Buying a Manufactured Housing Community

[Ken Rishel]

There is no question in my mind, and in the mind of many others, that manufactured housing land lease communities are one of the best, if not the best, commercial real estate available for investment. I can't imagine investing in a strip mall or apartment complexes, and can barely imagine investing in a hotel/motel, but MH has proven itself to me over and over again. I know over 100 people who started with nothing or very little and by working hard and working smart, have become very affluent. The book, Millionaire Next Door identifies manufactured housing community ownership as the number one way self made millionaires use to do so.

So, what is the problem?

The number one issue, as I have written here before, is that people don't know what they don't know and they are unable or unwilling to expend the time and money to learn enough before they invest. People often post to BP similar to this, " I've saved a little money and I want to buy a community next week so what should I do?" without even knowing enough to post basic starting points for people to give them real answers. 

Sometimes they will post, "I want to sell homes and do seller finance so I can make a pot of money but I don't want to mess with the SAFE Act or Dodd-Frank so tell me how to get around those laws." without realizing there are 20+ other federal statutes they have to deal with if they intend to avoid becoming a criminal.

The trouble is, there are very real resources out there they should know about that could begin to help them learn at least part of what they don't know that they should be availing themselves of. Every state that has any real investment opportunity in MH has a state trade association they could join, and often for very little money. George Allen has written books available on Amazon or directly from GFA Management that launched several MH empires, including ELS. The MH/RV Hall of Fame in Elkhart, Indiana has a huge library of historic and current information available to read and sometimes copy for the price of admission. Those that don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. There are other good books out there as well. Both George and Rishel Consulting Group publish monthly newsletters as well that are full of information valuable to anyone in the industry.

If your goal is to become a community owner you should consider the Boot Camps and educational material available from Frank Rolfe and Dave Reynolds as a starting place after reading the books mentioned above. Not every successful operator will agree with everything they teach, but, their materials and Boot Camp are the bargain of the century for getting a starting place. Then seek out knowledgeable people like Joanne Stevens who likes helping newbies acquire their first communities  and whose website has years of back newsletters packed with knowledge for community owners.

If you get far enough along that you know you need a seller finance operation you can talk to my company, Rishel Consulting Group. We have helped over 75% of the industry with their seller finance problems and we are now helping them navigate the newly treacherous waters of Fair Housing as well. If you need help training or motivating sales personnel, people like Ken Corbin or John Underwood can help with that and Rainmaker Consulting can help with the necessary sales related software and accounting software. Don Westphal can help with zoning issues or planning issues and can solve all kinds of problems relating to design and layout of the community. If you have tax problems or need to structure tax situations, John Hyre is not only a community owner, but also a CPA and tax attorney who advises many other community groups - including mine.

The resources are there. The opportunities are there. Getting there isn't as easy as some would have you believe. But, if it were easy everyone would do it. Who are you? The dreamer who never quite makes it happen, or the doer who will someday be in the Hall of Fame?