Manufactured Home Investors

[Ibrahim Yamini]

Would a good start in real estate investing be in buying manufactured homes?

I wasn't interested at first because a lot of the taxes and HOA fees were ridiculously high in certain areas. But a few netted me a cash flow of $500 a month in my ROI projection chart.

Then it got me thinking.  I can buy one of these manufactured homes outright.  Wait a few months to save money from my other income and buy another outright.

I would much rather own a SFH, but if I'm starting out and looking to cash flow, would this be the right move vs buying a $300K house and netting $150 a month?

The main issue that gives me pause is that I know SFH's will go up in value tremendously in the next few years. If I have enough owned manufactured homes payed outright would it even matter in the future?

[Nathan Gesner]

This is a cheap option. I heard about a college student 20 years ago that got a summer job doing maintenance in a trailer park. Long story short, he became a millionaire by purchasing old trailers for a few thousand, fixing them up, and then selling them with owner financing. He spent less than $10,000 total on each trailer and would sell them for an average of $40,000 by the time all the payments were made.

The problem is that you really need to know the market and the product. Trailers are easy to buy, but they can become very expensive to fix if you don't know what you're doing. I've seen people buy trailers for under $5,000 but then they put $20,000 into repairs and end up with a trailer that probably wouldn't sell for $10,000.