Looking for Mobile Home JV Partner in East TX & Advice

[Mark Podolsky]

Greetings all,

I have a 200 lot subdivision I own free and clear in East Texas surrounding a 40 acre lake. Most of the lots are .14 acres with for purely mobile home lots. There are no restrictions and power and water is already in place.

I purchased this land for back taxes and had planned on simply flipping the lots cheap. But since the bankruptcy of the developer this development sat for a long time. All of the paved roads need major repair and a dozen or so lots have had undesirables move in. Therefore I believe the best play is to partner with an experienced MH park developer and develop it into a nice mobile home park, perhaps age restricted. to 55 and over.

The location is Enchanted Lake at Holiday Pines about 20 minutes south of Mineola and 35 min north of Tyler, which is about 1/2 way between Dallas and Shreveport, east to west.

I get tons and tons of leads, mostly seniors wanting to either put a MH or RV or MFG home out there. But after they visit, the comments are typically “we love the area, its beautiful, but some of the people living there make us concerned for our safety”. Developing it would enable us to root this handful of people out.

The high level idea is that I would provide the land and the JV partner would develop the park with MH and improved roads in phases. The JV partner must be able to put boots on the ground. If needed I can assist in syndicating capital. The exit strategy is to get the park up and running profitably where we are doing standard space lease and MH developer selling the mobiles cash and terms, then sell the property and a nice low cap rate in 5-7 years.

The reason why I don't go it alone is because I don't have the experience in MH nor do I have boots on the ground or time to put my own boots on the ground.

If you have experience and are interested please reply. Or, if you know someone, particularly in East Texas let me know.

Thanks BP community!

[George N.]

Would look up Mobile Home University. There is a large community of park investors, many wanting to partner up. There are a ton of resources there to guide you on a deal like this.

I'm not 100% sure of the specifics here. So there are MHs in the subdivision? How many? For something like this to work you're going to have to ensure there is very vibrant market and a very strong demand for affordable housing. New parks are extremely rare and it will be very difficult to find a park developer as very few parks are developed each year. In fact, many more are torn down than put up. And a senior park has downside... limits your tenant pool, rent increase flexibility, and generally pulls in less demand on exit.