All Forum Posts by: Cliff Benner

 That is great information to know and makes a lot of sense! 

Yeah I lived next to great Trailer neighbors and Bad ones like TV shows, but then i lived next to the same kind of people when I moved to an Apartment and house. It's usually just people trying to live their best lives.

Good to know! Thank you!

I would add this to the Off Topic section, seems to be lots of Self Storage and Laundromat items in there.

From what I know, there is an SBA loan for buying a business that doesn't have real estate. My wife helped coach a client through the business purchasing process which he used an SBA Loan on and didn't buy the real estate with it. Start with buying it now, add value, make sure it cash flows in the mean time, refinance in a few years when rates go down or look for loans that have fixed rates but have balloon payments in the future and by making it more profitable it should become easier to lend on.

Look into Local banks around it, they love helping local businesses, read Buy then Build for info on the whole process including purchase options, why not ask about seller financing/listen to Codie Sanchez's take on this, and you can control the price or the terms pick one. 

I bought my business back in May on seller financing and we moved it into our house so different scenario then you are in. But we did Seller financing with step up payments and that was very intriguing to the seller. First year was affordable and every 12 months after that we added $100 to the next 12 payments until it is paid off. So they get interest over time but also get bigger payments as time goes on, which in time our business should be performing better and better to where the payment gets easier and easier to handle. 

Good luck man! It isn't easy but it becomes addicting and fun!

@Adrian Smude that makes a lot of sense to me. I grew up in an old mobile home that my parents worried about the electrical only to move into a brand new one in the early 2000s for it to burn down because of.....an electric fire, ironic.

But when we did get newer trailers I saw the differences in building and materials used so I wondered if that played into what you bought just due to the frame of the modular trailers being more updated.

I know on the older ones like you have, you probably had to update the electrical, furnace/HVAC system, and insulation, correct? Same thing with a "normal" house from those years, but since they were older you could buy them at a lower price, put in the same rehab work but make more in cash flow per month, I am assuming  please correct me if I am wrong. 

But I do like that strategy, tenant base is different though, leading to new issues that are still figure outable. 

Thanks!

@Adrian Smude what would you say is a good cut off for the age of a Mobile/Modular home to invest in?

I was thinking around '95 but have been looking for opinions from others  on it.

 Hey Jerry,

Do you only buy them if they are newer then a certain year? I have thought about this but have wondered how the age might affect what needs to be done in a flip; ie furnace and electrical.

Do you run into these problems in your flips?

Little biased since I am an Accountant 🤣

 Talk to your Accountant first, gains are not based on what is owe on a property but the tax basis of the property from purchase and improvements made.

@Amanda Davi Little tough, depending on how many LLCs you have and how much they make. Usually you need to track each properties expenses for Tax Time, that is where Class Tracking on QBO comes in handy, but that subscription costs the most, of course. if all your properties are in different LLCs and that is how you plan to keep going, you could use QuickBooks Online's cheapest subscription option but you probably would have to have a different log in for each.You can connect to your bank account to bring in transactions with this automatically.

One option might be purchasing QuickBooks Desktop Accountant and that will allow you to pay once and have the ability to make multiple LLCs, again all on different account logins. You can connect to your bank account to bring in transactions with this automatically. 

I use Wave for my one rental, it is free, and I can have multiple LLCs under one login. You get what you pay for and it is not the friendliest but you might be able get what you are looking for by pulling an excel sheet of each P&L and combining them. You can connect to your bank account to bring in transactions with this automatically.

Also, Yardi might be a good option. you can have multiple properties and LLC under one. I'm not sure what the cost would be though.

Hope that helps and I will you luck!

For my clients we set up a Box account, because it is free and tell them to put both in there, name it the same thing with a "A" and "B" at the end or a "1" or "2" just for proof. But I would suggest keeping whatever proof it would take to prove an expense to an Auditor as a rule of thumb. That could be both because a receipt might not have details on what something is but shows what you paid while an Invoice shows the item's details with the wrong amount having both helps prove it is X but it only costed me Y

If you are scaling and not an Accountant, I would look to outsource Bookkeeping. I have been doing Bookkeeping and Financial Reporting for 7 years for Small Businesses and even I have to educate myself on certain transactions and changes and I know what I am looking for. Most business owners don't. And they just dont know what they dont know so they maybe missing out on deductions they are allowed and could take to reduce their tax burden but they don't and Tax Accountants are way to busy from January to April to sit and explain that to their business clients. Plus a good bookkeeper can be a second pair of eyes to your Return to make sure everything looks right, if they know taxes. I caught a tax accountant missing Meals from the deductions because there were so many changes to the IRC one year that they focused on Personal Return changes and may have missed Business Return changes. 

Hope that helps! Good Luck!