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Mobile Home Investing: Design on A Dime

John Fedro
2 min read
Mobile Home Investing: Design on A Dime

There are many ways to beautify a home for sale or rent when money is tight.  Our goal as investors on a budget should be to maximize beauty and sales appeal and minimizing our spending limit.  I say, “The more money we keep in our pocket the better.”  Keep in mind the list below are mainly cosmetic fixes, anything structural, electrical, or plumbing related should be seen by a professional, as well as any skill level above your ability.

Bathroom ceiling and vanity light fixtures – Most mobile homes have a standard two to five horizontally built light fixture screwed into the wall just above the bathroom mirror typically made to resemble wood.   These fixtures tend to rust, tarnish and discolor very quickly.  In addition, the ceiling light may be an outdated glass bulb with single light fixture.  If either of these are the case in your used mobile home head to your local home improvement warehouse to pick up a few new chrome light sets.  The cheapest will usually do just fine.

Ceiling fans and lights – Installing ceiling fans into rooms that previously only had a light fixture can be done in under an hour by anyone that can read directions and use a screwdriver.  A cheap fan with light combo installed into each room makes for a wonderful selling feature.

Whenever I get a new place I like to give the new tenant-buyers the option for me to install the new fan/light combos in each room for only an extra $20-$40 dollar bump in their monthly payment.  This is a great little profit center I have found that pays for the materials plus hundreds more over time.

Linoleum floor squares – Linoleum square are typically sold in one square foot sections in hundreds of patterns.  They can be very inexpensive to purchase at any home improvement store.  On many older mobile homes these squares will be discolored, pealing off or very outdated.  Each square comes with a sticky backside. They are easy to cut with an ordinary pair of scissors to get around kitchen or bathroom corners.  The protective paper is removed from backside and stuck to the cleaned surface of the floor.  These make a huge improvement to any torn, ripped or stained vinyl/linoleum floor.

Prime all dirty walls Kills brand paint or any other oil based primer is ideal for covering walls with marker stains, smoke damage, discolorations and ugly paint jobs.  A nice clean neutral or off white primer covering the walls will unify the home, clean up the walls and leave a blank canvas for the new homeowner to imagine their favorite colors.  In my experience the size of the rooms seem to increase with a fresh off white paint job.

Potpourri or another pleasant smelling air freshener is  great way to add the sense of smell into the homebuyers’ experience.  When the prospective homebuyer or tenant first walk through the home they will smell something; whether it be normal neutral air, a foul smelling trash can, the fresh cut grass, mildew, fresh baked cookies or your sweet smelling $1 air freshener.  Make the homeowner enjoy the first smell and first impression of the interior the property.

Each of the following items should be kind to your wallet in exchange for a much faster sale and/or higher selling/renting price.  There are many more tips and tricks you can use with minimal cost.  Take a tour though new and used homes yourself to see what stands out good and bad.

– J. Fed

Photo: joebeone

Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.