Show Highlights-
What separates specialists from generalists—and why that matters in this niche. (1:10:36)
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Max exposes four types of bad brokers: The Wheeler-Dealer, The Ghost, The Lister, and The National Pretender. (1:11:04–1:13:30)
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Why The MHP Broker is built differently—and what makes the team uniquely effective. (1:14:20)
Power Quotes-
“Generalists aren’t specialists. And in this industry, specialists win.” (1:16:23)
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“We’re two steps ahead of every deal—because we’ve already seen every trick in the book.” (1:14:20)
00:00
Hello and welcome to the Mobile Home Park Broker’s Tips and Tricks. This is the podcast where we talk about mobile home park investing, because that’s what we’ve been involved in for the last decade. Let’s dive into today’s episode. Here is your host, Maxwell Baker.
00:22 Maxwell Baker
Hey, y’all, welcome to another eeeepic episode of The Mobile Home Park Brokers Tips and Tricks Podcast. I am your host, Maxwell Baker, yours truly, CEO at the firm. Today we’re going to be talking about your seller’s guide. So, this book is what I wrote a little while ago, for all y’all sellers, all you sellers, depending on where you’re from, as I’m going to say it, all you guys and girls out there that are sellers of mobile home communities. Today, we’re going to be going over that book. So, I’m going to be doing a little bit of a summary, but also be reading directly from the book.
01:04
Chapter Seven. ‘How to choose the right broker to sell your mobile home park?’ (clears throat) it’s probably going to be us ’cause we are the grand champions in the industry so why wouldn’t you hire us but in case you’re curious — let’s dive into Chapter Seven and see what we’re talking about. Let’s go over the last subject. It’s near and dear to my heart, being good friends with your neighbor real estate agent doesn’t mean they’ll be good at selling your mobile home or RV community. I have more broker friends than I can count because I’m in the business, but I will tell you one of the ways that my friends and I separate ourselves from the competitors. We actually meet once a quarter to talk about this very subject, is we all specialize in one field.
01:53
One of my buddies only deals with retail shopping centers. Another buddy of mine strictly apartments, and I only do mobile home parks. Hiring a specialist is the best way for you to make as much money as you can on your community when it’s time to sell. I’ll tell you right now that I don’t know everything about parks. It’s taken me over a decade to learn this information, and I pay rent on that every day but I’ll give you the best pointers that I know on brokers. Brokers who talk fast that act like they know everything about the business and have solutions to all your problems are what we call the Wheeler-Dealer Brokers. You know this type of person. They love to talk over you, and you can barely get a word in. Number Two, Brokers who promise you a high price on your park that isn’t anywhere near what the market is calling for, are called Brokers that Buy Listings because all they want is to get your listing at any cost. They don’t care if it doesn’t sell, because they’re using your listing to get more listings. They just want to look busy in their marketplace. In the back of their minds, these types of brokers are planning to squeeze you later to lower the price, or when rates drop, they feel like they can wait it out and get the price that they promised you later. So, let’s go ahead and list your park or community or portfolio for sale and wait for the rates to drop. That’s a bunch of BS y’all! They’re literally buying the deal and they’re going to sit on it for however long it takes. So, don’t fall for that trick.
03:32
Number Three, there’s also these “National Brokers” who say they sell parks everywhere. While this situation is sometimes true, I can guarantee you that they probably haven’t researched and found every single park in your state. Most likely, they don’t even have a team of researchers updating the database every day, finding out which parks are selling and where the trend of rents is going across your state. At a macro level, National Brokers are good at skimming your local market with buyers they have but they really suck at producing any local buyers because they haven’t spent the time updating every trade in your state. Trade, meaning every sale, it takes a lot of work, and like most people, they try to make as most money with as least amount of time from them.
04:19
Number Four, next, we have these Brokers just seem to disappear once the park goes Under Contract. I like to call these brokers the Ghost Brokers. It’s quite magic trick to disappear, poof! once the deal goes under contract, then they magically reappear. Abracadabra when it’s time for closing and it’s time to get paid. In some nightmare scenarios, these brokers don’t even check whether or not the buyer has deposited their Earnest Money. This is really bad, because when a buyer decides not to buy your park after their due diligence period, you should then get their Earnest Money right? Wrong! If your broker isn’t micromanaging the deal from the effective date of the contract until closing, you’re going to get hammered one way or another.
05:08
Number Five. Now the next broker is one that we only hire, and that broker is called “The MHP Broker”. Our brokers have researched the entire state and found out where rents are have identified the most active buyers. They also set expectations on where your park will eventually trade at the team who also stays engaged once we go under contract and stays two steps ahead of all situations on your deal, so we can put out any potential fires before they even happen, a broker from our firm will also advise you to possibly make improvements to increase your price and lower the park’s perceived risk profile. Finally, our team has connections with most, if not all, the local lenders who will finance the deal in transaction for you. We are actually your one stop shop for anything related to mobile, home and RV, community related marketing and sales, you must pay your rent in order to get that kind of information, and we do it every day.
06:14
So, moving on to the next section, which is Thinking Regional. Let’s look at your needs. As regional brokers, we try to look at every deal we list, and even our competitors’ listings. We’re looking at them all the time to see what they’re trying to sell their communities for, I like to study the surrounding market to see how the local economy is doing, from the sales and rental comps to all the other data. Doing that leads for a lot of good feedback for you as a seller, when it all comes down to is that the regional broker just has a better and bigger advantage to getting you the best price, they can we’re closer to the action. We get up to speed faster because we already know the geography and the local and regional business climate, the culture, the mood on the ground. We can act faster with more accuracy, and we simply already know what we’re going to do, and have a higher probability of getting you the highest price, faster!
07:11
Generalists aren’t Specialists. Is the title of our next section. If my spouse were pregnant and we were about to have a baby, I wouldn’t go to a General Practitioner, would I? I would much rather go to a specialist, an OBGYN, to deliver the baby, while a GP can do this work, I don’t think I would trust that physician, because she’s not specially trained in our specific needs of having a baby. It’s the same thing when making one of the biggest sales transactions of your life, you wouldn’t go to a generous Real Estate agent who sold your house a few moments ago, or even an agent that said he sells commercial real estate a few years ago, or maybe even did a deal for you a few years ago. You go to somebody who specializes in that very distinct real estate market. You want to have a specialist who can deliver the deal or the baby error free every single time. Specialists know how to look out for all the pitfalls. If they start seeing some red flags, they’ll try to immediately adjust and fix them. That’s the reason it’s extremely important for you to have somebody who specializes in selling mobile home communities or RV communities, just like the one you have and are thinking about selling.
