MHP Closing Cocktail Podcast, PA 37-Pad Mobile Home Park and GA 34-Pad Mobile Home Park

In this brief Closing Cocktails episode of The MHP Broker’s ® Tips and Tricks, Max discussed with MHP broker Eric Wanck the inside story on two recent deals Eric handled: PA 37-Pad Mobile Home Park, and GA 34-Pad Mobile Home Park.

As always, this episode is hosted by Maxwell Baker, the co-founder of The MHP Broker ®, and brought to you by our proprietary Community Price Maximizer. Use our four-step system through which we’ll help you navigate, and guarantee you a higher price when you sell your mobile home park or RV community.

Here Are Show Highlights:

• Eric actually found a buyer and got the park under contract even before PA 37-Pad Mobile Home Park was even listed. (Max, 1:24)
• Eric was talking with a PA investor he’d worked with before, and he felt that PA 37-Pad Mobile Home Park, which was still a week or two away from being listed, would be an ideal fit. (Eric, 1:35)
• The park sold for very close to the asking price, within around $10,000. (Eric, 2:37)
• PA 37-Pad Mobile Home Park is a very clean park, probably the nicest park in that small town. Paved roads, city water and sewer, mostly tenant-owned homes. (Eric, 2:47)
• It helped that they were able to get a PA banker who had worked with and understood the asset class, which is relatively rare. (Eric, 3:14)
• The one snag was that the appraiser completely ignored the five or six park-owned homes on the site, so the appraisal came in lower than expected, But Eric was able to work it out with the buyer and seller, to everyone’s satisfaction. (Eric, 3:14)
• The 37-pad park sold at an 8.9 CAP rate. (Max, 4:13)

___________________________________________________________________________

• GA 34-Pad Mobile Home Park was also brokered by Eric. It was an off-market deal with a lot of value-add upside. (Max, 5:23)
• Eric had been in contact with ownership for a year and a half, looking for a sale. Finally, the owner was ready. The property was in challenging condition, but Eric had a buyer lined up who saw the potential. (5:41)
• It was a strong all-cash buyer, a definite advantage to the seller. (Eric, 6:45)
• GA 34-Pad Mobile Home Park has city water and a septic system with no issues in due diligence. (Eric, 7:20)
• The park has 34 pads and went for a CAP rate of 8.8.

Two very different deals in two states, and two satisfied sets of buyers and sellers. Let us help you sell your park. Just drop us a line at info@themhpbroker.com or give me a call at 678-932-0200.

Power Quotes on These Episodes:

 “(PA 37-Pad Mobile Home Park)  just happened to be a great offer, one that the seller obviously agreed to.

 And we were able to put it in under contract before we took this to market. (Eric, 1:35)

“Very nice, clean community, even though it was a smaller town, certainly one of

the nicest parks, if not the nicest park in town. Paved roads, majority tenant-

owned homes, city water and sewer.” (Eric, 2:47)

“We had a…Pennsylvania lender, very familiar with this asset class, and that always

helps tremendously.” (Eric, 3:14)

“So (GA 34-Pad Mobile Home Park) is one of these parks that you might want to take someone with you

when you go through it for the first time. But you know, just a lot of value add, though.

And that’s what a lot of folks are looking for these days.” (Eric, 5:41)

“(Cash is) what sellers are looking for. ‘If you’ve got a strong cash buyer, bring them to

me and we can talk.’” (Eric, 6:45)

00:02

Hello, and welcome to The Mobile Home Park Brokers 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’s your host, Maxwell Baker.

00:22 Maxwell Baker 

Hey, y’all welcome to another beautiful closing cocktail with my main man, Eric Wanck, the myth, the legend, the rock star here at MHP broker. But before we go into this closing cocktail, this episode is, as always brought to you by the Community Price Maximizer. It is our proprietary system that will guarantee you a higher price when you sell your mobile home or RV park, and exclusively list it with us. It’s a four-step process. We’ve got a lot of things up our sleeve that can help you put that price up as high as possible, then we can bring you multiple offers. And Eric has got two deals we’re going to go over today. One is called PA 37-Pad Mobile Home Park and the second one was an off-market deal that we did here in Georgia called GA 34-Pad Mobile Home Park. We’re happy to talk a little bit about it. Welcome, Eric Wanck, thanks for coming to our closing cocktail, man.

01:17 Eric Wanck 

Thank you, Max, for the very warm and humbling introduction there. I appreciate it, always good to be talking about closed deals.

________________________________________________________________________________

PA 37-Pad Park:

01:24 Maxwell Baker 

Yes, we always love that. So let’s go over the five highlights that you’ve got here. You went under on PA 37-Pad Mobile Home Park. We have it here you went under contract before it was even listed, like tell us a little bit.

01:35 Eric Wanck 

Yeah, this is very unique. We don’t try to do this with a lot of our listings. The fact that we’ve got our marketing put together, always in constant communication with our buyer base and those that reach out to me. And I just happen to have a real good rapport with several buyers in the Pennsylvania market and I was in conversation with this particular buyer. And I knew this was coming to market in the next week or two. And I gave them a first look at it. And typically again, we don’t do that just because we want to give full marketing exposure to the client and our national database that we have really does a good job of getting the top dollar. But in this case, I said sure, go ahead and take a look at it. Bring us an offer if interested and it just happened to be a great offer one that the seller obviously agreed to. And we were able to put it in under contract before we took this to market.

02:28 Maxwell Baker 

Nice. It’s always good to get a good price before even getting it to market. It was pretty close to full list price, or how far off was it?

02:37 Eric Wanck 

We were within like $10,000 of where we were going out to the market with so…

02:42 Maxwell Baker 

Nice. It was mostly 10 and on community, right? Mostly a lot rent.

02:47 Eric Wanck 

Yeah, very nice, clean community, even though it was a smaller town, certainly one of the nicest parks, if not the nicest park in town. Paved roads, majority tended own homes, city water and sewer. I mean a lot of these checkmarks that most folks are looking for. So even though it was a smaller Park, it was 37 spaces in total. You know, it really checked a lot of boxes for this particular buyer.

03:09 Maxwell Baker 

You had some local bank finance there, right? Tell me a little bit about how that went down?

03:14 Eric Wanck 

Yeah, we did. We had a local bank, I should say it’s a Pennsylvania lender, very familiar with this asset class and that always helps tremendously. In that help the deal go along a lot of the challenge that sometimes we have specially on small to mid size parks is finding a competent lender that understands the space how to underwrite it, and the lender was never an issue for us. Now, we did have a small snag in the transaction, because the good old appraiser has to come out and appraise the part for hopefully our purchase price. And in this case, they underwrote it completely on lot rent only, there was a few park owned homes in there five or six and they just completely discounted. I mean, not even applying a shell value to the home there was this it was an empty lot and zero value for the homes. So we did have some challenges. There were the appraisal, thankfully, we were able to work it out between buyer and seller. But it gave a little bit of gray hair there for a little bit dealing with the appraiser.

04:13 Maxwell Baker 

Yeah, we actually had a podcast a little while ago about how to get your appraisal right every time because it’s kind of a crapshoot on these appraisers these days because they just markets moving really quickly and mobile home values have skyrocketed and a lot of these appraisers are not involved in the day to day of the values of mobile homes and mobile home communities. So it takes a lot of education on the appraiser side but that’s why the people hire us, that’s why they hire Eric. I mean we are able to get mobile home park values and mobile home values in line with where the market is as we do a lot of volume. And since we are able to do a lot of volume that means we see a lot of deal flow in organically means we are understanding what the hot buttons are for people and can get the best price for. So, this was a 37 space park and the cap-rate. I have it here as an 8.9. Is that right?

05:07 Eric Wanck 

Yeah, that is right. It was it was actually under contract, we did make a slight adjustment, do the appraisal. But, you know, 8.9 was after the fact, we closed that. I think a good cap rate, given the area and the demographics and the sellers very happy. Both sides were very happy during the day.

________________________________________________________________________________

GA 34-Pad Park:

05:23 Maxwell Baker 

Nice, nice. Well, that wraps up PA 37-Pad Mobile Home Park. Let’s talk about GA 34-Pad Mobile Home Park. This was an off market deal. Wasn’t the prettiest deal if you were to drive through it. But you know, it was one of those deals that had a lot of value as far as upside is concerned. Tell us a little bit about that winner?

05:41 Eric Wanck 

Yeah, very much. So this is one of these parks that you might want to take someone with you when you go through it first time. But you know, just a lot of value add, though. And that’s what a lot of folks are looking for these days. Not necessarily because it’s bad ownership, it could be distance, it could be health issues. There’s a variety of reasons why a park may be in its condition that it’s in. Our current buyers, they realize the inefficiencies here and in this was an off market deal that quite frankly, I’ve been in contact with ownership for over a year and a half, and just continuing to stay in touch and see and how things are going and eventually, he came around to, “Hey, now is the time”. So Macon can be a little bit of a an interesting market for us. But the buyers on this one had some other holdings in the area certainly made sense for them to add to their portfolio. And yeah, we got this one completely done off market seller didn’t want to take it to market simply, hey, if you’ve got some pocket buyers here, let’s try to get it sold. And that’s exactly what I did.

06:41 Maxwell Baker 

Nice man. Was this an all cash transaction?

06:45 Eric Wanck 

It was you know, it was. Yeah, I mean, anytime that we can have a clean contract, and especially from a broker standpoint, on off market deals, the probability of close and time to close is a high priority for us. So truthfully, I try to look and only do deals off market that have strong all cash buyers behind them. Unless the sellers willing to wait around. But a majority of time, that’s what sellers are looking for. If you got a strong cash buyer, bring them to me and we can talk.

07:14 Maxwell Baker 

Yeah, definitely and ironically, the cap rate on this one, even though is a little uglier. What kind of water and sewer did it have?

07:20 Eric Wanck 

It did have city water and it did have septic.

07:23 Maxwell Baker 

One the one septic?

07:24 Eric Wanck 

Yeah

07:25 Maxwell Baker 

And it was fine. The septic no issues?

07:27 Eric Wanck 

Yeah, they got it all checked out, septics were fine. A few things popped up on the water lines, but certain things are always gonna pop up during due diligence. We work through them, you know, at the end of the day able to bring this one to a close.

07:39 Maxwell Baker 

How did they check the septic? So they hired somebody or what was the process like?

07:43 Eric Wanck 

Yeah, they did they hired a local company to come out and take a look at it. I don’t know the exact details on it. But that’s that’s how it was conducted?

07:50 Maxwell Baker 

Yeah. Like I mentioned earlier, the cap rate was very close. I mean, this was an 8.8 to the Lilybridge at 8.9. The size of the park is very similar, 34 pads. One up in Pennsylvania was 37 pads and on face value, the PA deal seems like it’s a nicer park, but traded at a higher cap rate versus this off market deal trade at a lower cap rate. I’m curious, why do you think that happened is a factor of what lot rents are going for in the areas or what do you think that is?

08:23 Eric Wanck 

Yeah, I think it’s really boils down to a few things. One being the area itself, making a much larger market than what this Pennsylvania park was located in and because it’s a larger market, there’s more demand for housing and lot rents were higher here in this area than we were Pennsylvania.

 08:39 Maxwell Baker 

Interesting.

08:40 Eric Wanck 

And probably the third thing to add to that is just the value add component of this. Not that buyers are overly eager to pay aggressive cap rates on value add but it does come into a factor. They could add homes in here, they could bump rents up once the capital improvements were made certainly justified to pay a little bit more aggressive cap rate on paper. Yeah, for what the upside was.

09:03 Maxwell Baker 

Nice. Okay. Well, that pretty much wraps it up here at the closing cocktail, closing Nalgene bottle water cocktail is what I’m drinking at 1:30 in the afternoon on a Wednesday. But anyways, as always, Eric, thank you for joining us. We’ve got quite a few other deals lined up to close this year. We got a big one here in Georgia that we’re very excited about that. Hopefully we’ll get under contract here in the next few days. But as always, give us a call and Eric can walk you through the Community Price Maximizer. It is our proprietary four step program that will guarantee you a higher price on your mobile home or RV community when you exclusively list it with our company, and obviously Eric is very good. He is one of our top performers here at the company. I think his contract and close ratio is in the 80s Y’all. So he very rarely falls out of contract. When he puts a deal on under contract, and it’s simply because impeccable front end due diligence y’all. Problems, don’t kill deals, surprises do and Eric is one of the better guys out there that is very good at the upfront due diligence. So Eric, as always, thank you for joining us phone number for us here at the firm is 678-932-0200 or shoot us an email at info@themhpbroker.com. Thanks for listening. Y’all be well