MHP Brokers Tips and Tricks Closing Cocktail Podcast, Paul Schaaf and his Grace MHP Deal

In this episode of The MHP Broker’s Tips and Tricks Closing Cocktail podcast, Maxwell Baker, president of The Mobile Home Park Broker, interviewed rising star broker Paul Schaaf about his challenges and quick success in the recent sale of Grace Mobile Home Park.

This and every Tips and Tricks podcast episode is brought to you by The MHP Broker’s’  proprietary Community Price Maximizer. Use this four-step system to get the highest price possible for your mobile home park or RV community when you sell it through The MHP Broker. Guaranteed. Ask Max for details.

Here Are the Show Highlights:

• The challenge with the sale of this park was that Paul was dealing with the family of the park owners who’d recently died. None of the survivors knew much about mobile home parks or how to market them. They needed Paul to evaluate the park and the sale opportunity. It was primarily a park-owned home asset. (Paul, 1:27)
• Paul’s first task was to educate his clients on the marketing of a mobile home park, and to set realistic expectations. (Paul, 2:08)
• Paul quickly got some solid offers for the park, and went with a regional buyer who knew the market. He carefully conducted due diligence on the buyer, made sure the buyer was comfortable with the transaction, and held hands with the sellers to make sure they understood every step in the process and could provide all documentation needed to complete the closing. As a result, the park closed in an incredibly fast 35 days. (Paul, 2:32)
• Paul’s experience with this sale reinforced The Mobile Home Park Broker commitment to a strong contract-to-close ratio through due diligence and by doing business repeatedly with trusted entities. Many competitors need to bring five or six “buyers” to a seller before successfully closing with that last one. That’s the result of weak due diligence, which can complicate and painfully slow down transactions. (Max, 3:14)
• One key takeaway to this deal was that the parties came together through a referral from a satisfied former client, which emphasizes the importance of maintaining a strong brand with a reputation for good, clean transactions that generate enthusiastic referrals. (Paul, 4:33)

Looking into the possibility of selling your community? Ask The Mobile Home Park Broker team how they maintain their high contract-to-close ratio to sell your park as quickly and as cleanly as possible. Drop Max Baker a line at info@themhpbroker.com or give him a call at 678-932-0200.

Power Quotes in This Episode:

“They really appreciated our thoroughness and service every step of the way and it was a good transaction between all parties.” (Paul, 2:19)

“Typically, when we put your community under contract it’s going to close the very first time.” (Max, 3:14)

“Our brand is so strong that we can continue to fill the pipeline with listings and make sure we do a good job.” (Paul, 4:33)

“(Paul and our other dealers)…make sure that your contract–to–close ratio is as close to 100% as possible.” (Max, 5:05)

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 episode of the mobile home park brokers, tips and tricks, podcast. As always, this episode is brought to you by the Community Price Maximizer, is our proprietary system that will guarantee you a higher price when you exclusively list your community with us, four step process and today we are having a another beautiful, radical righteous any adjective you want to throw out at closing cocktail with one of our up-and-coming brokers has been with us two years, I think a little over two years now and is nipping, one of our other top brokers heels as becoming the top broker, Paul Schaff welcome to the podcast, man.

01:10 Paul Schaff

Hey, Max, how you doing, man?

01:12 Maxwell Baker

Good man. So, let’s start off with just Grace Home Spaces. We’ve got some highlights here but, give us some little background on how we met the seller and how the talk track was and we can kind of dive into some of the highlights.

01:27 Paul Schaff

Yeah, so background on Grace, it was owned and operated by a gentleman’s mom and dad for close to 30 years and they, you know, moved on, hopefully to a better place and the remaining family members did not want to own and operate it any longer. They counted on us to do a good evaluation and give us an idea of what type of offers we would see. You know, it was predominantly a park-owned home asset and you know, they were silent in the background and counting on one of the tenants to really run the park full blast.

02:07 Maxwell Baker

Yeah.

02:08 Paul Schaff

They didn’t know too much about mobile home parks. So, we really had to educate them and give them an idea of you know, how marketing of a mobile home park works and what to expect along the way.

02:18 Maxwell Baker

Yeah.

02:19 Paul Schaff

They really appreciated our thoroughness and service every step of the way and it was a good transaction between all parties.

02:27 Maxwell Baker

I don’t think we fill out a contract too many times with different buyers on this one, right?

02:32 Paul Schaff

That’s right. Yeah, we we had a lot of good action on it, solid offers. Then we chose the one that seemed like the best fit, and the owners were comfortable with, a regional buyer who knew the market. Yeah, we had a tight contract, we were able to negotiate some pretty strong terms in there on a quick close, this one actually closed in 35 days, it was really seamless. So, we prep the due diligence file helped out the buyer as much as we could to make sure they were comfortable with the transition on the acquisition side. Then the seller was there every step of the way to make sure we had all the documents we needed to complete the closing.

03:14 Maxwell Baker

So, I just want to reiterate that here at the MHP broker our contract to close ratio t ypically, when we put your community under contract, it’s going to close the very first time. So, if y’all were at SECO, that was one of the questions that I was asking some of the other brokers on the panel, if you were in the crowd, like what is your contract to close ratio, how many buyers do you have to go through in order to find the right buyer and as you can see, here, we found the right buyer, Paul negotiated some really great terms for the seller and we got it done with the very first contract we had on the park. So that’s a huge deal. A lot of brokers will, you know, put a deal on our contract five times and then maybe on the sixth time, they’ll finally close but here at the MHP broker, we have a very, very thorough due diligence process on all the buyers that come through our system. It helps alleviate any of the uncertainty that a lot of sellers may have and making sure they have the right buyer. So, Paul, congrats on that. Congrats to the seller and dude, you killed it on that one.

04:26 Paul Schaff

Appreciate that Max.

04:27 Maxwell Baker

Any closing statements man that you would like to tell me the sellers out there that are thinking about listing with us?

04:33 Paul Schaff

I would say one of these deals was a referral. So, we are always trying to do business with people we like doing business with. You know, it’s always good to have that connection where we want to do business with them because we trust the previous transaction. That’s what I like to work off is referrals, word of mouth. Our brand is so strong that we can continue to fill the pipeline with listings and make sure we’re doing a  good job. So, referrals that would be the key takeaway on that I’m thinking of right now.

05:05 Maxwell Baker

Yeah. So, you know you’re doing a good job, if people are doing a deal with you and then sending you another deal that their buddy or fellow, professional that they know in the area, or outside the area that own a community, you know, it’s like MHP broker, Paul Schaff and the rest of our team will take care of you. So, give us a call (678) 932-0200 or shoot us an email at info@themhpbroker.com. As always, this episode is brought to you by the Community Price Maximizer. It is our proprietary system that will guarantee you a higher price, when you exclusively list with us, upfront due diligence on your deal. Problems don’t kill deals, surprises do and Paul is one of the biggest researchers on our team to make sure that your contract to close ratio is as close to 100% as possible. Thanks for listening, y’all and let’s keep moving forward.