In this episode of The MHP Broker’s Tips and Tricks podcast, Maxwell Baker, president of The Mobile Home Park Broker, interviewed The MHP Broker Jeff Dodge who teamed up with Max to close a park in the Charlotte, North Carolina metro.
As with every Tips and Tricks podcast episode, this one 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. Call Max for details.
Here Are the Show Highlights:
- Jeff and Max worked together on te Mountain Village Mobile Home Park deal in Gastonia, NC. It came amidst a real hot streak for MHP Broker. The company was incredibly busy the first part of 2025, especially compared to two years ago, before the presidential election. (Max, 1:10)
- It was a nice park in a good location, the Charlotte metro. Mountain Vilage had 46 lots and 40 tenant-owned homes, three vacant park-owned homes, two vacant lots and one rent-to-own home. The park had a high occupancy rate and strong demand. By the fact that most of the homes were tenant-owned, the maintenance costs and responsibilities were low and Mountain Village was mostly a turnkey operation. (Jeff, 3:24)
- The response to the deal was so great that Jeff received multiple offers and they ended up selling it for MORE than the asking price. (Jeff, 4:09)
- It didn’t go for just a little bit above the asking price either. It was more like a couple hundred thousand dollars over. (Max, 4:21)
- Jeff and Max were able to quickly get Mountain Village under contract with an experienced buyer. (Jeff, 4:26)
- The sale came in with a CAP rate in the upper sixes, which is virtually unheard of for a park with fewer than 50 lots. Great for the seller. The rate indicates that the buyer might have overpaid for the park. (Max, 4:38)
- The worst thing you can do as an investor is to just let your money sit there. So investors will sometimes spend it quickly oon what they consider to be a smart investment, even if they’re overpaying at that moment in time. Charlotte is a good housing market and the buyer obviously felt it was advantageous to buy the property at whatever he had to spend. (Max, 5:24)
- As great as the sale was, it didn’t go off without a hitch. The seller had two park-owned homes that weren’t occupied. He’d agreed to sell them before the park sale or give them up for nothing if he didn’t have them sold in time. But he evidently forgot that term pf the deal until the sale was about to go through and the buyer got ready to take possession of the two homes for free. When reminded of the terms of the deal, the seller refused to give up the homes for nothing. That drama at the end nearly killed the sale. (Jeff, 6:49)
- Jeff saved the sale by getting the buyer and seller to agree to a compromise by which the seller would keep the homes in the park until they were sold and pay lot rent on them in the meantime. The new buyer had aggressively raised lot rents and the seller agreed to pay the higher rate. Both buyer and seller were happy with the negotiation and the park sale closed. (Jeff, 8:12)
- Whether you have a big park or a small one, you can trust MHP Broker to get through whatever issues might occur and get the park sold. (Jeff, 11:08)
The MHP Broker has sold parks of all sizes and complexity. Even if you’re just thinking of selling it at some point in the future, we can evaluate your property and calculate its market value. Call Jeff Dodge or Max Baker at The MHP Broker, (678) 932-0200 or drop us a line at info@themhpbroker.com.
Power Quotes in This Episode:
“Everybody says the market’s down, but here at our brokerage yeah, I don’t know, we’re just killing it, man. Like, we’ve had more contracts fly across the desk at the beginning of 2025 than we’ve ever had as a company as a whole. (Max, 1:10)
“I mean, it was unreal the response we got. Received multiple offers and then went to work with competing offers and got it sold actually over ask price. The seller was very happy with that.” (Jeff, 4:09)
“It was a couple hundred grand over ask price with multiple offers that were competing.” (Jeff, 4:26)
The worst thing you can do is have a (investment) fund just sitting there. (Explaining why an investor might overpay on a good deal vs. doing nothing with their money.)” (Max, 5:24)
0:00
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 beautiful episode of. Of the Mobile Home Park Brokers Tips and Tricks Podcast. As always, this episode is brought to you by, you guessed it, your Community Price Maximizer. It is our proprietary system that will guarantee you a higher price when you exclusively list with us. Give us a call, 678-932020. And without further ado, we have another beautiful closing cocktail on a deal that we closed a little while ago called Mountain Village in beautiful Middle Georgia. I had the honor to have Jeff Dodge help me on this deal. We were a team to close this deal. Jeff, welcome to the show, and congrats, dude, for closing the deal.
01:07 Jeff Dodge
Hey, Max. Glad to be here. Thanks for having me.
01:10 Maxwell Baker
Yeah, man. So this deal, actually, this was not in Warner Robbins. This was up near Charlotte. We’re talking about another deal we just closed over in Warner Robin. So many deals similar. I know, man. The markets, everybody says the market’s down, but here at our brokerage. Yeah, I don’t know, we’re just killing it, man. Like, we’ve had more contracts fly across the desk at the beginning of 2025 than we’ve ever had as a company as a whole. So I don’t know what’s going on, but two years ago, prior to the election, man, it was brutal, y’all. I was having to write checks to pay people, and were. Checks were not rolling in. They were only rolling out. You know, after a little while of that, you’re like, damn it, this is not fun.
01:58 Maxwell Baker
But now that you know we have a new president in the office, whether you like them or you don’t, the reality is there’s a lot more confidence in the mobile home park and RV park industry, and people are, you know, starting to call us back. Whereas it was like, you know, we would call, email, text, smoke signal, visit them face to face, and we couldn’t get them off the pot. Y’all, like, they just wanted to sit and wait. But now all of a sudden, we’re. We’re getting a lot of phone call backs. Jeff, what do you. What are you thinking about that?
02:32 Jeff Dodge
Yeah, I absolutely agree with you. That sentiment completely. Like you said, man, a year ago, there was a lot of outreach and not as much response from that, but now we’re seeing a lot of response and we’re seeing a lot of people, you know, really just contacting us, looking to talk to us about the parking, the properties and looking to sell. They feel like read the strike while the iron’s hot.
02:56 Maxwell Baker
Yeah, man, it’s exciting. That’s kind of situation of excitement actually happened in this Mountain Village deal that we had in Charlotte. And were shocked at what kind of cap rate this thing sold at. Jeff, what kind of cap did we sell this deal at?
03:14 Jeff Dodge
It was in the upper sixes, Max. Do you want me to expound on that a little bit?
03:18 Maxwell Baker
Yeah, give us the details because it’s crazy with where interest rates are at and where this deal traded.
03:24 Jeff Dodge
Yeah. So first of all, I just want to say that grateful that we had the opportunity to work with this seller, I know, you know him as well. Grateful that we gave us the opportunity to work with him on this. But there’s Mountain Village Mobile Home park in Gastonia, North Carolina, which is just outside of Charlotte. So the Charlotte MSA, it’s good market, nice park at 46 lots, 40 tenant owned homes. So primarily tenant owned home park, obviously. Three vacant park owned homes, two vacant lots and one rto. The park had high occupancy demand, strong rental rates. Because of the market, they had limited maintenance and expenses due to so many tenant owned homes. And it was pretty much a turnkey operation. Once we took it out to market, we saw a great response, Max.
04:09 Jeff Dodge
I mean it was unreal the response we got. Received multiple offers and then went to work with competing offers and got it sold actually over ask price. Seller was very happy with that.
04:21 Maxwell Baker
Yeah, I think it was like 2 or 300 grand above ask. I don’t remember how much it was.
04:26 Jeff Dodge
It was, it was a couple hundred grand over ask price with multiple offers that were competing. Went under contract ultimately with an experienced buyer and we closed with that buyer, the first buyer went under contract on.
04:38 Maxwell Baker
Yeah, it was a little dramatic at the end, which I’ll expand on in a second here. But the big variable was upper sixes in the cap range with a park that’s under 50 pads, where right now interest rates are at the mid sevens, upper sevens, even in the eights. Like that doesn’t make sense, y’all. Everybody’s always saying, oh, we gotta have 250 basis points above whatever we’re paying in debt. That depends on what, how expensive your personal debt is. I mean these funds that have out there raised money like they have to Move money, they gotta place money. They can’t just let it sit around. So sometimes they’ll even overpay for a deal simply because it keeps them moving forward.
05:24
The worst thing you can do as having a fund is just sitting idle unless you’re able to, you know, have some sort of agreement with your investors that, you know, you’re only going to be taking down certain types of deals and it doesn’t matter how long it takes but for the most part, like, these funds are out there hustling, trying to find deals, and being that the bigger ones are fewer and far between, they’re just out there paying a premium. I mean I was shocked type upper sixes, y’all in the smaller and 50 spaces. So, if you got a community out there that’s in a primary market, Charlotte’s a primary and it’s in; In Atlanta, it’s a primary as well. Like, you’d be surprised. You might be able to get sixes still in today’s game, maybe even the fives, depending on how the infrastructure is and how below market the lot rent is. I mean, this guy raise lot rents, I think 100 bucks within the first year, which is a little aggressive on my end, but I think that, you know, getting away with, you know, 50 bucks in one year is a lot. But everybody to each of their own, obviously, but they came in and they raised a lot rents and are going to be cash flowing it and doing well with it. So there was one little drama here, and Jeff knows all about it that we had at the very end that I’ll tap my shoulder here saying, I’m a good boy and I was able to structure it (laughs)
06:49
So the seller had a couple of park owned homes that he was supposed to sell prior to closing, otherwise it would be transferred over to the buyer. What ended up happening was, of course, seller forgot that he put that in the agreement or that the buyer put that in the agreement. So the buyer, a week prior, he’s like, all right, I’m excited. You’re gonna get me these homes, right? I’m like, no, what are you talking about? And she’s like, it’s in the contract and I said, well, I hear what you’re telling me, but the reality is it’s not going to happen. He’s not giving you two $50,000 mobile homes for free and the buyer was like, upset. He was, you know, threatening attorneys and, you know, a little emotional.
But I mean, he had every right to because, like, it was in the contract and the seller was like, look, I don’t care, I’ll just, I’m not going to sign anything until we figure this out. You know, I kind of huddled up for about 24 hours and I thought, I was like, look, why don’t we just do a lot rent until they sell? and he’s like, well, you know, my lot rents hundred dollars more than what he’s charging and I’m like, well then just charge that. So, we put together an agreement with the closing attorney and had it. So, the seller was going to pay lot rent pretty much indefinitely until he sold those two homes. I mean, we almost lost the deal. Deal almost blew up at the very end.
08:12
Structuring that lot rent agreement until the home sold really helped the seller out. And also the buyer was like, look, that’s fine. I, I don’t want to deal with the homes, but I, you pay my elevated lot rent, I’m cool. So we structured it and then, you know, closed on time. Well, actually we got a 30 day extension because they had some drama with the third parties. But outside of that, I mean, we closed on time and elevated price tried to re-trade us once and were able to negotiate that a little off, but we tried to re-trade again. We were like, nah, that’s not happening. So I think the re-trade on the second time was actually the Park Owned Home drama we just talked about, but were able to structure it and got the deal done.
08:54
So all that being said, if you’ve got a mobile home RV community that you’re thinking about selling, we’ve got 15 years of experience on this side of the table as your broker. Why would you not hire us to sell your mobile home community? I mean, I don’t understand why you wouldn’t and a lot of these guys and girls out there say, oh, The MHP Broker only does small deals. Well, the majority of the market, y’all, 80% based off of our research, is under 75 units. So, of course we do a lot of deals that are smaller because it’s the majority of the market (laughs).
09:39 Jeff Dodge
(laughs)
09:40 Maxwell Baker
So, if you’ve got bigger deals, why wouldn’t you want somebody like us to be in your corner that has done every single hairy deal under the sun? Do you want somebody that only gets their white gloves on to sell your park and is only going to, you know, shuffle paperwork? Or do you want somebody who’s going to get in the trenches with you, ask for a shovel and start digging next to you and being able to put these deals together drama free. Well, I shouldn’t say drama free. There’s always drama and deal flow. But you’ve got somebody who’s literally slammed their head against the door for over 15 years doing deals and we’ve seen, I would say; I would like; we as a company and we all work, we have a big giant think tank that we get together and just talk about deal flow regularly in underwriting and techniques and deals blowing up in drama. Giant think tank over here working on your behalf to make sure that we eliminate the drama, get you the highest price, and you close stress free. It’s literally on our website and it’s the reason why we have that. So all that being said, I’ll get off of my tangent here. Jeff, any other color you want to share on this deal before we wrap this up?
11:08 Jeff Dodge
Yeah, like you said, even though there’s issues can arise, we can always find a good resolution and I would just say that everyone out there, regardless of the size of the park, needs someone representing them in their sale. So, please give us the opportunity to work with you because we will find the right buyer for you.
11:24 Maxwell Baker
That’s right. Jeff killed it on this deal. He did a lot of the legwork and helped put this deal together. I wouldn’t have been able to close it without Jeff on this. So, Jeff, thank you for teaming up with me on this and if y’all have some questions, give us a call. (678) 932-0200or email us at info@theMHPBroker.com. Happy to provide you a free analysis, a free rental analysis to make sure you’re not below on lot rents and we can get you some legal updates in your state. A lot of cool things as far as data that we can help you with but don’t be shy, give us a call. Again, that number, (678) 932-0200. Appreciate y’all listening and have a marvellous, stupendous and great day. Peace, love and rock and roll. Let’s keep moving forward!
