In this episode, Max dives into what separates a good sale from a great one: presentation. Max outlines how small, inexpensive improvements can deliver massive ROI. From pressure-washing skirting to repaving roads and cleaning up signage, these tactical upgrades can literally mean hundreds of thousands in added value.
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First impressions matter. Think of selling your park like a first date—clean it up, shine it up, and show it off. (01:24)
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Replace skirting, pressure wash the homes, clean the roofs—especially before drone photos are taken. (02:54)
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Max tells the story of a seller who ignored all his prep suggestions—and lost $200,000 in value as a result. (05:03)
Power Quotes:
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“Keep your skirt on—literally. Broken skirting is one of the fastest value-killers in a park sale.” (02:54)
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“For less than $25,000, he could’ve made $200K more. That’s why curb appeal matters.”(05:03)
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 episode of The Mobile Home Park Brokers Tips and Tricks Podcast. 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. Give us a call (678) 932-0200 and we will go over all the details on how to get you the highest price when you exclusively list with us as your broker. 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.
01:24
Chapter Four. How to prep your park to maximize the sale price. Getting the biggest bang for your buck relies on first reactions. The biggest move you can make is to have your park free of debris, your signage should be clean, the phone number legible and visible and you’re landscaping up to par with the best-looking neighborhoods in your area. It’s like how you met your spouse, on the first time you met ‘em you were on your Ps & Qs, you made sure you didn’t have stuff in your teeth, you made sure your hair was combed, you made sure your breath didn’t smell, same thing with when you’re selling your park! You gotta have the first impression at the tip of spear per se whenever you are trying to sell it. For obvious reasons, like I just explained a lot of park owners I know have successfully flipped communities that have; I should say flipped communities have repaved the roads just before they put it on the market, nothing really pops like a freshly paved or sealed road even if it’s gravel or dirt, you should make sure it’s properly graded with holes filled in to show consistency throughout the entire park. Railroad ties are another great way to accent gravel and dirt roads. You always want to make sure the first impression your community gives is bankable and proves that your asking price is well-deserving when you exclusively list your community, obviously with us for sale!
02:54
Keep your skirt on! That’s right, keep your skirt on (laughs). The next thing is to install and replace skirting around your mobile homes so there are no missing pieces. Also, make sure you pressure-wash the sides of your mobile homes to get rid of any green gunk that may accumulate over time and you wanna make sure that it look like somebody actually cares about the cosmetic appearances in your community. Even if you don’t own the homes, you’ll need to put some Kool-seal on the roofs to get rid of the ugly rust-spots all over the top of your homes that’s because when we exclusively list your community, we’ll photograph the community with drones and those ugly brown roof-stains really stand out for all the wrong reasons in your community. I would even offer these cosmetic upgrades to those tenants who are just paying lot rent because when the bankers and the buyers come to look at the park their first impression should be Wow! This guy is maintaining the crap out of this place! Or there’s a lot of pride of ownership in all these Tenant Owned Homes all of which increase the value of your community. Example, I literally just had lunch with a banker, a national banker and they hire a third-party to come out and look at communities that they are about to lend on and they literally do exactly what I just described. They drive through, see if you’ve got skirting, see if the homes look good, see if the decking; see if the decks look good, you know even if they are old, just make sure they’re maintained or painted but literally that’s what they lend on based off of first impressions and then they’ll get the appraisal done but it was very surprising, well – not too much but it was surprising because they were all inspecting the parks themselves but they hired a third-party to do the inspections and it’s literally just a fly-by and drone shots and they don’t walk through the homes or anything like that at least in this situation. I’ve seen lenders do that on the appraisal but, yeah so just keep that in mind, like first impressions are very important.
05:03
So, what happens though when you don’t prepare, here’s a little story I got for ya. I was working on a park in Birmingham, Alabama that was an all-lot rent community. It had what everybody wants including dedicated roads, city water and actually septic tanks, let me curb that back, not everybody wants septic tanks but dedicated roads and city water everybody does like but anyways, each individual tank was operating very well and all the field lines were doing what they were supposed to be doing. When I did a walk-through, umm inspection I recommend that the seller cut the grass on the 30 empty lots. They were overgrown and just looked really bad. I also pointed out the green moss on the side of the homes. I further suggested that we spend a few 100 bucks on putting out a new sign with the park phone number and website, and cut down the vegetation that was almost choking the park entrance that was making it hard to even read the park sign. Later, when I showed up to take drone photos, he told me he was ready. What a shocker. His place looked exactly the same as when I last seen it. He hadn’t made a single improvement. I warned him that the lack of effort would affect his price and not for the better. He said, I’m too old and I don’t want to mess with it. Just sell it as is. Well, instead of getting a million dollars for he ended up just getting 800 grand. So, with that money, he would have spent, you know, at most 25 grand, he would have gotten an extra $200,000, do the math, there’s value in curb appeal.
06:37
Appraisers and Buyers are Eagle-eyed. That’s the title of the next section. Case you didn’t notice, appraisers look at your property much like buyers. They’ll examine the local lot rent and their sales comps. They’re going to look for curb appeal and for what the park’s first impressions would be due to its current appearance, obviously, as a brokerage firm, us, we specialize only in communities. Not only did we provide the data needed to show the park was under market with rents, but we also provided all the recent sold communities for the last 12 months in the state the park was in. Why is that important? Comps? That’s how appraisers gauge how the local market is doing. If your broker doesn’t have these, then you’re going to be in a world of hurt when your appraisal comes back super low. Here at the MHP Broker, we send out over, it’s actually; it says 15,000 but it’s closer to 20,000 mail pieces every month, and we have updated it to 36 different states, not 15, and when we get these undeliverable mailers coming back, like, you know, when you get returned mail because the address was mad, we take note on why, most of the time, it’s because the park was just sold and the mailing address doesn’t work anymore. With that info, we change the data and update who the owner is, and scrape all the sales data so that we can give it to you when we sell your park for you. Why is it important? It’s what reveals the value of your community. No other brokerage firm in the industry does this! It’s why we are involved. The chances at getting the highest price at sale are greatly increased. No other firm does it! We do it! We’re passionate about what we do, and we want to see you, guys and girls, get the highest price we can when we sell your community for you. So, give us a call (678) 932-0200.
08:32
Seis, Siete, Ocho, Nueve, Tres, Dos, Cero, Dos, Cero, Cero for all you Spanish speakers out there, that was for you.
