Module 1

Market Research & Marketing

In this module, you will learn the following:

You're going to learn the ninja strategies we use in our businesses to quickly locate every mobile home park in your area, and how to set up 2 separate marketing funnels that will have buyer and seller leads rolling in daily right away.

We will show you how to build a buyers list bursting with highly motivated buyers that are literally begging you to take their money!

How cool is that?!

First, we need to identify exactly what they're looking for.  We want the following:

Single Wides & Double Wides compose about 99% of all mobile homes created, so you won’t have trouble finding them.

Here are a few things to know about single vs double:

You’ll learn all about this in later modules when calculating ROI.  Obviously the less you pay for something and the more you can sell it for, the larger the ROI.  More on that later, but for now, I just want you to build a solid knowledge base.

We are targeting mobile homes on leased lots, mainly in mobile home parks. When the mobile home is on a leased lot, it is actually considered “personal property” and not “real property” or real estate.

The rules are completely different because of this.

Essentially, the mobile home park (or land owner) owns the land, and you pay lot rent to the park every month to keep your home on their land.

Most of the time, these homes are located in mobile home parks. Some parks can be run by large corporations and be composed of 600+ mobile homes in a single park. Many other parks can be smaller “mom & pop” parks comprised of only 25 units or less. And there are plenty in between those sizes as well.

You’ll find the best deals on single wides and double wides manufactured in the 1980′s and 1990′s.

They are usually fully paid off (which makes the purchase simpler and cheaper), and they are still in pretty good shape.

You can still buy homes that are older than 1980 and newer than 2000. But obviously,older homes have a higher likelihood for major repairs and deferred maintenance.  It’s kinda funny though- homes built back in the 60′s and 70′s were actually built better than the ones produced today.

Over time, these manufactured housing companies started squeezing out more profits by using cheaper materials.

The problem with homes this old is that the wear and tear could be pretty bad from all the years of use like I mentioned about, but also they are typically smaller.  2 bed 1 bath is pretty typical.  So this will hurt your ability sometimes to fill or sell the property.

Plus buyers can be a little turned off if the home is 40+ years old!  We will get into more detail about this in a later module.

But don’t rule these homes out, there's still a ton of money to be made with them. For simplicity, though, we want to focus the majority of our energy on the 1980′s and 1990′s.  I mean, those were 2 pretty good decades weren’t they?!  The 1980′s was probably the most badass decade of all time because this is when Doug and I were born! And the 90′s rocked because… well because I said it rocked, ha!

That’s not a hard-and-fast rule. But it’s a good sweet spot and an area where we really seem to be able to maximize our returns.

What’s really cool about mobile homes is that you can buy an asset free and clear for between $3,000-$6,000.

These are extremely affordable to purchase for really just about anyone, and when you see what kind of return on investment you can get from these things, your blood will really be pumping! And that is exactly what we are going to show you in a later module, so stay tuned…

Mobile Homes on a Leased Lots VS. Single Family Homes

Mobile homes on leased lots are considered Personal Property not Real Property.

Technically, mobile homes on leased lots are not considered real estate. They have a vehicle title, just like a car does. When the land is not deeded with the home, we are working with personal property, which is very very different from real property and real estate.

I want to make this distinction very clear! The entire investing process is completely different because of this.

For the purposes of this course, we are only going to be working with mobile homes on leased lots that are considered personal property.

MARKET RESEARCH:

You may have no idea where to even begin finding these mobile home parks to target. So the first step is going to be locating all the parks in your area so we can then target them in our marketing.

How to find Mobile Home Parks:

This is a quick and easy way to start locating these parks. Simply type this into the google maps and a bunch of parks will be listed. However, many parks will not be listed with google so this is just the first, easiest option.

You can create your own custom google map (which I recommend) and pin every place that has a mobile home park.

With your own custom map, you can add parks as you discover them, and you can make notes on each park and include park contact info as well. This is a very good way of keeping track with where these parks are located. (It is especially important if you ever want to out source talking to parks on a regular basis with a VA, assistant, or wholesalers or bird dogs that you train).

This is a nationwide site that many people and dealers list mobile homes for sale. Get on this website and search for mobile homes for sale in your area.

We are not trying to necessarily buy these, because often times they are listed at full retail price (or higher).

The purpose of this is to find out where these mobile homes are for sale (aka what parks are they located in). Most of the time the site will have the name of the park listed, if not, pick up the phone and call the seller. Act like a buyer and find out the location of the home and what park it is located in.

Many people will list their homes for sale by owner on craigslist. Search for all the mobile homes you can find for sale (either FSBO or listed with a broker) and call them up, act like a buyer once again, and find the location of the home and the park it is located in. **This is a great way to find parks**

Search for the mobile home dealers in your area on google.

Once again act like a buyer (a common theme of market research). Tell them you are interested in potentially buying a mobile home in a park, and ask if they have a list of all their mobile homes for sale.

Many times dealers will set up their homes in different parks in your area, get the list of homes for sale, and with that you will find which parks they are located in. Get the list, and drive the parks, and add them to you list of parks in your area.

Network with other investors in your area.

Go to your local REIA and find the folks who are investing in MH’s, or ask for a referral. Find out who knows where the mobile home parks are located in your area.

Call other investors bandit signs that say “We Buy Mobile Homes”. Obviously those are mobile home investors.

MARKETING:

Where to find the deals (or have them come to you)

Marketing for mobile homes is so much easier and cheaper than searching for deals on single family homes.

We can build a list, of both buyers and sellers, so much faster.

We can literally start having seller and buyers leads start pouring in on day 1 of your marketing. And that is exactly what we are going to show you how to do.

It doesn’t take a lot of money, and it doesn’t take a lot of time…yet another reason why I love mobile home investing! Speed. Not only speed of transaction, but how quickly you can “turn up the volume” on the leads coming in.

So what we are going to do is build 2 different systems of having buyer and seller leads come to you.

All leads will be driven to a phone # or email.

You can use whatever phone you want, cell phone, office phone, etc…

I highly recommend you utilize a free number from Google Voice.

This is a great way to keep your leads from contacting your personal numbers. This is crucial because you will be getting a lot of phone calls day and night, and you don’t want to be bothered all the time.

I set up this number basically as a voice mail system.

My message tells them that I buy, sell, finance, and rent mobile homes. Whether you are looking to buy a home or rent one, or you have one for sale, please leave a voicemail with you contact info and we will get back with you right away.

I check voicemails once or twice daily, and return the calls then.

You can even link your google voice number to your actual cell phone.  That lets you receive and make calls from your cell phone, through your own free google voice number.  You can also check your voicemails on your cell phone too...really cool tool.

Download the google voice app from your app store if you have a smart phone.

If you don’t have a smart phone, not to worry, you can do everything from your computer as well.

Remember, we are going to be building two separate systems, or funnels, to drive leads to your phone number.

We want to make sure these two systems are always up and running, continuously, and simultaneously, to build your lists!

This is probably the biggest mistake I see from business owners. They don’t focus on their marketing. If no one knows about you, then it is probably going to be hard to do business. This is not a process you "do marketing" once and expect to make money on that forever.  It has to be continuous.

The minute you let your marketing slide, your will see a direct decrease with income in your business. I stress this because marketing is the lifeblood of your business.

So let’s get into it here.

Use the Buyer and Seller Scripts below as a guide when talking to prospects.

MARKETING FOR SELLERS:

Yellow corrugated plastic signs

Put on stakes or telephone poles

Rifle vs shotgun

Rifle is when you put signs directly outside of parks, very targeted

Shotgun is when you place them at high traffic areas like corners or major intersections

2 things to note about craigslist:

A. You need to be posting ads on craigslist in the "real estate for sale by owner" section every couple of days without fail.

Your ads need to be “We Buy Mobile Homes” ads. Elaborate in the ads that you buys mobile homes in any area, condition, and situation, and that you have all cash and can close immediately. Put your (Google Voice) phone number in these ads so prospects can call you and leave you a message.

B. This is a great place to look every single day for people posting ads to sell their mobile homes.

You need to be checking craigslist daily. Many times, these sellers are highly motivated to sell quickly.  In this case, “the early bird gets the worm” and you want to be that first investor to get a chance to buy the deal, because if you don’t take quick action, they will sell for pennies on the dollar to someone else.

Craigslist is a GREAT place to find hot deals. But like I said, as soon as they are put on craigslist, they are gone.

It doesn’t get more targeted than this.

Take a white or yellow legal pad of paper, and 8-10 times on that piece of paper, you need to write something like “Hi I am interested in buying your home, if interested in selling, please call Sean xxx-xxx-xxxx”

Each piece of paper should produce 8-10 different notes. torn horizontally into strips.

It is crucial that theses are hand written and hand torn.

The goal here is to make it look like you were just walking down the street and randomly saw a house you liked and wanted to buy.

Having the tear offs hand written and hand torn will increase your response rate.

You will get a TON of calls of these tear offs.

Simply walk through a mobile home park and place each tear off in the storm door or screen door. Open the door slip the piece of paper in the door when you close it.

You will get many calls. Many of the calls will simply be wondering why you placed a note on their door and that its not for sale, thats okay because they may keep the note and know who to call when they are ready to sell. Some will desperately need to sell, and obviously those are the people we are looking for.

**Some people, including the park manager, may be upset with this tactic. That’s OK. Be friendly.  Effective marketing will always piss a few people off- not to worry, those people aren’t who you’re looking for anyway.**

This is a GREAT source of getting leads.

These people know everything that is going on in the park, and will know when people need to sell, even though there may not be a for sale sign in the yard or window. They know this too because many times the sellers will get behind on lot rent and have no other option but to sell.

Building a good relationship with these people could be a source of leads for you all the time for years to come.

They are concerned about keeping the homes in the park, keeping them in good shape, keeping good tenants in the park, and generating lot rent.

You can be the solution they are looking for.

You can buy the home, get lot rent generated, fixing up the home, and placing a new qualified tenant in the park. It’s a win/win for everyone involved.

A good source of leads is to let everyone you know that you buy mobile homes, and can pay referral fees for leads that you are able to close on.

A. Bird Dogs: A bird dog is anyone who brings you leads in exchange for a fee if you close. You can train bird dogs or you can find a few people who live in each park. Tell them to call you whenever they hear of a home for sale, and if you buy it, then you pay them a fee.

B. Wholesalers / Investors

Connect with all the investors and wholesalers in your town. Chances are they don’t mess with mobile homes, but they probably do get leads from motivated mobile home sellers. Let them know that you buy mobile homes and to pass the leads to you, and of course if you close, you will give them a referral fee.

Every time you visit a park you should drive the whole park searching for vacant properties or homes that have for sale signs in the yard or window of the home.

This is a great way to find leads while you may be out doing other things.

Stop in 1 or 2 times a month to talk to and build rapport with the park manager. See if there is anything for sale that you may be able to help them with (always frame it as mutually beneficial).

Many times the park will have a list of homes for sale in the park, or know of deals that aren’t listed that you could have.

**Driving parks and calling sellers is a great way to find leads but it is also a GREAT way to find out what is selling in the park and for what prices. We get into this more in the next module when it comes to establishing values so you know the going rate for mobile homes in certain parks.

I have ads running every month in the cheap free classified paper saying “We Buy Mobile Homes”

Do not place ads in the large publications, it is a waste of money, and ineffective!

One ad costs me about $30 for the entire month

Contractors/handymen

Mobile home part stores

Used mobile home dealerships

Mobile Home movers