Book Review: “Millionaire Mobile Home Investor”

(Note: Recently, I’ve had a lot of folks contact me asking what the difference between some of Lonnie’s as well as other mobile home investing materials out there and which one I’d recommend the most. So, I’ve decided to go ahead and start a new series of posts – book reviews).

So, I decided to check this book out as it sparked my curiosity. Quite honestly, it was the cover title that caught my eye and intrigued me.

According to the back cover of the book, here’s what it says:

“Calculate the $20k profit you make of each mobile home. All you have to do is sell 50 of them and you’re a millionaire. The question is simply how aggressive are you, do you want to become a millionaire in 1 year or 5 years.”

From an initial read, this book is a bit hard to follow.  Throughout the book, there seemed to be quite a bit of grammatical and punctuation errors. Also, there are some formatting issues. Clearly, this book was not proofed by professionals.

Putting aside these issues, I will say – this is not a book for beginners. In the beginning of the book, the author seems to talk in “jargon speak.” Had I not been familiar with the mobile home industry, I may have been a bit lost.

In the first part of the book, the author really focuses on how to buy bank owned mobile homes from mobile home lenders. He then proceeds to talk about how you can sell these bank owned mobile homes for cash and make a profit on the spread.

Here’s one example from the book:

“It’s not on usually to pay only $25k for a 28×80 and turn around and flip it in less than a month for $56k to 58k.”

As the back cover states, the author claims “All you have to do is sell 50 of them and you’re a millionaire.”

To be honest, this type of strategy is extremely difficult in this economy especially with mobile homes. There was a time where this strategy worked as many mobile home investors were getting cashed out by mobile home lenders when they were less stringent on who they loaned money to.

(Note: For those of you who don’t know, this time period was called the “fog in the mirror” syndrome. Basically, mobile home lenders would lend money to basically anyone as long as they were breathing. In turn, mobile home investors could sell their inventory to anyone able to get these loans eventually cashing out…big time. Yes, the mobile home industry did have their own housing bubble at one point in time).

I do know quite a few fellow investors who cashed out big time in this point in history. Then again, I know some other fellow investors now who are ending up giving back their mobile homes and mobile home parks (as well) to their private lenders and/or banks as they just cannot make it work due to the economy.

(Note: This is why I tend to focus in high end parks rather than low end parks. I know many fellow investors who have the majority of their holdings in low end parks who have had many defaults and some who have even had to lower their payments just to be competitive. One fellow investor I know had 26 homes default (0uch!) all at the same time. This fellow investor thought even at the low end there will always be folks looking only to find folks at this end of the spectrum tended to just move back in with family when times got tough).

Getting back to the book, the author writes about how to set up and manage this type of operation of buying and selling bank owned mobile homes. Though, I did find some gaps and not everything stated was clearly explained.

The second part of the book is more of a historical lesson about the manufactured home industry and how to go about buying a mobile home from a homeowner’s point of view. In a sense, the book seems to switch gears and cater to a different kind of audience – the homeowner.

The author continues to show the pitfalls and what to lookout for when buying a mobile home. Though, it seems it is more from the perspective of buying from a mobile home dealer.

The last part of the book goes into financing options and lending criteria. This part of the book seemed to be more general and not very mobile home specific. It seemed to be more of a general guide to applying for a loan and what types of things lenders look for.

In a nutshell, I don’t think this book had much focus on mobile home investing. There were some issues that were discussed such as moving and setting a home in a park that were touched upon. Though, overall – it was a bit hard to follow and understand.

In my opinion, I would not recommend this book since it is a bit hard to follow. For those just starting out, I still highly recommend checking out “Deals on Wheels.”

I hope you enjoyed reading this book review. With the high amount of requests for my opinions on these, it’s something that I’ve decided to start doing from time to time.

(Note: The blog will be on hiatus through next week. I’ve been a bit tied up with other deals and projects but will be back soon. Stay tuned, thanks for reading!)

Happy investing!

p.s. Feel free to leave comments on any post either here and/or my Facebook Page. Comments are always welcome, thanks for reading!