Book Review: The New Investor’s Guide to Owning a Mobile Home Park

(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.)

Since there have been so many people who have expressed interest in owning mobile home parks, I decided to pick this book up.

Now I’ll admit, most of the books and courses I’ve read on the subject have come from a male perspective. So, in reading this book it kind of gave me a different angle of the industry, from a woman’s point of view.

If you’ve read a lot of material on the subject of buying mobile home parks, you’ll notice many tend to gravitate towards parks that need extensive work in terms of filling vacancies and turning around parks. Though, the author’s perspective in this book comes from one of buying turnkey mobile home parks that are essentially ready to go and/or involve less work.

With that being said, I found it interesting how the author promoted the use of bank financing to purchase mobile home parks. In my experience talking with other park owners, most have found it difficult to go this route and have used private lenders. Though, the author insists bank financing for mobile home parks exist.

The focus of the book tends to be on purchasing smaller parks owned by “mom-and-pop” type individuals. What I found beneficial were the due diligence sections of finding and negotiating mobile home parks for sale. There were a couple of tidbits of information in there that can help folks when deciding whether or not to purchase a mobile home park.

Apart from the due diligence sections, I enjoyed reading the stories of what went wrong in terms of management. Having the wrong type of management can definitely break a business. And, she goes into her experience in further detail.

The sections on taxes and asset protection were a bit questionable. Though, I am sure she is only citing from her own perspective. When in doubt, it’s always best to talk with an accountant and an attorney well-versed in these areas.

Overall, I found the book to be very educational while at the same time entertaining. There are many stories in the book about the problems she encountered while owning mobile home parks and what steps she took to solve them. All in all, it’s a good overview of the industry from a small business perspective.

Who should buy this book?

If you have experience with mobile home investing and the desire to invest in mobile home parks, then it may be something to look into. Though, if you do not I would suggest otherwise. Why?

Here’s a post where I talk about the advice given to me by other mobile home park investors.

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.

Happy investing!