Posted by GL on February 06, 2000 at 20:47:59:
Right off the bat the dealer had to pay the manufacturer for the MH. Plus a lot of other expenses. And he either had to borrow money to be able to finance it, or he used his own money which deserves a certain interest rate. So he hardly got it “free”.
However most of your thinking is irrelevant. The question is, what is the place worth? You have to figure that out. What could you get for it? How about if you fixed it up? In that case figure out what you could get fixed up and deduct the fixup cost to get an idea what you could pay. Make sure your buying price is far enough below the selling price to give you a decent profit.
You have to know what similar places are going for around your area.
What really makes this work is that the vendor (dealer) has the leeway to write his own ticket on this one. He can give it to you for $1000 down with no qualifying or whatever he likes. And it seems he is willing to give it away cheap to get rid of a headache. Well if you can pitch in and cure that headache you can get a deal.
What is more, if you make it easy for him, he will remember that the next time he gets a headache. You could be setting yourself up to get all the cheap but nasty mobile home deals you can handle, on your own terms.