Posted by lonnie on April 30, 2000 at 16:36:32:
Hi Jerry,
I recently had a call from a man in Florida telling me about a couple of deals he had just done in a senior park. His first deal was a home that he paid $2,500 for, spent another $300 on it, and sold it for $5,000. cash. He found his buyer from a classified ad, which he ran for 14 days and received 16 calls.
He then found another home, agreed to a purchase price of $5,200, and tied it up with $100 deposit. Before the closing date, he had it sold for $9,800, $800 down and a note for the balance.
Here’s something I thought was very interesting. He said that out of 64 parks in his area, only 4 were family parks. One senior park has over 800 spaces. So obviously, if you choose to do business only in family parks, you will miss many good opportunities in an area such as this. This shows once again why you need to keep an open mind and be willing to make changes in your investing program.
And here’s something else he told me, which emphasizes again how important a cooperative park manager is to your financial wealth. After doing these two deals, and making a very favorable impression on the park manager, the manager made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.
The park had two vacant homes that needed fix-up. The park wasn’t getting any lot rent, and didn’t want to spend money to have these homes fixed up. The manager offered both homes to him, provided he would fix them up, and keep them in the park. He was offered one of the homes for $500, and the other one for free. This should answer the question about doing business in Senior parks. But like any business, it depends on you.
Don’t be intimidated by the ads. I think you will find most off them are teaser ads run by dealers. When you can talk eye ball to eye ball with your buyer, you can structure a deal when others can’t.
Hope this helps,
Lonnie