Values of mobile home parks have been skyrocketing over the past decade. At the same time, so have municipal government deficits. Where these two lines intersect is with property tax, and that’s why this is an important item for all park owners and buyers to understand. So how can you take control of your property tax costs?

Attorneys can be an important piece of your arsenal of weapons when you have a problem or in deciphering a complicated contract. But they can also be a disaster when it comes to making RV park deals if you cede control to them. Here’s how an attorney can go from a help to a hindrance with an RV park purchase if you don’t keep adequate controls over them

The life’s blood of a self-storage property’s occupancy is the calls coming in from prospective customers. All of your marketing is contingent upon what happens when the phone rings. Yet too many storage owners cede control over their important conduit to the manager, without adequate safeguards. So how can a self-storage facility owner take control over that phone line?

Wikipedia defines “excellence” as “the quality of being outstanding or extremely good”. All park owners aspire to excellence, but how do you really achieve it? In this episode of the Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast, we’re going to explore how you can trade-in average performance for something much more profitable.

“You can never be too rich or too thin” is a popular expression. However, that’s just not a reasonable goal for most investors. While it’s great to have a safety cushion, it’s unreasonable for that cushion to be limitless.

We live in an extremely litigious world, and self-storage owners are no different. All it takes today is the slightest mistake and you can immediately receive a lawsuit in the mail or person. So how can you protect yourself and your storage facility from these type of attacks?

A part of the billboard construction process – whether the sign has wooden poles or metal ones – is to dig a hole in the earth that meets the required engineering standards to hold the sign up. And digging a hole often 15’ deep in an area that rarely has seen excavation can often yield unusual results, such as hitting water and giant rocks.

When you’re looking at buying an RV park, one of the key ways to develop sizable deal flow is to work with the various industry brokers. Of the deals we’ve bought over the past 25 years, the majority came from brokers, with the balance a mixture of on-line listings, cold calling and direct mail. So how can you do a better job of developing a broker base and increase your deal flow with them?

Like any business, self-storage owners cannot succeed without collecting their rent each month. To make this possible, smart owners build a “collections ritual” that influences the action steps they take and help shield them from liability and failure in getting the necessary funds. So what are some ideas for a successful “collections ritual”?

Billboards have very few management responsibilities. You build the sign once every 30 years or more, and you rent the ad space typically only once per year. So after that, you simply need to casually watch over the sign to make sure that 1) it has no storm damage and 2) the lights are working (if there are any). So how can you minimize that time obligation?

There are many types of mobile home parks in the U.S. but only one of these is probably right for you. So how do you select the type of park that will fit your goals? That’s the topic of this event.

The approach of winter often brings forth mental images of the holiday season. But for mobile home park owners, it also brings forth other items: some dreaded and some good news. Here are the winners and losers of winter as far as community owners are concerned, and how to mitigate these issues before the snow starts falling and the temperature dips below freezing.

RV parks and mobile home parks used to be the same thing. About a half-century ago. But since that time, both have created their own business model with little shared between the two. And one big difference is that many RV parks have a 2-point higher cap rate – but potentially for good cause. However, this issue can be used to your advantage if you buy the right RV park.

America changed in March of this year, when the acknowledged arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic rattled the U.S. population with self-quarantine followed by urban riots and unrest. On top of that, many of the activities that we had all learned to enjoy (dining out, movies, theater, shopping) suddenly ceased to exist in the manner they had before. This ushered in what is now known as the “Great Reshuffling” by Bestplaces.net – which refers to the population moving from urban to more suburban and rural markets.

The Covid-19 pandemic has changed many things about the U.S. – but does that include the best places to buy mobile home parks? In this episode of the Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to examine how changes to America post-virus are impacting different parts of the nation in relation to affordable housing and other challenges. The U.S. is in a state of turmoil on many fronts, but is mobile home park geography one of them?

Most people start small and then think bigger over time. I’ve always found it better to think big and then work backwards to ascertain what you have to accomplish to get there. So here’s how that would work as far as building up a billboard portfolio to create a new income street.

When a mobile home park has bad financial records or poor occupancy, it’s a pretty good guess that there are other problems lurking. In this week’s Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to examine some of the typical “skeletons in the closet” regarding poorly managed properties – including items above ground, underground, and regarding the residents. As you’ll see, there is often a chain reaction of problems in a mobile home park when bad management is evident. And you need to budget and plan for these probabilities so you don’t get taken advantage of.

There are few things more predictable in life than the seller’s expense numbers being lower than they should be in reality. While mobile home park buyers know that the typical operating expense ratio runs 30% to 40%, there’s no question that those seller numbers reflecting 15% to 20% are not accurate. So what’s typically missing in the seller’s numbers?

There’s an old saying that you can’t escape from death and taxes. And one of those taxes is “property tax” which is the amount you will pay annually for your storage facility. While the concept of property tax may seem complicated, it’s pretty simple when you understand the format. So here’s a quick review of self-storage property tax from A to Z.

Most Americans will spend thousands of dollars per year – and hundreds of hours – to improve their appearance and attractiveness. Yet virtually nobody spends much time thinking about how to appeal to their local lender. Indeed, if you want to buy an RV park it’s vital that you know how to be attractive to banks in a manner that will make them want to make the loan. So what can you do to increase your attractiveness?

Billboards can do many great things for your finances, but there’s one thing they can’t do: screw up your day job. There’s probably no easier solution to mixing a day job and a side hustle, for many reasons. So why are billboards not a threat to your day job?

Most RV park deals are built on the framework of 20% to 30% down payment on the price of the property. However, sometimes you can go lower. Much lower. In this RV Park Mastery podcast we’re going to discuss how “zero down” or “low down” deals come to be, and what the tools and traits are to make these deals possible. We’ve done around twelve “zero down” deals and we have identified four characteristics that make these a viable alternative to traditional financing.

Every self-storage facility you put under contract does not end in a successful purchase. Many times the deal will die quickly with cursory inspection, and others make it all the way to the finish line before they get cancelled. In this Self-Storage University podcast we’re going to discuss hidden deal killers, visible deal killers and suspenseful killers that sometimes pop up right at the end. It’s important that you understand these issues and embrace their meaning as opposed to buying a deal that will not work.

It takes discipline to find new billboard locations to build or buy. And it takes effort to rent advertising space. But all of these things are pretty simple to master. What’s at issue is whether or not you will make a good “employee” to your dreams and aspirations. Every entrepreneur knows their most important hire is themselves. So how do you make sure that you take the necessary steps to keep you commitment to yourself? In this Billboard Mastery podcast we’re going to discuss how to hire yourself, manage yourself, and not have to fire yourself. There’s no job loss more embarrassing than when you have to give yourself your own pink slip.

We all know the trends in fashion, from the 1920’s spats to the 1960’s Nehru jacket to the 1970’s bell-bottoms. But do you know the trends in mobile home park design and what they can mean as an owner? In this week’s Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to discuss some of the most basic mobile home park design trends and what their strengths and weaknesses are. As you’ll see, mobile home park builders changed the product up considerably over the decades – and not always to the good.

Let’s first clarify – we’re talking a million in value, not in cash out. But we’re still talking an increase in value of over $1 million in one year. That’s a huge number in any business, but not that uncommon in the mobile home park industry. How is this possible? Let’s examine what community operators can do to increase value, and model out how much value they can tap.

Traditionally, larger buyers of self-storage facilities always viewed themselves as having an edge when it came to lending and negotiating. They thought they could get lower interest rates and better terms than smaller buyers and use that as a weapon against them. However, the Covid-19 changes to the self-storage industry have rendered a new era in which the big companies have no advantage over the small.

As we approach election season, it’s important that billboard owners remember the old adage “never discuss sex, religion or politics” because it can be bad for your sign business. Political billboards can often lead to complications you had not anticipated, such as happened to this sign owner. So what are the rules on political advertisements?