STRATEGY
MOBILE HOMES
Manufactured/Mobile Homes on Acreage: The Best Kept Secret in Real Estate Investing
PROPERTIES THAT LOOK BETTER THAN THE COMPETITION
by Glenn Stromberg, Think Realty Resident Expert
Most likely, you’ve already read the title of this article. At the four mastermind groups in which I am a member and speak- er and at the nationwide events I speak at, I always use this title. People always ask me, “Do you really believe that? Why?” My answer is always, “Yes, from the bottom of my heart I believe it 100%.” l will explain why man- ufactured/mobile homes on acreage are truly the best kept secret in real estate investing! First of all, let’s define this asset class. Whether I say mobile home or manufactured home, they are and mean the same thing. These homes are built in a factory and come in both singlewides and doublewides. My company buys 95 percent double- wides normally from 1,200 to 2,500 square feet, and we buy five percent singlewides from 900 to 1,200 square feet. Don’t confuse this with mobile home parks, that is not the same. Although, I have owned a mobile home park in the past and they can be tremendous investments.
What l am talking about is buy- ing the manufactured homes that are already on the land and they have the exact same classifica - tion as a single-family house; they come with a deed of trust or a mortgage depending on the state. In my company’s business mod- el, we currently buy 10 properties a month in four states: Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Geor- gia. We have bought over 425 prop- erties in the last seven years and we do it all with private lenders and investors. We have over 100 investors and are deploying over $1 million a month with them inside and out- side of their IRA. Stromberg Invest- ment Group believes and follows the golden rule and structures win-win lucrative real estate joint ventures. We are buying existing homes that are already on the land; we are not moving the home to the land. Then, we fix the home up like new. That is really our secret sauce. It truly looks like a new house when we are done—new carpet, new paint, new air conditioning, new appliances, a
new roof if it needs one. Why do we do that? First, it makes it super easy to lease. Our tenants love our prop- erties because they look so much better than our competitors’ houses do! It’s great for us and our investors, because it pushes deferred main- tenance far down the road because everything is in “like new condition.” Also, we have much lower main- tenance costs because we don’t have the foundation problems many single-family homes have. In the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex, I hear of $30-$50k foundation repairs. If we have to relevel the home, it’s $1,500. When you say the word “mobile home,” people think of an old 1960 or 1970 singlewide metal sided 12x 60 with tires on the roof. The homes we buy have tremendous construc- tion standards. They are built with
62 | think realty magazine :: may 2021
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