We buy mobile homes in San Antonio

Now I'm trying to figure out exciting ways to let the world know that I’m growing my business. The problem is telling people that as of this week, we buy mobile homes in San Antonio just doesn’t seem that exciting to most. In fact, I’m willing to bet that no one ever even reads this particular post. I won’t even read it myself after I check for obvious typos.

But it is important for me to get the word out there. For the past few months I’ve tried to figure out ways to limit myself to the Austin market. I’d much rather just do business here, as the thought of driving for over an hour to look at a mobile home deal doesn’t fill me with joy. But the simple facts are that San Antonio price points make more sense. There are more mobile home parks, lower lot rents, and more people looking to sell their mobile homes at reasonable prices. Ultimately this is just a financial decision for me.

What I’m hoping is to start finding some interesting things and places in San Antonio to visit as well. I’ll admit, it doesn’t seem like a city I’d like that much but I don’t really know it outside of mobile home parks and the Alamo. Maybe this is my chance to learn about a city I’ve dismissed in my head over the last few years.

Either way, I’m gonna start hitting it up in the new year. So if you know anyone who wants to sell their mobile home in San Antonio for cash, tell them about me. If I end up buying their home, I’ll pay you 500 bucks. If I make money, you make money plain and simple.

So that’s about it for now. I hope everyone has a great new year and San Antonio, let’s become friends!

Temple Texas Mobile Homes

So this week, I'm thinking about lovely Temple, Texas. For those of you who've never been, it's a small town about an hour north of Austin of the I35. As Austin increases in size, I find myself looking more and more at the surrounding areas. While many people like the idea of living "in the mix" there are others who would like to be close but not too close.

So Temple is where I'm setting my sites to increase my business in 2015. I'm shouting from the internet that We Buy Mobile Homes in Temple Texas. But when I do that, I feel like it's important to explain to people what exactly that means. Because, let's face it, there are a lot of the "we buy" people out there these days. Who are the "we" and how does the whole thing work?

Well in my case the "we" is really just me and maybe my dog Sugar, but she's not great at negotiating so I usually just leave her in the car. I come and look at your mobile home. What I'm really trying to figure out when I look at your home is what can I re-sell it for and how much work would I need to do on the home to do that. From there I figure out what I can pay you for it. Sometimes I can give you an offer right on the spot, but other times it might take me a day or two to work out the numbers.

Normally I can close on the home within a couple of days. It's usually just a matter of getting qualified with the park, getting a property tax certificate, and things like that. There have been times where I have bought a home the same day I look at it, but those are relatively rare. In Temple specifically it will probably take a few days because I'm still learning the area.

Now if you don't like my offer, need more money than I can pay, owe too much money on your mobile home or things like that, I can still help you. Most of the homes I look at, I don't buy. This was always frustrating to me because usually they are good homes, they just weren't the right ones for me. So I decided to start helping people sell their mobile homes. If you'd like some help selling your mobile home, or if you're a mobile home buyer looking for homes for sale by owner, then check out my new site: Carter Sells Mobile Homes

Thanks for reading!
CF

What to do when you owe too much money on your mobile home

When you owe too much money on your mobile home, it's a very common problem. For reasons I'll explain in another post, it's almost mathematically impossible to not owe too much money on your mobile home. And while it might be comforting to know you’re in good company, this is still a big problem when it comes time to sell your mobile home.

If you need to sell your mobile home quickly, it’s important that you communicate with your lender and your park manager. With your lender you need to find out what the total amount you owe is and if your loan is assumable. Most loans on mobile/manufactured homes are assumable as long as the new buyer applies with the mortgage company and qualifies. But you’ll need to more than just this.

You also need to find out all the details of how your potential buyer can assume your loan. Make sure to get a specific name, direct phone number, and email of whom your buyer needs to talk to. Mortgage companies are usually large and can be difficult to deal with.  You want this process to be as easy as possible for your buyer. Remember that most deals in real estate fall apart because the buyer cannot get financing!

Once you’ve established the process for getting your mobile home loan assumed, the next step is to talk to your park manager. Your park manager can help you sell your home because they deal with potential buyers calling, emailing, and stopping by the office all day long. And if your mobile home already has financing in place, this will give you a big advantage in being able to sell it quickly.

You can start advertising your mobile home for sale in places like craigslist with wording like “take over payments” or “financing already in place”. I recommend adding a fee on top of this in order to have some money in your pocket to help with your own moving expenses.

This will allow you to access a much larger pool of potential buyers and to jump over the biggest hurdle in finding a new mobile home buyer: getting financing on the home.

Good luck and let me know if you have any questions.

Carter Fisk

Why can't I sell my mobile home?

I know there are a lot of frustrated mobile home sellers out there asking themselves this question. There are several reasons why it can be hard to sell your mobile home. The biggest one I’ve seen is that it’s very difficult for any buyer to get financing on a used mobile home and most buyers do not have enough cash to buy a mobile home outright. I’m sure anyone who has tried to sell a mobile home has had people ask if they’ll “take payments” instead of all cash.

This usually leads people to ask the question, “Why can’t I sell my mobile home?” It seems like the mobile home seller is at an impasse. They want cash for the home, the seller wants to make payments, and no one wants to finance the deal.

One answer is to create a note on the mobile home and then sell that note to an investor. Here’s how that works.

Creating the note

As much as you might not want to do it, you’ll need to bite the bullet and offer your mobile home for sale with owner financing. Once you’ve found a buyer, have a lawyer draft up a promissory note (or chattel mortgage) for your mobile home. This is commonly just called “the note”. A quick example would be on a $20,000 sale with $2,000 down you would create a note for $18,000 with monthly payments and interest rate described in the note. Once you’ve done this you have $2,000 in your pocket, a note for $18,000, and are ready for the next step.

Sell the note

There are sites out there specifically set up to sell notes. However, you may not even need to use them as craigslist seems to work for many people. One thing you’ll need to realize is note buyers will usually “buy on a discount” which means they’ll pay somewhere around 90% of your note’s value. In our example of an $18,000 note, that would be $16,200. You usually will be able to increase your selling price by about 10% when you offer owner finance so that should cancel out the loss you’ll get selling at the discount.

Once this happens your buyer will make payments to the investor and you’ll have the chunk of cash you need. It works out as a nice win-win situation for everyone involved.

Oh and if you live in Central Texas and would like help selling your mobile home, say to yourself Carter Sells Mobile Homes three times, then click on the site and call me!!

Marketing, marketing, marketing...

Today's thought is on marketing. For most of my mobile home investing career I have sought people out that I thought might want to sell their mobile home. I have sent them yellow letters and postcards hoping to catch them at the moment they decide they need/want to sell their mobile home. The problem with this is I need to luck out on the timing. Most of the time people will throw out an ad for a service they don’t need at that moment. So while direct mail is important, I’d argue it’s more important to have a system in place that makes it easy for people to find you when they need to find you. And this involves a different type of marketing: online.

For various reasons I’d never spent much time doing online marketing. It just didn’t seem to fit with what I was doing and somehow in my head I decided since I hadn’t gotten any real leads from online, then online just “didn’t work” for what I do which is buy, sell, and owner finance mobile homes. I’m an Austin Mobile Home Buyer. For whatever reason I felt the need to keep this relatively quiet until now.

The direct mail approach works well when the timing is right.  But what about all the time in between? The most logical answer is to put the idea that Carter Buys Mobile Homes out there for the world to see. Because, like all businesses I need a constant good source of leads. So this blog is just another piece in the puzzle on how to get my name out there and let the world know that I’m looking for leads in this business. It’s made me strangely competitive on something I never really thought about before: my place in the online search world. So I’m throwing my hat in the ring!

CF

Mobile Home Stories

For the last 6 years mobile home investing has been one of my main sources of income. There are many things I like about it: the honesty, the control, the simplicity, and yes, the money. However, above all else, I really like the stories I hear. I didn't get into the business to hear people's tales, but it's what I look forward to most when I head to someone's house.

 People want to sell their homes for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes it's because they are moving on up in the world. Many of them are buying a site built home, or a mobile home on land. This is a big step up from owning a mobile home in a mobile home park where they just rent the land. Many for the first time in their lives, are about to become land owners. They just need someone like me to come in and buy their home for cash so they have enough for a down payment on their new dream home. I gotta admit, that is really cool to see.

 I've also had deals where I financed the home when I sold it. Over the last year I've had half a dozen people who have paid off their loan to me early. Many of them have moved on to buying a mobile home on private land. It's a really satisfying feeling to know I got to watch someone change their life for the better. Most of them had never owned a home when they bought one from me. And now they were buying land as well. This isn't something that took decades. Most of them did it within 4 or 5 years.

 But with the happy stories, there are sad ones as well. Death is a big factor in many of the sales I'm involved in. I've bought many homes from grieving spouses or family members. And I've bought many homes from people who know that death is coming soon and they need to prepare. But those stories I'll get into next time. Who knew that some postcards saying We buy mobile homes in Austin Texas would lead to such things?

I'll try to blog as much as I can on here on on my Carter Buys Mobile Homes site