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