If you've ever wondered what it actually takes to buy a mobile home park, here's the short version. We hunt for off-market deals from mom and pop owners, we run the numbers until they prove themselves, and we pass on far more parks than we buy. The good ones are hard to find because we may talk to a hundred owners just to land one property, and that's exactly why the parks we do close on tend to perform.
I broke this whole process down in a recent webinar with my business partner, and if you'd rather watch than read, you can see the full walkthrough here. Otherwise, grab a coffee and let me walk you through a real deal we're working on right now.
Why Did a Periodontist End Up Buying Trailer Parks?
Let me back up, because most people are surprised that a periodontist invests in mobile home parks.
About ten years ago, I sprained my wrist on a ski trip, and it scared me. I was making good money as a periodontist, life was on cruise control, and then in one moment I realized my entire income lived in my hands. If I couldn't use them and treat patients, I couldn't provide for my family.
That was the wake-up call. I'd done everything the traditional way, maxed the 401k, paid off debt, kept my head down, and I still had only one income stream that depended completely on my body holding up. So I went looking for income-producing assets that didn't need me showing up every day, and after years of reading and learning, I landed on something almost nobody talks about.
What Makes Mobile Home Parks Different?
Here's the thing about real estate. When most people picture it, they think single-family home or maybe a duplex, and that's where it stops. Mobile home parks never even cross their mind, and they didn't cross mine either until my business partner opened his books and showed me the numbers.
What pulled me in was the simplicity. We own the land, the residents own their homes, and they pay us lot rent for the spot. Think of it like a paid parking lot, except for houses instead of cars.
Because the tenants own their own homes, they handle the upkeep and the maintenance. There's a real pride of ownership there, and that means we're not fixing holes in walls or replacing appliances every time someone moves out.
Why Are Good Mobile Home Park Deals So Hard to Find?
This is the part nobody warns you about. Finding a park worth buying is genuinely hard, and it's gotten harder.
The supply keeps shrinking. Every year, roughly a hundred mobile home parks disappear across the country, because the mom and pop owners are retiring, and the cities are coming in to demolish the old parks and put up apartments or retail.
Meanwhile, the demand keeps climbing. Millions of working families need affordable housing, and that supply and demand gap is the whole story. So the parks that are left are valuable, and the owners know it.
Why Don't We Just Buy What's Listed Online?
You've probably heard it said that mobile home parks go on sites like LoopNet to die. By the time a park hits a public listing, the broker has usually tried everything else first, so what's left online is often the leftovers.
We work the opposite way. We chase off-market deals, the mom and pop owners who never put up a for sale sign and weren't even planning to sell.
Right now I'm in conversations with a fellow in my own community. One of our brokers called him, he wasn't interested, and then I called him directly. He told me he was glad I reached out, because he'd rather sell to someone who's actually going to buy it and take care of it, since he and his dad had worked so hard on it.
Will he sell? I honestly don't know yet. But that's what it takes, and it's why we might talk to a hundred people to find one property worth owning.
What Does a Real Deal Actually Look Like?
Let me show you a live example so this isn't all theory. We're buying two parks on the same street in Gonzalez, Louisiana, about two miles apart, and the way this deal came together tells you a lot about the work behind it.
The deal came to us through a few different people, including a broker and our own sewer operator who works across all of our parks. The owner happened to be a social media influencer who was selling off his properties, and the moment we heard they were in Gonzalez, we paid attention.
Why Gonzalez, and Why These Two Parks?
Gonzalez, LA is one of the toughest markets to buy in our state, and that's exactly why we wanted it. It sits along the I-10 corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans; it has high incomes, good schools, and it's minutes from a huge number of jobs.
That corridor has seen an incredible wave of industrial growth, with somewhere in the range of sixty to seventy billion dollars in projects coming into the area. New steel mills, refinery work, and plants are bringing in jobs, and jobs bring people who need somewhere to live.
The average household income in this market runs around a hundred and ten thousand a year, which is about the highest in Louisiana and above the national average. Over seventy percent of folks in the area own their homes, so there's a very small pool of rentals, and that's a market that heavily favors what we do.
What's the Game Plan Once We Close?
Our plan is always the same. We bring the lot rents up to market, and in this case the market is close to five hundred to five hundred fifty a month, while the current park sits anywhere from $425 to $480 with no real rhyme or reason.
When we raise rents, almost nobody moves out, because the increase is small, say fifty or seventy dollars a month, and moving a mobile home is a different story. It can cost four, five, or six thousand dollars to relocate a home, so residents tend to stay put.
This is why we call them sticky tenants. The math of moving rarely makes sense for them, and the result is steady, predictable lot rent for us.
How Do You Know If a Park Is Worth Buying?
Here's where the discipline comes in, and it's the same filter I apply to everything. Every claim has to have a number behind it.
Before we ever put a park under contract, we test the demand. On these Gonzalez parks, we ran Facebook ads to see who'd want to buy the homes, and within a day or two we had roughly hundred interested people reaching out.
That kind of volume tells us we've got a product the market actually wants before we risk a dime. It's the same way my business partner first won me over years ago, by proving demand with real ads instead of asking me to trust a hunch.
What Are the Numbers on This Deal?
Let me put some real figures on the table. We're purchasing these two parks for three point three million dollars, and we're looking to raise about one point four million to cover down payments, closing costs, and some capital improvements.
We underwrote the whole thing on lot rent alone, which means even if we did nothing but collect the lot rent, the deal would still cash flow. Anything we add on top by selling homes is upside.
That's the kind of margin of safety we look for. If we can't get close to doubling our investors' money over a five to seven year window while paying monthly distributions, we don't buy the park, or my business partner and I just buy it ourselves and leave investors out of it.
How Do Investors Actually Make Money Here?
For a typical hundred thousand dollar investment, we're projecting around eight thousand a year in distributions, which works out to roughly six hundred and fifty to seven hundred dollars a month once they begin.
Distributions usually start about six months after we close, because it takes that long to stabilize the park, raise the rents, and convert park owned homes into rent to own. On this deal, that puts the first checks around early 2027.
There's also a tax piece that gets a lot of attention from high earners. A park like this throws off heavy depreciation in year one thanks to a cost segregation study, and that often shows up as a paper loss on your K-1 even while the property is appreciating. If you want to understand how that works, I broke it all down in this article on how a K-1 loss affects your taxes.
Who Else Is Buying Mobile Home Parks?
If a periodontist buying trailer parks still sounds strange, look at who else figured this out.
Sam Zell built the largest mobile home park portfolio in America before he passed away. And Warren Buffett didn't just buy parks, he bought Clayton Homes, which builds the homes, and the company that finances them, because he saw how lucrative the whole space is.
When that caliber of investor is quietly buying up an asset class everyone else jokes about, it's worth paying attention. This isn't a fad, it's a need that millions of families have, and the smart money has known it for years.
How Does This Fit Into Making Work Optional?
For me, this all ties back to one idea, which is building income that doesn't depend on my hands. That's the heart of my 7 WOW Steps, the work optional steps I teach for replacing your personal expenses with passive income so work becomes a choice instead of a requirement.
I invest in these deals as a passive limited partner in real estate syndications, and I also operate parks on the ground with my business partner, so I see both sides of the table. If you want to understand how the passive side works, here's my full breakdown of real estate syndications.
The point isn't to get out of dentistry tomorrow. It's to build a second stream now, so that one strained wrist never threatens your family again.
The Bottom Line
Good mobile home park deals are hard to find for a simple reason. The supply is shrinking, the demand keeps growing, and the best parks rarely show up on a public listing, so we have to dig for off market deals and talk to a lot of owners to find one worth owning.
When we do find one, like these two parks in Gonzalez, we test the demand before we buy, we underwrite conservatively on lot rent alone, and we only move forward if the numbers prove out. That discipline is the whole game, and it's why we've been able to keep paying our investors monthly so far.
You don't have to operate parks yourself to benefit from them. As a passive investor, you can own a slice of the dirt, collect monthly checks, and get the tax advantages, all without finding a single deal or fixing a single home.
If that sounds like the kind of income you've been looking for, the next step is simple. Come learn how it works.
If you want to see the deal we're working on right now and learn how to invest alongside us, you can view the current offering in our investor portal here. And if you're not quite there yet and just want to learn the ropes first, join the Passive Investors Circle, my free community where doctors and dentists learn how to build passive income and make work optional.
This is not financial or tax advice. Always consult your own financial advisor or CPA before making any investment decisions. Past performance does not guarantee future results, and all investments carry risk, including the potential loss of principal.