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Like all forms of real estate, mobile home parks have had about a decade-long run of easy financing and low cap rates. However, those good old days are over. And the result can be some of the best yielding mobile home park deals since the first trailer rattled down the interstate.

There are few things more attractive about the mobile home park business than seller financing. Non-recourse seller financing allows the buyer to escape the hassle and scrutiny of bank lending, while at the same time offering some degree of insurance against fraud

When I first got into the manufactured home community business, everyone was obsessed by the concept of a "star" system 1 for poor, 2 for mediocre, 3 for average to good, 4 for better and 5 for best. Owners would love to outdo each other by boasting "my property is a four-star, how many is yours?"

Some people invest in Google. Some buy shares of Berkshire Hathaway. Other invest in Apple. But sheer investment geniuses invest in bushes. And trees. Because if you own a manufactured home community, these are, dollar for dollar, the best investments you will ever make. How good are the returns?

Mobile home park tenants use, on average, about $30 per month of water & sewer. In some parks, however, that amount can run around $100 per occupied lot. Whenever you become suspicious that your water is running too high, here are the steps to find out where the water is going and proactively solve the problem.

Of all the barometers of park performance, from a profit and loss statement to the annual license renewal, one of the crudest and simplest is the fine art of analyzing grass. Because you can tell a lot about a mobile home park just from looking at the grass.

The election is over and the President-elect is Barrack Obama. While that ends a lot of uncertainty over the general direction of the government, it only opens new worries over what this means to the economy and, on the micro scale, the mobile home park industry.

Am I supposed to take the roof off and smell manufactured homes to see if they've spoiled like milk? Do they have an expiration date stamped on the frame? Can you fit one in a curbside polycart?

Everyone knows that commercial air travel is the safest in the world. But that's because of the high level of training of the pilots. From the pre-flight checklist, to the flight plan, to dealing with problems in the air, the pilot knows everything about what they're doing.

The mobile home park industry is terribly misunderstood. There is massive opportunity, but everybody is looking in all the wrong places. Why? Because mobile home park investing, properly done, requires trusting in the opposite of what your initial instincts are.