Posted by Dr. Craig Whisler CA on March 31, 2002 at 10:48:47:
Actually, now that you mention it, I think the Dollar Stretcher is the name of my local throwaway paper. You are right again, thanks again Tony, doc
Itchin’ to pull the trigger - Posted by Shawn Dostie
Posted by Shawn Dostie on March 30, 2002 at 19:34:51:
I just saw an ad and have talked to the owner, he’s not super motivated but… The deal is a 1979 ? 12x65 2br w/ 4’ tipout. Good condition, new fridge, water heater, newer range, $1500.00 in carpet. $3500.00 must be moved, already to be dico’d tires and axles already on. Thinking w/out looking about taking $3000.00 cash and offering it if he arranges for delivery and sets it up. He has 4 and is experienced, I sell cars and I know my limitations. I have a few rentals but have never been involved in the moving of a mobile home. Also, until watching this forum, it never occured to me to place one in a park. Never having done this, I am slightly nervous, but what’s the worst can happen. The most I’m out is $3000,00 and a couple months Lot rent (approx $130.00 mo.) All you pro’s; Doc; what do you think? All input welcomed.
Hoppy Easter everyone,
Shawn
Well, since you asked, for starters I would… - Posted by Dr. Craig Whisler CA
Posted by Dr. Craig Whisler CA on March 30, 2002 at 20:41:40:
… offer the guy a car that retails for about $5k for his mobile. Like you I am in the used car busines (unlicensed and work out of my home). I can buy a $5k car for $1,000. Since you are in the car business why not do as I do?
I have a deal lined up with a new mover in my area. For my next move and set up of a doublewide he will accept a nice 87 Honda Accord that cost me $300 to buy and another $100 to get running. How many of you reading this post can compete with someone like me, cost wise? The answer should be ALL of you. With costs like this I can afford to move doubles from park to park, to resell Lonnie style.
Many people have occupations that lend themselves to buying something wholesale and trading it at retail for whatever they want to buy. Jimmy Napier always called these dollar savers. How right he was. This works best for trading into things that are hard to sell or are overpriced or that have hard to determine values. You can trade for things like mobile homes, mobile home repair and remodeling, or mobile home moving and setup. This is also a FANTASTIC way to spend your small mobile home notes. Trade them for other mobiles, land, land, down payments, for zero interest loans etc. Remembrer if you have a dozed Lonnie notes they will probably be of all sizes. Some will be new and some may only have a grand or so left to be paid. Whenever you can trade these in place of cash you have just increased your rate of return DRAMATICALLY. I go to several auctions each year and buy military surplus stuff to use for trading material. I once got about 800 gallons of house paint from the Navy in San Diego for about $135 (a GSA auction). It was great for trading with rehab and repairmen at full value. How many of you have something you could trade in your next deal? An old boat, motorhome, useless vacant lot, unneeded mother-in-law etc. The list is limited only to the heigth and width of your imagination. I realize that this won’t work for everyone, because thinking outside the box is such a painful experience for some folks. Well Shawn… you asked. Hoppy Easter to you too.
Regards, doc
I HAVE AN EX WIFE, WHAT WILL YOU TRADE,LOL - Posted by brad
Posted by brad on April 05, 2002 at 14:15:44:
SEEMS SHE WOULD BE A KEEPER IN VEGAS WERE ITS LEGAL.LOL
Fireworks in my head!! - Posted by lyal
Posted by lyal on March 31, 2002 at 12:47:11:
To all,
I had sent Doc a private email asking for details on his post above. Per his request I’ll post it here so all can benefit from his answers and he won’t aggrevate his carpal tunnel (Sorry everyone I shoulda done that anyway!!)
Thanks, Doc
My (slightly edited) text:
Doc,
Happy Easter!!
I read your latest post on the Lonnie forum about trading used cars, notes etc and it was like fireworks going off in my head! I had thought of this earlier but had never heard of anyone doing it successfully. Can you give me some details about your used vehicle dealings? Are you a licensed dealer? Do you attend auctions? Do you have any warranty responsibilities to be concerned about when you sell? Do you have agreements with repair / body shops for bargain work? I’m looking for a truck right now and would love to find a deal where I can trade a home (at my cost) instead of paying retail.
All the very best, Lyal
Re: Well, since you asked, for starters I would… - Posted by Tony-VA
Posted by Tony-VA on March 30, 2002 at 22:57:09:
Doc has stuck upon a great means of creating value.
Jimmy Napier was who I first picked this idea up from. Doc was close in name, but I believe Jimmy refers to these types of deals as “Money Stretchers”.
The creativity and potential is unlimited. Jimmy does this type of deal with vacant lots for example. If I recall correctly, Jimmy sometimes gets these lots back at tax lien sales. He donates them to charity at market value. Remember now, he only purchase the tax lien for a few hundred bucks but ended up with the property at market value.
A great course on money stretching is Terry Vaughan’s “Paper into Gold”.
I humbly admit that I have not done much in the arena of money stretching deals. I do however, view them as an amazing gambit filled with limitless potential. Salesmanship at its best in my opinion.
Tony-VA
OK Brad, I’ll trade her for … - Posted by Dr. Craig Whisler ca
Posted by Dr. Craig Whisler ca on April 06, 2002 at 11:57:46:
… all of my bills and mortgage payments. At least she might be cost effective. :~)
“Free Car When You Buy This Home!” - Posted by Tony-VA
Posted by Tony-VA on March 31, 2002 at 21:10:48:
It would only seem logical that we lonnie dealers would flow into these money stretchers. Think about it. We stretch money on these mobile home deals simply by adding FINANCING to the sale. That one word ads 2 to 3 times what we paid on each and every deal.
If we could step back from the Lonnie box a bit and keep that train of thought, we can realize great values through more creativity. Cash is not the only medium. We have proven that already in the Lonnie deal.
For example, work the idea backwards. Let’s say you have a home you just can’t seem to sell. If in Doc’s example, you have an old car worth a few hundred bucks, you could throw that car into the deal. Let’s say you wanted $500 down and $200 bucks per month for the home but just no takers. What if you added a sign in the window saying “Free Car” when you buy this HOME!
You simply add your value of the car on top of the loan, make the payments and down payment the same (remember all these buyer’s want to know is “How much down, and how much per month”).
This way you can get full price for a home you could not previously sell, and full price for a car you had litte or no money in.
The best I have seen at this is Terry Vaughan. He sleeps with these kinds of deals going through his head. If you have the interest in seeing just how far it can go, take a look at his “Paper Into Gold Course”. I guarantee it will open you eyes to a whole new world.
Great String,
Tony-VA
Don’t stand near an open flame - Posted by Dr. Craig Whisler CA
Posted by Dr. Craig Whisler CA on March 31, 2002 at 18:34:54:
This is a great string. The answer could become a medium size book. Horse trading is my middle occupation.
It has been reliably reported that the famous department store magnate, J.C. Penny, once started a string of trades beginning with a Parker pen and ended up with a model A Ford.
Why do so many of us so tightly channelize our thinking as to believe that we are in the mobile home business. I’m certainly not. I am an entrepreneur. My business is making money.
Mobile homes are just one vehicle for making money. That being the case, I’d rather have a whole car lot than just one vehicle (figuratively not literaly).
You will run out of money before you run out of imagination. When your imaginaation is unlimited so is your money in a sense, if you know how to barter.
Lets say item B is selling for $5k and I can buy Item A for $2k and trade it for item B plus $2k. Haven’t I just gotten a freeB ?
Horse trading is mainstream commerce throughout the world just as much as straight buying and selling is.
Trading has an infinite number of possibilities. Buying and selling only have a few, ie. price, terms etc.
We could even afford to give retail value for mobile homes if we could get them in trade for something else that we acquired at wholesale (preferably by trading for something else that we obtained at wholesale through trading, etc. etc. ad. naseum).
How can it be that trading is the oldest form of commerce and yet so little used today? You tell me, I don’t know.
Lyal, you only asked about cars so I’ll answer that first, but it goes a thousand times further when you consider that almost anything in the world might be tradable.
When I started this ‘trading cars for other things’ business I didn’t know beans about cars. I still don’t.
I only know that when a car doesn’t run the price plummets way down below what it is really worth. How many people will buy a car that doesn’t run? Why not? Most people are afraid of risk. What if I can’t fix the car? What if the motor is worn out or blown up? What if it has a bad transmission? We can’t test it if it doesn’t run. Therefore the price drops to riduculous levels and there are STILL almost NO buyers.
What is an entrepreneur’s task in life? Isn’t it to take reasonable, carefully calculated risks in the attempt to turn a decent profit?
An entrepreneur’s job really isn’t so much to take risks like most people think. It is to find creative ways to reduce or eliminate risks.
I have found a creative way to greatly reduce the risk that lots of unforseen repairs might cost me a lot of money.
I found a good free mechanic. Well almost free. He doesn’t have my buy/sell skills and he doesn’t like to have to deal with people. People can be onery, illogical and unpredictable. Repairing cars is orderly, logical and fun for him. Every time he fixes 2-3 cars for me labor free, I use my talents (and his money) to buy him a good used car that isn’t running. I buy him one that is underpriced by about $300-$500. He fixes it with his time and parts and I then resell it for him and I give him all of the proceeds. Since I never have to pay him, I guess he is free. Hows that for creative risk reduction?
I typically pay $200-$500 for a car that I can resell at about a $400-$600 profit. If I TRADE for something instead of selling for cash, my profit will typically be $1,000-$1,500. If I don’t have a trade lined up I just park my cars on a street corner with a price in the window and they are generally sold in 1-2 days without any further effort on my part.
No business is really that simple. There are a multitude of other little things you need to learn to do it as easily as I do. However, I started from scratch and you probably can too.
Don’t you have some special skill or trade or profession that you could use to trade for other things?
If not I would suggest that you consider auctions. I mean general auctions not car auctions per se.
I like DOD and GSA auctions best. (Department of Defense and General Services Administration). These are held in nearly every state, and territory. My mechanic friend is from Guam and he used to go to these auctions there. I have seen them in Hawaii, Alaska, Japan, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Cuba (Guantanmo Bay), and practically in YOUR back yard.
Some are online. Some require personal attendence and others are sealed bid auctions by mail or fax. The latter are great if you work at a regular 9 to 5 job.
Get online now and look for these two agencies and order their free catalogues of items to be auctionedoff in your area soon. Studying these catalogs is very interesting.
Also with GSA auctions ask for the results of their auctions for the past 3 monts or more. This will teach you how much to bid. It will literly drive you crazy to see how cheap something has just sold for in your town.
Years ago I bought (sight unseen) a 1991 Chevy Caprice for $1,113. It was located 400 miles + from my home. I got it in a sealed bid GSA auction. I had to drive to the prison in Florence, AZ to pick it up. It was the warden’s car. He was furious that it sold so cheaply as he said he had just spent about $1,700 on it a couple months earlier. He said to me, “Sonny, I have 16 free full time mechanics to service that car. It has brand new tires and mag wheels that are worth more than you paid for it. If a birds drops on the fender I send 4 mechanics out to remedy the situation. They just love to get out of their cells for a while to work on that car” Well I drove this car another 122,000 miles and still sold it for $1,800. True story.
If you can’t find something at one of these auctions it isn’t made. They literally have everything imaginable, not just surplus military stuff. You can buy cars, trucks, land houses, and yes even MOBILE HOMES this way.
Here is a true auction story about my friend Ski (the guy mentioned in earlier posts who buys bill boards and timberland for less than the value of the trees alone. Ski saw some field walkie talkie batteries at a local military base (DOD) auction. He had seen them before in 'Nam. He bought them for about $136 for the lot of a hundred or so. He knew they contained a lot of silver. He didn’t even pick them up (hazardous material). UPS or someone sent them to Phoenix AZ, to Handy and Harmon (the precious metals refiners). I saw his first check it was either $15,000 or $20,000 I don’t remember exactly but I know he got another check for nearly $5,000 before it was over. Ski said that the batteries were in mislabeled boxes so other buyers wern’t aware of this deal. It really pasy to go look for yourself. Yes you CAN occasionally get a real deal from GSA and DOD despite what they may say.
Dr. Albert Lowery, the real estate seminar teacher tells of another gov’t sale of a DC-3 airplane. It was widely advertized as a no reserve auction. That means that any bid, even if only one dollar would buy it if it was the highest bid. Guess what? They held the action in Phoenix and there were NO bidders. It was reputedd to have gotten a lot of press coverage after that and another auction was scheduled. Guess what it sold for the second time? No you’re wrong. There were NO bidders at the second auction either. This time it REALLY got a lot of TV and press coverage in the media. A third auction was scheduled and finally some guy bought it real cheap. I don’t remember for how much ectally but I think it was in the $4k-$6k range.
Not the end of story though. He advertized it for sale in aviation magazines and one day there was a knock at his door and two suits with a briefcase full of hundred dollar bills bought it for $100,000 cash. He asked how they would get it moved. They said no problem. They just fuled it up and climbed in and flew off into the sunset (south-so you know where this story is going).
Not the end of story though. About a year later the guy who had sold the DC-3 noticed it was for sale again by the same governmenttal agency. use your imagination. End of story. Yep this is true, just ask Dr. Lowry if you ever meet him at a seminar.
Another true story, this. I know 'coz it happened to me. I once received a form letter from the GSA warning everyone not to fall for those phoney ads that say you can buy cars for as little as one dollar. In the 2-3 months previous I had purchased a pickup truck and a bread truck van for $1 each. Yes I got them both at a widely attended public GSA sale held in Phoenix AZ. This is an interesting story but it will cost you a Big Mac at the next convention when we meet (its a little windy for this post). You all know how much I like short posts, right?
The bottom line is that you can and will, with some practice, be able to occassionally pick up auction assets for pennies on the dollar, which you can trade at or near full value for goods and services, including mobile homes.
I trade this stuff for handymen, mobile home movers and set up people etc. I have even traded freebie mobiles for cars, boats etc.
Bartering is so much fun. Why not look around for something you don’t need or something you can buy subwholesale and then trade it for something of greater value.
Regards, doc