Posted by KG on January 11, 2001 at 18:45:24:
hello! I am a newbie to real estate investing and I have been devouring this web site. I am very excited at the idea of flipping mobile homes. I think it is something I’d really like to do. I just ordered the Lonnie books a few days ago and can’t wait for them to arrive.
Anyways, I was looking through the newspaper and I noticed a mobile home ad so I thought I would call on it. Here is what it read:
12x56 2 br. in trailer park. Space rent $210/month, A/C, $5,500.
I just read an article by Joe Kaiser called “Get on the same page with the seller.” His general idea was to get beyond the statistics (ie. 2br/1ba, etc.) and get people to tell you their story. So I thought I would give it a try.
I called up and asked the guy to tell me more info about the trailer. He said it was his mothers and that they just had to move her to an assisted living home. He said it had a stove and fridge that were just 3 years old and it had air conditioning. (That was fine but I wanted to see if I could get past the statistics more) So I asked him what sort of time frame was he looking at for selling the mobile. He said that they wanted to sell ASAP because they were paying the $210 space rent and even though he thought that space rent was a really good deal for this area he just wanted to get some cash because his mother is on a limited income. (woohoo! I felt like I was getting some of his story out) So I told him that I knew it was for sale by owner and asked him if he was wanting to take payments or if he wanted cash or what. ( I figured he wanted cash from his earlier statements) He said that they really wanted cash and that he had the trailer for sale for $6500 but he lowered it to $5500 because they wanted out of paying the space rent. He said that it needed painting, his mom was a smoker and that the pipe under the sink had busted and had left waterspots on the wallpaper. I asked him what would happen if he didn’t sell the trailer, what was his plan b? He said, that he didn’t have a plan b. He figured he would sell it. He said he had 3 people look at it when it was $6500 but one guy was 54 so he was too young, one guy got sick, and one guy never called back. So I asked him if it was a senior park. He said yes it was a 55+ park and that it was a nice park and the manager did the lawns and there were plenty of Arizona snow birds that lived in the park. And then he told me that he just painted it and put in new double sided vinyl windows. I asked him since he just painted it why did he earlier tell me that it needed to be painted was it the inside that needed to be painted. He said yes. I asked him was year it was and he said it was a 1972. Then I said I would talk to “my people” and see if we couldn’t find a match.
Ha ha! I forgot to even ask what the space number was. duhh!
Anyways, This was just a practice run. I want to get good at talking to people and negotiating. I ordered the power negotiating tapes by R. Dawson as suggested by an article that Lonnie did.
So my question is? How did I do? What else should I have asked? How could I have taken this further?
What did I learn? I think I learned he must really want this to sell because he painted it and put in new windows and lowered the price by 1,000. He just wants some cash. I also know that assisted living is expensive and that a lot of seniors in our area won’t have the $5500 all in cash to buy this trailer. That is a lot of cash for most seniors to come up with around here.
Is there anything else I learned that I don’t know yet?
Thanks for your help,
KG