At least a miscellany, if not a panoply - Posted by Lucas (MI)
Posted by Lucas (MI) on June 22, 2002 at 09:20:27:
These aren’t things I have tried (yet!), so if they are impractical I leave it up to the more experienced mobile-mongers to point out why. I’m just trying to do a little brainstorming. This thread looked too good for me to let it die out.
What about companies that must relocate people or find temporary housing for them? Sometimes a person gets a transfer order from the company he is working for and must move to follow his job. Obviously this creates a motivated buyer that an astute mobile home investor can deal with, but what if there was a way to get in on the other end of the deal?
If a person could contact the companies, he might be able to arrange for workers who were transferred to his area to be directed to him as a source for affordable housing. These people would obviously be employed and that, along with them having just sold their prior residences to move, would seem to make it a reasonable chance that some of them would have cash.
What about people who, due to some misfortune, require long-term temporary housing? If someone loses his house through fire, flood, etc, he has to go somewhere. There may, as in some communities, be a collection taken up for this person, or his insurance might pay him, or he might have sufficient cash to purchase a mobile on his own. If you have a way to hear about these events and contact the relevant groups some opportunity might be found here.
This isn’t a way to get cash up-front, but it came to me while I wrote the previous paragraph: If you’re feeling really generous, you could lend or donate a cheap mobile home to a family who just lost a home in some unfortunate manner. While this isn’t a “deal” and won’t really get you lots of money by itself, it could be some of the best advertising you’ll ever get. (And some of the cheapest, if you do some good trading or get the mobile home for free.)
The word of mouth generated by it could be tremendous. Maybe you’d even get interviewed for a TV spot or a news paper. In smaller towns, anything associated with a big fire or something of that nature usually gets at least some attention. Mobile home donator being interviewed: “Yes, here at XYZ Mobile we believe in supporting the community…”
Getting back to the cash thing, it might be useful to look for a way to get involved with information networks for people building their own houses. The situation of someone selling a mobile home because he was living in it while he built his house and no longer needs it (and doesn’t want it cluttering up his yard) has been discussed, but I haven’t seen anyone suggest going at it from the other direction.
Aside from buying the mobile homes when people are done with them, don’t we want to be the people who sell owner-builders their temporary housing to begin with? These people obviously have money (borrowed or otherwise, we don’t care, it’s all green when it comes to us), because if they didn’t have money they wouldn’t be building their own houses!
It seems to me that it would be good strategy for a person to find the local sources of information that owner-builders in his area turn to and get himself noticed in those circles. Perhaps a person could pay referral fees to, or make other mutually beneficial arrangements with, people in the building trade. An agreement with someone who provides empty lots for building on (supposing that person isn’t you…) could prove very useful if he put in a word to his customers that he knew of a source for affordable, temporary, on-site housing.
There are my ideas for the moment. Make what you will of them. I’m interested in hearing opinions on this, so if anyone thinks these are feasible (or unfeasible) avenues for obtaining cash sales, or has suggestions to expand/refine them, let me know.
Lucas
