Spanish terms and phrases in MH business - Posted by Will (GA)

Real Estate Investing Mobile Homes & Mobile Home Parks
1

Posted by Mark (Atl) on January 07, 2003 at 12:41:13:

Will,

I know Mexicans use ‘enganche’ for down payment. My wife is Peruvian. She uses ‘inicial’ diacritical marks missing obviously. If you want to email me, I’ll give you my phone number. We can kick around some terms. I would say that the prof at UGA is probably going to be more focused on formal, correct, Castellano than slang and local idioms. I could be wrong though.

I have found a couple of Latino markets. They have a free Spanish language paper, Mundo Hispanico, that has a classifed section for Casas Moviles.

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Spanish terms and phrases in MH business - Posted by Will (GA)

Posted by Will (GA) on January 07, 2003 at 12:09:36:

Hi,
I’m just getting into this. I read Lonnie’s books last week, and I put my first flyers out last night. I’m trying to get a feel for what’s going on. I plan on trying to advertise and sell to the Spanish-speaking market heavily. It seems to me they are a prime relatively untapped one. To that end I’m creating Spanish versions of my ads, and making descriptive documents in Spanish that explain the contracts. I speak spanish, but this specialized vocabulary is beyond me right now.
I have contacted the business Spanish professor at the University of Georgia and he is going to translate them for me free of charge. He asked that a create a comprehensive list so that he will only need to do it the one time. To that end I wanted to ask for any input from this forum on what terms and phrases (amortization, interest rate, “low down payment”, “flexible terms”, etc) you might like to have for your own use. I’ll make the list, get it translated and then post it here somewhere. Thanks for any help.
Will

PS If anyone in GA can answer this I’d be grateful. I can’t find mobile home for sale ads. I’m calling FSBO signs in parks and screwing up the courage to call on park managers, but the AJC, and local papers, and local ad rags have maybe 1-6 MHs of any type for sale/week in the whole Atl area. I’m figuring there’s got to be some market that I’m missing. Thanks on all counts.
Will

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Don’t call me Gringo, but… - Posted by Dr. Craig Whisler CA

Posted by Dr. Craig Whisler CA on January 17, 2003 at 20:29:16:

I usually run ads in Spanish when sellling freebie mobile homes but I have found from experience that if you run Spanish language ads you will get lot of calls from Spanish (only) speakers who will talk a mile a minute. I can speak spanish (after a fashion) so it isn’t as big of a problem for me as it would be for you. I would reccomend that In the case of non-Spanish speaking sellers, that they run ads in English, but put the ads only in Spanish language papers. Some ads are semi-universal in language anyway. To wit: 1982 ‘Trailer’ 50 ft Broadmore, 3br,1ba only $8,000. $1,000 dn and $250 mo. Most non-English speaking Latinos would be able to understand or figure out about 90% of an add like that. When you put an English language ad in Spanish only papers, then usually the father has one of his children call and translate for you both. This works best for gringos who don’t know a word of Spanish.

If you are adventurous try to make up a Spanish ad:

Mobile home—trailer (if older singlewide clunkmobile) or casa movil if newer or doublewide.

Bedrooms—habitaciones or recamaras

Bath —bano

living room or den----sala

kitchen—cocina

dining room—comedor

Down payment— (pago) iniciqal or enganche

only—solo (as in solo $1,000 de enganche–only $1k dn)

monthly payments—‘mensuales’ or ‘por mes’ (or ___ cada mes if preceded by a dollar amount),

good condition----buenas conditiones

needs repair—necessita reparationes

easy credit—credito facil

no bank qualifying— no se necessita lo buen credito requerido por los bancos (literally— you don’t need as good credit as required by banks.)

available now—ya disponible

must be moved quickly—tiene que ser movado pronto (or trasladado)

good neighboorhood—buena area, or buen vecindario

located—ubicado or colocado or situado or even better just put the town’s name in your ad and it will be universall understood.

in— as located in Los Angeles—en (Los Angeles)

se habla espanol—we speak Spanish (literally–is spoken Spanish)

Solo hablo Ingles—I only speak English

We all have to start somewhere. You start learning a language with your first word. I hope some of these first words will be helpful.

Regards, Gringo-butt

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Accidentally insulting? - Posted by John Merchant

Posted by John Merchant on January 08, 2003 at 09:24:25:

You might want to go slow on your plan lest you unintentionally insult your prospective customers.

I’ll guarantee that LOW DOWN PAYMENT, LOW PAYMENTS are going to get correctly translated, pretty quick, and there’s no big need to translate that kind of language.

Also, how do you know if your ads, after translating into Sp. honestly say what you’re doing and offering? If they don’t, you could be finding yourself in hot water for dishonest advertising!