Five Reasons for the Elusive Mobile Home Park Owners List

Since the dawn of parks becoming a prized asset, investors have always chased the elusive mobile home park owners list that contains every park owner’s personal phone number.

In fact, most investors these days seem to focus harder on looking for that perfect list of phone numbers than they do actually analyzing the mobile home parks that fit their budget or business model.

So, let’s break down the top five reasons why a reliable list of mobile home park owner’s phone numbers is so elusive.

#1 – Defining a Park Owner

Everyone likes to use the phrase “park owner” when they are referring to who they want contact about buying a mobile home park. However, in my experience what folks truly mean is they want a phone number to the park's decision maker.

While it’s rare that only one person in a family or company actually exercises their sole authority to make a major business decision such as selling, let’s look at two common occurrences that make finding the decision maker's phone number so hard.

Take for example a mobile home park that may be legally owned by an elderly person. At one time there were a vital decision-maker as a co-owner with their spouse. However, as time passed, the spouse passed and their currently in a nursing home with dementia.  Because of memory problems, their son has now become the financial Power of Attorney the legal Will leaves the park to a grandson who has been running the park for several years. Obviously the legal owner is no longer the decision maker in this case. In fact, the legal owner more than likely doesn't even have a phone number because of the situation.

Or take a common instance where an owner has chosen to set up a different legal entity for each mobile home park they own. Because the owner wants to limit the exposure of liability, they use a registered agent’s contact information and either a park’s address or a post office box for its company address. In this situation, the phone number that is probably going to be publicly displayed is the registered agent or park office rather than the owner. Again, the decision maker's phone number remain fairly private to the public.

#2 – Types of Legal Ownership

Property ownership comes in a lot of forms.  Many parks are legally owned by an S-Corp or Limited Liability Corporation while others are still personally owned.

At one time, titling an investment property in the owner’s personal name was common practice for smaller investors. However, because of today’s liability concerns, a vast majority of mobile home parks are now legally placed into some type of corporate ownership.

This means that in today’s market there are really only two reasons that a park is placed in an individual’s personal name. First, the lender required it to help legally enforce the borrower’s personal guarantee of the loan. Or second, the park was purchased by the individual, or individuals, years ago.

While it’s obviously easier to locate the phone number of the decision maker when it’s in an individual’s name, the reasons the park has been placed under an individual’s name can come with its own set of deal making challenges.

In the case where a lender has required it, there is typically still going to be debt attached to the property. This means that there is a very low probability that any type of seller financing deal could be struck unless your down payment equals the owner’s loan payoff balance.

In the second case where the owner simply purchased it years ago, you’re more likely to face a situation where the legal owner may no longer be the ultimate decision maker as in the case of the grandmother I mentioned earlier.

#3 –Frequent Spam Calls

We all get them. The inevitable spam call. Cell phones have done an awesome job of connecting us to one another no matter where we may be in the world. However, this convenience doesn’t come without a cost.

Unfortunately, we as an industry haven’t helped ourselves when it comes to being part of the spam problem. The poor calling tactics that are commonly utilized to solicit mobile home park owners, fall directly into this category in the eyes of most owners.

Because of the frequency and the way many investors word their pitch, most park owners simply see you as another spam caller.

To counter this, many park owners add their personal phone numbers to the National Do Not Call Registry. When that doesn’t stop what they consider spam calls, they may even choose to change their personal phone  number and simply rely on a park’s office phone number as their public point of contact.

#4 - Cell Phones vs. Land Lines

As late as the early 90’s when you wanted to know a person’s phone number you could simply look them up in a phone book or call the local phone directory.

Back then every land line number was considered public information. This meant the only time you couldn’t find someone’s number was when they paid for the additional service of having an unregistered phone number.

When cell phones were first invented, they were considered a luxury that was only afforded by the wealthy. This caused the telecommunication companies to classify each cell number as a private number rather than public. Until recent years you couldn’t even request that your cell phone number be added to a public phone book or directory.

While now days you can have your cell phone number added to a phone book, most choose not to so that they can avoid the obvious spam issues that are associated with making your phone number publicly available.

#5 – County Records

Until the cyber age, no one had really ever heard of identity theft. Sure, there were various forms of fraud but nothing like we see now. Today, with the help of the internet, a tech savvy bad guy with even the smallest bit of personal information can identify you, and your entire digital footprint, in a fairly short amount of time.

This has led to stronger government policies that help prevent a person’s identity from getting into of the hands of the bad guys. Take for example, years ago the DVMs use to publish a license plate number directory. Anyone that had one of these printed directories could simply look up a license plate number and immediately know who the car was registered to and where they lived.

Today, County Assessors, Treasurers, and Clerks all take steps to ensure that phone numbers are never recorded within the public property records. In fact, many times even a property’s Deed of Trust only states that the property was sold for “One Dollar and Other Consideration”. This is all done in their effort to protect the privacy of the individual property owner as much as possible.

Summing it All Up

Each of the items I’ve just laid out doesn’t make it impossible to find the personal phone number of an owner or a park’s decision maker. Instead, they each simply help to explain why there will never be a perfect mobile home park owners list.

It’s why I recommend that investors first identify the attributes of the parks they are looking to purchase. It makes doing the additional research like identifying the correct decision makers and deal structures so much more efficient. As a previous investor, it’s also why I designed ParkSitesIO.

As a three dimensional mobile home park data center ParkSitesIO is built to save our clients valuable time rather than performing random Google searches in hopes to find the right information.