This is episode number 2035. We are talking about flipping mobile homes to add value to your land business. You’re like, “It’s called Land Academy. We’re going to buy a piece of land or resell it and go about our lives.” That’s exactly right. You can do the exact same thing with mobile homes without replacing your land business. Add it to it. The whole week, we’re talking about added value to your land deal. Have you ever done a mobile home deal, Jill?

Yes.

Tell us about it. Was it glorious, successful, and easy?

Yes.

That’s my point.

They’re great, especially the ones that we buy. I have no trouble with them. There’s one where we walked in Idaho. We were like, “Maybe we should keep this thing because the land is awesome.” The mobile sucks, but there’s a roof on it and there’s a couch in there, and I walked in it. It’s funny.

Concierge Data

Before we get to that, let’s take a question. Each day on the show, we answer a question from our Land Academy Member Discord forum and take a deep dive into land-related topics by popular request. Here’s a question.

Joe wrote, “I’m new to Land Academy. I’m from Chicago. It’s great to be a part of the Land Academy family. I have a question, if someone doesn’t mind answering. Should I use concierge data for my first campaign so I don’t mess it up, or do most of you jump into the fire, do Docs Ready, and download, scrub, and prep everything on your own mailer?

I have watched 3.0 on How to Target a Market, but I need to watch that video a few more times. It was difficult to digest all the due diligence Jack did on the Excel sheet. I figured using concierge data would be better for my first mailer campaign until I get better at using all of the tools.” Direct mail campaign is what he’s talking about. He said, “Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.”

Joe, if it’s going to take you four weeks to do it, then I would use somebody else as you get going. If it would take you one weekend to really dig in, figure it out, and get good, then I would spend the time on my own. It’s your comfort level, your Excel skills, and things like that. The part that you need to focus on is what you are focusing on, which is, “I can understand how to pick the market. I can understand how to run the Red Yellow Green Test. I can understand where to mail what I want to mail and how I want to price it. I’ve got all that figured out.

Now, it’s the details of going in, downloading that data, scrubbing out the stuff I don’t want, assigning a ZIP code to the ones that don’t have a ZIP code, and scraping all the comps so I can get a good price per acre, come back, set my offers, and then I can get them out.” That’s what’s involved. That part where you’re like, “It took me all weekend to get to that point,” then I would say yes. Use concierge data. That’s why they’re there.

You’re not nuts. What’s great about concierge data is when you establish this product, which is our team working for you, they’re doing our data. We don’t need them every single day running our own data. That’s where they have time to do data for everybody else in Land Academy and the planet. You don’t have to be a member. You get special pricing. Within concierge data, we thought it would be more people like you. We set this up. We’re like, “Anybody who’s hung up at this point, this is going to solve it and help them get their mail out faster.” It’s almost like it’s split down the middle. What do you think?

This is a really popular question at this point.

New people versus advanced people. I want to finish my thoughts here. Did you think it’s 50/50 or is it 70/30?

For a concierge?

Yes.

The vast majority of people who use concierge data are outsourcing it because they’re tired of doing it, myself included.

The vast majority of people who use concierge data are outsourcing it because they're tired of doing it. Share on X

That’s it. That’s the point. It’s not more new people doing it that are overwhelmed. It’s more people like Jack. They’re like, “I can do it. I know how to do it. Why would I do it? I’m going to spend the money.” You might get in, Joe, and go, “I know what goes on behind the scenes. I don’t need to sit there and do the minutia. I’ll start with concierge and always use concierge data like the pros do.”

The answers were split almost down the middle. Number one, your land business will never happen unless you get the mail out. Many people said, “Pick one,” to Joe. Joe, I’m really glad you asked this because it’s a very popular concept. It vocalizes what I said. You got to get the mail out. Nothing’s going to happen. Your phone’s not going to ring for better or for worse.

You have a choice. You can outsource it or you can go through the pain of learning how to do it on your own in the beginning. This is my opinion. Do it yourself. Do Docs Ready. If it’s going to stop you from sending the mail because you have other stuff going on in your life for I don’t care what reason, then get concierge data. You have to get something in the mail.

It’s not about the money. Here’s what happens. If you’re like, “I don’t want to do it. I’m going to save the money and do it myself,” but it takes you three months to get a mailer out, then I go, “Did you save money? You could have got a mailer out in month 1 and be making money on month 3.” You have to take a step back and go, “I got to look at it that way too. It’s worth the money if I’m going to spend all this time.”

There are a couple of reasons people do it. 1) They’re busy, 2) They’re lazy, and 3) It’s like, “It’s going to take me too long. Why do it?” It’s like our business. It’s true. Jack can do everything I do and I can muddle through. I wouldn’t be nearly as good as you. You know what I’m saying. I’m not an Excel PhD. Everyone can learn all the pieces of this. That doesn’t mean that you’re great at it or you should be doing it.

If you teach yourself how to do a mailer and ultimately, you do a bunch of deals and say, “I am going to outsource this now. It’s more expensive but I realize how profitable this is,” what ends up happening, the best case scenario is you know how to do it. You’ve done it several times yourself. You choose to do concierge data out of whatever.

What ends up happening and how I do it is I can check it then. Are the guys at concierge data, the guys I picked personally, creating a mailer that’s as good as or better than I would for myself? I know the difference. I fear that if you always use concierge data, you’re not going to know whether or not the mailer is what it should be. There are a lot of caveats to doing a mailer.

I’m not saying you don’t use concierge data. It’s hugely popular. Jill and I own Offers2Owners. I can see on the back end what kind of orders are being purchased and how many units are in each order. The new people tend to use concierge data for small amounts. I don’t know why. 200, 300, 400, 500 units, which concerns me. We have people who spend well over $1 million a year on mail using concierge data because the machine’s rolling. The point is whatever’s going to get the mail out.

Flipping Mobile Homes

This episode’s topic is flipping mobile homes to add value to your existing land business. You know how to send out mail. You understand the concepts. You understand that if you send out several thousand pieces of mail and follow up appropriately, you can buy and sell a piece of land without a lot of work. When you look at the work, time, energy, and money spent to generate the money in this business is staggeringly positive. Why not add a product type, mobile homes, houses, all of it?

There are pros and cons to buying and selling mobile homes. Mobile homes are different from buying and selling land in the following way, sending out a mailer. There are much fewer mobile homes out there than land. Let’s pick Texas. If you go to a rural county in Texas and find out how many pieces of vacant land there are, it’s going to be thousands of land depending on the size of the county and what’s going on there. You’ll find mobile homes that are on their own piece of land, their own APN, in the hundreds, not the tens of thousands. There are far fewer mobile homes to choose from.

To get a 5,000 to 10,000-unit mobile home mailer, you have to cross state lines often. We certainly have to cross county lines. Deconstructing the data to find out where mobile homes are in the sea of real estate in that given county is a little bit more tricky. It’s very doable but it’s a little tricky. Pricing is really easy because it usually has a mailing address.

You can find out what Zillow thinks it’s worth and what Realtor.com and all the algorithms out there think a mobile home is worth and price it from there. You do individual pricing. It’s much easier from a pricing standpoint. When a seller calls back and says, “I do want to sell my mobile home,” there are a bunch of extra due diligence steps that have to happen. It’s very similar to buying a house. It’s usually on a septic system. Flipping mobile homes to add value to your land business is possible. We talk about this in Career Path in great detail.

I want to add really quick too that we’re talking about mobile homes that are owned on their own land, not in a park. We’re not talking about buying mobile homes. We’re talking about buying land that has a mobile home attached to it. There’s a big difference. You don’t want space 32. We’re not buying that.

Legally and technically, Jill’s exactly right. The vast majority of mobile homes out there are in a park. They’re in a mobile home park or a designated area that’s got one APN. The entire park is one APN. People are living side by side in mobile homes next to each other and are renting the land every month. That’s not what we’re talking about. That’s personal property. It’s the same legal status as your automobile. It’s not real property or real estate.

If the mobile home is on a piece of land, it’s got its own APN, and you’re paying real estate taxes as a person that lives there, that’s what we’re interested in. Everybody who is living in a mobile home park dreams of living in a mobile home on their own land to get rid of that land’s monthly rent payment. They’re easy to sell in any condition. With few exceptions, we’ve owned a proper mobile home and it takes two weeks to sell it.

Everybody who is living in a mobile home park dreams of living in a mobile home on their own land to get rid of that land's monthly rent payment. Share on X

We could do Mobile Home Week too. There are a lot of different things that go into this. You’re right. Even in mobile home-friendly land, there are two things that we’ve had that fly off the shelves. A) It’s land that the county will allow mobiles. They love that. Mobile home-friendly lots fly off the shelves. The second one is when there is a mobile home in any condition because of the infrastructure that’s set up. It’s ready to go even if you scrape it and put a new one on there, which people love.

Over the years, we have bought and sold some that I’m like, “I’m sure we bought it so cheaply and sold it so cheaply that they’re going to scrape it. They’re doing what they should do and put a new one down.” I then look it up later and they’re living there. I’m like, “What?”

They cleaned it all up?

They did. You fixed the hole in the side. I was joking earlier about the one that we looked at that we still own in Idaho. I should put some pictures up of that too because what’s holding the front door closed is a cinder block. You have to move the cinder block to open the front door. You go in, look around, close it, and put the cinder block back in place.

I love that little property. There’s no way we can sell it.

It’s got a protective ridge, which we joke about. It’s true. It’s five acres.

We should never go visit your property.

That’s bad.

If you’re a true real estate lover like the both of us are, everything turns into a real estate experience with us.

It’s true.

Jill rented an ATV and I took my Dual Sport Kawasaki out. I don’t know where we were. It doesn’t matter.

Yellowstone.

It was in West Yellowstone. What a ride, but it ended up being, “Look at that real estate. I wonder who owns that.” It became that kind of thing. We could go fishing and it would become, “Who owns that land? Maybe we should send a mailer out here.” It becomes that whole thing.

It’s a disease.

We encourage each other. It’s like two criminals encouraging each other.

No one holds the other one back. It’s like, “You’re right. We should buy that.”

It’s like, “Let’s do a mailer when we get back.”

We drove to Canada for lunch. The next thing you know, Jack’s like, “We can buy this up here.” I’m like, “We could.”

Here’s the whole point of this episode. Flipping mobile homes can and will add a ton of value to your existing business. It’s a little bit more complicated but very rewarding. They’re much easier to sell than vacant land once you purchase it. There are some moving parts. If you’re interested in learning more about this, send a note to Support@LandAcademy.com. They will steer you toward considering attending our Career Path class. We have one and a half whole modules on this, and we walk through every step of the way. Join us in the next episode when we discuss our buy-and-hold strategies to add value to our existing land business. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. We are information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.