MHC Database · Manufactured housing transaction intelligence
How to Buy a Mobile Home Park: A Data-Driven Playbook
Quick answer: Buying a mobile home park comes down to answering four questions with evidence: what is it worth (comparable sales and cap rate), what does it earn (lot rent, occupancy, and the expense ratio that build net operating income), who actually owns it (county deeds and entity filings), and how is it financed (the recorded mortgage and its maturity). Most of those answers live in the public record, before you ever call a broker.
Buying a manufactured housing community is not like buying a house, and it is not quite like buying an office building either. A community is a piece of land-lease real estate: the owner leases sites to residents who own their homes but rent the ground beneath them, so value moves with lot rent and occupancy, not just with what the land cost. That makes community acquisition unusually data-driven: the buyers who win are the ones who can value a property, read its performance, and verify its ownership and debt quickly and independently.
This playbook walks through the six steps in order, with a link to a deeper guide on each. It is written for acquirers, brokers, lenders, and first-time community buyers who want to work from evidence rather than from a broker's narrative.
Start with the property, not the listing
Most tools start with a deal and hope to find the property. The more durable habit is the reverse: start with the specific community and assemble its record. Because community sales, ownership, and financing are all recorded at the county level, you can build a complete picture of a target asset whether or not it is formally for sale. That is the entire premise behind a property-first database like MHC Database, and it is why off-market sourcing is possible at all.
Step 1: Pull the comparable sales
Comparable sales (comps) are the anchor for every other number. A community comp is a recent arms-length sale of a similar property, expressed as price per site (sale price divided by site count), so a 120-site sale and an 80-site sale can be compared on the same scale. Comps come from recorded deeds and assessor rolls, the same public records the expensive terminals repackage and resell.
Read the full method in How to Find Mobile Home Park Sale Comps from Public Records. The short version: gather recent sales of similar quality and market, convert each to price per site, and adjust for condition, utilities, and date.
Step 2: Value it three ways
Serious buyers do not rely on a single number. There are three accepted approaches, and you triangulate across them:
- Income approach: capitalize net operating income (NOI) at a market cap rate. This is the primary method for a stabilized community.
- Sales-comparison approach: apply a per-site value drawn from your comps.
- Cost approach: land value plus the depreciated cost to develop, useful for new or unusual assets.
The step-by-step math is in How to Value a Mobile Home Park: Methods, Cap Rates & Comps. Where the three approaches cluster is your supportable value.
Step 3: Read the cap rate
The capitalization rate is simply NOI divided by price, and it is the fastest way to sanity-check an asking price against the market. Manufactured housing communities have seen cap rates compress over the last decade as institutional capital moved in, and a small change in the cap rate moves value a lot, which is why it deserves its own analysis: see Mobile Home Park Cap Rates Explained (and Where 2026 Stands).
Step 4: Check the operating metrics
NOI does not appear from nowhere. It is built from a handful of operating metrics: lot rent (the monthly site rent residents pay), physical occupancy (how full the community runs), and the expense ratio (operating expenses as a share of revenue, shaped heavily by who pays for utilities). Learn to read all of them in Lot Rent, Occupancy & the Metrics That Move an MHC Deal.
Step 5: Find out who really owns it
The name on the entrance sign is rarely the owner on the deed. A community may be operated under one brand or management company while the real estate sits in a single-purpose LLC. Before you approach an owner or underwrite a deal, trace the actual title holder and the people behind the entity. The how-to is in Who Owns That Mobile Home Park? How to Find Community Owners in Public Records.
Step 6: Map the existing debt
A recorded mortgage tells you how much leverage is on the asset, who the lender is, and when the loan matures. Maturities matter: a community facing a near-term loan maturity in a higher-rate market is a more motivated seller, and a wave of maturing loans is where distressed opportunities come from. Recorded deeds of trust and mortgages make this visible without inside information.
Where the data comes from (and what it costs)
Every step above draws on the same public sources: county recorder deeds, assessor rolls, and entity filings. Legacy services collect those records and license them back at enterprise prices. The table below maps each question to where its answer lives.
| The question | Where the answer lives | Expressed as |
|---|---|---|
| What is it worth? | Recorded deeds, assessor rolls (comps) | Price per site, cap rate |
| What does it earn? | Operating statements, rent rolls | Lot rent, occupancy, expense ratio, NOI |
| Who owns it? | County deed, entity / corporate filings | Title holder, sponsor |
| How is it financed? | Recorded mortgage / deed of trust | Loan amount, lender, maturity |
If you would rather not pull records county by county, that is exactly the gap MHC Database fills, covered in How to Get Mobile Home Park Comps Without an Enterprise Terminal.
What makes a mobile home park a good investment?
Run the six steps above and a clear picture emerges of whether a community is a sound investment. A strong mobile home park investment usually shares a few traits: a price per site supported by recent comps, an in-place cap rate that is not propped up by below-market lot rents, stable occupancy, a clean ownership chain, and debt you can either assume or refinance on workable terms. Weakness in any one of those is not automatically a deal-killer, but it is a number to underwrite hard.
The reason manufactured housing draws so much investment interest is structural: limited new supply, residents who rarely move, and lot-rent income that tends to hold up across cycles. None of that guarantees a given community is a good buy. The public record, read the way this playbook lays out, is how you separate a genuinely good investment from a merely cheap one.
Frequently asked questions
How much money do you need to buy a mobile home park?
It depends on price and financing. Community acquisitions are commonly financed with debt covering a large share of the purchase, with the buyer funding the remaining equity plus closing costs, any deferred-maintenance or infrastructure budget, and operating reserves. The honest answer is that the equity check, not the price, is the real gating number, so start by estimating value and likely loan proceeds.
What is the first step in buying a mobile home park?
Identify the specific property and pull its public record before you negotiate. Recent comparable sales, the assessor's record, the current owner, and any recorded mortgage tell you what the asset is worth and how it is financed, often before a broker shares an offering memorandum.
Do I need a broker to buy a mobile home park?
No, though many deals still run through brokers. Because community ownership, sales, and debt are recorded publicly, a buyer can source and underwrite off-market by working from county records and a property database rather than waiting for a listing.
How do you value a mobile home park before making an offer?
Use all three approaches: the income approach (capitalize net operating income at a market cap rate), the sales-comparison approach (price per site from recent comparable sales), and the cost approach (land plus depreciated replacement cost). Where they cluster is your supportable value.