MHC Database · Manufactured housing transaction intelligence
How to Get Mobile Home Park Comps Without an Enterprise Terminal
Quick answer: The established commercial real estate data platforms are powerful, but they are priced for firms and built to cover every property type. For mobile home park comps specifically, the facts you need (recorded sales, owners, and financing) live in the public record. A community-focused tool that assembles those records gives you the same comps for a fraction of an enterprise subscription.
If you buy, broker, or lend on manufactured housing communities, you need comparable sales, ownership, and financing data. The question is how you get it, and how much you pay. There are three realistic paths, and they trade cost against effort against breadth.
The three ways people get mobile home park comps today
Most community buyers end up using one of three approaches:
- An enterprise commercial real estate data platform. Broad coverage across every property type, with analytics, listings, and research. Powerful, and priced and sold to firms under a contract or seat license.
- Pulling the public records yourself. Recorded deeds and assessor rolls are public, so you can assemble comps county by county for free. Accurate, but slow and manual at any real volume.
- A community-focused database built on the public record. The middle path: the public records are already assembled and tied to each property, so you skip the county-by-county grind without paying for an all-property-type platform.
What the broad platforms do well
The large CRE data platforms earned their position. They cover offices, industrial, retail, multifamily, and manufactured housing together, layer on analytics and forecasting, and carry deep research teams. If your work spans every property type and your firm can support the contract, that breadth is genuinely valuable. This is not an argument that they are bad tools.
Where they fall short for a community buyer
The gaps show up when your focus narrows to manufactured housing:
- Price. Enterprise platforms are sold to institutions on annual contracts. For a single buyer, a small shop, or an occasional acquirer, that is a lot of overhead for the slice you use.
- Generalist, not community-specific. A manufactured housing community is a land-lease business with its own metrics, so community comps benefit from per-site normalization, utility and class context, and the lot-rent fundamentals behind value. A generalist platform treats a community like any other parcel.
- Opaque sourcing. Aggregated platforms often show you a number without the underlying record. When you cannot click through to the deed, you are trusting the aggregation rather than verifying the sale.
The public-record middle path
Every community sale, owner, and loan is recorded publicly. That is the whole reason a property-first database is possible: you can assemble the public record once, attach it to each community, and let buyers filter it. The method for the comps themselves is in How to Find Mobile Home Park Sale Comps, and the ownership side is in Who Owns That Mobile Home Park?. Doing it by hand works; a database just spares you the repetition.
Where MHC Database fits
MHC Database is the community-focused version of that middle path: manufactured-housing-only, property-first (start with the community, attach the deals), with every transaction tied to its public-record source so you can verify it yourself. It is self-serve, a login and a card rather than a contract and a seat. To be candid about the limits: MHC Database is communities only and newer, so it does not try to match an all-property-type platform's universe or its analytics suite. If you need every property type, a broad platform still has a place. If you focus on manufactured housing and want source-transparent comps without a large contract, this is the cheaper, more specific fit.
How to choose
A short decision guide:
| Option | Focus | Sourcing | Pricing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Broad CRE data platform | All property types, analytics | Proprietary, aggregated | Enterprise contract |
| Public records, done yourself | Anything, manual | Primary source, you pull it | Free, but slow |
| MHC Database | Communities only, property-first | Public record, source-linked | Self-serve subscription |
If you work across all property types and have an enterprise budget, a broad platform fits. If you have time and only an occasional need, the public records are free. If you focus on manufactured housing and want fast, source-transparent comps without a big contract, that is the gap MHC Database is built for.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a cheaper way to get mobile home park comps?
Yes, if your focus is manufactured housing specifically. The broad commercial real estate data platforms are priced for firms and cover every property type. The underlying facts for community comps, which are recorded sales, owners, and financing, sit in the public record. A community-focused tool that assembles those records can deliver comps for a fraction of an enterprise subscription.
Do you need an enterprise subscription to get mobile home park sale comps?
No. Community sale comparables come from county recorder deeds and assessor rolls, which are public. You can pull them yourself county by county for free, or use a database that has already assembled them. An enterprise platform is one option, not a requirement.
Where does MHC Database get its data?
From the public record: county recorder deeds, assessor rolls, and disclosed filings. Every transaction is tied to its public-record source, so you can verify it yourself rather than trusting an unsourced number.
Can a manufactured-housing-only tool replace a full commercial real estate platform?
Not entirely, and it is not meant to. A broad platform covers every property type with deep analytics and research. MHC Database is deliberately manufactured-housing-only and property-first. If you work across all property types you may still want a broad platform; if you focus on communities and want source-transparent comps without a large contract, a community-specific tool is the better fit.