CrosstownOS / Investor's guide
Mobile home park investing starts with knowing what you own.
A mobile home park is two businesses in one legal entity: lot rent on the land, and whatever the park owns on top of it. Most underwriting mistakes in this asset class come from valuing the wrong business, or valuing both as one. This guide separates them.
TOH vs. POH: why the mix determines everything
Tenant-owned homes (TOH) mean the resident owns the home and rents the lot. The park collects lot rent, maintains the land and infrastructure, and carries almost no home-level capex. This is the business most investors think they are buying, and it is the cleanest income in the asset class.
Park-owned homes (POH) mean the park owns the home and rents the whole package. The income is higher per site, but so is everything else: maintenance, turnover cost, insurance, and the slow depreciation of an aging housing stock the park is now responsible for. A park that is 80 percent POH is closer to a scattered-site landlord business than to a land-lease business, and it should be underwritten like one.
The first diligence question on any mobile home park is the mix, verified home by home, not taken from the broker's summary. Titles, not claims. For the full treatment of why ownership of the homes is the diligence starting point, read Field Notes: manufactured housing diligence starts with who owns the homes.
Value the two businesses separately: park-owned homes as personal property, tenant-owned lot rent as real estate. Run the POH/TOH Split Valuation.
Lot rent verification: not just the rent roll
The rent roll says what lot rent should be. Bank deposits say what arrived. Reconcile the two for 12 to 24 months, and age every delinquency. In tenant-owned parks, delinquency is stickier than in apartments: evicting a homeowner who owns the structure is slower, costlier, and politically harder than turning an apartment.
Then check the rents against the market. Pull lot rents from comparable parks within a realistic drive and adjust for utilities included, home age restrictions, and amenity gaps. The value-add story in most MHP deals is lot rent growth, so the question is never whether rents can go up. It is whether the current residents, in these homes, in this market, can absorb the increase without the occupancy you underwrote walking out the gate.
Utility infrastructure: the hidden capex
Mobile home parks are old. Much of the national stock was built in the 1960s through 1980s, which means the water lines, sewer lines, and electrical systems are often original. Deferred underground infrastructure is the silent deal killer: invisible in photos, absent from the P&L, and priced in five or six figures when it fails.
Verify three things. First, who pays for each utility and whether the park is master-metered or sub-metered; master-metered parks where the owner eats the bill need immediate sub-metering capex in your underwriting. Second, the condition and material of water and sewer lines, from inspection reports or a scoped sample, not from the seller's memory. Third, permitted capacity on well, septic, or lagoon systems against current and planned home counts, confirmed with the county.
Underwrite the park that exists
The pattern across every section is the same: the marketed park and the verifiable park are two different assets until you close the gap. Verify the home mix from titles. Verify income from deposits. Verify utilities from bills and permits. Then price the deal on what you proved, not what you were told.
When the deal gets real, the Acquisition Workspace holds the full record: seller claims, source evidence, site observations, unresolved diligence, and underwriting connected before you commit capital.
