Selling Your Mobile Home: Wholesale vs. Retail (part 2 of 2)
Selling a Mobile Home Wholesale
Wholesale is the process of selling your mobile home to a broker who will move the home and then sell it to a buyer to be provided at a lot of their choice. This option is advantageous for a number of reasons and can be a better option for many mobile homeowners. Like with retail, there are several considerations and drawbacks and you should take care to consider all of your options before you make a decision.
Wholesale allows you to sell quickly and without the hassle and additional costs of retail, but for a significantly lower price.
Market Values
Most wholesalers will inspect your home and then make an offer based on the same conditional factors you would include during pricing a home for the retail market. However, this bid is usually significantly lower because of several factors. Most wholesalers must move your mobile home off of the lot in order to purchase it and sell it elsewhere, meaning that they must take on high moving costs for transportation, permits, licenses, unhooking utilities, and prepare a new lot in another location. These costs can be high, and they are all directly subtracted from the offer that the wholesale broker will make to you.
Most wholesale buyers also dont pay retail price, which means that the final value will be lower than the retail, even for the wholesaler. While the price you are quoted will vary depending on the moving costs associated with your home, it will be lower than the retail value. However, you can greatly benefit if you are living in a less than ideal area, as brokers do not factor in the condition of the park, amenities, or the community, only the mobile home itself.
In A Hurry to Sell?
One of the largest benefits of wholesale is that you can sell your mobile home very quickly, sometimes even on the same day you receive the offer. This can be very advantageous if you need funds quickly to handle other financial issues or to put a down payment on your new home in another location. In some cases, brokers will be willing to purchase your mobile home upfront and allow you to move out at an agreed-upon date, which gives you the time to use the money to put a downpayment on your new home. When looking for an accurate mobile home value estimation, speed quickly changes the value based on how long you are willing to wait.
Comparing The Sales Processes
Unlike with retail where you must market, show the home, and ask permission from the park, selling wholesale is fast and painless. The wholesaler will offer a rate and if you accept they will immediately close the deal. This sale will go through instantly and parks cannot stop the sale due to repairs needed and cannot deny the sale as the home will be moved off the lot. You also wont need an attorney or park mediation, because it is a two-party sale between you and the broker. At times, parks will implement the First Right Of Refusal, where you are required to give the mobile home park the chance to match any purchase agreement you enter into. This is often misrepresented in order to make the homeowner believe they are not allowed to sell their home to a buyer who plans to move the home. If this is what you have been told, please contact us and we can help you navigate through the sale in a way that wont get you into legal trouble.
Selling your mobile home directly to a broker allows you to make a sale quickly, avoid issues with the park, get money quickly, and move on with your life. While you will earn less money upfront, you wont have to worry about additional fees, park issues, or waiting a year or more to sell your mobile home, and you might walk away with more profit. Direct sales are ideal if you cant sell quickly, have high rental fees to consider, or need the money from the sale upfront to invest in a new home or opportunity.
Choosing Your Sales Process
Selling your mobile home means making key decisions regarding how, where, and how quickly you want to make the sale. If you want to make the most profit, you should sit down to consider your options, do the math, and make a decision that offers the most value to you. Because the average time to sale is 9-12 months and sometimes longer for a mobile home, you should calculate at least a years worth of park fees, any repairs that you might have to make, the cost of maintenance for the home over that period, advertising, marketing, and other details.
Hopefully, this helps equip you with the information needed for understanding the different markets assessing mobile home values. Feel free to reach out to our team and see how we can help.