How to buy a mobile home park

Before you make an offer on a mobile home park, work out which loan it qualifies for, because that sets the price you can pay. A 120-site park at 92% occupancy with a handful of park-owned homes can get agency debt at up to 80% of value. A 35-pad park at 70% occupancy with half the homes owned by the seller can’t, and you’ll be financing it with a bank or a seller note at a lower loan amount. Same price per pad, very different deal.

Here’s the order we’d check things in.

1. Count the pads, the occupied pads, and the homes the seller owns

Three numbers decide which lenders will look at it:

• Pads: Fannie Mae needs 50 sites, Freddie Mac 5.
• Occupancy: both agencies want about 85%: Freddie Mac for the three months before closing, Fannie Mae at 85% physical and 70% economic.
• Park-owned homes as a share of all homes: Freddie Mac caps it at 25%, Fannie Mae at 35% with a plan to sell down past 25%.

Get these from the rent roll, not the listing. Then put them in the loan sizer.

2. Rebuild the income from the rent roll and the bank deposits

Ask for the rent roll, the trailing 12 months of income and expenses, and the bank statements that show the rent actually landing. Value the park on lot rent collected from occupied pads, with home rent on its own line. The valuation worksheet is set up that way. Add back what the seller left out: a management fee, reserves, and the repairs the seller has been doing himself.

3. Read the leases

Agency lenders care about the paper. Fannie Mae wants written site leases with no option for the resident to buy the site, and no master leases. Freddie Mac also bars purchase options and wants initial lease terms of at least 12 months. If you plan an agency loan, you’ll also be adding the eight tenant site lease protections within the first year, including 60 days’ notice before any future sale.

4. Find out where the water comes from

Who pays the water and sewer bill, and whether the park runs its own wells, septic systems or a treatment plant, changes the expense line and what the lender’s engineers and environmental reviewers look at. A park on city water and sewer with submeters and bill-backs is a simpler loan than one with a private plant and utilities buried in the lot rent. Ask for the utility bills, any state permits for a private system, and any notices of violation.

5. Check the physical requirements

Freddie Mac requires paved roads and an on-site management office. Fannie Mae requires a Level 3 quality rating or better from its inspection, and generally no more than 12 homes per acre on an existing community. If the park is short on any of these, price the fix into your offer or plan on a bank loan first.

6. Check yourself

Freddie Mac’s key principal needs at least two years of park ownership, operation or management experience and has to own another park. If this is your first one, that rules you out as Freddie’s key principal unless you bring in a partner who qualifies. Fannie Mae publishes no park-experience rule, but every lender will ask what you’ve run before.

7. Size the loan and write the offer around it

The loan is the smaller of value times the max loan-to-value and what NOI covers at the lender’s coverage ratio. If the price only works at a loan the park can’t support, the gap comes from your cash or a seller note. SBA isn’t an option: mobile home parks are ineligible for 7(a) and 504.

Where parks for sale come from

This site doesn’t list parks for sale. Parks are sold through commercial real estate brokers, some of whom specialize in them, and directly by owners. Once you have one under contract, or close to it, send it to the desk through the financing form and we’ll tell you which lenders will quote it.

Residents

The people living in the park own their homes and have rights under their leases and state law. Talk to them through the seller until you close, follow every notice rule, and treat every resident the same way. Fair housing law applies to screening, rents and rules in a park exactly as it does in an apartment building.

Sources

• Fannie Mae, MHC term sheet (© 2026), Multifamily Guide Part III Ch. 6 and Part II Ch. 1 (effective September 28, 2026).
• Freddie Mac, MHC term sheet (April 2026) and Seller/Servicer Guide Ch. 22 (update of April 22, 2025).