A 24-lot mobile home park case where the only operational change was individual water metering

Take a first manufactured housing park purchase as a case study, since the appeal of the asset class is straightforward: the owner holds the dirt, the roads, and the water lines, while residents own their own homes and pay lot rent for the ground under them. No roofs, no water heaters failing at 11pm. 24 lots, 22 occupied at purchase, $310k, seller financed on terms confirmed in writing by a lawyer before signing. Lot rent was $255 against a market closer to $340. City water and city sewer, one master meter to the park, which is where the story is. The park was paying the whole water bill, about $1,750 a month across 22 homes. That is nobody's fault exactly, just how the prior owner had always run it, and residents had no reason to fix a running toilet. Spending about $9,400 on individual meters at each lot and billing usage back is a common fix, though whether water can be billed back and how it must be disclosed varies by state and sometimes by city, so local rules are worth confirming before the first invoice goes out. Six months after metering, total park water draw typically drops roughly a third, since residents fix their own leaks once they are paying for them. Combined with a pass-through and a modest staged lot rent increase, net operating income on a park like this can rise around $27k a year, with the occasional loss of a resident already behind on rent. The near miss worth flagging: a seller's claim that water lines were replaced in the nineties is worth verifying rather than trusting. Two-inch galvanized runs sometimes remain live under older loops, and budgeting toward their eventual replacement from day one is the safer posture. The broader lesson: buying a park where the operating problems are boring and mechanical tends to work. Metering is boring. It also works.