Six mobile homes grossing maybe $4,200 a month combined and I cannot figure out which exit actually pencils

The individual sale path makes sense to me too, for exactly the reason you named: the math on operating the portfolio long-term is thin either way, and the regulatory and park-rule exposure just sits there compounding the longer she holds.

A few things I would want to confirm before treating $18k to $25k as the working number. Mobile homes are personal property in most states until they get converted to real property through a process called title retirement or affixture. If the homes are still titled as personal property (meaning they have a certificate of title like a car, not a deed), a buyer using conventional financing cannot touch them. The buyer would need chattel financing, which is a loan secured by the home itself rather than the land, and those loans are harder to find, carry higher rates, and some lenders will not touch homes in parks where the land is leased rather than owned. That gap can push the realistic buyer pool toward cash buyers, which compresses price.

The park's approval process matters just as much. Most parks require management to approve any buyer before a home can transfer, and some parks charge a transfer fee or require the incoming resident to sign a new lease, possibly at a higher lot rent. If lot rent resets upward on transfer, that changes what a buyer will pay. That is the phone call, agreed.

On the STR-to-annual conversion comparison, the $70 margin per door you laid out before expenses is not a stable operating business. It is a waiting room for a problem.

I am not certain about Georgia's specific treatment of the nonperforming firsts you mentioned, so I would not try to connect those to this analysis. That part probably needs someone licensed in Georgia to look at.

What does she actually know about the title status on the six homes right now? That one answer changes almost everything downstream.

The lot rent concentration is the structural problem every exit has to price in, and the one that changes the math most is whether the park has a right of first refusal or a transfer approval clause in the ground lease, because those two provisions together can kill an individual sale even after a buyer is found and financed.

If the park requires written approval on any title transfer, her six sales could become six separate negotiations with a landlord who has every incentive to drag them out or condition approval on a lot rent bump at the new tenancy, which a buyer will then discount from their offer price before the ink dries.

Does she have the current ground lease language in front of her, specifically the transfer and sublease sections?

The assumption doing the most work here is that $18k to $25k per unit is achievable on a move-or-stay basis, and that number collapses fast if the park's ground lease restricts title transfers or requires management approval on sales. In Texas, mobile homes on leased land are titled as personal property through TxDMV, and a lien search plus a title history pull takes about ten minutes, but what actually controls the exit is the lease addendum the park has every resident sign, because those routinely include right-of-first-refusal clauses or outright prohibition on subletting and assignment. If that language exists, her individual sale path requires park cooperation she may not get, and the discount she takes on a bulk portfolio sale is the price of that dependency, not just a negotiating concession. The STR premium also deserves more pressure than the $700 average gets: two years of refinery turnaround traffic is a demand cycle, not a baseline, and a buyer underwriting that number is really underwriting the TPC Group and LyondellBasell shutdown schedules, which nobody can predict with confidence past twelve months. What does the actual park lease say about subletting and owner transfers?

The title question is the one that actually gates everything else, and you flagged it correctly as the first call. In Texas, mobile homes are titled through the DMV until they are converted to real property, and if any of these six still carry a lien from a chattel lender, the sale cannot close cleanly without a payoff or assumption. The park's own rules on transfers matter almost as much: some parks in the Houston market require buyer approval, charge a transfer fee, or simply refuse financing from outside lenders, which cuts the buyer pool to cash or in-house installment sales.

On the STR-to-annual conversion math, I would push the $550 estimate down rather than up. Workers who pay $700 short-term for flexibility rarely convert to $550 annual tenants in the same unit, and a park near the Ship Channel is not going to attract a different tenant profile on a lease. She is more likely looking at $500 or below on annual terms, which makes the $70-per-door figure you cited optimistic.

The individual sale path has one more complication worth pricing in: if she sells on installment to residents who then stop paying, her remedy is repossession through a Texas eviction, not a foreclosure, and that process has its own timeline and cost. Has your contact confirmed whether the park allows subletting or STR use in the written lease, or has she been operating on tolerance?

Has she pulled the actual park lease to see if there's a right-of-first-refusal clause on individual sales?

The park's right of first refusal, if the lease contains one, would let management match any purchase offer on each unit before a third-party buyer closes, which collapses the individual sale timeline and occasionally the price when buyers walk rather than wait. That clause is the first thing she needs to read before she prices anything or has a conversation with a prospective buyer, because it changes the negotiation entirely.

On the STR-to-annual conversion path, the math you ran is accurate but understates the problem: annual tenants in that income range are harder to remove from a mobile home they occupy than a refinery worker on a weekly rate, and eviction on a titled mobile home in Texas has its own procedural layer on top of standard landlord-tenant law, so the $70 door she nets monthly comes with more legal exposure than the STR arrangement does.

Does she know whether the homes are titled as real property or as personal property under the Texas DMV, because that distinction controls whether a retail buyer can get conventional financing or is stuck with chattel, and chattel shrinks her buyer pool considerably?

The $220 per door margin is thin enough that the STR premium over annual rent ($150 per door on your numbers) barely covers one bad month of vacancy or one appliance replacement, so the whole operation is essentially running on the assumption that refinery turnarounds stay frequent and she never hits a slow stretch across multiple units simultaneously.

What I would want to know before pricing any of the three exits is whether the park lease has a subletting or commercial-use clause, because if the park can argue STR operation violates the lease terms, the STR exit price collapses to the annual-rent exit price overnight, and the individual sale path becomes the only one with real optionality.

What is the remaining term on her park lease, and does it have rent escalation language?

$480 lot rent on a $700 gross is 68 percent going to someone else's land before she touches a wrench.

My Stockton industrial took twelve months to stabilize and I still had more margin than that. The STR premium here is maybe $150 over what annual would clear, and that $150 is entirely dependent on turnaround schedules she does not set and cannot forecast.

What are the homes titled as, personal property or real property, because that answer changes every number in this conversation.

$550 on annual leases near the Ship Channel is optimistic. I've seen worker housing in that corridor sit at $475-$500 on annual terms when the turnaround crews dry up, because those guys are not sticking around on twelve-month leases and the local pool is thinner than people think. So her long-term conversion number might be tighter than she is running.

The $18k-$25k range for individual sales also assumes the homes move. Older HUD-code units that have been sitting on leased land in a park are not easy to finance retail, and if the park will not allow in-park transfers with chattel financing she is looking at cash buyers only, which means $10k-$14k is more realistic and that $108k gross becomes $70k before title work and any repair concessions. Does your contact actually know what vintage these units are, and whether they were ever titled as real property or stayed as personal property?

Confirm with the park manager in writing whether buyer financing is permitted before anything else, because many Texas parks require cash-only transfers or park-approved lenders, which cuts the buyer pool to a fraction and drops per-unit prices below that $18k floor fast.