If you’ve been in the mobile home park space for more than five minutes, you’ve heard it: “Buy the vacancy. Fill the lots. Force the value.” It’s the foundational value-add thesis of MHP investing — and it’s right.

But if you’re actually trying to execute it in 2026, you’ve probably run into a wall most operators don’t talk about publicly: filling vacant lots is genuinely hard, and the primary reason isn’t home supply or contractor availability. It’s a financing system that hasn’t worked for manufactured homebuyers in a generation.

The Math That Doesn’t Work

A new double-wide manufactured home runs $80,000 to $150,000 delivered and set up. To get a buyer a loan on a home sitting on land they don’t own — the land-lease model that defines mobile home park investing — they need a chattel loan. A chattel loan treats the home as personal property, not real estate.

Chattel loans today carry interest rates between 8% and 12%. On a $100,000 home at 10% over 25 years, that’s roughly $900/month — just for the loan. Add $500–$700/month in lot rent, and that buyer is paying $1,400–$1,600/month total.

For a working-class family in a secondary market — exactly the demographic that manufactured housing is supposed to serve — that monthly payment is often out of reach. And lenders know it. Their underwriting reflects the perceived risk of lending on depreciating personal property without land collateral.

The result: a thin, expensive lender pool that can’t support the volume of home placements operators need to fill their parks.

Where Fannie, Freddie, and the GSEs Have Failed

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have a statutory “Duty to Serve” underserved markets — manufactured housing is explicitly included. In theory, the government-sponsored enterprises should be backstopping chattel lending the same way they backstop conventional mortgages.

In practice, their participation in chattel lending has been minimal. The secondary market for manufactured home personal property loans barely exists compared to the mortgage-backed securities market. This keeps the cost of capital high for chattel lenders, which keeps interest rates high for borrowers, which keeps the qualified buyer pool small.

21st Mortgage (a Berkshire Hathaway/Clayton subsidiary), Triad Financial Services, and a handful of credit unions are essentially the entire chattel lending market. When one lender tightens its criteria — which happens periodically — operators feel it immediately in their fill rates.

The March 2026 Executive Order: A Signal Worth Watching

On March 13, 2026, the White House issued an executive order directing federal agencies to review housing affordability barriers. Buried in the technical provisions was something MHP investors should pay close attention to: a direct mandate for the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) to review its guidelines around chattel lending for manufactured housing.

This is the first time in years that a presidential directive has specifically targeted manufactured housing financing reform. The order directs FHFA to consider “incentivizing low-balance home mortgages” and reviewing chattel lending guidelines that have constrained the market.

Will it fix the problem overnight? No. These things take 12–24 months to work through regulatory channels. But the directional signal matters — and it creates a window for operators who are ready to move when financing improves.

What Operators Who Are Actually Filling Lots Are Doing

The best operators we’ve seen aren’t waiting for Washington. Here’s what’s working right now:

1. Dedicated Lender Partnerships

The most effective operators have a dedicated relationship with 1–2 chattel lenders — typically 21st Mortgage, Triad Financial Services, or Credit Human. They’ve negotiated referral terms in advance, created a clean lead intake process, and direct prospective residents to a dedicated lender rep who knows their communities.

The park owner’s job becomes straightforward: get qualified prospective residents in the door and hand them to the lender. Let the lender do the underwriting. This costs the operator nothing in capital outlay and creates a consistent buyer pipeline.

2. Structured Lease-to-Own Programs

For residents who can’t qualify for chattel financing today, a well-structured lease-to-own (LTO) program can bridge the gap. The operator acquires a home, places it on a vacant lot, and structures an installment agreement with the resident — typically a 5–7 year term at 10–12% interest.

On a $15,000 used home, a 7-year note at 10% generates roughly $240/month in note payments plus $500/month in lot rent. That’s $740/month total revenue from a lot that was generating zero. The breakeven on the home itself is under 24 months.

The programs that work have three things in common: a standardized contract vetted by a manufactured housing attorney, a clear title-transfer trigger tied to payment milestones, and systematic payment tracking. The programs that fail are administered in spreadsheets with no enforcement protocol.

3. Used Home Acquisition Pipelines

New homes at $100K+ make the per-lot economics challenging. Used homes change the math dramatically.

Repossessed homes from chattel lenders are available at 40–60% of market value. 21st Mortgage, Triad Financial, and other chattel lenders regularly cycle through repo inventory. Building a relationship with their asset disposition teams — getting on their lists, checking inventory weekly — creates a supply of homes at price points that actually pencil for lot-fill programs.

The USDA’s expanded financing program for existing manufactured homes (effective March 2025) also helps. It broadens the buyer pool for used homes in rural areas, creating new demand that supports the economics of moving and placing pre-owned inventory.

4. Closing Park Recruitment

Parks close every year — redevelopment, owner retirement, municipal pressure. When a park closes, dozens of homeowners need a new place to put their home. They already own the home. They just need a lot.

Proactive operators monitor park closures in their markets and reach out directly to displaced residents with professional relocation packages. A $3,000–$5,000 moving subsidy is far cheaper than acquiring a new home, and you fill a lot with an owner-occupant who has immediate skin in the game.

When to Reconsider the Fill-Up Thesis Entirely

Here’s the honest truth that most MHP pitch decks won’t include: the “empty lot arbitrage” that worked beautifully from 2015–2020 is harder to execute in 2026. Home prices are higher. Supply chain backlogs are real. Chattel financing is restrictive. The easy-to-fill markets are picked over.

The best value-add in MHPs right now often isn’t filling lots — it’s buying a 90% occupied park that’s 40% below market rents and executing a methodical rent normalization over 24–36 months. Less glamorous on the pitch deck. Far more predictable in execution.

If you’re evaluating parks with more than 20% vacancy, price the fill-up cost conservatively. Model 18–24 months per lot to breakeven. Include the full cost of home acquisition, transport, setup, and site prep — typically $25,000–$55,000 per lot all-in. If the deal still works with those assumptions, proceed. If it only works on the optimistic scenario, pass.

The Bottom Line

The chattel lending environment is the single biggest structural constraint on MHP value creation in 2026. The policy environment is moving in the right direction for the first time in a decade, but meaningful reform is 12–24 months away at best.

In the meantime, the operators filling lots are the ones who’ve built systems: lender partnerships, LTO programs, used home pipelines, and closing park recruitment networks. These aren’t shortcuts — they’re the operational infrastructure that makes the fill-up thesis actually executable.

At Keel Team, we’ve filled hundreds of lots across our portfolio of 50+ parks. The deals that have performed best aren’t the ones where we got lucky on home supply — they’re the ones where we had the systems in place before we closed.

For a complete due diligence system used on 50+ acquisitions, check out the MHP Due Diligence Playbook.