In 2019, buying mobile home parks off-market was almost too easy. You built a list of parks in your target states, sent out 500 yellow letters, and waited for the phone to ring. One in every 20 calls would turn into a deal. The sellers were largely unsophisticated, the competition was thin, and if you had capital and patience, you’d find opportunities.

That playbook is dead.

We’ve tried to run it in 2025 and 2026 alongside our relationship-based approach, and the numbers tell a stark story. Response rates on direct mail have dropped 60–70% from their 2019 peaks. The sellers who do respond have already received calls from Marcus & Millichap, from institutional buyers, from a dozen other operators running the same lists. Pricing expectations are fully institutionalized even at the mom-and-pop level.

After acquiring 50+ mobile home parks — almost entirely off-market — here’s what actually works right now and what’s just burning your marketing budget.

What Changed and Why

Three forces converged to kill the classic MHP direct mail play:

First, capital flooded the asset class. The 2020–2022 era created a gold rush for “recession-resistant” assets, and MHPs were at the top of every list. New operators by the thousands went through the same training programs, read the same books, and launched the same direct mail campaigns. Sellers in quality markets were receiving five to ten unsolicited letters per month. They stopped reading them.

Second, data became commoditized. The park-owner lists that used to be proprietary intelligence are now available through half a dozen services. If you can find the list, so can every other buyer targeting your markets. Competitive advantages built on data access disappear overnight when the data becomes universally available.

Third, brokers got smart about MHPs. National commercial brokerages now have dedicated manufactured housing teams proactively reaching out to owners of quality parks. A 90-lot park in suburban Charlotte with city utilities is getting a call from a Berkadia or Marcus & Millichap rep every couple of months. By the time that park is “off-market,” the seller’s been pre-educated on value expectations for two years.

The Relationship Advantage

The deals we’re finding in 2025 and 2026 are coming from relationships, not mail. And specifically, relationships with the people who are in the room when a park owner decides it’s time to sell — not the owner themselves.

Think about it from the seller’s perspective. A 68-year-old who’s owned a 90-lot park for 30 years doesn’t start their sale process by responding to a yellow letter. They call their attorney. They talk to their CPA. They mention it at the local Rotary meeting. They ask their banker what it might be worth.

The investors who are winning right now have spent years building relationships with exactly those people:

Estate and Transactional Attorneys

Estate and real estate attorneys in secondary and tertiary markets are worth their weight in gold. They’re the first person an owner talks to when a sale is on the horizon. A 30-minute coffee meeting and a simple introduction — “if you ever come across a park owner thinking about selling, we’d love to be the first call” — can generate one quality referral per year from a single attorney relationship.

Build a network of 20 attorneys across your target markets and your deal flow changes completely. That’s 20 potential referral sources who hear about park sales months before anyone else.

CPAs and Financial Advisors in Rural Markets

CPAs are even better positioned than attorneys in many cases. They see the full financial picture — they know when the depreciation is running out, when a health event is creating urgency, when estate planning conversations are triggering a sale decision. Same approach: introduce yourself, explain what you buy, and make it easy for them to refer.

State MHP Association Boards

Most states have an active manufactured housing association. Board members of these associations are embedded in the owner community. Sponsoring a state conference or joining an association committee puts you in the room with sellers in a completely non-adversarial context. You’re a fellow industry participant, not a cold caller.

Local Government Contacts

Zoning officials, county tax assessors, and utility managers often know about park sales before the owner has talked to anyone else. A park applying for a variance, falling behind on property taxes, or disputing utility bills is often a park that’s about to change hands. These contacts don’t cost anything to build — they just require showing up and being a known presence in the market.

The Hyper-Local Digital Play Nobody’s Running

Here’s something almost zero MHP investors are doing systematically: becoming the known buyer in their specific target markets through local digital presence.

When a park owner in Cabarrus County, NC finally decides to Google “sell my mobile home park,” whose website shows up? Almost certainly nobody who’s specifically targeting that county. The local search space for MHP sellers is almost completely unclaimed.

A targeted content strategy makes this yours:

• County-specific landing pages optimized for “sell mobile home park [county name]”
• A simple Facebook presence in local community groups where park owners participate
• Occasional participation in county chamber events and local business associations
• Google My Business profile targeting park acquisition in your key markets

These aren’t expensive. A landing page takes an afternoon to build. But the inbound leads they generate are in a completely different category of quality. These are sellers who are actively looking for buyers. They’ve already decided to sell. You’re not interrupting them — they’re coming to you.

We’ve generated some of our best deals in the last two years from exactly this kind of inbound.

The Pitch That Cuts Through the Noise

Even when you do get in front of a seller, the pitch matters more now than it ever has. Sellers have options. They know it. The investor who wins isn’t always the highest bidder — it’s the one who removes the most uncertainty.

Sellers in their 60s and 70s who’ve owned a park for decades have a few core fears:

• What happens to the tenants they’ve built relationships with for 20 years?
• Will this buyer actually close, or will they retrade the deal during due diligence?
• How complicated is this going to be? Do I need to hire a broker?
• What are the tax implications of selling outright vs. a seller-financed deal?

The buyers who address these fears directly and specifically — in writing, in a clear seller guide, before they ever make an offer — are the buyers who get the deal even when they’re not the highest price.

We’ve put together a simple one-page “Seller Promise” document that addresses each of these concerns head-on: we explain our track record, our commitment to residents, our close timeline, and our flexibility on deal structure. That document has gotten us into more conversations — and closed more deals — than any marketing piece we’ve ever sent.

Building the Machine: A 90-Day Action Plan

If you’re starting from scratch with no portfolio and no relationships, here’s what the first 90 days should look like:

Month 1: Identify 20 target markets (not individual parks — markets). These should be counties or MSAs where your buying criteria align with available inventory. For each market, identify one estate attorney, one CPA, and one local commercial lender.

Month 2: Reach out to all 60 contacts. Schedule coffee meetings, phone calls, or Zoom introductions. Your pitch is simple: “We buy mobile home parks in your area. If you ever hear of an owner thinking about selling, I’d love to be the first call. Here’s my card.”

Month 3: Build county-specific landing pages for your top 10 markets. Set up a Google My Business profile. Create a simple seller guide document. Follow up with every contact from Month 2.

That’s 60 relationship seeds planted across 20 markets. Nurtured over 12–18 months, that network generates more quality deal flow than any direct mail campaign ever could.

The Fundamental Shift

The MHP deal sourcing game has shifted from a marketing problem to a relationship problem. The operators who understood this early are sitting on robust pipelines. The ones still running the 2019 playbook are frustrated and spending money with nothing to show for it.

The parks are out there. The sellers are there. They just need to find the right buyer who makes them feel confident about the process and the outcome. Build the relationships, establish the local presence, and make it easy for sellers to find you.

At Keel Team, almost every park we’ve acquired has come through a relationship — an attorney referral, a local connection, or an inbound inquiry from a seller who found us through our content. The direct mail budget went to zero two years ago. Deal flow has never been better.

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