Should It Stay or Should It Go?

by Joey English | Oct 21, 2026 | Mobile Homes | 0 comments

Should It Stay or Should It Go?

Last time, I told you about some of the changes we have been making to our investing strategy. One of those changes was buying a single-wide mobile home on a rented lot. And I briefly mentioned Lonnie Deals.

This week, I want to go a little further into that and explain what happened after we closed the deal.

First, let me recap what a Lonnie Deal is.

A Lonnie Deal is an investing strategy where you buy a used mobile home on a rented lot for cash. You then offer it for sale with owner financing. You vet a buyer, collect a down payment and receive monthly installments until the home is paid off.

Lonnie Deals provide an important service because traditional financing can be difficult to obtain on used mobile homes located on rented lots. By offering owner financing, you add value for your buyer and give someone the opportunity to own instead of rent.

They are named after investor Lonnie Scruggs, who invented this strategy and literally wrote the book on it, entitled Deals on Wheels.

A typical Lonnie Deal might involve buying a used single-wide in a mobile home community for $10,000 or less. You then offer it for sale, collect a $5,000 down payment and receive $450 a month for 48 months.

In this situation, your initial investment is $10,000. You immediately receive $5,000 back, leaving only $5,000 tied up in the deal. At $450 a month, you recover that remaining investment in just over 11 months. And if you put those numbers into a financial calculator, the annualized rate of return comes out to 106.15%.

Considering that many investors are happy earning an 8% return, that’s massive.

So, Lonnie Deals require relatively little money to get into, return your capital quickly and produce great cash flow thereafter. That’s one reason they were so beneficial to my family when we started our investing career, and why we’re looking at them again now.

The main downfall is that once the buyer pays off the home, the cash flow stops. So you have to keep replacing those deals.

That being said, the home we closed on this week didn’t quite fit that mold.

What we purchased wasn’t an older used home in a mobile home community. Instead, it was a nearly new, barely used 2023 model.

We bought it from an estate. The previous owner was an older lady who purchased the home new and placed it on a privately rented lot. (That part is important.) She passed away, and her heirs needed someone to buy it for cash.

Now, I’m going to tell you the numbers, not to gloat, but to show you how difficult these homes can be to value for sellers.

The heirs were originally asking $50,000. After talking with them, they voluntarily dropped the price to $30,000.

That was still too much because the home sits on a rented lot. And that means I have to consider the possibility of being required to move it someday.

In a mobile home community, that’s generally less concerning because the park makes its money by keeping homes on its lots.

But this home sits on a private lot behind the landowner’s house. The landowner is advanced in age, and I have to consider the possibility that if the property changes hands, the new owners may not want the mobile home to remain.

And moving a mobile home is expensive.

After explaining that risk to the sellers, I told them I could pay $18,000.

They agreed, and we closed the deal in the parking lot after my last soccer game.

Now, this home is located in Dalton, and I had some things to consider.

We haven’t owned anything in Dalton in years. I’m not as familiar with that market, I don’t have contractors lined up to cut grass, and I don’t even know if I still know anyone at the courthouse.

And then there’s the possibility of having to move the home in the future — something that could easily cost $10,000 to $15,000.

As I weighed my options, I considered a mobile home park here in Gordon County where we could relocate it. I talked with the park manager, looked at prospective lots and then came home to discuss everything with Ashley.

As we weighed the pros of moving it to Gordon County, we realized most of them came down to one thing: I was comfortable here because this is where we do most of our business.

But when we looked at the advantages of leaving it in Dalton, it became clear that doing so would save us money and allow the home to start producing income much sooner.

And most of the disadvantages were potential problems rather than immediate ones. After all, the landowner was very interested in having us stay.

After considering everything, I looked at Ashley and, in my best impression of the music group The Clash, said, “Should it stay or should it go?”

I even followed it with the proper beat, which I can’t really spell for you.

Once we considering all that, we decided to leave it in Dalton.

Afterward, we talked with the landowner and negotiated a 10-year lot lease. That made us much more comfortable with the decision. We even negotiated a two-month discount for paying a year’s lot rent in advance.

But because this home isn’t in a mobile home community, we decided to offer it for rent instead of selling it as a Lonnie Deal.

Our reasoning was simple. If we sold the home with owner financing, our buyers could eventually face the expense of moving it if the land arrangement changed. We didn’t want to put someone in that position.

So, we’re keeping ownership and renting it out instead.

And while we won’t earn the triple-digit returns of a traditional Lonnie Deal, we expect to have our initial investment back in a little over two years.

That’s a return I can live with.

And sometimes, the best investment decision isn’t doing what you’ve always done. It’s being willing to change the plan when the numbers tell you to.