Not that today marks the beginning of this journey, but the stress of what is to come has built to a point where I simply needed to start writing. I will be writing about our journey over the next few weeks. It is a journey of business, of family adventure, of new experiences, of significant personal growth. This is our 2009 summer vacation.

I have been thinking of starting this series of blog entries for some time now. Problem is, I have been so busy focusing of getting ready for our road trip that I have kept putting it off. Yesterday, the apparent stress that has been building up finally got to me.

We are planning to leave on Saturday for a trip to Warner Robins, Georgia to attend the closing of the purchase of our first mobile home park. I say “first” because we plan to buy several over the next several years. It has been a significant learning curve getting accustomed to the world of mobile home parks, U.S. real estate and generally being out of my element.

People as us all the time, how did you get involved with mobile home parks and how did you find this one. The simple answer is, the Internet. As you may or may not know, our ultimate goal is to move to Costa Rica. When in Costa Rica, we are not able to work a regular job because we will not be residents of the country (at least not right away). So, in order to generate the income to live, we needed something that would provide us with a stable income in an arena that we understand and are comfortable with. Since I have been dabbling in real estate for many years, it was obvious that real estate investing was where we had to focus. Also, since we will be non-resident investors, we needed a solution that would work well over the Internet and telephone. A solution that fit what we already know – rentals.

Mobile home parks provide a means, using on-site management, to run the park without being on site. As well, the volume of parks in the U.S. is very high (buyer’s market) and the barriers to entry are relatively low for the amount of income you can generate (high returns). So why mobile home parks and not other types of income producing real estate like renting homes, apartments or commercial property. Well, having several single family homes can be a administrative nightmare, apartments buildings have low returns and high maintenance costs, and commercial…well…let’s just say that this is not the time to be investing in a market that is having one of the worst times in history (vacanies are visible all around). Mobile home parks do well in any economy. There is always a need for low income housing.

So today, I start planning the trip down to Warner Robins to see where we will stop and how long we will need to drive each day. We are travelling with our three young children, so planning is much more important. Lot’s of work to do.

‘Til next time.