When we left Warner Robins on Oct. 5th, we first spent 2 days in Savannah and Tybee Island. It was a beautiful area and if I ever make the jump to go to art and design school, I would definitely consider SCAD (Savannah Centre of Art and Design).

Next we stopped in Jekyll Island, a beautiful little island with a strong view to conservation. The highlight here was meeting a group that was doing shrimping over the beach and they let me have a go at it. I had to really control myself when I was constantly getting nibbled by curious little fish and rammed by panicked shrimp. I’m just glad I didn’t get nibbled by any sharks.

Next, we went to Fernandina Beach on Amelia Island. This was a great little beach town and our hotel was right on the beach where we spent most of the time looking for sharks teeth. It is supposed to be a hot bed for all sizes of teeth. The only one I brought home was given to me by a regular visitor who found one in about one minute. The only disappointing this about Amelia Island is that most of it was for sale. They had not faired well in the real estate collapse.

From there we followed the Flordia coast south and had dinner on the beach in Daytona. I thought it was great to be able to drive right onto the beach. I guess it just makes sense in the birthplace of NASCAR. After dinner we headed to Orlando, where I spent 2 days at a commercial real estate course.

From Orlando we head to the Gulf and stopped in Fort Walton Beach near Destin. This was a very touristy place and also another area hit by the real estate decline.

After ripping through Alabama and Mississippi we stopped in New Orleans. A fantastic place to visit. So much history in the French Quarter where we stayed. We even walked Bourbon Street with the kids at night. Lots to see and surprisingly the kids didn’t even ask why there where so many scantily dressed women in many of the store fronts. For us, New Orleans was all about the food. We sampled everything that Louisiana is known  for and I fell in love with crawfish (not crayfish!!) and Amelia with Gumbo.

We had one more stop in Louisiana and that was for lunch in Breux Bridge, the Crawfish Capital of the World. I had the crawfish platter with crawfish prepared in about 10 different ways. I was all amazing.

Our next stop was in Houston. Unfortunately, I’m not sure this is a city I would return to, but we did have a great visit with some old family friends. The first time since we left Winnipeg in July.

Our next stop was in Frisco to stay with more family friends. This time we took a break and we stayed a whole week. With beautiful weather and great friends it was a welcome break.

Next up was Gurdon, Arkansas for another day with friends of the same family. That whole family is great which is why we planned visit more of them after stopping in Jacksonville, Arkansas to visit a few mobile home parks. Originally, we had planned to stay in Jacksonville for a couple more months, nursing our new mobile home additions to health, but they have not yet come through so we stopped, shook hands and sailed on through to Conway, Arkansas to meet the rest of the family.

Our last “friendly” stop was in Garnett, Kansas to meet friends from the mobile home park world.

After one more night in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, we hightailed it back to Winnipeg. But not before getting hit by a nasty, slushy, slick snow storm. Luckily, we did not end up in the ditch like some many others we say and we got past Grand Forks (Super Target) and Canada Customs without incident and back into Winnipeg on Oct 30th, at 7pm.

Since we have been home, I have been get everything back in order. Going through mail. Updated Quicken. Filing. Banking. This next week I spent working on a plan for one of the parks we looked at in Arkansas and fired my mortgage broker. Now we are on our own and looking for someone to help us get another park or two.

Again, sorry I haven’t written for a while. Just needed to focus on the present as the present blew past.

I’m back.

Did you ever notice when you buy a new car, you start to see the same car everywhere you go? Well, when you buy something as unique as a mobile home park, you get the same reaction. Everywhere we go, our eyes are drawn to parks on the side of the road and they draw us in to look at them. Sometimes to see what features they have that we should consider and other times to see if they would be a park that we would consider buying. Either, they start to pop out of the woodwork.

That is the think about being down in the southern states. A significant percentage of the population lives in mobile homes. On Saturday, we drove to Milledgeville, GA and on the drive into the city we notice tons of single homes that were actually mobile homes. Mind you, these were good looking homes with finely trimmed lawns and trees. This is not quite like the typical mobile home park that is ill-kept and not the prettiest place you could visit.

In the future, that will not be our parks. We plan to turn our parks (yes, “parks.” we plan on buying more) into respectable communities where the residents are proud to live there. Why should it be any other way? We’re not talking about Ritz Carlton or Augusta National, just a nice place to live. That is our vision.

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.

I have been offered several “oppotunities” lately and many of them just make me laugh. How do these scammers think their poor grammar, spelling and understanding of a subject will entice someone to want to work with them.

I have also been having fun stinging some of these scammers along, making them think that I might actually fall for their schemes. It is amazing how their offer changes when you put up some resistance.

Anyway, we are having fun and we are more optimistic than ever about achieving our dreams. How about you?