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When you first buy a mobile home park, you are a little terrified of your water and sewer system. "What if it breaks down?" you worry. "Can I afford to fix it?". "Will my tenants get mad and leave if the water goes out for a couple days?".

Unless you're George Bush, you probably already realize that we are heading into a national recession. And if you agree that we are heading into economic trouble, then it is worth your while to make preparations to survive and prosper during this cycle.

The 2008 Olympics in Beijing offers an important lesson to the manufactured housing industry. Here you have an event where athletes have taken a certain specialty, a certain strength, and turned it into an extremely advanced skill.

You only need one mobile home park. That's all you need to create a sizable asset and a consistent source of income. That's assuming you buy it and operate it correctly.

Nobody can own a mobile home park without having at least one run-in with the city inspector. They normally come out of nowhere, and often when you think you are doing a great job with your park. There is no reason for embarrassment everyone has been there.

If your definition of a good buy is to buy low, and buy when "there is blood in the streets", then this is the time to buy mobile home parks. Prices have never been lower, and sellers more desperate, since the mid-1990s. And there does not appear to be any improvement on the horizon.

It is impossible to be a landlord and not receive frequent requests to "help" your tenants. These requests normally revolve around payment of the rent either to pay late or to pay a reduced amount. And the way you handle these requests has a huge impact on your business, and the life of your tenant.

Although it has taken us literally thousands of pages to describe how to do due diligence and operate mobile home parks effectively, the general theory on how to make money with mobile home park investments could fit on the back of an envelope.

When you buy a mobile home park, and if you currently own a mobile home park, it's a pretty safe bet that you need to change the name. Because most mobile home parks have terrible names that, sadly, could be used as a marketing tool if only they were different.

Mobile home park tenants are not rich. Most of them live from paycheck to paycheck. As a result, they frequently don't pay their bills on time sometimes at all. To motivate these tenants to pay their lot rent on time, you must enact a late fee for rent that is not received by the due date.