A manufactured home land package works like this: buy a quarter- to half-acre rural lot, bring in electrical service, water and septic, set a brand-new factory-built house on an FHA-approved permanent foundation, and sell it to an owner-occupant at a price where the monthly payment lands under local apartment rent. Done right in the San Antonio area, that means a finished product priced between $190,000 and $240,000 carrying a $1,300 to $1,500 payment.
The margin does not come from rehab spread. It comes from buying lots with light regulation, controlling a utility timeline that runs about four months, and staging inventory so cash is never parked on a single project waiting for a power drop.
What follows is the sequence Anise El Hayani runs on roughly four of these a year outside San Antonio: which lots qualify, what the price band forces you to do upstream, why he funds with cash and equity instead of hard money, and the one lot-selection mistake that cost him a year and triple the normal power cost.
Key takeaways
- The finished price band is the constraint, not the goal — $190,000 to $240,000 is what keeps an FHA buyer’s payment at $1,300 to $1,500, and every cost decision upstream has to fit inside it.
- Utility installation runs about four months and is largely outside your control, so acquire multiple lots at once and actively work two at a time to avoid an inventory gap.
- Sale times have stretched from under contract in 30 days to three to six months, which is exactly why hard money carry now eats the profit on these deals.
- Manufactured homes cannot be placed just anywhere inside San Antonio city limits — the model lives in the surrounding rural counties where permits, electrical and water hookups are easier.
- Verify the cost to run power to the lot before you buy. One lot fronting a main road cost roughly three times the normal amount to electrify and took a year to sell.
From the Real Estate Pros Show
This article draws on an interview with Anise El Hayani of KFS Legacy on the Real Estate Pros Show, hosted by Scott Bursey.
What a Land Package Actually Is (and How It Differs From a Flip)
A land package is a development play, not an acquisition play. You buy raw or near-raw rural land, install the infrastructure, set a new manufactured home on a permanent FHA-qualifying foundation, and sell the finished house-and-land as a single conveyance to a retail buyer.
Three things separate it from the deals most investors run:
- No existing structure. There is no ARV on a vacant lot. Your comps come from finished manufactured-home-on-land sales in the same submarket, which is a thinner data set than SFR comps.
- No assignment. Anise El Hayani is explicit that he is not a wholesaler. He develops and sells direct to consumers, running the work through his own 1099 subcontractor crew rather than a GC.
- The house is bought, not built. He buys the units new, not used, because he is selling them as new. Construction risk shifts from framing and finish work to utilities and foundation.
He sorts his business into fast, medium and slow money. Mortgage brokerage is the fast money. Long-term rentals — 15 single-family doors — are the slow money. Land packages sit in the middle: roughly four completions a year, each one turning capital in months rather than years, with the proceeds partly recycled into the next lot and partly used as down payment on another rental.
That middle position matters for how you underwrite. A land package has to actually pay out in a defined window, because the cash that funded it is the same cash that funds the next one.
Why Rural Lots Outside the City Limits Beat Infill
You cannot set a manufactured home just anywhere inside San Antonio. Zoning and placement rules make most city lots unusable for this product, which pushes the entire model outward.
Anise works the ring of towns and counties around the metro — Marion, Bulverde and Spring Branch closer in, and further out toward Lockhart, Blanco, Luling and Gonzales. All of it sits within roughly an hour of his base, and the closer-in properties are inside a 40-minute drive. His stated reason for going rural is straightforward: less regulation, and easier paths to permits, electrical service and water.
The target lot is a quarter to half an acre. That size is large enough to support a septic system, which is the practical requirement out here — there is no municipal sewer to tap, so every lot needs on-site wastewater. Septic feasibility is therefore a go/no-go item, not a line item you sort out after closing.
What you are really buying in these submarkets is permitting speed. An infill lot might have sewer at the curb, but if the jurisdiction will not let you place the home, the lot is worthless for this use. A rural lot with a workable septic path and a short power run is worth more to this model than a better-located lot with a placement restriction.
One practical consequence: drive time caps your radius. Anise keeps everything inside about an hour because he is managing subcontractors on two active projects simultaneously. Push past that and the supervision cost starts showing up in the build.
I have access to capital from hard money, it just — by the time you get the closing, you don’t want to carry that over. It will eat your profit. The last couple of years we’ve been putting the home under contract within 30 days. Right now we’re looking at three to six months to get the home off our books.
— Anise El Hayani, San Antonio, Texas
The Price Band That Makes FHA Buyers Qualify
Every cost decision on a land package traces back to one number: the finished sale price has to land between $190,000 and $240,000. That band is what produces a $1,300 to $1,500 monthly payment, which is what lets an FHA buyer qualify — and, critically, what makes the payment competitive with local apartment rent.
Two things make that math work at this price point. First, FHA’s low down payment requirement means the buyer needs very little cash to close, which widens the qualified pool considerably in a high-rate environment. Second, property taxes on a manufactured home run lower than on a comparable site-built house. That tax difference shows up directly in the escrow portion of the payment, and it is part of why the monthly number clears the affordability test when a stick-built house at the same sale price would not.
Read this as an underwriting ceiling, not a marketing target. If the lot costs too much, or the power run comes in three times normal, or the new unit price rises, you cannot simply raise the ask — the buyer stops qualifying and the house sits. That is the whole discipline of the model.
It also explains Anise’s stated concern about contractor cost inflation and rising new-home prices from the manufacturer. Those are not general grumbles about the market. They are direct threats to a fixed exit price, and they are the reason he is working toward buying units at dealer cost.
Sequencing Utilities and Staging Inventory So Capital Never Sits Idle
Utility installation takes about four months, and most of it is outside your control. Power and water are scheduled by other people on their timelines. That single fact dictates the entire operating rhythm.
The answer is not to speed up any one project — it is to overlap several. Anise acquires roughly four lots at a time and actively works two at once. While two are sitting in the utility queue, two are moving toward completion or sale. That staggering is what produces a steady pipeline of about four finished homes a year and prevents the dead period where you have nothing to sell.
The sequence on any single lot runs:
- Acquire the lot, with power cost and septic feasibility already verified.
- Order and begin the utility work — electrical service, water, septic. Budget four months.
- Set the new manufactured home on the FHA-approved permanent foundation.
- List on MLS, push to Zillow, run open houses. Marketing cost runs around $1,000 per property.
Anise’s stated efficiency goal is compressing the utility phase from four months to two. He is candid that he has not solved it — some of it simply is not his to control. Which is the argument for staging: if you cannot shorten the wait on one lot, you make the wait irrelevant by having another lot further along.
The failure mode to avoid is sequential development. One lot at a time means your capital is idle for a third of every cycle, and your sales pipeline goes to zero between closings.
The Capital Problem: Why He Uses Cash and Equity Instead of Hard Money
Capacity on this model is set by available cash, not by demand. Asked what single fix would change his business most, Anise’s answer was access to money — he does about four land packages a year because that is what his capital supports, and more capital would mean more deals.
He has access to hard money. He chooses not to use it on land packages. His reasoning is carry: by the time you get through closing, utilities and sale, the interest on a hard money loan eats the profit. So he funds with cash and with equity pulled out of other properties he owns, and keeps the land package business in its own LLC operating on cash.
The data point that justifies that decision is the shift in sale times. For the past couple of years, these homes went under contract within 30 days. Now he is looking at three to six months to get a finished home off the books. A carry cost sized for a 30-day sale becomes a different number entirely at five months — and on a deal with a hard exit price ceiling, there is nowhere to pass it along.
His cost-side answer to the same squeeze is to become a manufactured home dealer so he can buy units directly from the factory. With new-home prices and contractor costs both rising against a fixed $190,000 to $240,000 exit, cutting the acquisition cost of the house itself is one of the few levers left that does not require charging the buyer more.
Lot Selection Mistakes That Cost Real Money
One lot taught Anise the expensive version of this lesson. It fronted a main road. Bringing power to it cost roughly three times the normal amount, and the finished home took a year to sell. Two separate failures — a cost failure and a demand failure — on a single acquisition.
Both were knowable before closing. The pre-purchase checklist his process implies:
- Price the power run before you buy. Get the distance from the nearest service point and a real cost figure from the utility. This is the line item with the widest variance and the one most capable of breaking the price band.
- Confirm septic feasibility. No sewer means the lot has to support on-site wastewater at the size you are buying. Verify it, do not assume it.
- Pull MLS comps for sale price and days on market in that specific submarket. Anise researches both before touching a property — how much homes sell for in the area and how long they sit. A main-road lot with thin retail demand will show up in days on market long before it shows up in your bank account.
- Check placement rules for the jurisdiction. Confirm the manufactured home can legally go where you intend to put it.
His summary of what keeps the model working is buying right at the front end. Everything downstream — the utility budget, the foundation, the list price, the carry — is fixed the moment you close on the land. You can recover from a slow contractor. You cannot recover from a lot that costs triple to electrify and nobody wants to live on.
Frequently asked questions
How long does it take to go from buying a rural lot to selling a finished manufactured home?
Budget four months for utilities alone — electrical, water and septic — then add time to set the home on its permanent foundation and market it. In the current San Antonio-area market, finished homes are taking three to six months to go under contract, versus 30 days a couple of years ago.
That puts a realistic full cycle well past half a year. Anise El Hayani’s stated efficiency goal is compressing the utility phase to two months, and he is open about the fact that much of the delay sits with third parties rather than with his crew.
What does it cost to bring utilities to a raw rural lot, and what can go wrong?
Costs vary enormously with distance to the nearest power service point, which is why pricing the run before you close is non-negotiable. On one lot fronting a main road, bringing power in cost roughly three times what Anise normally pays.
The second variable is wastewater. Rural lots in these submarkets have no sewer, so every project needs a septic system, and the quarter- to half-acre lot size he targets is partly driven by that requirement. A lot that will not support septic is not a land package lot.
Can you finance a land package with hard money, or do you need cash?
Hard money is available but carry cost is the problem. With sale times now running three to six months instead of 30 days, interest on a hard money loan can consume the profit on a deal whose exit price is capped by what an FHA buyer can qualify for.
Anise funds his land packages with cash and with equity pulled from other properties he owns, held in a separate LLC. He is candid that this caps his volume at around four deals a year — capital availability, not demand, is what limits the business. This is his experience, not lending advice.
Why sell manufactured homes as FHA-eligible rather than renting them?
Because the FHA-qualified owner-occupant is the deepest buyer pool at this price point. A low down payment requirement plus a $1,300 to $1,500 monthly payment puts the home within reach of families who would otherwise be renting apartments at similar or higher cost.
Selling also fits the capital model. Anise treats land packages as his medium-speed money — capital comes back in months and gets redeployed into the next lot and into down payments on long-term rentals, which is where he wants his slow money working instead.
What lot size and location works best for a land-home package?
A quarter to half an acre in a rural jurisdiction with light placement regulation. The size supports a septic system, and the rural location is what makes permits, electrical hookups and water service obtainable — manufactured homes cannot be placed just anywhere inside San Antonio city limits.
Anise operates in Marion, Bulverde and Spring Branch closer to the metro, and further out toward Lockhart, Blanco, Luling and Gonzales, keeping everything inside roughly an hour of home so he can supervise two active builds at once.
The bottom line
Before you write an offer on a lot, get a written cost to run power to it and a septic determination — those two numbers decide whether the deal can still exit inside the $190,000 to $240,000 band that makes your buyer qualify, and nothing you do later will fix them.
