Buying a vacant lot inside an established neighborhood and setting a brand-new factory-built house on it is a real build strategy, and it is one of the few construction models a single operator can run without a development team. Manufactured homes on infill lots work across most of the West Coast, where the climate and the jurisdictions cooperate; east of the Rockies the math and the weather usually push you toward something else.
Cezary Nowowiejski runs this model out of the Bremerton, Washington area. He currently owns four lots — two in development, two about to start — and he still pulls his own permits, negotiates his own contractors, and walks the site to mark which trees come down.
Below: what he pays for lots now versus a year ago, how he finances acquisitions using subject-to and seller carry, where the owner-operator bottleneck sits, and where the rent comes from on the back end.
Key takeaways
- Lot basis sets the pace, not deal volume. Nowowiejski was paying as much as $50,000 per infill lot; he recently bought one for $27,000 after pulling back on price roughly six to eight months ago.
- The model is regionally constrained. Factory-built product on infill lots "generally works all over the West Coast" and is "not so great east of the Rockies because of the weather."
- You are still the general contractor. If the operator disappears for 30 days, acquisitions and wholesaling keep running on assistant and lead flow, but permitting and job-site management stop cold.
- Creative acquisition is how the cheap debt gets in. A Tulsa house taken subject-to cost $30,000 out of pocket at a 3% rate — that rate came from assuming an existing loan, not originating a new one.
- Exit rents do not have to be long-term leases. The current project is a furnished two-unit mid-term rental aimed at traveling nurses, with a planned pivot into clustered single-family senior living.
From the Real Estate Pros Show
This article draws on an interview with Cezary Nowowiejski of Cezar Homes on the Real Estate Pros Show, hosted by Issa Hanna.
What the Infill Lot Plus Manufactured Home Model Actually Is
The model is narrow and repeatable: buy raw land that happens to sit as a vacant lot inside an already-built neighborhood, then set a new-construction manufactured home on it and either hold it as a rental or sell it. You are not assembling acreage, not platting a subdivision, and not fighting a rezone. The infrastructure is already in the street.
Nowowiejski owns four lots at the moment — two in development, two about to start — alongside a set of traditional long-term rentals and one flip in progress. That is the whole pipeline. It is a volume a single operator with one assistant can actually carry.
Compare that with ground-up stick-built construction. Stick-built on an infill lot means a framing crew on site for weeks, weather risk through the entire shell phase, a longer draw schedule, and a punch list that runs through a dozen trades. Factory-built compresses the structure into a delivery date. Your on-site work becomes site prep, utilities, foundation or pad, set, and finish — fewer trades, fewer weather days, fewer places for the schedule to blow up.
What that buys a solo operator is predictability. You still have to pull the permits and manage the trades you do have, but the piece most likely to sink an inexperienced builder — framing and weathering-in a custom structure — is handled off site by someone else.
The constraint is basis. This is not a model with a wide margin for error on the land. When lot prices run up, the deal stops working, which is exactly what Nowowiejski responded to when he slowed his buying.
Why the Strategy Stops at the Rockies
Nowowiejski is direct about the geography: the concept “generally works all over the West Coast. It’s not so great east of the Rockies because of the weather.” That is the practical line. Milder Pacific Northwest and West Coast winters are easier on the product and on the set schedule.
Host Issa Hanna’s own experience is the counterexample. His portfolio sits in Cleveland, where vacant lots are cheap enough to be tempting. He looked at manufactured product, concluded it would not hold up in that climate, and built small multifamily on those lots instead. Cheap dirt is not sufficient reason to run this model.
Before you assume a manufactured home pencils where you operate, check three things in order:
- Climate and durability. Freeze-thaw cycles, snow load, and heating performance change both the build spec and the long-run maintenance number.
- Jurisdictional acceptance. Whether the municipality and the zoning district permit a factory-built home on that lot, and on what foundation standard, varies enormously by city and even by district within a city. Confirm it in writing before you buy the dirt.
- Neighborhood comps. The surrounding houses have to support the finished value. An infill lot inside an established neighborhood of site-built homes may not appraise or rent the way your pro forma assumes once a manufactured home sits on it.
If any of the three fails, the answer is not to force the product. In Cleveland the answer was small multifamily. In your market it may be something else entirely.
I kind of saw the market going south about six, eight months ago, and I decided I’m just not going to put any money into anything right now. I’m still marketing. I’m just not aggressive with my prices.
— Cezary Nowowiejski, Cezar Homes
Lot Basis: What He Paid Before and After the Shift
The clearest number in this model is what the dirt costs. Nowowiejski was paying as much as $50,000 per infill lot. He recently bought one for $27,000, and says he was paying considerably more a year ago.
That gap did not come from finding a better market. It came from refusing to chase. Roughly six to eight months before this conversation, he saw the market turning and, in his words, decided to “close the spigot” — he stopped putting money into new acquisitions and waited.
The important detail is what he did not stop. He kept marketing. He kept making offers. He simply stopped being aggressive on price. “I’m still marketing. I’m just not aggressive with my prices. I’m still offering, but it’s got to make sense.”
That distinction matters more than it sounds. Operators who shut off marketing during a soft stretch lose their lead flow and then need months to rebuild it when conditions improve. Operators who keep marketing and only move their price discipline stay in the deal flow and catch the sellers who eventually come down. The $27,000 lot is what that patience produces.
For a build model this tight, lot basis is the whole deal. There is no value-add play on a vacant lot and no rehab upside to cover a bad buy. If the land is overpriced, nothing downstream fixes it. Let basis set your pace — not a target number of starts per year.
Financing: Subject-To, Seller Finance, and the Cheap-Money Problem
Two acquisitions in Nowowiejski’s portfolio show how creative structures do the financing work. The flip he was sitting in during the interview was bought using a combination of subject-to and seller finance. Separately, he owns a brick house with a three-car garage in Tulsa that he took subject-to for $30,000 out of pocket, carrying a 3% interest rate.
Read that 3% correctly. It is a legacy rate on an existing loan he took over — not a rate anyone is originating today. As he put it: “You can’t get that deal today. You just can’t.” Any subject-to or seller-finance structure carries real legal and lender risk, including due-on-sale exposure, and should be run through an attorney and a title company in your state before you sign anything. None of this is a lending recommendation.
What creative finance does for an operator at this scale is reduce the cash required per acquisition. Thirty thousand dollars to control a finished house is a different capital picture than a conventional down payment plus closing costs plus a rate in today’s range.
Asked what single problem he would fix in his business if he could, Nowowiejski’s answer was two words: “cheap money.” That is the honest constraint on this model. The build is manageable. The permits are manageable. Capital cost is what caps how many lots he can run at once, and it is why assumable, below-market debt is worth the structuring work it takes to get.
He also named scaling speed and his own mental roadblocks as the other thing keeping him up at night.
The Owner-Operator Bottleneck: Permits, Trades, and Succession
The honest limit on this model is the operator. Nowowiejski still pulls his own permits, still negotiates with contractors, still drives to the job site to point out which trees come out. Every one of those tasks is a scheduling dependency on one person.
He put it to a useful test: if he disappeared for 30 days, what breaks? Acquisitions would keep running. The wholesaling side would keep running, because his assistant handles marketing and bookkeeping, and the lead flow converts at a known rate — a certain number of leads produces a certain number of contracts. But “permitting and running the job sites and making sure the contractors are all there, that would stop.”
That is a clean diagnostic for any solo builder. Run it on your own business. The functions that survive your absence are systematized. The ones that stop are the ones you still own personally, and they are the ceiling on how many lots you can have going at once.
His fix is succession rather than hiring. A wholesaler named Gerardo reached out after noticing the mobiles-on-land deals, said he wanted out of wholesaling because the niche is saturated, and wanted to put houses on lots himself. Nowowiejski is mentoring him through his first one, with the explicit intent that Gerardo eventually takes over the mobiles-on-land side so Nowowiejski can move into senior housing.
Self-assessment lines up with that plan. He rates marketing a 6 (he is new to mid-term rentals), acquisitions a 6 (deliberately throttled on price), and team and leadership combined a 6.
Where the Exit Rents Come From: Mid-Term and Senior Housing
The current project is a two-unit mid-term rental — a private studio plus a shared three-bedroom, fully furnished, with laundry and a pool table — explicitly targeting traveling nurses. Mid-term tenants in that category typically arrive on contract, stay for a defined term, and pay above long-term lease rates for a furnished unit.
He is candid that this is new ground. It is his first mid-term rental; everything else in the portfolio is long-term leased. That is why he rated his marketing a 6 and said the only thing that would move it up is experience.
The larger pivot is single-family senior living, which he calls the biggest opportunity he sees coming. The thesis: large-scale senior facilities have priced out a lot of people, demand keeps growing, and an investor without heavy capital can start with one house.
His planned operating structure is specific:
- Acquire houses subject-to where possible, concentrated in his local Bremerton area
- Retrofit each for wheelchair access and ADA compliance
- Contract with a registered nurse to provide clinical oversight across the portfolio
- Hire a CNA for each individual property
- Cluster the houses close together so one operator can manage them
- Target roughly 10 houses total
He projects a four-bedroom house can net $10,000 to $12,000 per month. Treat that as his forward projection, not a verified result — he has not opened one yet. Residential care is a licensed business. Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement rules, state licensing, staffing ratios, and building codes govern what you can charge and who you can serve, and those rules differ by state. Verify them before you underwrite anything at that number.
Frequently asked questions
How much should I expect to pay for a buildable infill lot right now?
It depends entirely on your market, but one data point from an active West Coast operator: Nowowiejski was paying as much as $50,000 per infill lot and recently closed one at $27,000, with prices noticeably higher a year prior. The spread came from discipline on offer price, not from switching markets.
Treat lot basis as the governing number in this model. There is no rehab upside on raw land to cover an overpay, so set your maximum from the finished value and hold it.
Can I put a new manufactured home on an infill lot anywhere in the country?
No. The model generally works across the West Coast and is weaker east of the Rockies, largely because of climate. Beyond weather, zoning districts differ on whether factory-built homes are permitted and on what foundation standard, and neighborhood comps may not support the finished value in a street of site-built houses.
Confirm all three — climate suitability, written jurisdictional approval, and comparable sales or rents — before you put a lot under contract.
Can you buy land or a house subject-to, and what does it cost out of pocket?
Yes, and the out-of-pocket can be a fraction of a conventional purchase. Nowowiejski bought a brick house in Tulsa subject-to for $30,000 out of pocket at a 3% interest rate, and acquired a flip using a combination of subject-to and seller financing.
Be clear that the 3% came from taking over an existing loan, not originating one at that rate. Subject-to carries due-on-sale and other legal exposure that varies by state. Run any structure past a real estate attorney and a title company before closing.
What’s the advantage of a non-expiring offer on an MLS or bank-owned listing?
It keeps your number alive after the seller rejects it. Nowowiejski offered $56,000 on a Bank of America REO in Antioch, Tennessee that was listed at $120,000. Ten months later the listing agent called and said the house was his if he still wanted it. He sold it repaired for $120,000.
The tactic costs nothing. Write your number based on your underwriting, leave the offer open rather than letting it expire, and let time do the work on sellers whose situation changes.
Do I need a nurse on staff to run a single-family senior living house?
Staffing requirements are set by state licensing rules, not by preference, so the answer depends on your state and the level of care you provide. Nowowiejski’s planned structure is to contract with a registered nurse covering the portfolio and hire a CNA for each individual property, which is how he intends to deliver a higher level of service.
Before budgeting, get the licensing, staffing-ratio, and reimbursement rules for your state in writing. Medicaid and Medicare participation adds its own compliance layer.
The bottom line
Start with the lot, not the build. Price a handful of infill lots in your market, confirm in writing that your jurisdiction will permit a factory-built home on that zoning with the foundation spec you intend to use, and check the surrounding comps before you spend a dollar. If those three line up, the construction side is learnable; if they do not, no amount of operational skill fixes a bad lot basis.
