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Flipping Mobile Homes to Single Family: Real Estate Investing in Denver

By September 4, 2025Real Estate Pros Show

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Show Summary

In this conversation, Joan Mahan shares her extensive experience in real estate, focusing on her journey from flipping mobile homes to exploring various asset classes. She discusses the challenges and strategies involved in navigating the mobile home market, the importance of financial discipline for aspiring homeowners, and her aspirations to invest in mobile home parks. Joan emphasizes the need for innovative thinking in real estate and offers insights into the Denver market, highlighting opportunities for both investors and first-time buyers.

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    Investor Fuel Show Transcript:

    Joan Mahan (00:00)
    You know what? I completely disagree. I think if you manage your money well, you save properly, ⁓ follow strategic financial advisors on how to prepare for it. But if you go into it with an attitude of, I’m never going to make this happen, you’re never going to make it happen. So you’ve got to go into it with, I’m going to save. I’m going to put money away and put it away smart. I’m not going to go to Starbucks. I’m not going to go out to eat every day. And it builds wealth.

    So I don’t, especially since COVID, now it’s more difficult. But I’ll tell you, I know a single woman that I helped buy a home here in Denver two years ago now, she moved in with family. They let her save every penny. And she, by herself, as a single woman, not a high-powered job, saved, put herself in a financial position to buy her first property. And then, of course, we bought

    Dylan Silver (00:43)
    Mm-hmm.

    Joan Mahan (00:59)
    it well, we negotiated well, and she walked into it with equity.

    Dylan Silver (02:37)
    Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest is a realtor, contractor, and designer in the greater Denver metro area who’s been flipping properties and involved in so many different deals. Please welcome Joan Mahan. Joan, welcome to the show.

    Joan Mahan (02:56)
    Hey, thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.

    Dylan Silver (02:59)
    It’s great to have you on here, Joan. We were talking before hopping onto the podcast here and I was asking you really what kind of deals and asset classes ⁓ are you active in? And you mentioned to me, you know, if it underwrites, well, if the deal makes dollars, then I’m taking a look at it. I think that’s an interesting mentality to have. And was that the mentality from the beginning?

    Joan Mahan (03:20)
    you know, it’s starting. was terrified. And so I did really safe, low deals and actually started flipping mobile homes. And that was five or six years ago. Yeah, I’ve done about

    Dylan Silver (03:32)
    wow.

    Joan Mahan (03:35)
    I think I’ve done six to eight of them, you lose track. so anyway, mobile homes, Flippin’ Mobile Homes is a totally different doc, but actually had an extremely high ROI, extremely high, especially here in Denver.

    Dylan Silver (03:43)
    It is.

    I wish I had reached out to you or we had been in contact somehow two years ago. I had a great mobile home deal in really the southern part of San Antonio, Texas where I was living at the time. And I just couldn’t connect the pieces. Because as you’re saying, it’s totally different. The banks won’t lend on it. I needed to go to a land bank. I needed to find the note buyer at the end of the day. The deal was entirely different because the real value was in

    as far as I could tell was in the land, not so much the mobile home, because it was so distressed. How was it navigating through that space? You mentioned you did more than a handful of deals.

    Joan Mahan (04:26)
    Yeah, so ⁓ everyone I did was actually in a mobile home park, which sounds really odd. ⁓ But they were very dilapidated, got them for $10,000 to $20,000, came in, updated them. So for me, purchasing was just a cash deal. I usually purchase with cash. ⁓ Going to sell them is where you have to navigate, right? You’ve got to navigate, and I have the resources. ⁓

    Dylan Silver (04:52)
    Yeah.

    Joan Mahan (04:56)
    knowledge now, ⁓ quick learning curve, on what lenders will lend, what parameters they’re looking for, and how to make that happen.

    Dylan Silver (05:07)
    want to

    ask you a couple granular questions. Maybe give away some of the gold, but not the whole gold bar here, Joan, about finding investors and then also lenders in the mobile home park space. This is really where I got stuck on my deal. I had a great deal, which we had a huge margin on, ⁓ like a 20 to 30 % margin on this deal. It was really gonna be a great spread, even if we had to reduce it by 50%.

    but we just had so much trouble with the lending and it made me kind of throw up my hand and say, well, I guess this is too much for me to bite off right now. What would be your advice to folks if you have a deal or are looking at a deal, but know in the back of your mind, hey, I’ve got to find a lender in this area and I don’t have connections out here.

    Joan Mahan (06:41)
    And so that’s the thinking that has to shift. You’re not going to find a lender in the area for mobile homes. Very few lenders will touch it with a 10-foot pole. So there’s basically two lenders that work nationwide, one up in Wisconsin, one in Tennessee. You just get connected with those, send them the information. They’ll tell you whether they can loan on it or not. ⁓

    They’ve gotten, they segue in between being really strict to Lucy Goosey. And I actually had two that we couldn’t even find a VIN number on the mobile home. So we had to call the highway patrol. We had to ⁓ have them come out, do a VIN inspection, say, no, there isn’t one. And then ⁓ provide that documentation saying the trailer was sold. There wasn’t even one, no HUD tag on it at all. ⁓

    Dylan Silver (07:34)
    I gotta go to Wisconsin,

    I guess, and find the lender.

    Joan Mahan (07:36)
    No, you just make a phone call!

    And so then you connect the buyer, because I bought with cash, you connect the buyer to the lenders. They get pre-approved. ⁓ And that’s, in your situation, man, if you had raw land, you could have just trashed that trailer, gotten it off, and just sold the land and negated the mobile home altogether.

    Dylan Silver (08:00)
    brain.

    I know, so many different things. I think about that deal quite often, but also as probably divine intervention, because here I am now, and this has been an unbelievable experience for me, connected with folks like yourself, met my sponsor through EXP on this show. I wanna pivot and ask you about going from the mobile home space into other asset classes, and then also I wanna ask you a follow-up to that. Did you ever think about buying mobile home parks?

    Joan Mahan (08:32)
    I want to buy a mobile home park. It’s on my bucket list. Absolutely. That is just a cash cow. I’ve looked into it. I’ve spent some time trying to locate one. I’ve talked about developing one. ⁓ That’s in my future because that is just money sitting there ready to happen. yeah, pivoting. ⁓

    Dylan Silver (08:53)
    It’s rain.

    Joan Mahan (08:57)
    So started with that and then got connected with an off market investor or out market asset company and purchased a couple of properties. ⁓ Note to self, don’t ever purchase a property without seeing it when it’s in trouble. ⁓ But so then shifted into the single family realm and then ⁓ and that’s

    I enjoy the single-family realm a little more. I feel a little more safe. And then in the mobile home park, I shouldn’t say that. Anyway, yeah, so then I shifted to single-family, but the money was in the mobile home parks.

    Dylan Silver (09:32)
    Then the mobile homes.

    I want to ask you about that. ⁓ Most people when they’re thinking about where to start I’ve heard lots of different feedback. My personal perspective right now is start with like a quadplex, triplex or duplex. That’s my personal opinion. I folks can start in any asset class and have success. But if I had to start right now what would I do? I would look for partners and buy a quadplex. But you mentioned the mobile home and mobile home parks are

    greater ⁓ deals, greater cash cows than the single family homes. I’m curious why that is and what’s been your experience with that.

    Joan Mahan (10:59)
    So with the mobile home park, you go in and what I did is connected with the property manager. She knows everyone. She knows every property. She knows the quality. She knows who’s in trouble. And so when they get in trouble with the fees at the mobile home park, she would just give me a heads up, say, go talk to these people. But they were dilapidated. ⁓

    And so that people, well, you wouldn’t think there would be money in the mobile home park, but when you get into looking at homes inside and very old mobile home park, the mobile home park wants you to come in and fix it up. And then, ⁓ and in Denver, they’re crazy expensive. ⁓ It’s like buying a $300,000 house by the time you can take in the lot rent.

    Dylan Silver (11:53)
    What is the responsibility of the park itself? Is it like a HOA effectively? Because if you own the mobile home and you own the land, or do they own the land, how does it work?

    Joan Mahan (12:04)
    Mobile home parks, they own the land. that’s what’s so odd about that scenario. The mobile home park owns the land. The homeowner pays lot rent. The homeowner owns the trailer because the ⁓ property manager and the owner do not want to maintain the trailer.

    So the homeowner has to maintain the trailer and then the property manager ⁓ just assesses fees, collects them. It is an HOA. You have to live by rules.

    Dylan Silver (12:40)
    want to

    pivot and ask you about other land involved deals that I really like looking at. I haven’t done one yet, but I hope I can soon. ⁓ Offsite stick built modular homes, ADUs like glamping units, and then storage facilities. And these come in all different variety from like air conditioned multi story storage facilities to, you know, no air conditioning basically like garages laid out on a

    couple of acres or less, right? What is your perspective at some of these other deals which are very land heavy and have you taken a look at any of these?

    Joan Mahan (13:20)
    You know, ⁓ I flipped one piece of land and did very well on it. Denver is a different duck in that we are land poor now. ⁓ So I have not jumped into it other than the one piece of land that I did. And it was very successful.

    Dylan Silver (13:38)
    Pivoting bit here. I want to ask you about going from really starting out to scaling where you are now, but also really across multiple ⁓ different arenas because the realtor world is different than the flipper world and the flipper world can be segmented into so many different asset classes. You’re active in

    Joan Mahan (13:41)
    Yeah.

    Dylan Silver (14:03)
    in multiple arenas, where was the idea, hey, I’m going to go get the real estate license, I’m going to be active here as well. And then also, was this kind of a natural progression or was it very intentional?

    Joan Mahan (14:10)
    Help.

    So in eighth grade, my sisters bought houses together next door to each other and our family came in and fixed them up. In eighth grade, I knew this is what I wanted to do.

    moved forward, got married, stayed home, mom, 17 years, ended up with a kid that needed some extra finances available. So I got my license in 2000. I’ve been an agent for 25 years and the intent was to get into the commercial realm and I just blew it out in the residential. So that’s what I ran with. But then when the market crashed, I got back into construction and doing roofing. And so somebody hired me as

    Dylan Silver (14:54)
    Hmm.

    Joan Mahan (14:57)
    an

    admin to manage all their roofing deals. And I’m like, heck, I’m a salesperson. I can sell anything. So I started selling roofing and started my own construction company in 2014. And so then started doing roofing site exterior guru, by the way, roofing, siding, windows, decks, anything on the exterior. And we stayed away from interior because I didn’t want to deal with people inside. It’s a different, it’s a different client.

    Dylan Silver (15:25)
    Yeah.

    Joan Mahan (15:27)
    So then that’s ⁓ when the opportunities for these trailers presented. We just had cash, we bought them and flipped them.

    Dylan Silver (15:28)
    It’s a different thing, yeah.

    I want to ask you about being a realtor. I’m a newly licensed realtor and I think there’s a lot of people who are interested in getting into the real estate space. ⁓ One of the areas that I’m particularly passionate about is affordable homes, affordable housing, helping people through the process when it seems so overwhelming. It seems like for lot of young people you practically need a blood sample in order to qualify for a ⁓ mortgage alone in so many cases.

    Joan Mahan (16:46)
    Yeah.

    You know what? I completely disagree. I think if you manage your money well, you save properly, ⁓ follow strategic financial advisors on how to prepare for it. But if you go into it with an attitude of, I’m never going to make this happen, you’re never going to make it happen. So you’ve got to go into it with, I’m going to save. I’m going to put money away and put it away smart. I’m not going to go to Starbucks. I’m not going to go out to eat every day. And it builds wealth.

    So I don’t, especially since COVID, now it’s more difficult. But I’ll tell you, I know a single woman that I helped buy a home here in Denver two years ago now, she moved in with family. They let her save every penny. And she, by herself, as a single woman, not a high-powered job, saved, put herself in a financial position to buy her first property. And then, of course, we bought

    Dylan Silver (17:30)
    Mm-hmm.

    Joan Mahan (17:46)
    it well, we negotiated well, and she walked into it with equity.

    So when you come to the table of that negative mindset of I’m never going to do it, you’re never going to do it. Sorry, sorry, not sorry. And when you talk about affordability, make it, position yourself to make it happen.

    Dylan Silver (17:59)
    It’s true. It’s true.

    Joan Mahan (18:12)
    Nobody, we have, we have properties in, I have opinions on this, you didn’t know. ⁓

    Dylan Silver (18:21)
    No, yeah, no, I love to

    hear him.

    Joan Mahan (18:22)
    Anyway,

    yeah, so we have affordable housing all over Denver, so it’s terrible because people come in and they’re like, oh, we’re buying our first house. Woohoo, yay. Well, they have limited growth. They have a limited growth amount that they can make every year. And they’re right in the community where people are selling for six, hundred thousand around them, and they’re selling for three hundred, four hundred thousand.

    Dylan Silver (18:33)
    brand.

    Joan Mahan (18:51)
    And they’re making the same payments. And if they would have just buckled in, saved their own doggone money, they would have had that several hundred thousand dollars more. So affordable housing.

    Dylan Silver (19:03)
    When you when you talk about saving saving up

    in the Denver area I can’t speak for Denver but I know Texas in the Denver area looking at you know the the homes that you’re talking about not maybe the the entry level but maybe a little bit higher than that to where it appreciates over time maybe in a slightly better area. What kind of down payment would someone who is you know super I would say not a high income earner need in order to qualify for some of these homes if you’re looking at.

    you know, non-inskid level. Yeah.

    Joan Mahan (19:33)
    So in this market, in this market,

    nothing because people are paying for down payments. The sellers in Denver, people are paying, the sellers are giving the buyer their down payment. I had a transaction last month. The buyer asked for $15,000 down to buy the rate down and that bought it down significantly.

    and the sellers were just happy to do it to be rid of the house they needed to sell. And that is happening day in, day out here. But if you’ve got 20 grand, yeah, there’s always, I can’t, there’s always more than one way to skin a cat. Sorry, not sorry. But you’ve got to get, you’ve got to think outside of the box and get out of this status quo thinking that somebody’s going to give you a hand. The government is not, it’s not the government’s responsibility for you to be responsible.

    Dylan Silver (20:05)
    That’s interesting. Yeah.

    Yeah.

    Joan Mahan (20:27)
    for your life and buy a house. So buck it up. Buck it up, it up. Stop going to Starbucks. Stop going out to eat. Move in with family. Put in the cost and put in the time to make yourself get in a position to do what your dream is.

    Dylan Silver (20:29)
    Yeah, no.

    I hope the folks with ⁓ family members are now listening to this and saying, okay, we gotta have people come in. We gotta help people save all meals cooked at home. No Starbucks.

    Joan Mahan (20:55)
    Absolutely, absolutely. This girl saved, one

    year, one year, she saved over $40,000. And she makes $70,000 a year.

    Dylan Silver (21:05)
    It’s amazing.

    Yeah, yeah, that’s she probably saved, you know, 90 % of her or very close to 80 % of her take home pay, something like that, depending on how much taxes was taken out.

    Joan Mahan (21:18)
    She committed to it. She did it. It’s an inspiring story.

    Dylan Silver (21:23)
    Yeah, I think it’s great for folks that are in that position that have family like that. I think you mentioned the one year you can save up more than enough to cover ⁓ your down payment plus some leftover. We are coming up on time here, Joan. Where can folks go if maybe they’re in the greater Denver area, they’d like to reach out to you? ⁓ Or if they maybe have a deal that they’re looking at and would like some feedback on it?

    Joan Mahan (21:47)
    Yeah, so if you want to flip a house here in Denver, I have a bazillion off-market opportunities. We can sit down, run the numbers, see if they’re profitable or not.

    Many are not and you need to run, but you need to know your numbers. So you can reach out to me on my cell phone, 303-669-7598. You can go to joanmahan.com. I’m with EXP Realty here, which is an amazing opportunity. ⁓ But I’d love to help people and have conversation around ⁓ flipping properties because it is a great way to make money and ⁓ love to

    help them. And you know as a realtor, contractor, flipper, I have all the experience. If you just need to buy or sell a home, ⁓ give me a call because I’ll talk through all of the details with you and with my construction background I’ll tell you whether it’s smart purchase or not.

    Dylan Silver (22:44)
    Joan, thank you so much for coming on the show here today.

    Joan Mahan (22:47)
    Thanks, see ya.

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