Executive Summary
The executive summary is the first part of your business plan, but you usually write it last because it is a summary of all the important parts of your plan.
Your executive summary should quickly catch the attention of the reader. Tell them about your mobile home park business and how things are going. For instance, do you own a new business, a mobile home park that you want to grow, or a chain of mobile home parks?
Then, give an overview of each part of your plan that comes after this one.
- Briefly explain what mobile home parks do for a living.
- Talk about what kind of mobile home park business you own.
- Detail your direct competitors. Give an overview of the people you’d like to buy from you.
- Give a quick summary of your plan for marketing. Find out who on your team is the most important.
- Tell what you want to do with your money.
Company Overview
In your business summary, you will say what kind of mobile home park business you run.
For example, you could write about one of the following businesses in a mobile home park:
- Retiree or age-restricted: This type of mobile home park meets the needs and wants of older adults and usually has a minimum age for residents.
- This kind of mobile home park is good for families, and it might have things that kids like, like a playground or a pool.
- This type of mobile home park is for people who want to save money or live a simple life. Most of the time, these parks have less to offer than others, but the prices are lower.
- People who want to live in a high-end, designer mobile home can live in this kind of mobile home park. Most of the time, these parks are in areas with higher costs of living.
- Pet-friendly: This kind of mobile home park is for people who have pets and may have features like a dog park that are good for pets.
In the business overview, you need to say what kind of mobile home park business you will run and give some background on the business.
Include the answers to such questions as:
- When did you start this business, and why?
- What big steps have you taken so far? Milestones could be things like how many mobile homes were rented or sold, how many parks were opened, how much money was made, and so on.
- The way your business is set up legally. Is your business set up as an S-Corp? An LLC? A single-person business? Tell us about how your law system works.
Industry Analysis
In your industry or market analysis, you need to give a general description of the mobile home park business.
This might seem pointless, but it has more than one use.
First of all, learning about the mobile home park business gives you knowledge. It gives you a better idea of the market you are in.
Second, market research can help you come up with a better plan for marketing, especially if you look for market trends.
The third reason is to show you know what you’re talking about. This is what you do by doing research and putting it in your plan.
In the industry analysis section of your mobile home park business plan, you should answer the following:
- How much money does the business of a mobile home park make?
- Is the market getting smaller or bigger?
- Who are your biggest market competitors?
- Who are the most important market providers?
- What new things are happening in the business world?
- How do you think the market will change in the next 5–10 years?
- What is the right size for the market? That is, how big is your business’s possible market for mobile home parks? You can figure out such a number by finding out how big the market is in the whole country and then applying that number to the people in your area.
Customer Analysis
In the “Customer Analysis” section of your mobile home park business plan, you should talk about the customers you serve or plan to serve.
Different types of customers include people, schools, families, and corporations.
As you might guess, the type of mobile home park business you run will depend a lot on the customer segment(s) you choose. People would react differently to marketing campaigns than, say, corporations.
Try to figure out who your ideal customers are by looking at their demographics and how they think and feel. In terms of demographics, you should talk about the ages, genders, locations, and income levels of the people you want to help.
Psychographic profiles can tell you what your customers want and need. The more you can figure out what these needs are and how to meet them, the easier it will be to get new customers and keep the ones you already have.
Competitive Analysis
In your competitive analysis, you should figure out who your direct competitors are and then focus on them.
Other businesses that run mobile home parks are your only direct competitors.
Indirect competitors are other things customers can buy besides your product or service that are not in direct competition with it. This includes apartment complexes, condos, and other kinds of communities. You could also talk about this kind of competition.
Give an overview of their businesses and a list of their strengths and weaknesses for each of these competitors. Unless you’ve worked for one of your competitors, you don’t know everything about them. But you should be able to find important information about them, like
- What kind of clients do they work with?
- What do mobile home parks do for a living?
- What is the price range (high, low, etc.)?
- What are their strengths?
- What do they not do well?
Try to answer the last two questions from the point of view of your customers. Don’t be afraid to ask customers of your competitors what they like and dislike about them.
The last part of your competitive analysis is to list the ways you are better than your competitors. For example:
- Will you make it easier for people to use or buy your product?
- Will you sell or do things that your rivals don’t?
- Will you give your customers better service?
- Your prices will be better, right?
- In this part of your plan, you should think of ways you can do better than your competitors and write them down.
Marketing Plan
Usually, a marketing plan has four parts: the product, its price, where it will be sold, and how it will be promoted. In your marketing plan for a business plan for a mobile home park, you should:
In the “Product” section, you should repeat what kind of mobile home park business you talked about in the “Overview of Your Company” section. Then, describe the goods or services you’ll be selling. Do you, for example, have high-end, cheap, or fully furnished mobile home units?
Price: List your prices and how they compare to those of your competitors. In your plan, the product and price sections are basically where you list the products or services you offer and how much they cost.
Your mobile home park’s place is where it is. Write down the location of your business and how it will affect how well it does. For instance, is your mobile home park close to public transportation, on the edge of a city, or in the middle of nowhere? Talk about why your website might be the best place for your customers.
Promotions: In the last part of your mobile home park marketing plan, you should write down how you will bring potential customers to your location (s). Here are some ideas for how to promote your business:
- Put ads in local newspapers, magazines, or radio stations.
- Reach out to websites.
- Distribute flyers
- Engage in email marketing
- Put up ads on social media websites
- Improve your website’s SEO (search engine optimization) for the keywords you want to rank for.
Operations Plan
You wrote about your goals in other parts of your business plan. In the operations plan, you talk about how you’ll reach those goals. There should be two different parts to your operations plan.
Everyday short-term processes include everything you do to run your mobile home park business, like answering calls, showing units, billing tenants, collecting rent, and so on.
Long-term goals are the steps you plan to take to get there. These dates could be when you hope to get your Xth tenant or when you hope to make $X. It could also be when you want your mobile home park to start doing business in a new city.
Management Team
A strong management team will show that your mobile home park business has a chance to do well. Show the backgrounds of your key players, with a focus on the skills and experiences that prove they can help a company grow.
You or someone on your team should have run a business in a mobile home park before. If so, talk about what you’ve learned and what you’ve done. But you should also talk about any business experience you have that you think will help your business do well.
If you don’t have a strong enough team, you might want to put together an advisory board. A board of advisors would have between two and eight members. These people could give you advice that would help your business. They would answer questions and give planning tips. If you need to, look for members of your advisory board who have successfully run a mobile home park or a small rental business.
Financial Plan
Your 5-year financial statement should be a part of your financial plan. For the first year, it should be broken down monthly or quarterly, but after that, it should be done annually. Your income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement are all part of your financial statements.
Income Statement
Most people call an income statement a Profit and Loss statement (P&L). It shows how much money you made and how much it cost you, so you can tell if you made a profit or not.
In order to make your income statement, you need to make some assumptions. For instance, will your mobile home park have 10 units, and do you think you’ll be able to keep an average occupancy rate of 70%? By how much will sales grow every year? 2% or 10%? As you might expect, your assumptions will have a big impact on the financial projections for your business. Do as much research as you can to try to back up your ideas with facts.
Balance Sheet
Balance sheets show you what you own and what you owe. Balance sheets may have a lot of information on them, but try to focus on the most important parts. For example, if you spend $50,000 to start up your mobile home park business, you won’t make money right away. Instead, it’s an asset that you hope will bring in money for years to come. In the same way, you don’t have to pay back a $50,000 check right away if someone gives it to you. You’ll have to pay that back over time instead.
Flow of Cash Report
Your cash flow statement will help you figure out how much money you need to start or grow your business and make sure that you never run out of money. Most business owners and entrepreneurs don’t know that you can make money and still go bankrupt if you run out of cash.
When making your Income Statement and Balance Sheet, make sure to include some of the most important costs of starting or growing a mobile home park business:
- The cost of land, buildings, materials, and tools
- Staff salary or salaries Insurance for a business
- Taxes
You’ll also have to pay for things like legal fees, permits, software, and equipment when you start a new business.