Part I

Say you have a 40-acre mobile home park, two blocks off the Gulf of Mexico in central Florida.

And you have tenants. You have many, many tenants. What you really want is the land the mobiles homes sits on. Do you have any theories of what it takes to close down a mobile home park and get re-zoning to a high-rise or something like that?

Are you wondering what to do about the time frame? How long will this take to get started?

Well, first of all, you need to make sure the people in the mobile home park, do not own any of the land (most do not, but it is a question you should always ask). Most just own their unit.

There are laws in Florida that might stop you for a bit. Keep in mind; it is going to take you a while to get them out of there. I would say a minimum of (90) days. You need to get with a real estate attorney on that and you just simply serve them all notice. But there are special laws concerning mobile home parks. In other words, they own their own trailer. You would be putting a burden on them to give them a (30) days move. It's actually a good law.

So, let that take its course, clean it out, and that's exactly what you should do - just clean house. And then simultaneously, while you're doing that, you need to get a good engineer and decide what the highest and best use of that property is. And let’s face it; if you are two blocks off the Gulf, it is way higher than a mobile home park. And if you can put a high-rise there, you just hit a bonanza, because once you get that zoning changed, your property value just went through the roof if, in fact, you can put high density residential there like that.

You may be wondering if you need high density, but the question to ask is, is it better suited for residential or commercial. Look at what is around it.

Most likely it is residential. Maybe it is even a sleepy little fishing village with one little convenience store, bait-n-tackle, beer type place in it and a post office.

Who cares? It's in Florida!

It’s in Florida and it is two blocks from the ocean, that's all you need to know. And, in fact, a lot of people would prefer sleepy little fishing villages rather than the hustle and bustle of the big cities.

In Part II we’ll talk about how you are going to get there!