Episode Summary
Listen on iTunes
Listen on Spotify
Watch on YouTube
Have you ever considered investing in mobile homes as rental properties? For many of us, it’s an interesting and intriguing idea, but one we’re not very familiar with. Mobile homes are an asset class within real estate investing that for many people is loaded with stereotypes, generalizations and even stigma. In this episode, Jeff interviews mobile home investing expert and author of “How to Buy Mobile Homes,” Adrian Smude from Lifestyle REI. Adrian and Jeff have a wide-ranging conversation, discussing everything from the 3 different ways to invest in mobile homes, to seller financing for mobile homes, to relationship-based negotiation with the Seller, and more.
Episode Transcript
If I want to ask questions, build rapport, I’m genuinely interested in people. I don’t care what the topic is, I love traveling. And most people do. So if I’m in the home, they live there. There’s usually a picture of or a Knick Knack or something, or somewhere traveled. And I legit want to know about it. Don’t just ask to try to build a steak before. I’m interested in their trip there. And we’ll talk sometimes for a while just about that. Or I’ll find some, I think there’s everything every two people have something in common that they can truly genuinely want to talk about. Yeah, and that’s when I looked at it.
Jeff Stephens
Welcome to racking up rentals, a show about how regular people, those of us without huge war chests of capital or insider connections, can build lasting wealth acquiring a portfolio of buy and hold real estate. But we don’t just go mainstream looking at what’s on the market and asking banks for loans. Nor are we posting WE BUY HOUSES signs, we’re just looking for quote, motivated sellers to make lowball offers to. You see, we are people oriented deal makers, we sit down directly with sellers to work out Win Win deals without agents or any other obstacles, and buy properties nobody else even knows are for sale. I’m Jeff from the thoughtful real estate entrepreneur. If you’re the kind of real estate investor who wants long term wealth, not get rich quick gimmicks or pictures of yourself holding fat checks on social media, this show is for you. Join me and quietly become the wealthiest person on your block. Now let’s go rack up a rental portfolio. Hey, hey, thank you for joining me for another episode of racking up rentals. Show Notes for this episode can be found at thoughtful our e.com/e 159 including a transcript of this interview you’re about to hear, please do us a big favor real quick by hitting the subscribe or follow button and your podcast app. It really really helps spread the show because then the platforms know that you are listening. And of course, that means you also won’t miss any upcoming episodes. Onward with today’s episode. And in this episode, I’m so pleased to share with you an interview I recently did with a new friend, Adrian smooth and Adrian is an expert in mobile home investing. And that’s kind of how I became aware of him or how he kind of came on my radar screen because that’s not a topic that I know much about, or I should say knew much about until I chatted with Adrian and had this interview conversation with him. But what I quickly discovered is that not only is he a wealth of information on a technical level about mobile home investing and the various nuances and styles and approaches and different ways you can do it. He’s also really a thoughtful real estate entrepreneur, his way of thinking and his philosophy about dealing with people and crafting solutions, sensitively to kind of what their needs and situation are paired with and his technical abilities in the area of mobile home investing made him just a perfect fit for us in our community. And I was so glad to get to know him a little bit and have this interview in which I learned a lot and I think you’re going to as well. So let me stop talking and let’s get on to our interview with Adrian smood. Adrian and thank you so much for spending some time with me today here on racking up rentals and welcome.
Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.
Jeff Stephens
Yeah, so I you know, I’d heard your name a couple times I recognize your profile pic actually from the shirt. Although I think the one in the profile pic I’ve seen says like maybe it says my wife and then something below it. I was guessing maybe it said my wife buys mobile homes or something. But is that is that what it says?
Yeah, you’re exactly right. That’s my buying brand. And that’s what I became known for is that bright yellow shirt. My wife buys mobile homes.
Jeff Stephens
Nice. Nice. So yeah, tell us like Just who are you? How would you find yourself on a on a podcast talking about real estate investing in mobile homes specifically.
I started out as a terrible, terrible tenants. I was the tenant that has I literally have a stack of eviction notices from my past, and they were all amazing, my friends helped. But we had spaghetti wrestling parties, mud wrestling parties, putting wrestling parties parked a motorcycle in the living room. And these are all eviction notices we had. But because I was evicted, I bought a house. Because I’m a problem solver. I moved my friends in and that helped me get evicted. I live for free because I basically divided my mortgage up amongst my friends realized that’s really cool. I bought a second house. The short story there is I lost it as a short sale. It wasn’t so cool. One of the best things that ever happened to me not at the moment because it it hurt real bad. But it helped me become a conservative investor. And the long story short, that’s one way I found more more homes. People usually think it’s an oxymoron. I’m saying, I’m a conservative investor, and I invest in mobile homes. So for people that aren’t watching, I have a 1962 that has most of exciting behind me, that scares even the most advanced investor. But I learned about the topic. And I’m conservative when it comes to numbers. I understand the mobile homes, but the numbers I’m very safe with. And so now today, fast forwarding is I buy in rent, single unit, mobile homes with the land. And that’s the niche I found that really works for me. I’m serving, I’ll say a little tight population that most investors are scared of. And don’t there’s not many people to help them. I am in Central Florida, and between Tampa Orlando, a little town called Plant City, and we are the winter show right capital of the world.
Jeff Stephens
Oh, nice. winter, winter. Strawberry. Sounds good. That’s good. Well, I’m over in Oregon, where we’re buying your winter strawberries, because we’re definitely not growing them here. Yeah. Nice. Okay. Okay. And so at some point, then you you kind of get a taste of the mobile home, you know, niche or subcategory within real estate. So I like that I think I’ll take another one. But were you pretty immediately kind of choosing that as like, this is my thing, I’m gonna go deep fast, or did you kind of continue to dabble in different things, and ultimately, you know, Hone, hone it down and refine and decide. After some time, this is where I want to be.
I think I was like, pretty much every investor, I shiny object for a good why I already was in a rental space before I found out the real investor world, and I signed a object for a while. And I did hire coach still have him as a coach. And he really pushed me to get NIST. And when he saw some of the numbers I got on a mobile home. And he pushed even a little bit more there. So he’s like, you have something special here. And which I didn’t fully realize, and then I, you know, go over the numbers, let them be like, Yeah, this is something great. And part of that reason, is, it’s a hidden niche. Even the most experienced investors don’t realize this little niche, or they’re scared of it. They don’t want to research it. They think they’re trashy, you know, all these stereotypes. And then that leaves very few people wanting to buy them less competition. More for me more for you, and whoever else wants to buy them?
Jeff Stephens
Yeah, yeah. So I have so many questions, I want to ask you about mobile homes kind of specifically, and then your own journey, but it sounds it feels to me, like we should, you know, establish a few definitions. Right. And so before you and I hit record, you were mentioning that there’s one of the first things it’s really important for everybody to understand is that there’s really three different types of mobile homes. Right. And, and in that moment, I thought, Gosh, I don’t think I could name exactly what those are. So why don’t you if you don’t mind, give us the mobile home? 101. Like, what are the three categories? Why is it so important to understand the distinction between those.
So the most a less money to get into cheaper dollars to get in is owning just the mobile home, you own a 10 box, you don’t own any dirt underneath it. This is typically inside of a mobile home park, where you pay someone every month lot rent, or some areas they call space rent, you’re paying for the right department, they’re they’re the cheapest to get in because you’re not buying dirt, you’re just buying the box. Some things I don’t particularly like about them any more, because they are good ROI return on our investment, the recession resistant. But I lost control, because the park manager makes all the rules. And that lot run. That’s like a mortgage that never goes away. And it’s gonna go up every year doesn’t mean I mean, they served me really well. The ones I’ve owned, and I still know very people very successful. Then let’s move on to mobile home parks, you own everything. The square here, let’s say there’s two main ways around them. You can own everything, all the homes, all the land absolutely everything. You own a flat apartment complex. Or you can run a park, as if you own just the dirt. And people pay to park it every month. You own a big parking lot. And then you can own a combination of the two. You can manage it either way. But what I stick to is this middle ground in between. It’s forgotten about it’s it’s hidden little niche. I own a single unit mobile home, so just one unit, and I own the dirt underneath it. So that’s a homeland package. Now people always say, Well, where are these? They can be in the rural areas that is a little bit more popular. Maybe I own an acre with it and Some areas you might own 2030 acres, it usually becomes a little more difficult to get the rent out of the bigger lots. But it also can be your standard neighborhood, your single family subdivision. And instead of the house being built there, they brought all mobile homes. And that’s pretty common around me. And I’ve seen it around the whole us as well. People may think of those as parks, but sometimes you actually own the dirt. And then there’s also communities or roads that are mix, you might have a mobile home with the land. And the next one might be a site built home built out of concrete blocks, and the next one might be a wood frame, home built there. So but everyone owns the home and land, it’s a single units. Those are the three main types of ways to invest in mobile
Jeff Stephens
homes. Yeah, okay. That’s, that’s super helpful. And then I also just realize to just as I explored my own confusion, people probably use different words to describe things that might have subtle differences. Like, can you tell us is it what is the difference if there is a difference between a mobile home, a manufactured home a trailer? And maybe there’s other lingo? I’m just not thinking of right now. But like, what are the distinctions between those things?
I love that you asked, because I literally have a slide when I speak, in person meetings that have asked that question, please tell me which is which everyone gives out different definitions. There is technically yours. But here’s the important way I describe it. If I am buying, they’re all going to be trailers, I don’t care. It can be a 2022. I’m calling it a trailer. Because it sounds cheaper, brings the value down. And if I’m selling or leasing, I don’t care what year it is. They’re all gonna be manufactured homes. Because our words matter of persuading. And just bringing the value of it. I’ll say the important most important year, because a lot of important years within mobile homes, but June 15 1976, that is the year that the federal government got HUD involved and said, We’re going to make a little bit different and better standard across the whole US as a whole for mobile homes. That is the year that they believe they started actually called on manufactured homes, they moved different trailers, they became less physically moving them around the country, because they used to move them all the time. They’re not that movable. They’re not that mobile, as people as a word sounds like.
Jeff Stephens
Yeah, yeah. So like a travel trailer just back up and lower the
hitch. Yeah. And they kind of started that way. I just recently kind of dug into some history back to the 30s. I think it was, and that’s actually how they started our travel trailers today, or what I invest in is mobile homes.
Jeff Stephens
Yeah. Okay, so Alright, so we’ve got some kind of like common definitions and a little bit of like, a lay of the land there, no pun intended. But the next natural question on my mind is like, what are the things that you love in general about the mobile home? You know, class, I guess, in any of those three categories you just mentioned? But then specifically, also, why is it that you have gravitated towards, you know, the third option in the homeland packages? So what do you like about the whole thing, and then that one specifically,
I love the return on investment, ROI. That is one of my biggest things, because if we can make more money, with less dollars, we can get to our ultimate goals faster. And everyone their ultimate goals, really narrows down to helping more people, spending more time with more people and traveling. We all want about that. And if we have more freedom of time, controlling our time, we can do those. And the fastest way to get there is making more on our money. So that’s one of my big reasons. The one I’ve also been pushing a lot now, it’s been on my mind, but no one’s cared is the recession resistant. Now that we’re talking about a recession, some people say we’re in one will won’t know for months or years. But now people all of a sudden care about that. Yeah, so the recession resistant because most mobile homes are in the affordable housing space. Affordable housing space, once we have a recession, people are going to have to start moving down and what they pay in rent. Because once you’re making maybe let’s say there’s two household income, one of them loses their job. They’re just getting by they have to slowly move down. We’re going to have more demand more demand. Yes means we can raise our rents but more importantly than that, I may not raise my rent. I have a larger pool of applicants. And I’m not going to go without rate. That’s the most important piece to me.
Jeff Stephens
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That makes that makes really good sense. And speak to the ROI. Is it? Is it as simple? Is it an oversimplification, just to say the ROI, it just directly comes from a different price to rent ratio than you get with stick built location site built homes, right? I mean, just the relationship between the amount of rent that can drive and the cost to get into it. Is it? Is it really as simple as that? Or is there a more a more sophisticated answer for where the ROI comes from? I guess,
I mean, that’s really there’s, there’s less demand, because there’s less people in it. And financing becomes a major issue. So banks, the big banks aren’t going to finance them. I mean, we’re on Bank of America Chase, like the big ones, they say, they’ll go back 20 years, I don’t, I wouldn’t even really look at them. The small banks, your credit unions, your community banks, they have told me, they go back to that important date, June 15 1976. But what comes with that is it has to be completely up to code. And sometimes they have even other things that have to be on top of it. Well, a lot of them, it’s gonna cost so much to bring it up to code that it’s not worth it. If you are going that direction, please go sit down with a banker and find out the exact things I have too many people that come up to me and say, Oh, I just thought all I had to bring up is two or three things. And then 1000s of dollars later, they’ve lost money. Usually, if we’re talking about the 1960s 1970s 80s, for the most part, you’re not going to use a bank, or have that as an option. And most of our sellers already know that. Because they bought with bank, or they bought with owner financing. And they know that bank financing is not available. So it’s not this brand new topic to talk about owner financing. Yeah. And because of all that, we if we go and serve them the right way, talk to them find out their problems, we can help. And for an unfortunate reason, a lot of investors don’t do that. So then again, there’s less competition. And all of these things end up giving us a better ROI. So I’m in Florida, and we have hurricanes, a lot of people around the country haven’t heard of these hurricanes that we get, and then I’ll understand the danger. Yeah, more dangerous, because of the hurricanes means we need to get higher return to be a responsible investor.
Jeff Stephens
Yeah, as well. Yeah. Okay. So, so we have a sense for what some of the things are that you really like about this. And I was, as I was just like, noting, like, my next natural question was like, Well, what are some of the downsides, but I like to think that, you know, positive, pros and cons are kind of relative, like, there’s more like, here’s a list of attributes, some might see these things as pros, someone sees these things as cons. But really, that’s a matter of perspective. It’s just simply attributes. So it got me thinking in a slightly different way. So I’m gonna, I’m going to try to ask my question a more interesting way, which is, based on some of the attributes of a mobile home investing, who, who is the type of investor who might not be a good fit for it, right? I’m trying to ask like the what are the downsides? Question, but in a different way, like who? Who, who wouldn’t be a good fit for doing this type of business? Do
you think I would say someone that has very low risk tolerance, okay, because there is more risk in it. We like the one that that people are actually watching the video here, the one that is behind me as a 1962. And is not going to ever warrant me putting granite in it and building it up to be this really strong, big structure. Now, I do have properties that do get that. So the property kind of tells me what money and what quality I can put in it. Let’s say you’re someone that loves idea of condos, because condos are very less risk. You have less involvement. And it’s a that’s your area, I would say don’t go to mobile homes, because we do have more risk. And my style, I don’t fix properties. Perfect. I make them liveable safe, and then I’d be a little ugly. And a lot of people there’s no right or wrong, just don’t want that, like take a lot of pride in their product. And if there’s a pink checkmark somewhere, they’re going to have a fixed and that’s great because some people want to live in that property and they need that. My tenants icon residents, they are fine with maybe some ugly wall color. So I’m serving a different population. But the short answer my little long rant is if you have a low risk tolerance, it’s probably not the best asset class for you. Yeah, yeah. Ah,
Jeff Stephens
so are all the properties that you invest in? Are they sort of geographically centered around, like where you live? Or do you? Are they dispersed a bit? So what?
How do you leave, I have a very tight 30 minutes from Plant City, I literally have a diamond, I have a graphic I created because wholesalers and send them to me. And I send them back this graphic of exactly where I buy. But why can I buy in a very tight little diamond? I’m very fortunate we have a lot of properties there. If I was in the rural Midwest, or Wisconsin or the Ducote, you’d like areas that you might drive 30 minutes to get to your neighbor, I would have a larger area. But I am fortunate that I just work a little harder in that very tight spot. But they’re everywhere. I mean, they’ve had mobile homes and Alaska since the 50s. So they really are everywhere. We just have to maybe look a little harder or keep our eye out for them. Because people don’t always realize that they’re there.
Jeff Stephens
Yeah, yeah. I noticed that even in myself, sometimes. I’ll drive somewhere that I’ve been like, 800,000 times. And I’ll look over and I think is that park is been like wallpaper to me the whole time. Like how am I never conscious? I’m sure I’ve seen it. But like consciously like, oh, there’s a park right there. I don’t know why. But for some reason, I don’t know if it’s this is just me being weird. Or if this is like unique to mobile homes is for some reason. But I will I will notice like so I’ve been walking or driving or riding my bike right by some for a long time and never even really registered my mind.
It’s so I nerd out on the mindset stuff. It’s called the reticular activated system in our brain. I’m big Tony Robbins fan he was talking about you buy that brand new car. And in my case, it would be a lime, green, yellow car. And then all of a sudden, like, oh, everyone has this color. There’s actually a bunch out there on the road. I’m not the only crazy person that loves this color. Yeah. And it’s really that part of our brain. We don’t see everything. And
Jeff Stephens
yeah, yeah. So I was just thinking a moment ago about your residence. And some of the people actually, I’m guessing most of the people listening to the show, if they have any experience with mobile homes is probably pretty, pretty limited. And I can certainly say I have basically none, myself. So it got me wondering about like, how, if our point of reference from a management perspective is x, whatever, how is it different? Like, what would somebody needs to like have their eyes open about as it relates to management? Cuz I’m guessing, you know, I mean, the tenant profile is going to be a little bit different like that maybe the physical structures themselves are different. And I’m guessing there may be more prone to easy damage and things like that. I mean, they’re built to be kind of lightweight and movable. So maybe that’s so without me answering the question for you like from a management perspective, you want to know what you’re signing up for kind of like so what if somebody’s sort of used to like normal rental single family homes, duplexes, quads, things like that? What’s the Compare and contrast experience like there?
I really short answer is the same. I do have some master leases. So I’m renting some traditional homes site built homes from someone with the right to sublet them out, and I manage everything the same. But I’ll go a little deeper is one of my mentors Lenny’s seminar, he says when you buy your home, you buy your tenant. And what he means if you buy a good home, in a good area, you’ll probably get a good tenant. So the exact opposite is true. We buy a bad home when a bad area when a probably a bad tenant. Mobile homes get that stereotype of the trailer trash. You know the movies and songs have made it fun to poke fun of there. Everyone thinks that the little kid comes with Tallboy natty light, and they’re just these terrible people. I can’t say I don’t have any homes that are not in the best of areas. But my goal is I buy good homes that people want to live in. And I get a lot of blue collar handyman and handy lemon. And I created this group of people as my avatar. So we’ve talked about in real estate marketing is marketing to buy stuff, but I don’t believe landlords think about marketing as marketing to their ideal customer that’s going to come and take care of their home. So I went deeper. What type of property does a blue collar handyman handing woman want? I found that they want a fenced yard because they typically have animals not just a dog and cats but maybe a goat, maybe a pig or rabbits ferrets, these different animals that I allow. They love a little garage workshop because they work on their own vehicles. And I look for properties that have all these attributes that they want. So now they are attracted to the property. And then people that don’t want to pay maybe a premium, because they’re getting an acre of land, they just want the home to live in, or they don’t want to cut that grass. They say, No, that’s too much work. I don’t want to live there. But everything I do within my mantra says is to think of the person I want that’s most ideal. And do everything I can to attract them. Same thing, neighborhoods, sometimes blue collar handyman hammock, they don’t want to live in an HOA neighborhoods easy because they have a logo on the side of their vehicle. And they have ladders and stuff, and Hoa is going to tow that vehicle. Ask me how I know. You know, I looked for properties that they really want. And so that’s my style. I have friends that are into the Airbnb world. Well, they have to think in a whole nother way. They need an entertainment space, maybe you have to think of where do they want to say, one of my friends does rentals and a historic downtown. And he really wants people that want that walkability. And they value that 1800s building. So they put up photos of the original building, they do things like that I try to attract someone that’s going to appreciate their home. Yeah.
Jeff Stephens
Yeah, that makes that makes really, really good sense, I think absolutely follows all the principles that we advocate for here too. And I feel like one of the things that just is like it, maybe I need to be more explicit about it, like on the show, even in my communities and stuff. But that’s like principle number one is like buy stuff for which there’s high demand. And it sounds like that’s very much you know, what your, what you were doing, it might be high demand for in a different audience than high demand of people looking for Airbnbs in this town, or you know, there’s different, obviously, subcategories of demand. But I think a lot of people go out, and especially people who are newer, they go buy stuff, because it’s cheap, but without really thinking about like, Well, is it cheap? Because like nobody really wants to live there, right? It’s not an area that’s close to the employment or it’s not an area that’s got a quality of life, or maybe the area is good, but this particular block is not so good for various reasons, or, or, or whatever it might be. But anyway, buy like a lot of that stuff.
Yeah. So when I was in a real growth phase, I bought, what I could afford, what was cheap. And it was definitely harder to manage, and not as much fun and took more time. Now I have this thing that when I’m valuing properties, I have a headache value. How much headache is this property going to cause me what type of person is going to try and also buy it, I just have to get paid for headaches, I need to get a higher return for the same property in a different area, because one other area is going to cause me more headaches. And I want to get paid for that. Yeah, yeah.
Jeff Stephens
So let’s pivot just a little bit. And I think it like in a lot of ways I, I would call this show like an acquisition and finance kind of a show. We get around, we hit it from lots of different angles. But to me, that’s kind of at the end of the day, like we’re talking about, like how do we buy great, great properties is gonna help us get where we’re trying to go in life. So what is generally kind of speaking the the way that a person goes about finding, negotiating and, and paying for mobile homes, and I guess maybe in any of the three categories, but maybe we just especially focus on your as the homeland package where you’re kind of buying both?
I would say it’s not terribly different. I’ll point I’ll talk about what I do. And I’ll point out pieces that I would say are a little different in mobile homes and any other class, the first, we are problem solvers, in my opinion as investors. So we need to start out with a question that one of my mentors is famous for asking and always ask Peter Fortunato, he asked, Why would you sell a nice home like this? And if we don’t ask that horse, similar question, we can’t get to the actual root reason they’re selling. And if we don’t know why they’re really selling, we can’t help them. The best way we can just say, here’s our cash offer. But I’ve had people that cash actually would hurt them financially because they had government assistance, you know, they were losing. I go there. Once I know where at least in some type of ballpark, or that I’ll open the door will say the financing. Would you be interested in payments? Essentially, if they don’t say no, let’s me because I want to build that rapport before they need to trust me. One of the things I did is I went to a property once for the pure purpose of practicing an owner finance tactic that I had learned in class, I didn’t go there to buy the properties. My number one goal, of course I want to buy it. But I can’t control making you say yes. Or I went there to practice something because I had full control. And then the guy said, yes. So it worked. I think it calmed my nerves a little bit too. What do I typically do? will say, with a mobile home world, I think it works better, because they already know that they cannot, I cannot get bank financing from a bank, and they’re not brand new to it. whatever price they say. I can do that. If I can do it on payments. Why do I like the word payments? It sounds simple. Financing. Sounds complicated. Payment. Sounds simple. I want to keep it simple. Another reason? Or finance implies interest to me. Payments and talk about interest. And I like to start my negotiations zero. And if you bring up interest, yeah, let’s talk about that. And yes, I do have some 0%. And some people have made me pay as high as 4% on owner financing, and I had a bite my tongue to scream, yes, I was happy. But it really didn’t matter. Honestly, the interest rate I matter about the payments, because I know $1, I can pay a month in order to cash flow. And that’s what’s most important to me, because I’m a cash flow investor. Yeah. And I also want to talk to him a fair bit of work, because it’s that money if you’re going to buy, so I’m going to buy the property from you. And you’re going to take that cash and set it in the bank, at whatever the rates are today, it’s probably gonna be different by the time this podcast airs, because seems like it’s going up every day. But 1% 2% 3%, whatever it’s going to be. If I can still pay you more, are you better off? And if you’re better off, I’ve now benefited your life more than just buying your property from you. And then I get a benefit, because you’re probably still going to have a cheaper rate than my private money is going to charge because they’re professionals at it.
Jeff Stephens
Yeah. Yeah. So if you’re if you’re specifically, hopefully shooting for land home packages, does that mean you’re often buying from owner occupants? Or is it more often that you’re buying from other landlords? Or is there a pattern there necessarily, do you prefer one or the other for any reasons?
I’d refer anyone I can help. I really don’t care who it is, I just like to help people and solve a problem. And then I can make money. I have bought more from homeowners, I have bought from tired landlords, or small time landlords that thought they were gonna get into real estate investing and realize this is actually work. And you can just rent it and then never talk to the person again. And then I’ve rented or bought from landlords that didn’t understand the mobile home space got into it. And then realize, alright, this is not for me, I don’t have the risk, tolerance or stomach for it. Though an inheritance. So I’m in Florida, you know, we sometimes call a Florida God’s waiting room, because everyone loves moved out here. But inherited properties, you know, that works for any asset class. But I would say a lot of the people that inherit a mobile home thinks of zero value at, and we’re able to help a lot more there. Now. From my experience, I did not get as much owner financing. If it’s an inherited probate property. Yeah. One other piece actually is another big pain point is title work. I’ve never done one that had perfect title work. That is a problem that we solve a lot as real estate investors, but mobile home world, and people just love to go to Staples, and buy a quitclaim deed and pass it around. And then they think they own it. I’ve literally found the packages from staples in the home and after I bought it. And so there’s always a lot of dirty paperwork with involved in it. And that’s another value that we bring in that I have my good title company that knows what they’re doing to help clean all that up and solve. We’ve had two generations of probates and get senators from London. I mean, we’ve had some crazy stuff that we’ve had to deal with.
Jeff Stephens
Yeah, that’s interesting. So that reminds me of something I wanted to kind of bring back a little bit. You know, I asked you before a few minutes ago about where are the properties you own. And you said they’re all basically 30 minutes from from home more or less. And that is 100% in line with not just my own thinking, but then the sort of, I guess, overall philosophy I’m out here advocating too. And a big part of it is kind of a quality control side of things. But another part of it is, well, another part of it would be like the ability to have a team that you know that that like the title company that you just mentioned. You wouldn’t probably want to have to start over every time with some random title, person and others. Ain’t you’ve never dealt with to handle, maybe complex, like title chain of title cleanups and stuff like that. But anyway, and then it goes back to acquisitions. Right. And so before again, before we hit record, when we’re just sort of chatting and figured out, the best way to tackle our conversation here was like the idea of Have I made it very clear, like I, I’m an advocate for sitting down in living rooms and having this conversation, right, and how that really goes hand in hand with with the financing structure, or the payment structure that you that you tend to negotiate. So just talk to us, I guess it kind of open ended question, if you wouldn’t mind. Talk to us a little bit about how you find that, like relationships and just one on one types of direct conversations with people. How does that relate to your business model buying these types of properties in this location?
Let me start out with, I have a business vision of a personal vision of business vision and my business vision. Within it, it states that everyone that comes into contact with my businesses, leaves, feeling better and more positive manner. So that means I contractors, people I buy from people, I don’t buy from my goals, everyone is better off by coming in contact when I go to sit down, or stand there, whatever I’m doing, because some of them don’t have anywhere to sit and the floors are all rotted away. We don’t want to sit in them. Whatever it looks like that I’m talking with them. I’m there to solve a problem. And I’m not always the solution. I’m not a licensed agent. And there have been times I tell them, I think you need to sell this on the MLS open market. That’s your best bet. And sometimes they don’t want to do that. So then I can help solve on and sometimes they say yes, I you know, you want me to call a friend right now. And you can just, I’ll introduce you and you too, can talk later. I’ve done that because I felt like I was not the best solution for them. Because I want to ask questions, build rapport, I’m genuinely interested in people. I don’t care what the topic is. I love traveling. And most people do. So if I’m in the home, they live there. There’s usually a picture of or a Knick Knack or something, or somewhere traveled. And I legit want to know about it. I don’t just ask to try to build a steak before. I’m interested in their trip there. And we’ll talk sometimes for a while just about that. Or I’ll find some I think there’s everything every two people have something in common that they can truly genuinely want to talk about. Yeah. And that’s what I looked at it. And then when usually they have to bring up the topic, get it back to business, because I just there to have fun. Yeah. And I come up with some solutions. And if they it doesn’t work for them, I keep asking questions. Well, what doesn’t work? What what do you not like? What if we could do this? Would it work for you? And sometimes I don’t know if I can actually do that. If they say yes, I’m like, Okay, well, I’m not sure. But let me go and ask somebody else. And I actually just had one that she was in pre foreclosure. And that is not my expertise at all. And she was getting letters, and she was scared by one of the letters that she had to be out in a week. So I called a friend up that is a short sale expert. I mean, he knows some of the bankers by name. And I asked him he, we’ve extended some of the documents. And he’s basically like, no, she does not have to be. So I was able to just ease her nerves. And that was my first goal there. Some people would go they’re like, Oh, yes. Now she’s got a fire lit underneath her. She has to sell right now. No, I’m there to make her feel better. Yeah. Yeah. I love that.
Jeff Stephens
I love that perspective. And we refer to like on this show a lot. Kind of we use I use the word lowbrow kind of to describe just the idea of trying to find people who were in a bind, exploit the bind, just just buy low, sell high find distress. And I don’t know I like what you like how you just articulated that, which is you know, it’s about helping people I find it sometimes you sometimes you’re creating solutions, because the other person says, Hey, I have a problem. But sometimes you’re creating solutions when they don’t even necessarily feel like they have a problem. They just might. They just might be moving towards something else. And it’s not really a problem. But my favorite example, I feel like maybe I overused this one is but if you’re talking to a couple grandparents and their their kid and their grandkids just moved a couple states away. They might want to relocate themselves, right? And that’s not necessarily distress, but it is motivation, but it’s not motivation driven by a quote problem. It’s more kind of like an opportunity. And I feel like there’s so much opportunity well, yeah, there’s opportunity on our part to be able to connect with those people and act as the travel agent, you know, in this case, sort of literally to get them from where they are to where they want to be or you know, physically Get them from where they are to where they want to be, or just situationally from this situation, to the situation they’d rather be in. So anyway, I just really appreciate that, you know, overall perspective you just mentioned there.
And you’re Whoa, I have a quick story of how I made it. Oh, yeah, you reminded me of, I went there to a property, built the report. And the guy enough solid demand, great owner financing terms, 0%. But I found out later, the real reason he sold it to me, he was in his 70s, he opened a cafe that he loves going in cooking, so he’s there for him, he got off work, he did not want to go and work on this property. He’s the old school investor that went and did the work. Later, I found out people were going and bullying him telling how terrible the property is, and trying to drive the price. Now, that was really directly insulting him because he was doing that work. And people didn’t realize they were insulting his work. And I didn’t say anything bad about it, he actually gave me a hug, to give me some of the best owner financing terms I’ve ever had. And I was confused at that moment, because I thought I should be giving him a hug. And it was such a brilliant, like, we both felt like we had the best thing. Because we talked.
Jeff Stephens
Yeah, that’s a beautiful example of a fantastic story. And it just, it just perfectly illustrates that. I just feel like 99% of the real estate world. They’re just so focused on on the property and the numbers and stuff. And they don’t realize that having those insights about the other person you’re dealing with, getting that insight is the thing that can absolutely
unlock
Jeff Stephens
your ability to create a much better sort of Win Win arrangement, you know, for everybody. Like, but it takes. It just takes a different kind of skill set. And it takes I think patience and willingness to, you know, I think a lot of investors maybe most like, if they’re not talking about the property within two minutes, they’re like, I’m wasting my time gonna move on to the next one. And like when you were just mentioning a few minutes ago at the travel photos, or the knickknacks and souvenirs from, you know, this country or that city or whatever. It’s a great example of I mean, I actually pretty much literally advise my coaching clients, like let’s, let’s play a game where we’re practicing delaying talking about the property, as long as we can just in favor of talking about this stuff. That is the connection between two humans.
And the other, we have to be okay, not buying it. And I am located in Atlanta, of course, I want to buy everyone I see. Yeah, but I just sleep better and feel better. on my own without anyone talking to anyone that I did the right thing, and I believe the right thing is genuinely wanting to help people. And hopefully I’m that person, but I cannot help everyone. That’s pretty silly for me to think that every person I go and me, I am their solution. I am not that good of a person. I just cannot help everyone. There’s that’s why there’s other people in the world and that it would be only I’d be the only person.
Jeff Stephens
Yeah, yep. Yeah, absolutely. I absolutely agree. I wanted to, I guess, wrap up with just what a couple observations I had from some of the things you from some of the things you said, right at the very beginning, you were talking about your experience with being a bad tenant some of the problems that caused but then it’s translated into kind of exposing you to some stuff you wouldn’t otherwise have been exposed to what you’re glad for. So hopefully, I’m not over extrapolating here. But to me, I said, Oh, Adrian is a guy who appreciates the value in adversity. Do you feel like that is, you know, kind of a hallmark of you as, as a person in general or the entrepreneur you’ve become I mean, you know, you said before, before we recording and after about how you’re a big mindset person, and I wondered if there was a correlation between those I, I see the value and adversity and I appreciate it.
Yeah, you’re definitely correct. I I do today, more mindset work. And I think that business is very easy. Mobile homes are very easy real estate very easy. We get slowed down and caught up with our limiting beliefs. And what we can do, what we can’t do, one of my favorite quotes is by one of my coaches, Ken homes, that if your action proves your faith, so if you are not taking action, you don’t believe it’s possible for you. And that’s just, frankly, Bs, I, I am successful, merely because I take what people say, and I go and try it. And sometimes I’m doing it to prove them wrong. I’ll be honest, my ego gets in there and I just want to prove them wrong. And when they’re right, it’s great because I’m successful. And then the few times that they’re wrong, which is not very often, then my ego gets Little boosts, and then I have to get back in check. But it’s just taking stuff and not being scared of fail forward. John Maxwell the book fail failing forward. Brilliant book, brilliant concept, essentially, do something trip over, fail forward, get up, do it again, keep asking for help get a coach, get a support group that you can borrow the face of the group. I mean, yeah, I wouldn’t be where I’m at with, I would be successful, but not as fast of the curve. And as confident as I am where I’m at, without all those elements around me. Yeah.
Jeff Stephens
I absolutely couldn’t agree more. And that also is a perfect segue to the last little thing I wanted to just mention and ask you about but but sort of mentioned too, is you you coach, teach other people, you’ve even written a book, which I want you to tell us about in a minute. Yeah, it’s early in this conversation you mentioned you have a coach or you had a coach, and you still do. And you’ve, you’ve even referenced a few other people you’ve learned from, but I believe a lot. It’s just funny when you get to a point where you start to want to share ideas with other people, Coach teach spread a message. There’s this kind of, I think, Bs assumption that like, Oh, you’ve reached a certain level on a mountaintop, there’s a you’re good. And now it’s just about distributing information, rather than continuing to grow and learn yourself. And so I love the idea of having a coach be a coach. And I’ve talked about that a lot here too, that I’ve, I have a coach, I would not be anywhere close to where I’m at without him. And for me to not be working with him now, even though I get to coach other people would be to me insane, absurd, and probably really arrogant, honestly. And so I just I don’t know, maybe I just want to feel free to comment on it. But I just wanted to point out and actually, I guess, congratulate you I think it’s an excellent thing that you are, have a coach because you are doing both things. And I maybe do you agree that like actually, there’s a really interesting. You actually learned by coaching other people. And of course you learn by being coached. i It’s just this really cool kind of symbiotic back and forth thing. But that was a big ramble. I’m sorry, Adrian, but like, what do you think about that?
I could not agree more, I have two big quotes that I remember, I cannot remember who said each one, they’re different people. One of them is not to hire a coach that does not have a coach him or herself. That is one of my, when I’m looking for a new coach, or adding a coach, I currently have two coaches. I’ve had up to four paid at a time. And I have a lot of really close friends. From some I’m in three masterminds. So in some of the masterminds I’m in there’s a lot of coaches within it. So I’m very fortunate to have good friends that people pay them a lot of money to be a coach. And I kind of get the free coaching will say because we’re close friends and the other one. And this is the one that really broke me into. Yeah, I should look into coaching. A guy said, Who are you to think that you are better than Michael Jordan? Because Michael Jordan has tons of coaches. And I’m not even a basketball fan. But that hit me I’m like, yeah, how I think I’m better than him. At his top, I can’t remember how many coaches he had obviously had a basketball coach. That one really hit me there. And I also believe, so I have my kin homes as my coach. And it’s a life business as a little bit of everything. I then have a relationship coach. And she is for me with significant others, with family, with friends and with myself. Those are all different relationships. When I was writing my book, I hired a coach for that because neither one of them specialize in writing a book, they could have helped me. And they can help me with the mindset stuff, but they couldn’t tell me exactly what’s working and how the process works. Because that’s not what they do the best. So I believe in coaching. And I believe it’s I will say specializing and hiring the right person, because you get there faster. That’s all it is. Yeah. If you’re driven person, you will get there. But if you want to get there faster, with less mistakes, win more confidence. The right coach is just phenomenal. Yeah.
Jeff Stephens
Amazing. This has been such an enjoyable conversation. So I want to make sure people know how to find you. But before you even mentioned that, tell us a little bit about your book. Like what would somebody get from reading it? What’s it called? How do we find it and stuff like that?
My book is how to buy mobile homes kept pretty simple. And it’s on Amazon anywhere you buy books. And it is a story of my journey, starting out as that terrible tenant up to where I am today. Essentially. It came out earlier this year, March of 2022. So the story all the way there. I talked about a lot of what we talked about today by Single families finding my way into mobile homes. And throughout my whole journey, I’m teaching about mobile homes. And it’s a book that I use the same mindmap for that, as I use for my actual classes, obviously, two days, you can go over more than what’s in a book. So it’s expand on more, but it’s not a book that I just said, here’s a little bit, come and pay me to get more if you’re an action taker, you can read the book, understand mobile homes enough, and go by him and make money and improve your life. Because I believe, part of my education side of the lifestyle Rei is my education brand. It is not only to teach people from my mistakes and my success, but it’s to pass on the information I learned from my mentors. Because if not, it dies. And I think that’s the biggest sin. I mean, my mentors have helped me have an amazing life. If I can just do that for a few more people. It’s
Jeff Stephens
just awesome. Yeah. Beautiful, beautiful. Well, if you’re not watching the video, the URL that you can see on the screen is lifestyle dash rei.com. Adrian, what is there other other good places for people to hang out with you any platforms you favor? Mostly?
Yeah, then go there. That’s my actual education branded page. And I do have a new site that I built. It’s Adrian, a DRI, a n s. Three sixty.com. And that’s kind of a landing page. It pushes people everywhere. It’s gonna bring you to the lifestyle to Sri brings into my social media. It brings you to my book, anything new I create there. I’ll link it all there. So people just have one place to go and find everything.
Jeff Stephens
Yeah. Wonderful. All right. Well, I certainly encourage everybody to go and and follow Adrian on those things. Check out the book. I mean, if you can download a vast amount of experience for you know, the cost of basically going to lunch, I think we’d be all be crazy not to do that. So I encourage that very much, Adrian, thank you for being here today. I really appreciate it. You’re welcome.
Thank you. And like I said earlier, thank you for having the podcast, putting in place for people to put information out there and adding value to everyone else’s lives precede it.
Jeff Stephens
That’s my it’s an honor to do it. Thank you. So there you have it, my conversation with Adrian and I, I’m guessing you would agree with me. He’s got both the incredible technical understanding of his craft and his niche within the real estate investing business as a whole. But he also brings a very, truly thoughtful real estate entrepreneur type of approach to how he does everything. So I hope you enjoy that interview upon listening to it as much as I did upon conducting it and really listening to it myself. So that is it for today’s episode of racking up rentals. But again, reminder, you can get the show notes for this including transcript at thoughtful rt e.com/e 159. Also, a reminder, please do a big favor to us by hitting the subscribe or follow in your podcast app button. So we’d really really appreciate that. And if you take just two seconds to rate and review the show if you feel like we’ve earned a five star rating. That’s amazing. And we are so grateful. Did you know we have a Facebook group for thoughtful real estate entrepreneurs as well. We do it’s called rental portfolio wealth builders. We’d love to have you join us over there. Just type group dot thoughtful rt.com into your browser and the magic of the internet will take you right to that page and you can join us if you liked this episode, and I hope you did. Please take a screenshot of it. Post that screenshot to Instagram and tag us we’re at thoughtful real estate. Well, we’ll see in the next episode. Thanks for being here. Until then. This is Jeff from the thoughtful real estate entrepreneur signing off. Thanks for listening to racking up rentals where we build long term wealth by being when when dealmakers remember solve the person to unlock the deal, and solve the financing to unlock the profits.
Leave a Reply