How to Start Mobile Home Investing (The Right Way) for Just $15,000

Dave:

What’s the deal with mobile home investing and why do some investors find it problematic? Many investors say that you can put a little down and make an excellent return, but how can you do this ethically where it’s a win-win situation with your tenants? Today we’re talking about all things mobile homes.

Hey everyone, I’m your host Dave Meyer, and with me today is Henry Washington. And in today’s show we’re going to talk about mobile homes and mobile home park investing. And we’re going to bring on a guest, John Fed, who’s been investing in mobile homes for a very long time and has a broad spectrum of experience with this strategy. So we’re going to hear all about his experience and as you’ll hear in the conversation, a lot of it centers around this concept of lease to own or lease options. And I just before we get into the conversation, wanted to explain what that is. You might’ve heard this as rent to own, but basically the situation is when someone owns a property or a mobile home, they can create a structure where the tenant is basically buying the property from the current owner, you the investor over time.

And this can be a really great way for people who struggle to afford a down payment or might not have the right credit to get into home ownership. So there are some challenges though, and some nuances to lease to own that I want you all to understand, just so this conversation makes sense in context. But basically, when you’re a tenant in a lease to own situation, typically you are paying more than you would to rent out that situation because you’re trying to own that property, you’re maintaining that property and you just take on more than you would if you were just a typical renter. And that’s all well and good. But what happens unfortunately sometimes is that a tenant in a rent to own situation at lease to own situation falls behind on their payments and then the landlord basically can retake the property and it leaves the tenant in an unfortunate situation because they’ve been paying more for this property and now they’re not going to get to own it. So it can create misaligned incentives between a landlord and a tenant. So I just want to explain all of that because we’ll add some context to the conversation that Henry and I have with John. Alright, so with that disclaimer out of the way, let’s bring on Henry and John to talk about mobile home investing. John, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us today.

Henry:

Thank you so much for having me. This is awesome.

Dave:

Yeah, it’s great to have you here. So John, I feel like a lot of people who are first getting started and investing, myself included, don’t really consider mobile homes or mobile park investing generally as an asset class. So how did you get into it and how did you feel about it when you first started?

Henry:

It’s perfect that most people don’t think about this niche, which us a little more hidden and underground. Well, like most people, I have an ego and I never wanted to be a mobile home investor. I never lived in a mobile home ever, well once I guess, but never growing up. So I did live in one of my investments for a short period of time, but I’ve never lived in a mobile home, didn’t really have any friends that lived in mobile homes. They were not on my radar. And so I failed. I say that in a good way. I failed into mobile homes. That was my first deal, was a mobile home in a park. And then two weeks later I got a mobile home attached to private land. And I was embarrassed. Like I said, I had an ego, well like most real estate investors, and we want to do nice pretty homes and we want to brag to people.

And so I was embarrassed for my first six months investing in mobile homes. I didn’t tell other investors I would go to real estate clubs and I would sit on the side pretending not to have done deals when I know other people that were older than me, they weren’t doing deals and they kept showing up and I was embarrassed. And I finally told people what I was doing after six months, buying them in parks, selling them in parks and on land. And people would actually, they said like, John, why didn’t you tell us sooner? We don’t want these properties. You can have them. So it took me months to really embrace that, okay, there’s a need for this type of investing and I’m going to fill that need.

Dave:

What was it about mobile homes that you felt wasn’t worthy of sharing?

Henry:

Oh, that it’s not real property. That it’s not real estate. It’s not, it’s like failing into it. You want to be a doctor and you become a dentist, sorry, dentist, which is a great profession and you can make a ton of money, but I was embarrassed. These are trailers, the trailer trash term gets thrown around or slumlord, oh, this guy’s just being a slumlord, joking, laughing it off. And that was something I couldn’t handle at the time. My sensitive ego, that was it. But it allowed me to get start investing with very little money. I was broke at the time, and so this was a vehicle to get me to a lot of wealth.

Dave:

Well, were you a slumlord?

Henry:

I’m going to quick answer. No, but it did take me five years to realize my first five years selling mobile homes was just on payments. In fact, from 2002 when I started to about 2015, mobile homes are cash cows. You’ve probably heard that mobile homes are cash cows because you couldn’t sell ’em for cash. It was extremely difficult for that time to sell a mobile home and find a buyer that would cash you out or get bank financing. So for my first five years, I sold everything on payments except for mobile’s on land. You could sell those with bank financing. But the ones in the parks I would sell in my first five years, the reason I bring up five years is because every one of my properties defaulted. The people I was putting into those homes kept bailing. They would stay a couple months, they’d stay a couple years, but eventually they would bail.

And it wasn’t because the homes were crappy or they were slummy. In fact, everything I sold was as is. So the person moved into the home, they fixed it up if it needed fixing, but usually it was very nice. But I wasn’t a slum lord. But what I was setting people up for failure on accident or not really knowing, because as you can imagine in this world, there’s a lot of people that will agree to pay something like, oh sure, I’ll buy this house for a million dollars and pay on it. And you’re emotional. I mean, not a mobile home for a million dollars, but a house people get into bad mortgages and loans all the time. So I was putting people in high interest loans. I didn’t approve the people very thoroughly. The park would get in people with just a pulse. So I was putting the wrong people into my homes that were never going to stay the five or 10 years. I sell my homes on five to 10 year notes. And so I was just putting the wrong people in the homes selling for high interest and the properties were too expensive. So nowadays I sell for a lower amount with zero to average interest and most of my homes get paid off. So anyway, I was never a slumlord and I’ll say that proudly, but I was sort of setting people up for failure in the first few years, which was an eyeopener.

John :

Yeah, so this is similar to a strategy I hear people talking about, which is lease options where you essentially put somebody back into a property, they take over caring for that property, paying the taxes and the insurance and they have the option to buy. But I feel like some people see this or the way some people do this is they’re putting people into properties who maybe can’t actually afford to turn around and buy it. And so the landlords take it back. What was the shift you saw that this was happening and then it clearly sounds like you maybe understood that this wasn’t how you wanted to go. So what made you kind of realize what you were doing and then make a shift?

Henry:

Good question. There are vampires out there right now that are licking their lips and drooling because they say, John, that’s a great strategy. Get people in the home, take the down payment, collect payments for a few years, then you get the home back and you can resell it and you just keep doing that and you keep, people keep bailing and you can just keep selling the home. And there’s a lot of people that are like, that’s such a good strategy. When it gets tiring after a while, A it doesn’t feel good emotionally, and B, you have to go backwards. When you get a property back, you go backwards some. Now people usually didn’t damage my properties. I realized that only if they were vindictive towards me. Like most people when they can’t pay, they leave or they stay a month or two and then they leave.

They don’t want eviction. And with some kind words, with a little bit of money, maybe you can get people out of your home in a little bit of time without doing an eviction, without them damaging the home. And then you can resell it. But it gets tiring emotionally. And because you want, I’m in this business to help people. And also you take a big step back. It’s like, okay, I just got a property back now I can’t focus as much on gaining more properties, my marketing, my closing, it takes my focus away and I have to now resell this other property that I thought I had. So I’d rather have people knowing they’re getting a good deal, paying me off. Like, John, I want you out of this deal, so I’m going to keep paying you until the note is over. So for me it was looking at myself in the mirror and realizing that it wasn’t good for business. You just moved backwards and you can’t move as forward as you would because dealing with that other home that you got back.

Dave:

Yeah, I mean to me that does what you’re describing sound like the reason a lot of people avoid getting into this type of investing because that does feel like at least your early deals feels like you’re putting people in a negative financial position. And that’s probably worse off for them than even renting is,

Henry:

Which should never be the case. And you should really know your buyer. I mean, it’s taken me now 22 years, I think I have a good grip on the buyers that want to buy something on payments and how to make it win-win. In the beginning of my business, I really thought it was like a win lose relationship. If I win, you have to lose both on the buying side and the selling side and what a terrible investor mindset. That’s like somebody has to lose here when we all want the same thing. The sellers want to sell their homes and I want to buy it. The buyers want to buy this home. You just have to know how to really analyze a buyer and make sure that they have the ability to pay and it’s the right time of their life. I mean there’s only certain times in our lives when, okay, we’re ready to buy a home, we’re going to stay for a couple of years. We have responsibilities, we have a track record. But it did take me those five years of realizing that I think in those first five years I only did I want to say one eviction, maybe it’s either one or zero. Since then I’ve done a number since owning parks, I’ve done more. But those first five years I didn’t have to do I think one eviction maybe.

Dave:

Okay, we got to take a quick break, but we’ll be back right after this.

John :

Welcome back to the show. We’re here with John fro talking about mobile home investing. So let’s jump back in.

Dave:

You mentioned this sort of win-lose thing and I personally am a very big believer that real estate should be a mutually beneficial situation between tenants, investors, communities, service providers, everyone who’s involved in it, no one has to lose for an investor to win. So John, how now since you’ve learned these lessons, do you ensure that it’s sort of these mutually beneficial situations and deals going forward?

Henry:

This is an old saying, but buying with the buyer in mind. So buy the mobile home with your end buyer in mind. That’s the first step. It’s like make sure you got a deal well under market so that you can sell it under market a bit and it sells faster. You get more people interested, you make a hell of a profit. And so buying right is the first, I guess fundamental thing. If you just pay too much, then you’re going to have to dupe somebody else into buying this thing that you should never have bought. And then when you do sell the home, now you can sell it for cash. For the past nine years or so, which is a long time now, we’ve been selling way more homes as mobile home investors for cash, which has allowed me to save up more money, which has allowed me to purchase parks.

So if you’re selling for cash or bank financing, you really don’t need to care if those people are as long as they have the cash and can get approved at the park. But if you are taking payments, then you want to be super thorough on the background check that you do with your folks. You want to make sure that they have the ability to repay you, they have a good job that they’re showing up on time, they don’t have a victim mentality. There’s more stuff besides just like the numbers. Do they look good on paper? Do they show up on time? How are they treating you? Does their demeanor seem normal every time? I kind of like to poke the bear a little bit when I’m selling homes on payments. I try to ask the potential applicant for more and more things, not in a crazy way, what bicycle did you first have growing up? But just things that I’m kind of keep asking. That way I can tell if they’re going to get offended, why should I have to give you this information or what’s taking so long even though I try not to take a long time, but why do you keep needing this? I want for somebody that’s not entitled and they’re appreciative of this needle in a haystack opportunity that I’m providing them not to mention, verify income, not to mention call previous and current landlords. So be super thorough.

Dave:

Thank you for explaining that, John. And so over the course of your career, have you seen the success rate of your purchase options, your lease options go up?

Henry:

Yes, it is. It sort of nice to get some properties back and you can resell ’em again, but that hasn’t happened in a while. And now when people do need to leave, people get promotions, they move away or something bad happens and then they can’t pay for the home anymore. But my people now, because I have a better relationship with them because I vetted them so much more thoroughly now they call me ahead of time, which is what a concept, John, I’m not going to be able to pay or John, I need help with this. And so yeah, it has shrunk dramatically. I don’t know if it was this year or last year, I had one person default between all of my rent to own properties and other people’s parks and my parks. So super low, super low. Now

John :

I think the key here for those is intention, right? This is a legitimate strategy if done properly. There are an entire subset of people who truly need an opportunity like this to be able to own property. But I think you have to have the heart and the intention to provide that opportunity to that group of people. And we as investors have to take on the responsibility of putting people in situations that they can win, that they can be profitable in. We have to know that on the front side and actively look for people who A, need the opportunity and B, we feel like can actually capitalize on that opportunity. And when we do that, we turn those win-lose situations into win-win situations because you are essentially in the privileged position to be able to help with one of the biggest problems our country is facing and that is providing affordable housing.

And so I think that this is a strategy that more responsible investors should take on because we do need this, we need this as a country and there are families who need opportunities like this. And so if you are considering this as an option for you, I think that you need to take a long hard look in the mirror and ask yourself, why are you doing this? Are you doing this because you can make a bunch of money or are you doing this because you have a passion to want to be able to help people who are in a position where this might be their only option to afford housing? And if that’s the approach that you take, if that’s the heart that you have going into it, I think it can be a extremely profitable, but B, extremely socially beneficial. And where those two things meet, I think you’ll find passion. And when you find passion, you’ll just continue to grow and scale your business. There are

Henry:

Certainly plenty of scumbags out there that don’t think about the end buyer or don’t have those people in mind.

John :

So what I’d like to do here is because when I hear mobile home investing, my brain kind of goes all over the place. Multiple types of mobile home investing, right? You can buy mobile homes that are on a plot of land. You can buy mobile homes that are attached to absolutely no land and you’re just getting the mobile home. You can buy mobile homes and you’re just buying the one home that’s in a park that you don’t own. Or you can buy entire mobile home park. So when you say I’m a mobile home park investor, what does that mean? What kinds of mobile home deals are you doing or do you specialize in? I’m sure you’ve probably done them all, but can you give us a little example or definition of what each is and then where your niche specifically is?

Henry:

Over the last 20 years, mobile homes have kept me busy, which is awesome to say. And that I’ve doubled down, tripled down in mobile homes first, buying the individual mobile homes, just the rectangle on somebody’s land for a couple grand, which I still do in somebody else’s community. And then buying the mobile homes attached to a piece of property that I also own. And the same sellers. A lot of these mobile home sellers are sort of paycheck to paycheck folks, good people, but they may not have a lot of cushion. And so when things get bad, there’s title problems, health problems, job problems, home problems, the list goes on. But folks need help quickly. And it’s the same if you live in a mobile home in a park or a mobile home on private land. Those are good people in sometimes desperate situations. And I learned that quickly.

And then it took me over a decade to actually have the courage, the foresight and the capital to buy the entire parks. Before then I was adding homes to land and doing some things here and there, but it’s not an entire park. So yeah, I think the three levels are buying them in somebody else’s park as personal property, which gets a lot of people. If you’re not in real estate, that’s a great way to get involved in real estate without a lot of capital buying them. And in parks, we can wholesale them, we can buy ’em and fix ’em and flip ’em for cash. We can sell ’em on payments. We might be able to rent them if the park’s okay with that. And then on your own private land, just a little ones Z mobile home on a piece of land, a small piece, not like 10 acres necessarily. And you’re selling that, you’re either owner financing or you’re renting everything or you owner or finance the home and you keep the land. It’s like a one space mobile home park. And then the third level is buying the entire parks and then cash flowing those, adding more homes, increasing lot rent, increasing how it looks.

John :

So what would you say the majority of your deal flow is right now? In which one of those levels?

Henry:

Oh, definitely still buying and selling the individual mobile homes, cash flowing those wholesaling ’em, selling ’em on cash. Whether I am traveling around the country like I am now or back home. Definitely buying and holding and selling individual mobile homes in parks.

Dave:

And can you just give us a brief pro and con of each of the different types of investing here? What strategy might work for different types of investors?

Henry:

If you’re looking to make money, like, okay, I want to help people, I want to make money, I don’t have an ego, then you’re going to do more deals in parks because you don’t need a title company, you don’t need a real estate person, you don’t need a mortgage broker. And so always throughout my career, I’ve always done more deals in parks than on private land. And so it’s always been like a five to one, seven to one, four to one ratio. I’ve always been doing more homes in parks and then I would do one home on land because the people on land, they have some more options of how they can sell and they have a little bit more breathing room in a mobile home park that park wants lot rent. And if they don’t get it, you are being evicted very shortly after in most parks, some parks drag their feet and don’t evict you as quickly as they should, but I’ve always been doing more homes in parks than on private land.

The ones on private land, you do need more capital. You can take those homes subject to the underlying loan, which is very nice. That’s how I got into my first one. I didn’t have any capital. And then you can sell ’em for usually a bigger payday. The ones on land, they have the land with them, so you can sell them easier or quicker or faster for more money. You can take a bigger down payment when you sell on payments, you can sell the home and keep the land forever and then just charge lot rent. I mean even if you’re hustling, doing everything, you’re going to be buying more in parks so quick. People need help there and they’re kind of clustered around each other. Mobile homes are social creatures and so in parks, they’re all in one area. Mobile homes on land, usually the zoning is sort of similar around a certain area. So you’ll find one mobile home, you’ll probably find a bunch more, but the people in parks don’t have as much breathing room.

Dave:

And can you just give us an idea of price point? What does it take to get into one of these deals? Pick your favorite strategy, tell us, give us some of the numbers of how it might work out

Henry:

In mobile homes, in other people’s communities under $15,000, some areas around the country, the east coast, west coast, in certain areas like 20,000 or less, but you do not need a lot of money. Just because you have 40 or 50 grand doesn’t mean you have to spend it. I want people, even if you have five or 10 or 50 grand to do the same deals as if you only had five or 10. So to get into mobile home parks inside the mobile homes in the parks, absolutely under $15,000. If you drive around you in most directions, you’ll find thousands and thousands of mobile homes. And we only want to do one, maybe two deals at a time. So yes, you can spend more like the retail value in the past 10 years has shot up in mobile homes. So the retail prices we’re selling these for is significantly higher than it’s been.

Maybe in 2002 it peaked and now it’s down a tiny bit. But so the retail price is still stupid high. But the buying and the acquiring prices, we are still purchasing those homes like we were back in 2002 a long time ago. If you want to buy the homes with the land, personally I say not to have too much money either unless you want to just pay cash with buying mobile homes on land, I try to use creative strategies, purchasing with payments, purchasing subject to the underlying debt, going to buy an entire park. I’d say to have a hundred thousand or so set aside.

Dave:

Okay, time for one last quick break, but we’ll be back right after this.

John :

Welcome back to the BiggerPockets podcast. I think one of the things that’s attractive for real estate investors in this particular asset class, in this particular market is the idea of being able to buy something that actually cash flows. And so if you’re buying something for 15 to 25,000, do you have situations where you’ve bought these properties for around those price points but you’re renting them out? And if so, what are you renting them for?

Henry:

A few things to unpack there. So if you’re putting in that much money to one property, in my opinion, that’s a lot of money. And so whenever I sell a mobile home for cash, I want to at least double it. So if you have 15 or 25 into a home, I say get out of it or cash out and sell it because if that’s a mobile home in a park, unless you can get all your money back in 12 months or less. The litmus test, in my opinion, of buying and selling mobile homes, if we’re talking just inside of parks, when you sell them for cash, you want to at least double your money at least unless it was a mistake and you shouldn’t have got into the deal. If you’re selling on payments, I want people to get all their money back in six to 12 months or less.

Even maybe with the down payment. You’ve collected a big down payment of 15 or 20 grand, you’ve gotten all your money back. But one year maximum, I want people to make $400 cashflow and then sell for at least five years worth of payments, 60 months. So if you did buy for 15 or 20,000, it depends on the neighborhood. If you could get 12 or 15 grand as a down payment and then make your money back in cashflow, that’s the way to go. If you’re going to rent it out, you don’t have the ability to take a down payment. So if you’re into a home for 25 grand and you just rent it for like a thousand dollars a month and it takes you 25 months to get your money back, that’s not, in my opinion, that’s not a good deal. We can do better. That is a skinny deal.

And like I said, many parks won’t allow you just to straight rent, but if you could, I’d still on a rental want you to get your money back in like 16 months maybe. So we’re really, we want to get our money back fast, that way we can keep turning it. I know a lot of the folks I know or that are mobile home investors, start with 15 grand. That’s our seed capital to start everything else. So usually the first couple homes, we don’t have the luxury of selling on payments. We got to sell for cash to keep getting our bank accounts higher, then we can keep one on payments, sell a few for cash, wholesale for cash, then keep another one rent to own on payments. I’m sure there’s other ways to build wealth, but that’s how I would suggest it.

Dave:

And when you say sell for cash, do you mean you’re just basically flipping it?

Henry:

Big time? Yeah. Yeah. It’s never been a better time to get, well, the last nine years or so has been a great time to get cash. There’s buyers with cash that will pay 10, 20, 40, 60 grand for our used homes.

Dave:

So John, the margins here sound very compelling. When you talk about either doing a straight rental or a lease option, what are some of the expenses and management considerations that investors should take into account?

Henry:

Mobile homes, if they’re airtight or not airtight? If they’re watertight, they will be almost indefinite things. Creatures, they will, it’s water that really damages these mobile homes. So I’ve been through homes in the two thousands that look worse than homes from the seventies or eighties. It’s really the pride of ownership and how you keep up with it. So if you’re going to rent a mobile home to a renter, I encourage people to make sure that they walk through that home every quarter and fix things accordingly because renters will damage your mobile homes. I guess if you have a renter in a house versus a mobile home, they’re going to put more wear and tear on it with a mobile home. Now if you sell rent to own the way most people do, the way I do, the buyer is going to be responsible for the repairs.

And you want somebody in there with a pride of ownership. So the management for my first, I don’t know, 10 plus years, I managed my own properties where in the beginning it was more difficult. Those people weren’t trained well, like I said, my first five years I was getting a lot of homes back. But when you set expectations with your buyers that are making you monthly payments and they know that you are not going to be doing repairs, they are responsible for the repairs as long as they pay, they stay. They got to follow park rules, they got to follow my rules. You have people that they do their own work. I go by and see the homes just because I like to, Hey, what’d you do to the home? Did you improve? What’s going on here? And I kind of poke my nose in every so often, but not too often.

And you have good people in there that they take care of their own problems. They’re not calling you for repairs unless it’s a super major one. I do tell people, Hey, if something big happens and you’re having trouble, call me. Otherwise don’t call. But if you do need help, bad news is better than no news at all. So when you’re selling on payments, you have people that just pay you. They want to get you out of the picture, they take care of all their problems. There’s really so little management when you’ve sold a home right on payments, renting is a different story. Rental, you get all the same problems as a house, but when you sell on payments the right to good people, it is little to no management.

John :

Are you ever selling these properties as a home? And the reason I ask that is I did a flip this past year of a mobile home. So it was a mobile home on an acre, but the entire neighborhood was all mobile homes on an acre, but they were sold as houses, so they were comped against other properties that were houses. They were technically, they had to be affixed to the foundation. And what I found out when I went to go sell it was there’s a lot of things that need to happen and be documented that they happened in order for that property to be affixed to the foundation and be sold as a home. Is that anything you’re ever dealing with or what do some people need to look out for when they’re going to sell a mobile home as a home,

Henry:

Definitely. Well, if you know you’re going to sell to somebody, if you know that your exit strategy is I want to sell this home for bank financing, then that’s one course of action. But if you’re getting into the deal knowing I’m going to sell this on monthly payments or I’m just going to rent out everything or I’m going to sell the home, you can attach them legally to each other, the home and the land. You can also unattach them legally. So you can just sell the title to the home and keep the land for yourself. So knowing your exit strategy before getting into the deal is super important because you’re right, Henry, if you get into the deal thinking, okay, I’m going to sell this as all real property, and you get into the deal realizing that the foundation is incorrect or the laws have changed in the ordinances locally, or you can’t comp ’em off of house values or they need the title for some weird reason, but this home doesn’t have a title and hasn’t had one since 1982, that’s going to be a monkey wrench in the gears that will stop this.

So you really have to know the due diligence ahead of time on the exit strategy. Luckily, you could always sort of sell on rent to own, and you don’t need the comps from a bank to justify the price that you’re selling for. You don’t need to comp it out if you’re just selling on monthly payments. Only if they’re going to get a bank loan or insurance, do they need more of an appraised value.

John :

That’s a great call out. Selling it to somebody who’s going to use bank financing. You’re going to have to have that affixed to the foundation, and you need to know ahead of time, what does that entail? How long is it going to take? I had to have a special person come out that had to be able to go look at this property and certify that it was done correctly. So understanding yet who your end buyer is going to be, and also it helps you on the front end because I bought that property, assuming that was already done, which means I definitely paid more than you would’ve probably paid for a mobile home. And so selling it on payments probably wasn’t an option. So knowing these things on the front side can really help save people from getting themselves in a sticky situation with a mobile home.

Henry:

I hear about it all the time, just people, I mean even small things like the wind zones or yeah, the title that you didn’t think that you needed anymore, but you do and things can jump up and bite you.

Dave:

So John, tell us a little bit before we get out of here, what listeners who are considering moving into this asset class should consider before making a purchase

Henry:

Lean on someone else that has done this because this is a sort of an odd animal. There are things that you can be trained in with real estate that you came into this mobile home investing that you didn’t know. And there’s so many moving pieces in these deals. A deal can be a straightforward, simple one. Everything’s going your way and there’s not much hurdles. And usually it’s the deals that have a lot of hurdles that make us the most money. There’s things to watch out for, things that I’ve been bit by because I just didn’t think that this could even be a real problem. So I guess get educated or lean on someone that is doing this in your local area or that will help you ask questions. Ditch the ditch the ego. Just because these are mobile homes, you can still lose a ton of money. I mean, that’s the first thing that comes to mind because not a blanket answer that says, if you do this, you will be profitable.

Dave:

All right, great. Well, thank you for sharing your experience and insights with us, John. We appreciate it.

Henry:

Super happy to, I could talk about mobiles all day

Dave:

If you all couldn’t tell. I wasn’t really a huge fan of John’s early strategy and approach to investing. It sounds like his first few years he was making some bad decisions that put his tenants in a bad spot, and he was pretty open about that. So if we appreciate that from John, basically, I sort of cover this in the intro of the show, but what was going on was John was not doing a great job of screening tenants and he was repossessing properties that tenants thought they were going to buy, and that certainly increased his cashflow, but it left his tenants or previous tenants in sort of an unfortunate situation. And it sounds like fortunately John has improved in that regard and is now more successful in actually getting the people who enter into rent to own situations with him to actually own those properties, which I was very glad to hear because I’m just a huge believer that real estate investing should be mutually beneficial, that investors can still earn great returns and tenants can still have a safe, comfortable, great place to live. It sounds like John got there eventually, which I’m glad to hear because really believe that no one needs to lose. Thank you all for listening. Hopefully you learn something from this episode. For BiggerPockets, I’m Dave Meyer, he’s Henry Washington, and we’ll see you for another episode soon of the BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast.