All Forum Posts by: Abraham Anderson

Thank you all for the kinds words, I am going to do my best to reply to all the questions:

@Tyler Horton

The capital for the first deal was from an earlier new construction flip of 4 town homes. I had the money to do that deal from a year of selling insurance (which I still do), if you want more details on that check out my first thread here

@Muhammad Sohaib Hafeez

I had to fire two property managers, currently I am self managing. For repairs/maintenance, all calls go to a google voicemail where they leave their unit number/issue, then I call the appropriate vendor to schedule repairs. For rent collection, they can either pay online with a bank draft (free to them), or with cash/debit card at any Walmart or Kroger, and the rent is direct deposited into my bank account. When there's vacancy, I use facebook marketplace & craigslist to advertise, it never takes more than a few days to fill

@Peyton Zachrich

Awesome bro, keep crushing it.

@Shawn Harrison

I would look for ways to increase your income. I know people who do wholesaling or flips in order to generate capital for their buy & hold properties, you could look into that, or into picking up a "side hustle" to save for your next rental.

@Ajibola Talabi

I got my first property through savings from my insurance sales job. See my first post here

@Aurelien Bonin

I found my local partner through Biggerpockets :) he saw other posts I'd made and reached out. Regarding qualification process, every bank can be different, one tip is go to local banks, they can be a lot more flexible in terms of requirements/qualification than regional or national banks can be. You can also get much better terms.

In terms of finding a bank that's willing to do an MHP, the qualifying question is asking whether or not they've done these types of loans before. Banks that have done them love them, but others haven't and don't understand the asset class, don't be their guinea pig.

@Joshua Zlatkin Check out my first thread here where I go into this

@Jacob Edwards

MHPs are very similar to apartments, they are both commercial multifamily. The two biggest expenses with apartments are turnover and repair & maintenance. With MHPs, both of these metrics are much better. The average resident stays ~13 years, vs ~1 year with apartments, so turnover is much lower. Also, with MHPs, the residents own their own home, so you have zero repairs & maintenance of their house (only capital expenses such as maintaning the roads, etc).

@Alex Jones

My daily mindset begins the night before. I lay out everything I need to do, then prioritize it based on the most important. It can be hard to develop this habit, but it's how you scale. Generally I will repeat self motivators to myself to stay upbeat and positive :).

@Daniel Hughes

To answer your question, yes. I'm naturally a very introverted person, it's a matter of making yourself be outgoing (because that's where the money is). Success is right outside your comfort zone.

@George Lods

Yes, see here

@Aaron Moayed

Currently I'm self managing, it's not too bad, I've automated a lot of it as I outlined above.

After I close the upcoming deals, my next "goal" is to hire a full time assistant to handle all of the day to day tasks of property management.

Metro is 1.1M, current rents are $170, market rent is $325-350. The plan is to go up $50 annually until we're at market (that way it gives residents time to adjust, and time to make improvements to the park, such as cleaning, landscaping, lighting, roads, etc). 

There is a lot of deferred maintenance, the rent bumps will be going into reserves to address that. Residents know that we plan to make the investment of improvements to the park, and they're willing to pay the increase knowing they'll have a nicer, cleaner, safer community to live in.

@Alina Trigub I remember, it was great talking with you then, I PM'd you.

@Taylor Chiu 20% down, we each brought 10% to the table. Remaining 80% was through a local bank.

@Andres Felipe Aristizabal My favorite business book is "Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude" co-authored by Napoleon Hill (who wrote Think & Grow Rich) & W. Clement Stone, another motivational speaker & businessman.

@Kenny M. Lewis Sounds like a good plan, stay focused & make it happen, brother.

@Stephen Moore Wheelbarrow Profits (Jake & Gino), Mobile Home Park Mastery Podcast (Frank Rolfe) & of course Biggerpockets.

@Nate Wilson If the deal makes sense, go for it. Don't be scared of larger deals, they're both easier to finance & manage than smaller properties (and they're a lot more profitable).

It's been nearly 2 years since my first post "$1,300,000 Deal at Age 21 & I'm Retired!", I wanted to share an update. 

Last year, 13 months after I bought my first 20 unit apartment, I had increased the gross monthly income from $12.8K to $17.2K, that allowed me to refinance out $163K ($33K more than I initially invested).
I did this through a combination of cutting expenses, raising rents to market, implementing late fees, pet/move in fees, and adding a 21st unit. 

After the refinance, I'm still cashflowing $3K+ per month, and I have all my money out of the deal.

From hundreds of hours of podcasts & reading, I decided to shift my focus to mobile home parks (in addition to apartments). I spent over a year cold calling, talking with brokers, meeting other investors, and even door knocking at owners homes directly to find MHP deals.

Finally in January of this year, another investor I knew sent me a lead on a portfolio of 3 parks. After many meetings, we settled on a price of $750K for 2 of the parks, a 30 unit and a 13 unit + a SFH.

Both parks are on city water/sewer direct billed, excellent location with strong demand, and a lot of upside in terms of low rents, addressing deferred maintenance, etc. The plan is to stabilize & refi out within 12-18 months, then snowball the capital into future deals. Essentially, the BRRRR method applied to commercial multifamily properties.

On these 2 deals, I had the capital to take them down myself, but I decided to partner with another local investor, we formalized a partnership agreement where we split all expenses/profits/work equally.

We finally closed on the 30 unit park as of May 3rd, and the 13 unit + SFH park is closing the end of this month. Including my apartments (which I own individually), that puts my total rental unit count at 51, and on June 1st it will be 65.

The main takeaways I'd like to share are:
1. Stay focused! If you haven't done a deal yet, or it's been a while since your last one, keep searching. Every day you move closer to reaching your goal; don't stop short of finding your next great deal.
2. You're better off buying no deal than a bad deal. I analyzed, went under contract, and/or visited at least 12 other MHP deals before proceeding on these. In this market particularly, you have to be sure your numbers and assumptions are accurate.
3. If you want to be successful in a particular niche, copy others who are successful in it. Don't skimp on your education, it's an investment in yourself. I've attended multiple live events & went through training courses from both apartment & mobile home park operators. Success leaves clues; you don't have to reinvent the wheel, copy what works.

Don't wait for something to happen, go out and make it happen. 👍🏻

@Aidan Mulligan "The stigma against pitbulls is cruel and unjust"

Insurance companies are in the business of analyzing and mitigating risk. Statistically, pitbulls are 5.6% of the canine population, yet account for 75% of all fatalities.

There's a reason many reputable insurance companies won't insure a property that has pitbulls, and it's not "cruel and unjust", it's the fact that these dogs were bred to violently attack and kill.

@Jeff Twigg let us know how it plays out. Probably will amount to nothing but an angry text/phone call (if even that).

I'll be there also :^)

Frank Rolfe has most definitely saved thousands of families from being displaced, because if his company didn't buy these parks & raise the rents to market, the park would be torn down & redeveloped into a higher & better use.

Part of the reason MHP owners are constantly ripped on for rent raises is the fact that, unlike apartments who are on yearly leases, mobile home residents are typically on month-to-month, so instead of increases being staggered throughout a year (like apartments), all the residents get the increase at the same time.

These problems are not the result of the companies buying the parks; if the original mom & pop owners of the parks simply raised rents with inflation, we wouldn't have this scenario where park lot rents are hundreds of dollars beneath the market rent. This leads to a situation like we're seeing where the new owners are vilified for preventing the property from being torn down by raising rents.

Frank & Dave are the 5th largest MHP owners in the USA, with ~40,000 lots, not sure how many Kevin's company owns. I attended MHU in January, it was excellent, as others have said, the networking alone was worth it.