The Mobile Home Park Lawyer Podcast

On this episode of the Mobile Home Park Lawyer Podcast, Ferd is joined by Ryan Hill and Brett Bowman. Ryan and Brett share the obscure way they got into MHP while also maintaining their day jobs, as well as some of the benefits of working as a partnership and how they get around managing parks out of state.

On this episode of The Mobile Home Park Lawyer Podcast, our special guest Nick Najjar who is an Entrepreneur, business owner, and real estate investor focusing on acquisitions and operations of mobile home parks in the midwest.  Nick Najjar works with the top Realtors in St Louis to host their events and produce their monthly trade publication, Real Producers. In this episode, you will learn Branding, Strategic Appreciation, Marketing, Consulting, and Relationship Action Planning Highlights [00:00:00] Episode Introduction [00:00:33] Introduction of the guest [00:01:05] How to get started in the Mobile Home Parks business [00:02:22] Getting the first deal on the market [00:04:08] The special sauce for uncovered gems [00:05:23] The Millionaire Park Opportunity [00:08:13] Professional operators learning from old park owners [00:09:31] How to look at broker deals and stay competitive [00:10:24] Finding Better Buyers in a Microeconomic market [00:11:39] Beating the offer of a competitor with a 500 million dollar line of credit [00:13:58] Premium pricing through a valuation perspective [00:19:36] Mistakes that park operators can make [00:23:20] What is HUD and why it's important [00:28:00] Finalizing the Contract [00:32:08] The Challenge of Repairing a Park Water System [00:37:51] Why Plumbers Don't Have To Go Through a Contractor Notable Quotes 8:13 “I like to call professional operators like guys like you and me, we run it like a business or at least try to and all that. And then you got the guys that built the mobile home park that owned the park for twenty years. And they're just such a unique type of individual that we learn so much from.” - Nick Najjar   11:39 “There's some brinkmanship and negotiation with I'm trying to buy your can of coke with a couple dance for 80 cents and you're trying to sell it for a dollar and a call for offers somebody so thirsty they're going to pay $2 for that can of Coke, even if it doesn't make any economic sense. - Nick Najjar   19:36 “There are some big, skilled operators that operate portfolios in all parts of the country. I just think that's a lot harder. And you're going to need a lot more and a lot better staff and it's going to reduce your margins. But if you can scale, maybe it's okay.” - Nick Najjar   Connecting with the Guest Website: https://stlrealproducers.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/STLRealProducers/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicknajjar/   Connecting with MHP Law: Website: https://themobilehomelawyer.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/The-Mobile-Home-Park-Lawyer-103814958118069 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/themhplawyer-ferdniemann6923147/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themhplawyer/   #HUD #PremiumPricing #MicroEconomicMarket Transcript Intro: This is the Mobile Home Park Lawyer podcast with Ferd Neimann. If you're looking to generate wealth and passive income in the lucrative world of mobile home parks, you're in the right place. You'll discover solutions to the common legal and operational pitfalls and how to optimize parks to maximize income. Your host is in the trenches. He's a real estate attorney, financial analyst and mobile home park investor and operator. Now, let's turn it over to Fern Neiman.   Welcome back Mobile Home Park Nation Ferd Neimann here again today. Another episode my guest today Nick Najjar. Nick's in the mobile home park business. Just like me, he's in Missouri as well. Owns Parks, Buys sells, owns parks in the Midwest. Please help me welcome my guest. Nick, thanks for coming on, man.   Thanks for having me. Excited and honored to be with you today.   Great. I know, I know you from the past and we worked on some deals together as well. But for our guests that don't know you. Maybe give us a little more of your background and how you got into this asset class. Uh, yeah, so   I have a couple of friends that have been in the business for probably over a decade now. Actually, both of my fingers, 15 years, maybe ten or fifteen years. So they were in it. Like most people that are intrigued by the mobile home park business, I've been intrigued in the business for over a decade. About five six years ago, I went to the first, you know, my first Frank Ralph, Dave Reynolds Mobile Home University Boot Camp. Then I actually ended up starting a business around that same time, so I kind of put my buying mobile home parks on hold for a minute. Then I picked up the activity again, but our first park in 2018 and then the year of COVID, we actually bought three parks and like an 18 month cycle and got one set to close here, plus close the day. But that's not happening, so we'll see what happens. But yeah, just for parks. Just just cranking away, man.   No, that's great, man. Now I know you find somebody deals off market or they've all been off market or have you bought anything on market?   It's a good question. So the first deal was A Market Sunstone listing that was on the market for a while. Fairly rough area up in the south side of Chicago. And  I just want to get my feet wet. Got a pretty good deal. Seller Kerry terms are actually in the middle of refinancing that right now, like waiting on the appraisal to come in so that that should work out really well for us. And then the second one was an off market cold call to an owner. And then the third one was wholesaler, one of our mutual friends, Corey Woodruff, thinks thanks to props to him for Hook Me Up with a deal after we bought that one, I started looking again and he's like, hey, we got the seal. It was a very rough bark. 81 sites. 29 occupied homes. 15 abandoned homes. Very rundown. Out-of-state owners. Just a project, but we got a really good deal. Corey took care of us and we took care of him, and we're still in the middle of that project because it's hard to get people to show up to anything. And then the third one was another off market. I'm sorry. Wait, I'm getting confused. Oh, fourth one was an off market as well. So two off market, one wholesaler and one broker. So good. Good little mix of everything.   Yeah, that's good. Cool. Now how many? Give me some tips on how you find an off market in today's market because today's market is pretty competitive. There's a lot of guys out there, buyers tie up, tie it up or sinus wholesalers call it, and it seems like a feeding frenzy at times. I get calls and postcards all the time, but there are still uncovered gems out there. Do you have any special sauce you can share with our listeners?   Oh man, I actually don't really think there's a special sauce. Kind of like most things, like just we just kind of put our head down and go, we do use an auto dialer mojo. We actually just kind of scaling up right now. We have two full time VAs that are combing through our lists and really just trying to update our owner records is as good as possible. But the biggest thing and I've been talking to my partner Jason about this, actually, I had a conversation this morning, just the daily weekly disciplines of prospecting. I fortunately have it in my background of sales like, you know, just sitting down for sometimes two to four hours a day, just literally like prospecting email and brokers calling owners, tapping into relationships, reaching out. Ironically, post on the Facebook mastermind group today probably won't get a ton of traction, but I see people like, Oh, you know, I'm looking to buy parks just like, isn't every single person in this group looking to buy? But, you know, just kind of throwing everything on the wall. See what sticks. So yeah, I guess the short answer is no secret sauce, just a working man, working hard to try and find deals. So I will say one tip and this kind of funny story that you kind of.   So I called the owner of one of the parks that you own. I can share it if you want. It's in the St. Louis metro area. I think you closed in February, March. I called the owner, talked to him in October of last year. Typical owner call and I'm interested in selling. I got I got some information out of him. He's like, Yeah, you know, I've got this many sites. I just threw out a cold off. Or maybe it was like two million bucks. I don't know exactly. He's like, No, I'm just not interested in selling. Three months later, I see your Facebook post just excited. We close this great deal with six of the seven cats, a great market like probably one of the best markets in all Missouri. It really was just like, Wait a second, I know that park. I looked it up. Talk to the owner. I had to talk to him the same week. I'm sure I warmed him up. Like he probably went home to his wife. Hey, got an offer to Millionaire Park and she's like, Oh, did you take it? And he's like, No, and she's like, Why didn't you take it? And then, you know, and you probably called in the next day and oh, you know what's funny?   That's what this guy is. We really tried. We really didn't reiterate anything on that contract. We really tried to be really nice. The guy, because he owned another park, was five hundred and thirty five pads in the same trade area. And we're like, We want to get that one. This one was sixty eight and you're right, the great submarket direct bill water sewer .0 park owned homes. Ninety five percent occupied, nice looking park. It was pretty much a dream, and he told us he gets called every day and on the day of closing my business partner, I went down there to shake his hand and, you know, butter him up to try to get the big park. And while he was there, three people called him and he said, I told you, I'm getting another offer. And at the last minute, there was a little bit of a closing statement issue that got me pretty riled up. And he's standing there and he said, hold on, They say they're closing today, but call me tomorrow it looks like they're threatening to walk and Andy was there with him.   He's like, He's not bluffing. These calls are happening. So we're like, all right, close the deck thing and we got it closed.

On this episode of the Mobile Home Park Lawyer podcast, Ferd explores how to keep a deal going when a seller is defaulting. Ferd goes through what to do when a seller gets cold feet, gets a better offer, or is hiding something sinister about the property. Ferd shares his own experiences with sellers which have saved him hundreds of thousands of dollars.

On this episode of The Mobile Home Park Lawyer Podcast, Ferd discusses re-trades – how to go about it and how to respectfully drop deals. Ferd shares some personal experiences about re-trades and gives his best advice on how to handle re-trading.

On this episode of The Mobile Home Park Lawyer Podcast, Ferd discusses why grandfathered rights might be superior to legal conforming zoning. Ferd shares some personal examples of when being grandfathered in can be better than legal conforming zoning. Ferd talks about how cities can rezone your property and explains why they would want to do that.

On this episode of The Mobile Home Park Lawyer Podcast, Ferd is joined by MHP and RV park Owner Heather Blankenship. Ferd and Heather discuss the advantages owning a RV park over owning a MHP, trends within the RV industry, staffing your RV park and so much more. Heather also shares some of her best advice and urges you to get involved with RV parks now and before they’re institutionalized!

On this episode of the Mobile Home Park Lawyer Podcast, Ferd is joined by guest MHP owners, operators and entrepreneurs Dylan Stewart and Alex Donnolo. Dylan and Alex are new to the MHP industry but have had rapid success. Dylan and Alex speak about how they got into MHP, tips and advice for investors looking to get into MHP and they also share some horror stories from which they have gained experience and learned from.

On this episode of The Mobile Home Park Lawyer Podcast, Ferd is joined by colleague Jonathan Gilmore. Jonathan is a veteran, a real estate lawyer and has experience in land development. Throughout this episode Ferd and Jonathan discuss general ticks and general 1021’s, why you should roll up your tick interest into the GP/LP investor LLC, and tax avoidance.

On this episode of the Mobile Home Park Lawyer podcast Ferd is joined by colleague Kristin  Dreasler. Ferd and Kristin discuss how to navigate mobile home title issues. Ferd and Kristin share personal stories and experiences when dealing with mobile home titles and also give you their tips and advice on how to deal with different complications when trying to get your mobile home title correctly.  

On this episode of the Mobile Home Park Lawyer Podcast, Ferd speaks to Frank Bowman about navigating state and local regulations in Illinois, as well as some other places too. Frank gives you all you need to know and what to look out for when developing or installing homes from a regulation standpoint and some very useful information to know before you start.

On this episode of the Mobile Home Park Lawyer podcast, Ferd interviews Gene Norman. Ferd and Gene discuss the importance of weather alerts and how Gene’s system has helped MHP owners. Ferd and Gene also discuss SECCO and encourage you to attend online, so that you can make great connections and reap all the benefits of the weeklong conference.

On this episode of the Mobile Home Park Lawyer Podcast, Ferd interviews MHP specialist and broker Jon Shay. Ferd and Jon discuss a series of topics including the broad range of personalities within the MHP industry, advice for first time buyers, finding the right broker for you, real estate, twitter, and more!  

On this episode of the Mobile Home Park Lawyer Podcast, Ferd covers a case study. Ferd discusses how to turn zero into one million dollars with one park in two years. Ferd shares some tips and lessons he learned from this deal along with some reasons why the MHP industry is worth investing in and how it's fun to invest in!

On this episode of the Mobile Home Park Lawyer Podcast, Ferd interviews Bill Baird. Ferd and Bill discuss how submetering water and sewer will save you money. Bill informs us about a master meter and its benefits and cost. Ferd and Bill also analyze and take us through some experiences and current examples of submetering with Ferd’s MHP/s/residents. 

On this episode of the Mobile Home Park Lawyer Podcast, Ferd continues the mini-series based on his previous case studies. Ferd discusses how to turn one hundred grand into a million dollars in one year from one park, and goes through some of his own personal experiences 

On this episode of the Mobile Home Park Lawyer podcast, Ferd speaks to Ray Mazzie of Southern Waters Capital. Ray gives some great insight as to what a developer does and shares some figures which can be really useful for anyone looking to get into the development business!

On this episode of The Mobile Home Park Lawyer Podcast, Ferd speaks to Sydney Barker, an asset manager for Open Door Capital. Sydney discusses what it is, Open Door Capital does and what it’s like to manage properties all over the country, from Hawaii to Alaska, as well as offering some great tips and tricks for people in the industry

On this episode of the Mobile Home Park Lawyer podcast, Ferd talks to Joshua Diaz, a new MHP owner about his experiences so far in the industry. Joshua discusses what he’s found surprising for better and for worse as well as what tips he can share with us through his experiences so far.

On this episode of the Mobile Home Park Lawyer Podcast, Ferd is joined by his father, Ferd, for the 100th episode, to talk about some of their weirdest and funniest stories they have over their partnership in MHP. Sit back, relax, and enjoy some gold as the guys reminisce through the years. 

On this episode of The Mobile Home Park Lawyer, Ferd discusses knowing when to sell and leave some for the next buyer. Ferd takes us through an experience he had with an MHP in Southern Illinois that wasn’t worth the hassle. This MHP taught him to leave some meat on the bone for the next guy.