The Journey from Door-to-Door Sales to Real Estate Investing

Ready to embark on an inspiring journey with Derek Vickers, the man who exchanged his door-to-door insurance sales career for the lucrative mobile home park investment? Join us, as we wander through Derek's intriguing life story from Virginia to Florida, from the insurance field to the challenging but rewarding world of the real estate market. As COVID-19 hit, he saw the opportunity in mobile home parks and took on this venture with his exceptional cold-calling skills. 

Derek's first real estate deal was no smooth sail, but he weathered the storms heroically. He shares his triumphs in turning around a troubled trailer park in Brevard County, Florida, into a desirable place to live. He navigated through difficult owners, delinquent tenants, and even municipal regulations. Particularly, his struggles in Florida, offer a unique perspective on the complexities and rewards of investing in mobile homes. 

Derek does not stop at sharing his experiences but also shares tips on overcoming real estate challenges. From leveraging his team for consistent leads to staying persistent when making sales calls, he is a treasure trove of useful advice. He also underscores the importance of systems and processes in this business, with examples from his own journey. Wrapping up, Derek discusses his approach to automation, the importance of standard operating procedures, and provides a sneak peek into his masterclass program, where he lays out the ins and outs of underwriting, structuring, and financing deals. Tune in and be enlightened!

Link to Derek's Free e-book:
https://go.ondemandcontents.com/checklist

Link to IG: https://www.instagram.com/derekvickers885/
Link to X (FKA twitter): https://twitter.com/derekvickers885

https://linktr.ee/derekvickers885

Transcript

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0:00:03 - Marcus
Well then, welcome back to this week's episode of MVP Real Estate Podcast. We have Derek Vickers here from Florida. I'd ever confirmed that you are from Florida, right? Yeah, yeah, okay, good, so you do your investing there. But thanks for joining us. I'm sure your weather is better than us. Up here in Wisconsin we're still below 60 degrees. 

0:00:24 - Derek Vickers
Seriously. 

0:00:25 - Marcus
Yep, oh fine, but we've had 90s like the past week. We're in like a cold snap for some reason. Who? 

0:00:32 - Dan
knows. I just want to add we are also in season three, episode 18. 

0:00:37 - Marcus
Forgot that part. Thank you, Dan, but thank you, Derek for being here. Thanks for giving us the time. I want to kind of find out because I was jumping to these shows cold If you can give me and our viewers kind of a background of kind of where you came from and then how it developed into what you're doing right now in your career. 

0:00:57 - Derek Vickers
Yeah, yeah, I'd love to, and this can either be an hour or 30 minutes, but I'll make it relatively short. So actually I've lived in Florida for I think about 13 years now, and basically I grew up in Virginia and I grew up in a small town that everyone knew everyone a thousand people and I went to school, went to college, didn't finish college we won't get into that and so I moved to Florida because I was hanging out with the wrong people when I'd gotten out of college and just going down the wrong path. I'm like I need to get out of here. So I moved down to Florida and I started selling insurance door to door. 

I moved to Florida like with $300 in my pocket. I had like a $300 tax return. I had just gotten fired from my job in Virginia but I did have that tax return coming in. So I'm going to take all this cash that I got and moved to Florida. I got the bright idea to go sell insurance door to door commission based sales because I'd read a book I forget what book it was, maybe a Zig Ziglar book or something he said. 

Salespeople make just as much as doctors and lawyers, and I'm like oh shit, this is, this is okay, I can go do this because I can't be a doctor, I can't be a lawyer, right? Just couldn't do that, I didn't want to do that. And so I started selling insurance door to door and just getting my teeth kicked in every day, just brutal, brutal. I think I made like 13 grand my first year and like, if you think about that now, it's like how the heck did I live off that? Well, my rent was 300 bucks at this place and yeah, you know. 

So a lot of turmoil in that, but I ended up making that business work took me a few years to get going, but then I started. I started building up a team where I had like 10 people and then I built it up after nine years to where I had 100 people on my sales team. I was this big regional director for a large insurance company, so I was making like big numbers of money. But you know, with this particular company I had all the office expenses and business expenses and things, and so you know, I wasn't really making that much money, but it was like oh. 

Derek, you're doing so great. 

0:03:20 - Dan
And I'm like damn dude. 

0:03:21 - Derek Vickers
no, I'm not Right. And I always wanted to invest in real estate because I figured out and this will, this will make you laugh. So I thought the guy who made you know who who was worth a hundred billion. You know a hundred million, a billion, whatever. I thought they got paid that every year, right? 

0:03:40 - Dan
I thought they got a W two every year. 

0:03:42 - Derek Vickers
That said, hey Dan, you got paid a hundred million dollars this year. But then I started doing research. I'm like damn dude, these guys, they invest in assets and the assets appreciate and blah, blah, blah and that's how they create these large net worths, and I'm like most of them do it through. Real estate is a great vehicle to do that, and so I actually. That was about 2015. I started actually just looking for multifamily deals and underwriting them, learning how to back of the napkin, math and do all this other stuff and figure out Right. 

0:04:18 - Marcus
Mm, hmm. 

0:04:19 - Derek Vickers
And so this leads up into 2020 actually. So I've been doing that, didn't buy any real estate. Until then, I was still in the insurance business. Boom, covid hits Right and uh, are my insurance team. I mean, we couldn't sell anything. 

0:04:33 - Dan
I mean. 

0:04:33 - Derek Vickers
Florida was still open, but there was so much uncertainty in the market yeah, no one wanted to pull the trigger on anything, so our revenue went. I mean, I think it was a third, maybe even less, of what it was. Oh my God, wow. I got to get this real estate thing going now Like this is crazy, right. And so, you know, I started um looking again and like damn, didn't multifamily you know it's 150 grand a door in Orlando, 200 grand a door in Orlando. Like that's not going to work for me. I don't have that much money right now. 

0:05:08 - Marcus
Mm, hmm. 

0:05:09 - Derek Vickers
So I had a friend that was buying mobile home parks and he's like, take a look at this asset cost dude. And I knew he was doing this. Oh my God, I mean, I grew up around trailer parks. I grew up around trailer parks Like no, it's not. So I started looking. I'm like, damn, I like the fundamentals of this asset class shrinking supply, increasing demand, Like they're the cheapest place in town. There's no affordable housing. I'm like, man, you know this sort of makes sense. And so I did what I knew best. I got a list of mobile home parks and in between my interviews and stuff, when I was still working in insurance, I was just cold calling and that's how I got into the business that is awesome and kudos to you one for his. 

0:05:51 - Marcus
Sales is difficult. That's actually how me and Dan met. We were in sales who work for the same company. Sales is difficult. You had the expression of getting your teeth kicked in. That's what you feel like half of your day is you're getting your teeth kicked in. And then you have the one good meeting where you're like, ah, it's worth it. And then you proceed to get your teeth kicked in the next five. So sales already not fun. But selling a non tangible asset like insurance is even more difficult. 

So for you to be able to build a book of business with that is super impressive. I don't think I have the the tenacity to sell insurance, so I'm going to give you kudos on that one. And being able to pivot and go into real estate, which is super cool, so all impressive. And to go into mobile home parks, which are not like the fancy, fancy glamour investment, but as like as I got into it. 

Because when I got into real estate, like I told you, I started listening to bigger pockets, the owners on there. They're big on mobile home parks. So they kind of changed my mindset on what I thought mobile home parks were, so where I look at them now and if they're working and they're operating correctly, they're kind of like this new, like the tiny home communities. They were like the original tiny home communities. They're not all junkie, they're not all rundown, the people are nice, it all works and it's great. People just need to learn more about it. So hopefully you're going to incite them on on the real workings of how they work yeah, in the benefits of them. 

0:07:29 - Derek Vickers
For sure, for sure. 

0:07:31 - Marcus
So you said you got. You got tipped by your buddy to get into mobile home parks or to look at it. 

0:07:39 - Derek Vickers
Yeah. So actually, you know, when I actually became friends with this guy and this is so. This is sort of an interesting story in itself. So I didn't want to go. I was in the insurance business still and I didn't want to go to this networking event one night. Didn't want to go. I was like gosh, most of these people just go there and get drunk and they're trying to hit on girls Like I don't want to do that, I'm trying to make some money. 

I'm like, screw it, I'll go anyways, right. And I met this guy there and he was working for like a real estate company. But this is the guy who eventually got into mobile home parks. And when he did, him and I would actually meet at my little cheap condo in the afternoons and I would cold call insurance and he would cold call mobile home parks. I didn't really think about what he was doing or anything like that. But when I decided to get into the business, he kind of tipped me off to like, hey, dude, you need to get into this and check this out. Because of the various things that I said earlier was that did I answer your question there on that. 

0:08:39 - Marcus
Yes, yeah, yeah, no, it's. It's just cool to have somebody else kind of push you into it, especially when you're a little reserved. It makes the comfort level go down. And I was just kind of curious obviously, when you build relationships in real estate, did you guys end up syndicating on that first deal or did you jump in all by yourself? 

0:09:02 - Derek Vickers
Well, no, and so the first deal, actually, I found I sort of fell into. So this is where this networking meeting was so important. So this guy, he had a capital partner that was investing with him, that happened to live down the street for me, and so I was like he was like, hey, you need to meet this guy. And I'm like, okay, yeah, I'll start talking to him. So I started sending him some deals because I was finding stuff. I'm like, hey, what do you think about this deal? He had a little experience in the industry as a real estate guy. I'm like, hey, this is what I'm underwriting this deal at. What do you think it is? You know, what did I mess up on? So he was sort of kind of pushing me along. And then I was finding some good stuff and him and I kept communicating, became pretty decent friends, and he calls me one day. We had talked about building real estate portfolio and stuff. And he called me one day out of the blue and look this like, okay, here's the, here's the little thing here. 

So like people say, oh, you got lucky on your first deal. Yeah, dude, but you didn't make all. I made all these freaking cold calls before I got my teeth kicked in and insurance for freaking tenure. I paid my dues, bro, trust me, trust me. But he calls me and he's like hey, I got this deal. I had it under contract. My operating partner backed out, I'm closing in seven days, Do you want it? I'm like I'll call you back tomorrow. And I got off the phone and I'm like All right, dude, what do you? What are you doing here? You need to call back now. You know you're gonna say yes because I was listening. So I was listening to some Grant Cardone stuff at the time and I could hear him in my ear like F and take action, man. And I'm like yeah, all right dude. 

Let's go. 

0:10:52 - Marcus
He will get you inspired. For sure. 

0:10:55 - Derek Vickers
Yeah, yeah. So I was like I need to move on this. Yes, it's not perfect, it's not the best deal, but I'm gonna go in and and I didn't have to put any money in that deal, but I got it was 20% of the entire deal, it was a. It was a good little deal for me for running the operation and I wanted to do that because I wanted to learn how these things worked. Yeah, I wanted to deal with the tenants. I wanted to learn all the BS that happened around them. And the great thing about this deal too it was like 15 minutes from my insurance office, and so what I would do when we close this? I so I was suited up every day in the insurance business, sometimes even a vest, and I definitely didn't walk into the trailer park like that. 

0:11:36 - Dan
So I was saying don't do that, don't do that. 

0:11:40 - Derek Vickers
No, and so I get four o'clock every day. I would change out of that into like a t-shirt and you throw a hat on and I would go over to the park and this was a disaster of a deal and maybe you're gonna get into this question, but it was. It was a mess of a deal, but that's how I got into that first deal really. 

0:12:02 - Marcus
Yeah, but this that's super exciting because now you get to go through how it runs Terribly and then how to clean it up and make it work more efficient, and the things you need to do to make it work More efficient with with no background in it. It's you're drinking from a fire hose because you're you're trying to manage what is and learn where to take it and then try to implement all that. So what were some of the? Let's start with the problems. What were the big problems that you were seeing consistent from the tenants that were there right, right in the moment when you bought it? 

0:12:38 - Derek Vickers
Yeah, so you know it's funny, first day, like day of closing, yeah, the the a whole owner we bought this from called the city water and said, hey, we're closing this day, turn the water off this day. And I didn't know, like, hey, you know, maybe we should have changed the water over first or whatever. So we get, we start, the tenants don't have water the first day of closing. I'm like, oh my Great, like so drinking from a fire hose for sure. So we had to go through this big, you know, as an emergency, trying to get the water turned back on, and my office manager in the office Was helping me with some of this stuff, and so that was just one little problem that happened first. 

But this park it was 22 units, it would. There were actually 10 units that were occupied. They were park owned units, meaning we owned the units and we rented them out, which is not where you want to be in the mobile home park space, and then 12 of them were vacant and they were in utter disrepair. I wish I had a slide show to show you like pictures of this deal. You've been like what are you doing? What? 

0:13:47 - Dan
are you doing? 

0:13:48 - Derek Vickers
Yeah, and not to mention that this park was full of criminals. When we finally checked like the criminal registry and things in the park, like they were all like in this park, and I had to go to that park every day and I was literally this is not, you know, hyperbolic like I was literally chasing people shooting up out of the vacant homes. 

0:14:14 - Dan
So I was in this really clean. 

0:14:16 - Derek Vickers
Yeah, I was in this big clean insurance office and Then I had to go deal with that. Yeah, and you know, someone looking at that would be like why are you doing that? Well, I, I'm used to rolling my sleeves up, like the insurance business, like as much as I have like things I didn't like about it, like the tenacity I have now, like you just can't, you can't blow me up like yeah. I've been. I've been through it all like I've been through a bunch of struggles. 

So it's just I have had that persistence from that now and so I was willing to go do that, and so we bought this park for 425,000, by the way and so there was a lot of people that were vacant there were hadn't paid rent. There was a guy yes, there was some time during COVID there, so there was some overlap of eviction moratoriums but there were like half the tenants were Delinquent before that even happened. Oh, so it it was a. 

0:15:19 - Marcus
It was a mess like it was so that could be over a year of no rent payments. 

0:15:23 - Derek Vickers
Oh, one guy was like, I think, almost 20 months Really. 

0:15:28 - Marcus
Yeah, and then in that moment, you're in COVID. So there's no, there's no evictions. So you guys are sitting on what you purchased, unable to get rid of what you need to Clean up or improve. 

0:15:42 - Derek Vickers
Well, no, we were actually able to get some people out. It just wasn't as easy and it took, you know, it took longer than it should have and a couple people just kind of refused to leave and I was. It was a. I could go on about this deal forever because I'm just. Some of these other stories are popping in my head. You know, I got threatened by a guy and then he calls me the next day. He's like oh, I'm so sorry, man. I didn't mean that when he was literally told me he was gonna freaking, kill me today. 

0:16:15 - Marcus
Didn't mean it, that was a slip, sorry. It reminds me of Going to see yeah, oh, there is. I thought you were frozen. It reminds me of going to see this duplex and one of the tenants would not respond to the the owner, and she was like well, we can see the upper. We can't see the lower because they haven't gotten back to me, but we can see the basement because it's common space, and we go to the upper, we go down to the lower and then we're in the basement and I hear, like people running across the floor and I like duck behind her because I don't know what's about to come down the steps in this lady unloads on the owner about how dare you be in my space? 

Just complete loss of control Over the whole building. Like I don't want this to be run like a militant base, but like she couldn't respond to your text. But she can run down the stairs and berate you. So I'm gonna leave. And I told the lady like hey, this is the way to go. I'm just here looking, I'm gonna exit because I don't know what is about to happen. And there are some moments like that where I I never would have expected that to happen. But here we are. So the threatening part does kind of it gets you. It sits with you for the rest of the day. For sure it does. 

0:17:36 - Derek Vickers
I was a little like Little disturbed by it. For sure, yeah, and then and then it's the, the recoup. 

0:17:44 - Marcus
Of and she felt bad and she's like, are you not interested anymore? And I was like, why didn't say that? But we're in the middle of cove it. She hasn't gotten paid and Basically what you're saying like 20 months, some predating cove it, they just didn't want to pay. It was a dirty, weird situation Lotta, lot of cleanup to do and the physical space and the operation of it. But that's where. That's where you come in and you clean up. So where did you take after being threatened, after removing some, what was the? How many people were still there when you were able to clear out the few that you were able to? Yeah, so there was half of those people that were still there. 

0:18:33 - Derek Vickers
So what we started doing is we started selling off these vacant mobile homes as, as a handyman, special, like we literally would give them away like a hundred bucks, like, and in this particular. So you can't do this in every market, but because this was a strong markets like Brevard County, florida I don't know if you're familiar with that like Cocoa Beach, like we're all the yeah, so that area Great market, there's actually a huge market for people that want to buy these things, that they enjoy living in trailer parks and they'll fix them up. 

And so what our offer was it was like hey, marcus, you buy this house from us for 200 bucks, we'll give you free lot rent for three or four months until you fix it up, and then you move in and you start paying lot rent, right, and to bring up the that would bring up the aesthetics and only to make sure it was on the outside of the house to we actually Made them, put vinyl siding and skirting on the houses and then, when they were done with that, we would actually reimburse them for the materials costs, which was about 1500 bucks for that at that time. 

And so they had an incentive to come at that time at that time, it's not that anymore, and so we would reimburse them for that. 

And so they had incentive to bring up the value of the park. And we came in, we paved the roads, we put new lights up, we put new mailboxes in. We they had this, these crappy buildings. We. We painted and put siding on and like, fixed up, put a fence out front, put a new sign out front. So this place and if you go through this place now you're like, damn, like this place looks a good right, because it was the armpit of that county before. So okay, here's a good example. So when I talked to the lady at the health department there, the health department used to take their new employees into this park as, hey, this is the worst of the worst, and what? 

really so, unlike training day, day one, you know, the health departments Denzel Washington would take their new people into this park and be like, okay, this is the worst, don't do this. Which was pretty indicative of what that properties was like. 

0:20:55 - Marcus
Yeah, and that is. That's great and if you think about reimbursing for siding the material costs, well worth it in the long run of what you're operating at this point. So a very easy decision for you to improve the area, and then more will follow where you don't like what you're saying at that time. Because once you get past that rough point Now, people want to be there and they're going to want to follow suit of what that rest is going to look like in that trailer park. So a very, very good idea to to offer something and then know in the end it's all going to be for a net positive on that. 

0:21:34 - Derek Vickers
Yeah, and just the kicker to this whole thing was that. So we bought that in the end of September of 2020. And we refinanced it I think it was July of 21 bought it for 425, we refinance it, reappraise for one, seven or 175. Dang boom. We freaking crushed it and I got my portion. That was like 350k and like like, alright, this is pretty good. And we had bought like other parks in between that, but this was kind of the first one. That where I like dang like this is you know what I was making, you know in the insurance business, in one year and I didn't have to pay all this stuff out, right, right and frozen Marcus. 

0:22:26 - Marcus
Am I frozen? I am frozen. Can you at? 

0:22:27 - Dan
least don't hear me. Yeah, I think I'm just going to stop your video for now, alright, you? 

0:22:34 - Marcus
can turn it off. I don't know. I'll turn it off and turn it back on If my computer wants to start working. 

0:22:42 - Dan
My not to interject, but since we got a little bit of a low, my association with trailer parks or mobile home parks are my grandma used to live in one and she was a. 

She was a brash, rough, rough grandma. So my, we would go over there and my mom and dad like, okay, you're going to go stay with grandma for the night or for the weekend, and me and my two brothers were just like, oh, there's nothing to do there whatever, and like just all you could do is watch old VHS tapes of Star Trek or sister act or other stuff. But there was, there was nothing to do, and it was like she was, you know, one of the older residents there and then it just I don't know, I just had a negative association with it. But so when you're breaking it down, how you know you have certain class of people there, and then how you flip it and turn it around, it's like you can see the potential with it. My question is like, once you start getting them occupied, what kind of rent, or like lot least, do you have with them per month? How does that work? 

0:24:01 - Derek Vickers
Yeah, so typically like we would sign not to get into leads on this but it's typically like a year lease and then after the year it'll just go month to month. You don't have to get a new lease signed every year typically. I mean, some people do you know they own the homes and so we don't want them to leave. You know they don't want to leave and so it's pretty easy after that. It's not. You know, in Florida if someone owns a mobile home, you can't just kick them out of your park, right, and so that's why it's important like when you're getting new and good people will end to buy homes you gotta do great background checks. Your background check process has to be great, because when you sell them that home, you're pretty much stuck with that person for a while. 

0:24:50 - Dan
Yeah, have you tried other type of like models on it where you, with other mobile parks that you've purchased, have you tried like a different model where you own the land and the mobile home and then you rent both out on extended periods and then maybe do like a rent to own option and just so that not that you're hopeful that they do miss payments or fail on their end, but then you still hold the asset and then you have an easier chance of you know weeding them out or you know finding the good occupants for the home in the space, or is it all? You sell them the mobile home or you just take over the home? 

0:25:34 - Derek Vickers
Yeah, correct. Yeah, so we sell them all, the mobile homes, like we really try to do that, just because it's the easiest, because you know R&M repairs and maintenance is drastically lower. 

0:25:47 - Dan
Okay. 

0:25:48 - Derek Vickers
And most of the parks that we were buying and most of the stuff that you'll buy in Florida. You'll have trailers in the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s older stuff that there's going to be more R&M on those because they're just old. Right, they're old, they're still good units, surprisingly, but they're old and so and you can't get as much in rent for them. Now, if you had a park where they're all brand new homes and you can get a substantially higher rent than the lot rent, then that may justify owning the trailers and we've actually looked at potentially doing some of that. 

But that hasn't generally been our business model, because the whole, like the fundamentals of the business that I love is that I don't own the unit right. The only thing I'm responsible for is the road, you know the infrastructure right, the infrastructure and the common areas, like that's what I'm responsible for and I like that because on a stabilized asset, depending on what kind of utilities set up I have there, I'm going to run at a 25, 30, 35% expense ratio, depending on if you have old homes that you own and you own the dirt. I mean you're going to be in the 50s, like you're going to be pretty high. 

0:27:02 - Dan
Yeah, that makes sense, okay, Interesting. Have you ever come across like opportunities where, like the first one that you talk about, where it's like almost too far gone but you can buy it for the opportunity of having the land because it's zoned for a mobile home park, and then you find either people that want to put new units on there or you buy them buy new units, put them on there and then sell them to that or have you not gotten opportunities like that yet? 

0:27:35 - Derek Vickers
No, I mean, the only reason that we haven't is because I mean sometimes the municipalities like they won't. Even so, some municipalities, because they hate mobile home parks so much they don't want them. So they'll say like hey, since you moved this home off a lot, if there hasn't been a home on it for two or three months, you can't move a new home on Right. So they've got these little weird laws that sort of prevent you from actually doing that. 

0:28:14 - Dan
That's gotta be frustrating, because my, I don't know, not, I'm sure it's not a new idea. But if you could find an area, a piece of land that is zoned for it, and basically trying to bring in like almost shipping containers and then renovate them and build them into mobile homes per se, right, and then you know, do the same thing, but then all of you have the same aesthetic all across, and then obviously people can put their personal touches on it. But I don't know. That's interesting. I like the idea. I think the downside up here is obviously the weather for us and finding, like you said, good tenants or people that are willing to put up that there's a few around our area, I think more for me. 

0:29:05 - Marcus
There's a few, there's not many. Sorry, I'm back in, but my video doesn't work, so I'm the ghost attendant. I don't know why I can't get it going, but I've been looking. Obviously, when I started with real estate, listening to the bigger pockets and I got curious, so I looked at mobile home parks around here not many in Walkshaw County. When you go out west and north, there are some. And I'm surprised and I don't know if I missed this part I'm surprised that the municipalities are so against improving them. 

It's like you're fighting a battle where they're trying to remove them actively, but in the same vein, a lot of people and a lot of young people are trying to get into the smaller homes or the. I don't want a big house for the taxes, for the maintenance, for the cleaning, like I want to travel and experience the world, so I want to rent something small. So we have a world of people that are trying to use that space and that could use these mobile homes, but the municipalities are like well, we don't like them. So it's a weird battle. 

0:30:15 - Derek Vickers
Yeah, it is. It is, and I mean it's interesting because, depending on which municipalities that you're working with depends on, it's different. It's not the same across any municipality and they're not gonna directly say that they don't like affordable housing or mobile homes, because that's in the paper. They'll be like oh yeah, we're champions for affordable housing. But if you look in the mobile home setback laws, if you try to bring in a new home, you can't because the setback laws are like 20 feet from the road and 25 feet between the other trailers, like 25 feet from the back of the lot, and I'm like, dude, it's Florida, it doesn't work. I gotta take out, it's still, I gotta take out free and then put this one horizontal Like they just have dumb stuff like that that prevents you from doing that. 

And I don't know if you caught what I was telling Dan here that, like some of them will have. So let's say, if we pull a mobile home out of our park and we wanna put a new one on, if you don't fill that lot back up in like two months, then it's non-usable anymore. Oh, I didn't touch that part, yeah, yeah, and so they'll have stuff in there like that, like we were looking at a park. It was in Ocala, florida, and then this particular, like the city, they won't let you like. This park had some vacant lots and you needed to bring in homes with the city. I called the city and they wouldn't even let you do it. 

0:31:46 - Marcus
Whoa yeah, and their reasoning behind that was not a good answer. Yeah, it's a city. 

0:31:55 - Derek Vickers
Yeah, that's bizarre, that's just what it is. 

0:31:59 - Marcus
Oh, I hate that answer and you get to work between different municipalities and some will give you answer A, some will give you answer B, some won't answer you and they'll give you just like that's how it is and it makes no sense. That's how it is Then I go to the city council meetings, when people are trying to put in apartment complexes and I'll air quote it I know my video is not working but for affordable housing and their rent is like $15 or $1600 a month, yeah, exactly. 

I don't know where they live that affordable housing is $1600 a month, but I don't think that's it. Yeah, it's not. But yes, they both put in mobile homes where you could make rent easily for half of that price? 

0:32:43 - Derek Vickers
Yeah, and people would like yeah, and so, for example, if you took this Ocala municipality, like so this park, it's probably worth, I don't know, maybe $2 million, 1.5 million, Maybe 2 million bucks. So your property taxes on that are X. But if they put 50 apartment units at 150,000 a door there, do the math on that that. Whatever that is, I don't know, you guys experts at math 150,000 times 50, that's 7.5 million 7.5, so your property taxes on that are obviously gonna be much higher. It's gonna look better right Yep. 

0:33:26 - Marcus
And then you can find their answer of why they like those more. There you go and that solves all the questions. And that's so frustrating for everybody everybody, except for the people in the government. 

0:33:41 - Dan
So if we want some, controversy, we can go there. 

The irritating part about it is the municipalities, the people, that some of the people that run them. They bring in their own bias to it, like whoever is the decision maker, it's partially power trip, partial bias, as opposed to looking at what the coding or the ordinances are for that specific area. And then if you were to contest it, you'd be like okay, where in this ordinance or code does it say I cannot do this? Instead of your answer, like you said well, that's just the way it is. Okay, well, that is your stance on it. But that doesn't show me where it's factual that I cannot. So like I would be way more, I guess, defensive in trying to win that opportunity. I mean, obviously you have to pick and choose, because if you dwell on one too long you might miss the next opportunity. But it's just. That's one thing that I guess gets to me, where you're saying no, but it's your personal no, it's not a no because X, y or Z, so yeah, and then that's you know. 

0:34:48 - Derek Vickers
It's not only that you spend a lot of time on this opportunity and it's not like a home run, but the thing about mobile home parks is they were built and they're not conforming. I mean, they were fricking, developed in the 50s. Like we have a park that was developed in 1948, right, and so these. So let's say you win that they're like all right. You think you won that I'm gonna drive through here tomorrow and pick out a thousand things that aren't up to code. 

Right and I'm gonna send you citations for it and make your life a living hell, and that's what they can do so easily in mobile home parks. And so you have to like, unfortunately, and what I found, even with fricking attorneys that you hire to help you deal with some code stuff and some building department stuff. They're soft Like, they don't. They're like oh, I gotta keep my good relationship with the city. 

0:35:43 - Dan
I can't go home on these guys. 

0:35:45 - Derek Vickers
And because the thing about mobile homes, too, is that they're fricking cars Like. So the mobile home has the same title that you get when you buy a car, and so the cities try and treat them as an F in building. I'm like it's not a building, it's a car, so it's not even really in their jurisdiction to like do some of these things right. But in some attorneys they're too soft to even tell them that and I'm like it is so frustrating it's not frustrating. 

0:36:16 - Marcus
I think we just need to rezone it or recode it as like a parking lot. 

0:36:20 - Dan
I was just gonna say that. 

0:36:21 - Marcus
And then you can get away with whatever you gotta do. 

0:36:23 - Dan
Build a big old warehouse and just call it storage facility, and then you could have onsite. People live in storage units anyways. Have you seen that I? 

0:36:32 - Derek Vickers
haven't seen that. 

0:36:32 - Marcus
I've heard a couple of stories. 

0:36:33 - Dan
Seriously, yeah, people will like the storage companies will build a brand new storage facility. We're talking eight by eight, 10 by 10 or bigger and then the manager of that will run it. Will live in one of the units. Yes, ridiculous, I don't know how it's allowed. But they're talking about like well, I don't have to pay rent, like I can stay in this unit. What is it? 150, 200 bucks a month. What the loss of revenue is for them and it's cheaper for them to stay there as opposed to because they have to be onsite anyways. I don't know. It's kind of crazy. I saw a couple of different stories where the office managers or the manager of the property were onsite in a unit. 

0:37:13 - Derek Vickers
That's interesting and I could see that like people's moving to that, because if you pay 350 bucks a month for a storage unit I don't know if it's climate controlled or not or exactly how that works. I'm not really familiar with that business, but like the middle class is getting squeezed right now and I could see people like, dude, where am I gonna go? Like okay, we'll pay 350 bucks to live in the storage unit, we'll buy one of these little AC things or something and put it in there wherever you are. Where you guys are would be like a kerosene heater or something. I don't know. 

0:37:50 - Dan
That'd be a rough. What is that called If you walk into somebody that's been sitting in a storage unit with a kerosene lamp? Yeah Wow, that'd be a tough find. Yeah yeah, so. 

0:38:06 - Marcus
I would not. 

0:38:06 - Dan
People are getting creative, man, it's not a necessity most of the time. You know, like they, I don't know they gotta do what they gotta do. Yeah for sure. 

0:38:15 - Marcus
So after you had you'd purchased this one just timeline wise you purchased this one. You said it was in 20. 

0:38:23 - Derek Vickers
September, end of September of 2020. Of 2020. How? 

0:38:29 - Marcus
long. How long until you were, I won't say fully occupied but stable. Cause obviously very unstable. When you bought it, you bought it for the price I'm predicting. Cause it was so unstable, Like what was the year process to get the thing up to where it was either cash flowing or stable enough to where you don't have to worry about getting run out because you're being threatened with your life by the tenants. 

0:38:56 - Derek Vickers
Yeah, yeah, yeah, so that was probably six months, but to fully, that was quicker than I expected. Yeah, probably five or six months. But to get it fully stable, like it's fully stable now, like it's cash flowing now, but we refinanced it twice now. 

0:39:11 - Dan
So it's like yeah. 

0:39:14 - Marcus
And then you used oh sorry, you've used that refinance to buy more is what you alluded to early. 

0:39:22 - Derek Vickers
Yeah, but we and so we actually bought. We went bananas in 2021 and at the beginning of 2022, buying wise, but yeah, so we had already bought, like quite a few of other parks before this refinance happened. But yes, when this refinance happened, I literally it was in my account for like I don't know six days, and then we roll, I rolled every bit of it into another deal every penny of it. 

0:39:53 - Marcus
That's awesome and hopefully they weren't all. I'm going to call that one a D-class property. Obviously you go. You're being nice. 

0:40:01 - Derek Vickers
Marcus, you're being nice. 

0:40:03 - Marcus
I don't want to get any property in F, so we're saying D-class property. Were all of them kind of like a fix and flip kind of thing? Or did you buy some operating trailer parks once you had more capital, once you went through the grunt work of improving one? 

0:40:21 - Derek Vickers
Yeah, so good question. And at the beginning, when we got into 2022, we did buy some more stabilized assets, but most because we found in that first part that we could buy these parks with these really shitty homes on them and still sell them and people actually wanted to come in and fix them up and by doing that we could actually generate market lot rent Immediately they want. That's why we were able to triple the value of this thing, and so we actually found other parks in great markets that we could do that to. So some of them weren't quite as bad as this one. I was one that I'm thinking about. That was Whoa, you know, pretty bad, maybe a little worse, if you believe that and so we were able to generate a lot of value really fast by doing this and we were able. So the interesting thing is because someone that, like, if we found one of these properties, we knew we could pay like way more than anybody else could, right? So I don't know if you've ever. 

You know, francis Greenberger is like the co-op King guy from New York. He started like co-opping but in his book I was just reading it because he found like a little niche in a market and that's what we did, and so if there was a property out there and you and Dan and Marcus were other mobile home park investors, I can't pay that for that. For me, I'm like I'm coming in at asking hard money in the beginning and boom, we get it under contract and go. We were able to move so fast on these parks, yeah, because we knew this business model worked like this was the litmus test. That first part was the litmus test, yeah, and we were able to move pretty fast. And so a lot of them in that first year, 2021 were, you know, d, if I'm being nice will be nice. 

0:42:30 - Marcus
D is all right, yeah, and how are you? Because obviously you move a lot quicker and you're moving fast, but what? What people don't see? You don't walk down the street and meet owners of mobile home parks and if you do, they don't flash it in your face and they're not touting that they own it. So how are you finding these owners? How are you? How are you vetting them to say like, yep, I actually like this property or no, I don't. Because I feel like, with it being a smaller asset class, there's fewer and fewer people and they're harder and harder to talk to and actually not just talk to them but have a meaningful conversation that I am serious. I'm serious about selling because most of the time it's they've offload the management and they're pretty much untouchable. They're collecting what they collect. They probably don't even know what disarray that their properties in because they're so far removed from it. 

So that's an uphill battle for you guys. As an investor trying to come in and take over the property, what were you finding as a good course or a good method to get conversations with these people? 

0:43:42 - Derek Vickers
I would say, like some of that that you said is 100% valid there, but also I've had experiences you know 180 of that where these people were actually very accessible to talk to, and so what I did that was a successful action is I looked in my market and I tell people, like, wherever you live, like in my mentorship course like this is what we talked about, you know buy something within a couple hours at your market so you can drive it. And so I literally drove, like almost every mobile home park between you know, north of Orlando to Brevard County, down to Tampa, in that area, I would just go out and drive, drive the parks. I'm like, oh, I like this one, I'm going to find this guy's number and call him. Oh, I like this one, I'm going to find this guy's number and call him. I like this one because, again, as I was mentioning earlier, I knew we could pay more. So I was like, dude, I'll make this guy this offer. And he's like, shit, yeah, I'll take this. And we were able to close, like relatively fast, and sometimes I would even go in person. And again, like with the insurance skills, I'm like, damn, this is easy. I'm calling a guy and trying to give him money. For once I'm not asking him for money anymore. It's a good point, like that was. That was like a okay, this is a little bit different, right? Yep, and, and so that was really my successful action. 

You know, I found mobile home parks and I Googled them. There's lists that I found online. I had some VA's that were calling for me and insurance and I had one of the guys. I'm like dude, you're just going to start calling these now. You're going to start calling mobile home parks now. And it was. You know, it's not great, it was terrible. I got some leads. I don't think we ever closed any of those leads from him, but it's still got my activity flowing. 

Yeah, and I just I ran into like I'm telling you, when you, when you fully commit to something like just stuff sort of starts moving and happening in your favor, yeah, you actually commit to it, because any second of the day that I had to call mobile home parks when I was in the, I would literally so. 

When I had the big team when the insurance business, my main thing was recruiting and bringing new people on. So that's kind of what I did all day, and so I figured out how to automate that process and we were killing it in insurance, by the way, but any any second that I got in there, I was, I was making a call to an, I was making a call to this guy and it was the same principles and insurance and more calls you make, the more people you talk to, the more deals you're going to find the cause that you don't feel like making or the probably the best time to call, or the ones that you need to call Right Cause you guys are in sales. You know the person. You're like I don't want to go talk to that guy and you go in and he buys right, yep. 

0:46:40 - Marcus
We're one right now that we're we're calling on and wasn't met with the greatest of warmth and it's. It's a situation where the we got, we were doing a flip, we found another decrepit house in the area. We found the owner. We called and we don't really know if she understands the severity of where the city is at with their property, like they're ready to demo this thing down and she is adamant that it's fine and we said to make it vacant out of state. 

Yeah, so you run into those situations, but it doesn't stop us from calling yes, is it uncomfortable? Like Dan was, we were, we hopped on a call together and then was like I know I have to call, but I'm like psyching myself out. It's like, well, we, we got a call, that's our option, we're going to call and to get over that fear of just calling Cause, the worst they're going to say is no, which the first book I read when I was in sales was go for no. 

0:47:37 - Derek Vickers
I don't know if you ever read that one, but no, I've heard of it, but I never read that one. 

0:47:42 - Marcus
Yeah, basically count your nose and if you, if you have your allotted nose and you go for it, you're going to find the yeses through it. But you've got to reach a certain amount of nose until you're done. And that was kind of like the long overview of the book. But yeah, the worst they're going to say is no. And if you're coming from an aspect of trying to help I'm not trying to undercut you, which you're saying I'm not trying to undercut you. I'm going to give you a good offer, either even asking price or above, to get this property. And I'm trying to help you. I'm trying to give you money. It takes kind of like that burden or that fear off. 

0:48:20 - Dan
Yeah, for sure it's frustrating because they're paying taxes on this property and it is like it has lost so much value it's going to get raised. There's like a raising, raising demo order on it and they just want to keep paying their property taxes and and like I think they're not fully comprehending, they're thinking that the house is how they left it and that was seven or eight years ago and it's been unoccupied, like the weather is going through it. There was like a how many 17,000 gallon pool that the pipe burst and all of the water went into the basement and like like there's literal hole in the top story and it goes all the way down into the basement. But they're not accepting this. And I'm just like you're paying seven, six, $7,000 a year on taxes. You're throwing money away because it's it's not going to get back to what you think and you know we're literally trying to help her avoid the state or the city taking it back or demoing. And then, hey, here's a, here's the, you know, raise costs and this is going to get tacked on your taxes and so I don't know. It's a frustrating situation and I I call on it every day, almost so I don't know what. 

What Marcus was saying like the no, the no, thing it for me. I sometimes get too persistent. Where it's like it's not a no right now, it's a slow yes, like I can, I feel confident enough in my ability to get them to understand and then turn the no into a yes eventually. There's just those hard ones. You move on and find the next one. But it's a great opportunity because no matter what price we get, it's it'll be, or what price we offer it for, it would be a very lucrative, lucrative win. 

0:50:14 - Marcus
And we'll be nice, we'll say this is comparable to your D type class property. 

0:50:19 - Derek Vickers
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you, I mean I would. I would take a selfie video and be like hey, I'm on the roof here and this is your basement dude, like they're coming for you yeah. 

0:50:32 - Marcus
Yeah, We'd shown her the picture and she's like that's not even my living room. I have a fireplace, but the picture was like was it a garage or something? 

0:50:39 - Dan
No, I think it was her fireplace. It just the the old stone that she's talking about is like kind of in the background shaded, so she can't get a full, good view of it. 

0:50:49 - Derek Vickers
I got you. 

0:50:50 - Dan
But the other difficult part about that video is I don't think you can look at videos on a landline telephone. 

0:50:56 - Derek Vickers
So she doesn't have a smart phone? Yeah, that's true. Yes, so she's a. She's one of the handwritten paper rent roll people. 

0:51:05 - Dan
So that's exactly what we did. We wrote a handwritten note and certified mail the tour with the pictures of the inspection report and we're like, hey, this is where your property is. That we've we caught wind of it. We're trying to get ahead of it because we don't want the city to tear this down without you knowing. They've tried to contact you. 

I spent six, eight hours trying to like go through all the different websites. I know this lady's political affiliation, I know her box is her associated, like all of this stuff, and finally was able to get a number for her, kind of on an off chance. And it's a weird, it's a weird situation. But we finally got a hold of her and she's just she's more of offended that we know her personal information as far as, like the situation with the house, because I'll ask her questions. She's like silent and I try to repeat the question. She's like, well, that's not really any of your business. I'm like, no, it's not, but we're interested in the property, we're trying to help you out here. Like keep repeating that, repeating that. And I think she's just more shocked that we know her, her situation with the house. But it's like, yeah, help us, help you. 

0:52:18 - Marcus
Yeah, the moral is is when you get into real estate, especially in the beginning, you get scared of people coming off like that and in being very like, angry towards you or have some resentment towards it, because in the properties that we picked up, the way that we invest, it's all run down usually a tear down or a big gut and rebuild, so they're usually not in the best situations. 

If you buy it from a share of sale and you have to go meet them and basically a victim out of the home that you've been in for 10 plus years because it went to foreclosure, they're obviously not in a very great spot. So you have to mesh this business with the personal and I'm not trying to be rude, I don't want to be mean, but things got to go the way that they're going to go. How can I help? And you usually can can break through. It's going to be a rough shell because you have to understand their situation, coming in and trying to take their house from a person who doesn't necessarily want to leave. But once you can kind of come in with some compassion and help them out, usually the rough shell breaks down and you can get somewhere. But it's getting over that like fear of no or fear of getting yelled at as you go through that, that sales process, which is the kick in the teeth you were mentioning in the first part of the show. 

0:53:41 - Derek Vickers
Yeah, yeah, and I mean one thing I would say on that like all right, your listeners, like I still get a little, you know, if I make a call now, it's like you know they're still at a little bit there, but I've done it so much that I just do it anyways. Like it's just, you know, it's kind of a, it's just a reaction that I've created, I just do it anyways. So think about it. If a telemarketer calls you now and you pick up the phone, how nice are you? 

Like I'm very nice, all the time Very nice, right so just like they're not going to be that friendly in the beginning like no one's going to call, like I don't know, people got this idea that someone's going to pick up the phone. Oh, I'm so glad you called me today, Dan I have no effing idea who you are, and so just you know. Reconcile yourself to the fact that it's going to be uncomfortable and they're not going to like the fact that you called. 

0:54:36 - Dan
Yep. 

0:54:36 - Derek Vickers
It is what it is, it's got nothing to do with you. Like I don't. Like I got cold called yesterday and I get, so some of these cold callers are so bad Like I just like answering the phone so I can kind of train our guys a little bit better. This person like hey, this is Derek Vickers. Do you own Mason's mobile home park? I'm like yeah, it's not called that anymore. But yeah, what's up? And it was just a bad time to call me, like I was doing something. I'm like I didn't want to. I was like what's up, what's up? And click hangs up the phone. I'm like, okay, I'm like if I was paying that guy to call for me, I'd be pissed. 

0:55:20 - Marcus
Yes, you got somebody to actually open up and say what's up. And then you hung up. Yeah, which can I feel like that was that, was the door open, like at least say what you were calling about Exactly. 

0:55:35 - Dan
Let me bring up a quick, quick example. I got a text message. I share a name with a cousin Right and I've gotten text before, a cold text right from some random number and they associate my information with his house. So they text me before. I've never responded. So I get a text last week. It says any updates on this address? I'm sort of tight on time and would love to move forward. Let me know if you're ready, mac. 

And they caught me in like the middle of a work day and I was in like a state of flow and it kind of irritated me and I just responded. I said I'm on the DNC list. What business are you with so I can report you? Just, kind of being an ass Said I have no affiliation with that address. Do better skip tracing and research. No response. 

I said you being tight on time is not a way to create a call to action for a big financial business decision on my end. Any questions that determine the needs of the sellers you're trying to work with Get micro with the process. Don't text a thousand people hoping for one bite. Do better research. Put a little more time in for better opportunities. Your success rate could be 10 to one. So didn't respond, by the way, to any of that, but I just I kind of laughed at it initially, and then I was just blowing them up. I was like forget this, I'm just gonna put them on the spot because they're like well, I'm tight on time, that's not okay. Oh, you got it. You're tight on time, okay, I'm gonna sell my house to you really quick. Like no, that's not how it works. 

0:57:00 - Derek Vickers
Oh yeah, yeah, I'm gonna sell it right now because you're tight on time. Yeah, yeah. And like you got to think about too. Like these in the mobile home part business especially, you're buying from mom and pop. They developed these freaking parts. They've owned them for 20, 30, 40, 50 years. Like it's not coming off that easily. Like you're not gonna woof a wall street on the first call and get them the clothes like that. Like it's just not gonna happen. And so like the relationship building is super, super important. 

0:57:31 - Dan
The follow up. 

0:57:32 - Derek Vickers
It's like I mean follow up, and you know you just have to kind of be more than just robotic with these people especially. And you know, just like you know, a mobile home park seller is the lady that you're dealing with with that house. Like, I asked the guy for a rent roll, it was a couple of months ago I think I had a post on social media about it, but he sends me a picture. He actually, he could actually send pictures on the phone. 

0:57:59 - Dan
I saw it, I saw it. I saw that one. 

0:58:02 - Derek Vickers
He sent pictures on the phone and it was a rent roll that he wrote out on yellow loosely paper. 

0:58:08 - Marcus
Oh no, yeah, that screams mom and pop, for sure. 

0:58:11 - Dan
I thought you were talking about the other one, where you asked him about his rent roll and you said he pointed to his head. 

0:58:17 - Derek Vickers
Well, yeah, that guy, we're still trying to get that guy. So, this guy great guy, by the way. So for a follow up with him, I knew he was a big Trump fan, so I got him this Trump figurine Awesome. 

0:58:31 - Marcus
And sent it to his house. 

0:58:32 - Derek Vickers
You gotta find what they like, you gotta find what they like and play with that. 

0:58:37 - Dan
Yeah. 

0:58:38 - Derek Vickers
But so he's got 72 in there. Now he's expanding it to 85. I'm like, hey, can we get a rent roll? Or walk in the park with him? And he literally tells me that he picks up cash from everybody at different times of the month because he's got different setups with everybody. And I'm like he thinks he's making this amount of money a month but he don't even know. He don't even know. He's just picking up all this cash regularly. And he said his rent rolls right here. I'm like, okay, why? Oh? 

0:59:09 - Dan
that's a scary part of it works man, that is a scary, hopefully because you haven't picked that one up, right? 

0:59:17 - Marcus
You said you're still working on that one. We're close. We're close on that one. Well, hopefully the numbers that he writes down are the actual numbers, but I guess we'll wait and see for that one. 

0:59:29 - Derek Vickers
Yeah, so that one is an RV park. I think there's like 10 mobile homes in there. Okay, and yeah, you're right, I hope so. I also like the second park that we bought. We were like, hey, is there bank statements or proof of deposits for the income coming in and that this rent roll was correct. And it was like the first of the month or the third or fourth or something, and we got a picture from their property manager sent of a stack of cash on the desk, Like okay. 

1:00:06 - Dan
I saw that one too. 

1:00:08 - Derek Vickers
It doesn't do much for me. 

1:00:09 - Dan
No. 

1:00:10 - Marcus
No, oh, that scares me. And obviously you guys creating these D-class properties, bringing them up to I'm gonna call them A-class properties, you guys are using I don't know about that. 

1:00:21 - Derek Vickers
You're being nice again, Marcus. You're being nice on both ends. 

1:00:25 - Marcus
I'm very generous. So you're taking from a D-class to an A-class. You guys are running a good management company. You guys have CRMs. You have systems in place for processing either maintenance requests or rent roll, all that stuff. Is that something you guys did from the jump or you developed over time? 

1:00:45 - Derek Vickers
Well, we did it from the jump like very haphazardly, because it was just drinking from a fire hose all the time. So it was just bandaid, bandaid, bandaid, bandaid, bandaid Until it broke. Until it broke. So we got to like 500 lots, 400 lots, and it worked. It was still bandaid, bandaid, bandaid and you know, catch up a little bit it was still very yeah, just wasn't great. And then we made an acquisition right after refinance. The first deal it was gonna put us a thousand lots, so we were gonna double in size in one transaction and my business partner was like, okay, these are pretty good deals, we like it, but I'm telling you it's gonna break when we do this. 

I'm like, oh no, we'll figure it out. You know, naive Derek was like, oh no, we're good, we'll figure it out. And of course, everything fricking just went to smithereens. Like nothing worked again, like it was completely operating differently. It was just there was more geography involved. 

And so, like people in my program now, I'm like, dude, when you have that park, that's when you need to put the systems and processes in place, yep, so you don't have to kill yourself like I did when we got to a thousand lots and you don't make all these mistakes that I made, like throughout the process. I'm actually creating a program now that actually it's a operations only program, to where every SOP that we've had is laid out in the program, like how to get people to do this, how to do this, how to do this, how to do this and, step by step process, how to set up your books and your bookkeeping and all that. That's not available yet. But I'm creating something like that because I'm like, damn, if I would have had something like that in the beginning, that someone would just said here Derek, do this, yep. Like you know, I would have been a lot easier for. 

1:02:47 - Marcus
Yes, and I will piggyback on that one, because when I started, it was all spreadsheets and I would keep track of the house. We're flipping on this spreadsheet and the rent rolls on this one and I wouldn't take cash. That was one thing I learned. Just no cash. It's either check or at that time I didn't have credit card, so that was what I was left with, and it was a whole week process of trying to make sure where all the checks were in, depositing them and then updating the spreadsheet, and then I'm also flipping a house, so like I have to keep track of costs here, and I was like I'm done, I can't do this, I can't sleep at night, so for my sanity. That's when I got on automation and now everything is done through spreadsheets. 

I found myself saving time. It was super simple because obviously you want to, you want to create a relationship with your new tenants and you want them to know the company and you want them to feel like there's more. This isn't just a business, because then they're going to treat it as such and they're not going to care for the things that you care for. So the more of a relationship you can build with them while still letting them know this is being run like a business. But I found myself repeating myself like oh yeah, this is in town and this is where you set up your WeEnergies and this is the number you call for electrical and these are the cable providers. 

I just I had Dan kind of create this blueprint of all the amenities in the area, all the schools in the area, the numbers for the schools, who to call when to set up your electrical, and it's all in this nice folder. With their move in, they can write down and take pictures of all the damages when they moved in and we can go through at the end and initial it. All of those systems that were built save hours and hours and hours of time throughout the year, which is super great, which I've never been a systems guy because they feel like they bog you down, but when you have them in place and you keep them rolling, it just makes the whole system work better and it saves your mental from being strained in tax on all the busy work you have to do, which is exciting for me and for the tenants as well, because they can go on and process their payment, they can set it on auto draft and not to worry about making a rent payment every month, like everything just works easier. 

1:05:10 - Derek Vickers
Yes, 100%. It makes your life a lot easier when you have this stuff. Yeah, trust me less hair, less brain damage, all the above. 

1:05:22 - Marcus
Yeah, grant Cardone didn't write the 10X rule, right, that was a different author. 

No, that's it he wrote that it is him because I got that from him, because I was like, well, I can take the checks and I can run to the bank and I can talk to him and I can do that. Yeah, I can. But should you? Because all the hours spent doing that, what else could you be doing? And then it kind of he kind of tipped my mind and like, okay, pay for the service, pay the extra money to get it actually like documented and automated, because it's gonna cost you what $200, $300 a year for this service. But your time is not free. So you have to weigh out what you'd actually pay yourself to do what you're doing and what it would cost to automate it. And in that point it was a very, very easy decision. Yep, yep, man Grant coming in twice on the show. 

1:06:18 - Dan
Is it frozen again? 

1:06:19 - Derek Vickers
Yeah, I'm frozen. 

1:06:24 - Dan
It looks like it. No, no worries, now you're good, now you're good. 

1:06:28 - Derek Vickers
Okay, okay. 

1:06:30 - Dan
Now, I think we're hitting the one hour mark too, I know, you like you said 

1:06:34 - Marcus
you're on vacation, so we don't wanna keep you much longer, but All good dude, the last question I was gonna ask you, because obviously you've grown so quickly, so fast. What do you have for I mean, I know we're what three months to the end of the year? Three, four months? What do you have towards the end of the month and what are you guys projecting for 24? Obviously, with the market being in limbo, what are you guys trying to shoot for for the end of the year, slash 24? 

1:07:06 - Derek Vickers
Shoof, wow, it's a little weird. Like I mean we'll close. I think we'll get two deals closed by the end of this year. Other than that, I mean we haven't bought anything since December of last year. I mean you just, you know the expectations from the seller are here and you know, you just we're here, right, and it just doesn't make sense and we're not gonna buy anything just to buy anything, right. Well, I mean I've got people, you know, hey, we wanna invest, we wanna invest. I mean capital is, you know it's there, but you know I'm just not gonna take an investor's money because I'm putting my money into these deals too, dude, like I'm not, you know, like I put a lot of capital in these deals too, Like I'm not just gonna, you know, put it in to put it in, and we don't have any. 

You know tax issues where we would buy something for tax purposes this year, but you know, so I, 2024, I think I, you know my projection is June of 24, you know things, sellers start to loosen up. I mean I've seen them starting to loosen up a little bit. But even you know, and some of these seller financing deals where I can pay more now they're getting greedy on the interest rate. They're like, oh well, if the Fed start, you know, if prime is eight and a half or eight and a quarter, then I can chart, I can chart eight. I'm like, well, it doesn't work like that. Yeah, we sell our finance, I want to sell our finance so I can pay you your egregious number, but you have to give me a low interest rate. So it's, you know, I think we'll get two deals done by the end of this year. Yeah, so we'll see. 

1:08:59 - Dan
And the deals you find, right, these aren't the operators or the owners aren't like listing these right. So you're doing the cold calling and you're like, hey, are you interested in selling this Right? And so that's, I think, another thing that you know, not that our listeners are naive, but like it's not, like you're going in there making an offer when it's listed publicly, right, you're doing the work, like you said, putting in the extra calls and building the report and establish the relationship, and then then you get to the point of the conversation Okay, so you know, have, have you know? Have we gotten to a point where you're ready to sell? If so, what's your number? And then we can, we can move from there. 

1:09:38 - Derek Vickers
So yeah, yeah, and I have a team of guys that that are doing that and I have another business partner that actually he's so good at acquisitions and talking to these guys because he understands real estate, he understands seller financing, debt markets and things, so he can really talk to them. And then also I've said I've got a, you know created this pretty decent social media presence in the mobile home park space in the last you know eight months to a year, that I've got great relationships with brokers and stuff. So I get pocket listings sent to me daily, nice, you know. Just, it's just difficult to get stuff to pencil, yeah. 

1:10:17 - Marcus
Yeah, definitely. 

1:10:19 - Dan
Awesome. 

1:10:21 - Marcus
And that's super exciting for the end of the year and I'm sure if you get those two locked in you'll have enough to manage and get going for 24 or at least until June when you look to buy again. So yeah, well this. 

1:10:33 - Derek Vickers
This is actually this little. You know, little craziness in the economy has actually been really good for us because we've been able to take a deep breath and really focus on operations. And now most of those parks are just, you know, we're like 96, 97% collected every month. There's not that many problems and we're we're chugging along. 

1:10:57 - Dan
So I think we needed this time. 

1:11:00 - Derek Vickers
We needed this time to take a breath, as much as I hate to say it. 

1:11:05 - Marcus
No, it's needed. It's needed. Yeah, no, that's exciting. I'm happy that you you came on and told the story. That's I'm excited for where you guys are headed, because that is a. You guys went zero to a hundred very quickly and I'm glad to see it's taken off and going well. Yes, Thank you. That's awesome and I look forward to your 2024. I'm sure we'll have you back on to see what big changes have happened, but we'll let you get on your vacation. I don't want to take up any more of your time. 

1:11:33 - Derek Vickers
I know we're like yeah, we'd love to come back on Dan and Marcus. I enjoyed chatting with you guys. Good, good conversation here. So, definitely would love to do it again. 

1:11:43 - Marcus
Absolutely. Yeah, we'll send you an invite, but enjoy the rest of your vacation. I appreciate the time and have a good weekend. 

1:11:51 - Derek Vickers
Yeah for sure, and hey, really quick before I go. Maybe you can put this in the show notes too. But if you go and check out my free ebook at free.parkinvestingpro.com free.parkinvestingpro.com it's an ebook. Basically it tells you how I structured all my deals that I did here in the beginning, how I structured them with no money and how to do it with no money, and then how to actually go get the money you need so you can do it with no money, and how actually I did that. So, if you check that out, I got my podcast, the MHP show. It's all about mobile home parks. New episodes every week, so you can check that out on iTunes, spotify I don't know YouTube, everything, and I'm on all social media platforms. 

1:12:37 - Marcus
I'm definitely not hard to find. No, I appreciate that. I apologize for not asking the only thing left out. What is the best way for them to contact you? Is it social media that you're on? 

1:12:48 - Derek Vickers
Yeah, yeah, just shoot me a DM on Instagram Twitter. 

1:12:51 - Marcus
I don't know, I mean any of them. 

1:12:53 - Derek Vickers
And like you, shoot me a DM. Would love. If you have questions, reach out. 

1:13:00 - Marcus
And then you do have the mastermind class as well. Is that something that people should reach out through Instagram to learn more about? 

1:13:06 - Derek Vickers
Yeah, so if you go and get that free ebook, there are also some other things that you can get, and I don't think that you know we still got this on there but you can scroll down and actually get the free webinar as well, and so that free webinar and ebook will actually give you the webinar, teach you the basics of mobile home park investing how to underwrite a deal, how to tell if a deal is good or not, and then the ebook will tell you actually how to structure that deal and how to find the money for that deal, and so it really gives you a step by step process all the way through for free. I mean, you could use that information and go get your first deal. And then we have the masterclass program, which is basically more of a. We do coaching calls biweekly and I'm on there and you know I probably do more than I should. I have people call me on my cell phone. 

I'm underwriting deals for our people all day and it's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. So you can check all that out. Shoot me a DM on Instagram, facebook, whatever. 

1:14:10 - Marcus
Awesome, awesome. Hopefully get some people to reach out to you, Derek, because you are wealth of knowledge and way to go get it. That's awesome. 

1:14:19 - Dan
Thanks guys All right, we'll talk soon. 

1:14:22 - Derek Vickers
All right, see you, bye. 

Transcribed by https://podium.page