Seth: Hey everybody, how's it going? This is Seth Williams from retipster.com. You're listening to episode 247 and today I'm talking with Brent Bowers.

So Brent has built an incredible business buying and selling land, often using seller financing to create predictable monthly income. But what's interesting is how he's expanded far beyond that.

He's now investing in light industrial properties, in mobile home parks, and even putting together land and home packages. He owns an office building, lots of stuff he's got going on.

And today we're going to dig into what his business looks like today and how he has evolved as an investor and lessons he's learned about scaling and how he's using his Landsharks community to help others find their own version of freedom through land.

And in particular, I actually wanted to dive into the land home package and just mobile home thing, because I think for a lot of good reasons, there's a lot of interest in that among land investors, how to bring in the whole mobile home component and sell properties for a lot more and add a lot more value to the marketplace.

So it's going to be a great conversation. Brent, welcome. How's it going?

Brent: What's up, Seth, man? Long time fan. It's great to be finally getting to know you. We got a lot of, we think in the same circles.

Yeah, we do. But yeah, I was inspired because you had interviewed one of my friends, Mason McDonald, one of our land sharks. And we're partnered together on some buildings as well.

Yeah, man, I'm excited to be here and I hope to give as much as I've gotten from so many other people in my journey. I sit there and try to make a list of all the people that have helped me and it's like pages long.

Seth: Why don't we start from the very beginning? So who are you and how did you get into the land investing space specifically? Were you doing other kinds of real estate prior to that? Or let's hear about your life story quick.

Brent: Heck yeah. I actually tell people I started practicing real estate in 2004 is when I started going to the seminars. I still have the creative finance real estate book from Robert Allen on my bookshelf.

My wife was trying to throw that away the other day. I was like, no, that's classic. I finally met Robert Allen a couple of years ago. I started with rentals. I bought my first rental in 2007.

2008 happened for me. 2009 was rough for me. I ended up having to move out of my first house I ever bought.

And me and my wife and my dog had to move in with my in-laws because I couldn't afford to pay the rent. Actually, so I take that back.

I bought a house, rented it out, and then we went to a rental property and I had to cancel that because I knew I wasn't going to be able to pay that landlord.

Long story short, they ended up wrecking my credit because I got out of my lease early. And then I joined the military. I was in that for eight and a half years. And I did real estate throughout that time.

But in 2009, I had to pay my bills and I just went back to school. And I wholesaled some houses in 2015 to pay for college and kept buying rentals.

But I was ready to get out of the military in about 2016. But I never could have done that with my rental income. And if I would have quit my job, I would have probably lost all those rentals because they were not producing me income.

And I thought that people got into real estate to make money and I wasn't making money. This was in 2016. Then I heard a guy talking about land investing business on a podcast.

And I'd never heard this before. I thought you had to be rich to own land. I thought you had to be a cattle rancher or a farmer. I was like, how do people make money with land?

So I just kept driving by all this land and I had already had some experience wholesaling houses. So when I heard about the land, I was like, you know what? I'm going to start sending these guys a postcard that are on the tax delinquent list.

And my phone started blowing up and I didn't know what I was doing. And I just started like, okay, yeah, I'll buy it. And they were killing me these like heck of discounts because the land was worthless.

It was like not buildable, not accessible, landlocked. Well there's a buyer for everything is what I found out. So here we are today. Many years later, I just kept doing it over and over and over.

Seth: Now, I was looking at your LinkedIn just before we got on this call, and I noticed what you talked about, how you joined the Army. I think it was in 2015, but you had—

Brent: 2018. I'm sorry, 2009.

Seth: I'm sorry, 2009. Okay, I got you.

Brent: I actually commissioned as an officer in 2015.

Seth: Okay, I see. So that might be what it is. It looks like you graduated college, and then you did something for several years, and then you went into the Army, which is like, that's a weird track.

Usually people do it like right after college, but it sounds like you did do it right after college.

Brent: I did it. I was actually in college while I was in the military. It was really cool. I got a special assignment. They give about 160 active duty soldiers a year.

So they pay my E-5 salary as an enlisted person while I was going to college for 21. So here's the catch. I had to get a four year degree in 21 months, but I mean, I just did two back-to-back deployments in Afghanistan.

That was nothing for me. And I bought two houses and renovated them during that 21 months.

Seth: Holy cow, how'd you do all that?

Brent: It's doable. I was single. I was a single guy and a single young guy under 30. So you could pretty much do anything.

I think we talked a little bit about this, if I remember right, when I was on your podcast. How big of a deal do you think that is to be able to build your business when you're single or when you're married before kids?

Like basically, you don't have the big time commitment of having a family. For me, it was a huge deal to be able to do it before I had kids. Do you think you would be able to do this all over again?

Like right now, if you're starting from nothing with the knowledge you had back then?

Seth: No. The answer is absolutely not. But now I'm a different person because I've grown so much. I could, you know, you could take everything and I'll start it over and probably do better.

But heck no. Like I got three kids now, a lot of responsibilities. You know, it's amazing. You got to do this earlier.

Like I think my catalyst was in 2013. My first wife had just left me. I moved to like I was in Afghanistan. She moved in with another man. It sucked.

But when I came home to Florida, I had to fill my mind with something besides crying over my ex-wife. So I bought a house and, you know, I fixed it up and then bought another one.

And then in that process met the woman of my dreams that I'm married to today and have three kids with. So it's good to take risk while you're young.

And like, I had no kids, I had no responsibility. Like I get three or four hours of sleep and go to school and work the next day.

So we, I talk to a lot of young people. They find me on like TikTok and Instagram and they're like, oh, how do I get started? I live in my mom's basement.

I was like, bro, it's the best time. Like, let's go do the free stuff. Like you have no responsibilities. You could take so much risk right now, but people are scared.

We, cause we don't know. We focus on what bad can happen rather than what could happen if I stay the same and don't do anything for five years.

Brent: That's a really good point. Cause I remember thinking the very, very similar thing when I was younger and had no responsibilities and I had no money.

And I kind of use that as a crutch to like, I can't do this because there's no money. But man, think about the value you can just create out of thin air just by like picking up the phone and talking to people or like making connections and building relationships and just the time factor and the energy factor is just massive.

Like it's probably worth more than money when you think about it because you can manifest the money from wherever it is.

Seth: Yeah. And that's funny. It's so funny. It's such a conundrum almost. It's such an experience because when you don't have time but you have money, you're going to find a solution real quick.

But you also have money at that point to pay people, right? But then when you're young, you don't have money and you got all the time in the world, but you won't take risk.

It's just funny. It's like when you're young, you should be throwing so much spaghetti at the wall and like trying to just blow it up everywhere. Anyway, I'm rambling. I went on a tangent there.

Brent: Yeah. I use that as a crutch as well. Too young or I don't know, I don't have the money, but now it's like, you know, my crutches now it's like, I run out of energy pretty quickly, like three o'clock in the afternoon, I'm done.

You know? So I have another issue, but I got to work smarter, not harder. I got to leverage. I got to use other people's talents and things.

If I want to grow and do big things, we always have a mountain to climb. You know, we've never made it as men, as business people, you know, luckily for you, Seth, you still look young, so you could probably use that crutch.

Seth: There's a lot we can talk about here. Before we started recording, I was saying we could probably talk for 10 hours because there's so much we have in common, so many different things that we both know about.

But the thing where I wanted to kind of focus our energy today was on this thing you've been doing of land and home packages. So I've known a handful of people who have gotten into this where you buy a piece of land that could be used for a mobile home or a manufacturer or that kind of thing.

And you don't just sell it as that, like you actually get a home on there and then you sell it for a lot more. And that's a big deal because you're no longer selling just a piece of land, which is essentially a luxury purchase.

You're selling a very useful asset that people need right now. Like they're ready to move in and they need it. So tell me about that. Like how does he even get into that? And how's it going? Let's just kick it off. Where do you want to go with it?

Brent: Well, you know what billionaires do, Seth? And I'll answer that question. You know what billionaires do? Is they're really good at creating businesses.

Yeah, they've got the luxury, like you said, the land business. We can make a lot of money doing this. I don't know if I'd ever become a billionaire, just seller financing land.

I probably maybe could. We scale it enough. But when you create something, and I didn't even create it, when you come up with something that people just absolutely must have, like a roof over their head, clothing, I mean, food, water, like that's probably the number one need.

You do very well doing it. So I haphazardly since 2020 have been putting mobile homes on land, brand new mobile homes to be exact. I don't like the old ones. I've flipped and I've seller financed quite a few older ones, but that's a whole nother podcast.

But really like, okay, I'll give you an example. In the last four days, we've had one of our, so we've taught a few people how to do this as well. We had a 24-year-old kid sell his first brand new mobile home on land package.

And we netted about $71,000 in Georgia of all places. I got one in a contract on Sunday, one of my own personal ones that I own by myself. I do have a project manager, thank God, because if they were up to me to try and do everything, I wouldn't get anything done.

But it's amazing how these things, and it's not even, it's not even done. We just got the steps on last week to where people can go in and look at these. So we've been pre-listing them before we were even done with them.

So I've never been in a business where there was that much demand for something. And it's such a different thing than now selling land again on seller financing. There's a buyer for every piece of land. There's a buyer for every parcel of land.

But I've never really had something where I can just like have a waiting list of people. And I think that's where the true wealth is built. So I'm finding that with the land mobile home packages.

And the more people I talk to about it, I feel like the bigger my business gets because people are reaching out to me and saying, hey, I've got money. I want to lend you because you're helping solve the affordable problem.

Housing crisis. And my partner, Robert Howell, he says, I show God's love through providing affordable housing, which I really love that.

Seth: So I guess maybe the first question is, to do this, you have become a licensed manufactured home dealer. Is that accurate?

Brent: Yeah, that's absolutely helped us very much. That's one of the key components to making huge profit.

Yeah. I used to buy them off the side of the road. These places that have a big billboard and you see all these mobile homes sitting on a lot. That's where I would buy them from.

And I'm paying full retail for these things. I want to be getting them at wholesale prices to where I can like be Walmart where they order or Sam's club, they've ordered pallets of stuff.

And then they sell it to poor jokers like me at retail. Not that I want to take advantage of someone, but it's, I was paying too much. That's one of the ways to get a discount.

The other way is with our land strategies that we use is getting the land at discount as well.

Seth: If you had not become a licensed mobile home dealer, there's really just one big drawback, and that is you're paying a higher price. Is that accurate? Or is there some other drawback to trying to do this without a license?

Brent: Exactly. Yeah, that would be a big drawback. Could we still do it? Yeah, I've been very profitable. I mean, I've done over 97,000. I mean, we've gotten land for so cheap where we made $97,000.

I've never gotten over the 100K mark on any of them, until I got the dealer license.

Seth: And how much cheaper is it? Are we talking, is it like a 10% discount, 50%? What would be the price of one at full price versus your dealer price?

Brent: I average about 30% off. So the numbers might not add up perfectly, but I just got one. This was a three bedroom, two bath. And if anybody's like, oh my God, I'm not a dealer. I don't know how to be a dealer.

I am basically creating a network with our land home league community to where we've got dealers in California, Georgia, Texas, all the Carolinas, Florida, to where I could just connect you with these people.

And I'm sure they'll mark it up a little bit, but what's cool is you're still going to get the discount pricing. But anyhow, going back to that amount. So I just ordered a three bedroom, two bath, brand new home, all drywall on the inside, not panel board, not that 1965 dark panel board stuff you see upgraded bathroom, standalone tub delivered for $81,000.

It's a 1500 square foot house.

Seth: Wow. That's your total cost is the 81,000 bucks.

Brent: Now I got to pay for the air conditioner and the install and the setup. So there's a lot more expenses that come, but like I get the whole product and that comes with appliances, everything.

Like I just got to plug this thing in now to septic or sewage or water and electricity or gas and gas to have the utilities. Now, those guys all charge their fees as well.

But what's really cool about that is you can get some smoking hot deals out there, especially if you're doing this at economy of scale. Like I've got four in one area and the septic guy is like, yeah, I'll knock off $1,500 a piece if you just keep, you know, if I do one of these a month for you, I was like, perfect.

Because Robert and Chris, my partners, are selling one a week.

Seth: So many questions. I guess one question is, help me understand exactly what this home is. Is this a single wide, a double wide, something totally different? Does it not even look like a mobile home? What does the house type look like?

Brent: Yeah, I can give you an address like 13090 Ravine Drive West in Colorado Springs. They don't really look like mobile homes. They're not what we have been put in our mind. Usually double wide.

I do like the double wide because it makes your kitchen and your living room so much like more expansive. I'm trying to think of an address, the address of the one I just got under contract this weekend in Florida.

And what's sad about it is I'm actually using a model from the floor on a piece of land I don't own. That's how I was able to pre-sell these things. So to give you an accurate representation of what they look like.

Seth: I'm looking at the realtor.com listing for the address you just mentioned there. And you're right. I mean, at least from the interior, especially, it really doesn't look like a mobile home at all.

Brent: Yeah. And that's one of the first ones I ever did in 2020. I mean, I appreciate that because you can see like a lot of imperfections. Like you could see the paint job on the front, the casing didn't match the front.

And then you see the garbage in the neighbor's yard and you see the decks I had to rip off because I hooked them to the side of the house and got denied on my certificate of occupancy. Like that's one that I made a lot of mistakes on.

Like, I mean, almost $25,000 worth of mistakes. So there's been a, I always tell people like, you're not going to like make a fortune on your first one or you could, but keep doing it. You'll perfect this process. It's a, it's a series of checklist.

Seth: Maybe this is a good example. This one in Colorado Springs, I will say it looks like a double wide from the outside, but the inside you'd probably never know. But like on this example here, what did you pay for the land? What did you pay for the mobile home? And what did you sell the whole thing for? So like what was the all in and profit from it?

Brent: I can remember those like yesterday, actually, this is before I had a dealer's license as well. And that's actually a modular home. So it's sitting on a real foundation, a stem wall foundation.

It's got crawl space and it's conditioned below there. So it's heated. Now that one, we paid 30,000 for the land and already had well. They'd already had electricity at the lot line because that was a house that burnt down during the Black Forest fires.

It was kind of a tragedy, honestly. So they got paid out insurance and they just wanted to get rid of the land. $30,000 for the land. I bought the house for $155,000.

I paid $17,000 for the foundation and then we paid the plumber and the electrician, all these odds and ends. I actually spent almost $20,000 on the decks unfortunately because I had to do them twice, which was my fault.

And my, my contractor that had helped me out, he was doing it from Kentucky. Another bad idea, but I had all in two 54, two 53 and we sold it for three 55.

Seth: Okay. So yeah, we are about now minus some real estate commissions. I think we were about profitable 90 something thousand dollars net on that. Do you recall how long that sat on the market before it sold?

Brent: That particular house, it was like 30 days.

Seth: Yeah. This was a little different market. The one we just sold in Georgia, that one sat on the market. It went under contract the first day. It's 201 North via road, Villarica, Georgia.

Brent: We got under contract the first 24 hours and then it fell out of contract and then it was under contract again for another week. I'm sorry. It was on the market another week and then went under contract again.

The cool thing about that one was we own a lot next door and the buyer wanted the lot next door. He didn't want anybody to ever develop it. So he offered us $85,000 for the vacant land next door. We had 17 grand in it.

So I was like, take it. And it was literally the day before closing and it changed his mind. I was thinking to myself, oh my God, we're about to make more on this vacant land next door.

Almost as same price as if we were developing. So we still did pretty darn well on the property. But if you price these things right and you make sure that they can get FHA, VA lending, conventional lending, some states USDA lending, like Kentucky, they're getting grants.

People are walking into these houses, no money out of pocket. Now, the catch is putting a brandy one and affixing it to the land.

Seth: I thought I've heard somewhere, isn't it a mobile home technically considered equipment until it's affixed to the land? Like, does something change once it's like on a solid foundation versus like, yeah, we can take it away at any time?

Brent: Yeah, it's considered personal property, like a VIN number and a car. And that's really important. You want to make sure you got copies of VIN numbers in many places. Like, they put them on the side of the house. They put them underneath the sink.

But you want to like take pictures of them. You want to document them, put them in a fireproof safe. Because when I was buying old mobile homes and like on land and fixing them up, like that was a pain in the butt, absolute pain in the butt.

And the thing about going brand new and putting it on a piece of land, because like what you said, why do I seller finance most of my land deals? It's because the banks aren't lending on it.

And you can get loans on land, but it needs to be more expensive. And a lot of times they want to see like 50% down. But when I put a brand new mobile home on it, now someone can get like a loan, no money out of their pocket.

And the easier lending is to get on something, the higher price I can charge. I mean, you take away all the lending, prices of everything will come down tomorrow.

Seth: Am I correct that there is a way to make it not personal property? Like, no, this is now real estate because it's connected to the foundation. Is that accurate or am I wrong about that?

Brent: Yeah, you're absolutely correct about that.

Seth: Got it. So before it becomes part of the real estate, I guess that effectively changes maybe how you could finance it maybe, but also the depreciation schedule.

If you were to use this as a investment property and try to depreciate it, the personal property portion would be depreciated faster, I think. But what are the other consequences of it being personal property or not? Why does that even matter?

Brent: Yeah, because something with a Venn number depreciates way faster than concrete block structure. Even though these things are built very well. They're built in a conditioned environment.

But for instance, last year, I owed about $80,000 more to the federal government. And this is after all my deductions, all my write-offs, paying my children, my office space, bought a new truck.

My CPA is like, listen, you can go buy like a brand new skid steer from John Deere at 0% interest for five years. Which quick tip for anybody who wants a skid steer, like your credit could be shot and you can go walk in there and get that and depreciate the whole thing and not have a penny out of your pocket.

He's like, or, and I'm like, what the heck am I going to do with a skid steer? Like, I'm not, I'm not putting in septic systems. He said, or you can buy $160,000 mobile home park and you basically depreciate half or the whole thing and get about $80,000 written off your federal taxes.

I was like, okay, why? He's like, because of mobile homes. But if I bought, I would have needed to buy about a 400 and something thousand dollar light industrial building to eliminate that $80,000 taxes. So I don't understand it.

But owning real estate allows us the ability to pay a lot less taxes.

Seth: No, absolutely. Now, you mentioned making sure that these mobile homes are, should I be calling them manufactured homes or modular homes? What is the correct term for them these days?

Brent: Here's how I explain it to people. A mobile home is brought in on wheels. A modular home is usually craned in. So that's kind of the two differences. I don't think there's a wrong answer.

Mobile home, manufacturer home, modular home. And a lot of people interchange them incorrectly. Modular is usually sitting on a real foundation, like a real stem wall. And mobile homes, sometimes jack stands or we have pads, but they're anchored in.

That thing is not going anywhere. We have 180 mile an hour winds in Florida. They don't move, which is awesome. They kind of flex a little bit.

Seth: But you were talking about the importance of making sure that they're eligible for different types of loans, like the USDA and the VA and all this stuff. So like, what do you have to do to make them eligible for that?

Like, don't these things just kind of, are they built to be eligible? Or is there something you have to do like a dotting I's and crossing T's to make sure people can get loans on those kinds of buildings?

Brent: Yeah. You have a licensed mobile home installer, put it in for you and anchor it down correctly. And you get your certificate of occupancy as well as an engineer letter saying that it's been done correctly.

You know, you put your polyurethane. There's so many different things. I'll try and break it down as quick as possible, but it's anchored and secured properly. And then you have the 20 milliliter, we call it a vapor barrier that that's got to be down.

So vapors can't come out of the earth and go through your floor, little things like that. Those are the things lenders want to see. One is secured to the land and it's not moving.

And two, it's going to be 20 years from now, still sitting there just fine. Cause they want to make sure like if they're giving you a 30 year loan, they want to make sure this thing's going to last 30 years.

Seth: Yeah, that makes sense. So I realize this question is very subjective, but is it safe to say that these manufactured homes are cheaper than a stick built home?

Like if you were to stick build the exact same home in the exact same place versus just getting a mobile home and bringing it in, like how much cheaper is that, you know?

Brent: Yeah. Well, perfect example. Like one of my criteria that I want to see in a market is one of my areas I build in on one acre parcels of land, the same exact square foot house, three bedroom, two bath concrete block structure, or CVS is what we call it in Florida, is selling for a hundred thousand dollars more than my three bedroom, two bath, very nice mobile home on the same size parcel of land, a hundred thousand dollars cheaper.

And there's a lot of reasons why it could be it is cheaper is because they're built in a factory and they're like they're not being built by human hands it's a machine building these things and like they're spending out five a day in a conditioned environment so the rain the water the snow the sleet never sees the inside of your house.

Like I've built stick built structures in Colorado. I ran out of money. Well the snow hit my subfloor. Guess what? I had to replace them.

But that is when these fly off the shelf, because if it's $100,000 less, if the interest rates are, let's just say, 6% interest, that's $600 less a month that someone's going to pay for that mortgage plus taxes plus insurance.

So that's a huge savings for someone that's just starting out or in the school teacher or brand new firefighter or police officer or nurse.

Seth: Yeah. So it sounds like it costs significantly less to build them and they also sell for significantly less. Like the actual value is less than a site built home. Is that accurate? Or is the value actually pretty similar?

Brent: You know, it's hard to say. We can look at stick built houses and figure our comps from that. But yeah, it's hard to say. Like modular in Colorado was the most, the easiest comparison for a stick built house.

Now, mobile home was a little cheaper. Manufactured homes were a little cheaper. Manufactured and mobile, I'm using those kind of interchangeably. So yeah, they do appraise a little less because, you know, these appraisers know it.

These things cost less. We're selling a property right now. The appraisal came in exactly what the contract was for. Funny how that works.

Seth: Do you think these manufactured homes are actually built better than site-built homes because of the things you said? Like, and I feel like to transport them down the road, like they need thicker studs to hold the thing together so like it's actually more solid home is that true do you think?

Brent: Yeah it's going through a hurricane and an earthquake at the same time going down the road. Now we always try not to transport them very far because one the freight costs money so they're not going super far usually they flex they're really good at flexing.

But I think the reason why I think it's a better product is because, again, it was built in a conditioned environment and sealed. When we're building these thick built houses, it's open to the elements.

Your siding gets wet or what's underneath that siding. You know, they got that, that plastic barrier. And then underneath that, the insulation, like that stuff gets wet. If you're building in Florida and Colorado, and it's also, I don't know about being built better, but it's, it's also more efficient.

Because like when it's like I got a property in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, we're about to get shut down for the winter. This is too cold to do stuff on the outside.

Seth: You mentioned the homes don't have to get transported that far from where they're manufactured. So like, does that mean there's manufacturing plants like all over the place?

Brent: Near any lot that you have to sell? Like how far is it? I'll give you an example. Like the ones we just bought in Florida, they came, I think about two hour drive. It was about a two.

And that was with them pulling it slowly. So they're all over Georgia. Like the areas we're doing it, we want to see them barely close by within about within a few hours.

Obviously there's probably some more rural States where they're not as close by, but I mean, the ones I'm doing that Mac, my max has been about two and a half hours.

Seth: And which manufacturers can you buy from? Like, can you buy from anybody? Or are there like certain ones that you're allowed to get them from?

Brent: Yeah. If you have a dealer's license, the States I'm in, like we get them from Cavco and Champion and Clayton. And there's some other ones that those are kind of my top three personals.

Seth: Is it similar to car brands where like certain brands are known for higher quality, like Mercedes versus Hyundai or something like that?

Brent: You know, that's a really good question. I don't know if I'm the best to answer that. I wouldn't call myself an expert on this. I mean I'm at about what 15 so far. I really like Champion. I think they're a good quality.

However you're gonna wait longer for those like Cadillac. They figured it out. They figured the supply demand. They don't make as many as many now so that way there's more demand and less supply so these guys are getting smart.

Like you want one quick? Clayton. Clayton's going to be your answer. I mean, we could spend one of these out. Well, the one I just gave you in Georgia, the address that when we were, we bought the land and got paid on it in four months.

Cause everyone's like, Oh, I don't want to do like, I'd rather do a land deal. It's faster. Yeah. I prefer to get paid at 30 days on my land deals as well. But if I'm going to get paid like three times more and I just got to wait three more months, I'll go for it.

Seth: So from the date that you order the thing in the case of Clayton, for example, because they're fast. From the date that you order it to the date that the thing is delivered and installed, how long does that usually take?

Brent: Yeah, well, the Clayton delivery took about three weeks. From the date that you ordered it? Again, yeah. It was delivered there in three weeks. I think it takes installation a little longer than that, usually. That's probably about five to six weeks, depending on how anything can affect it.

Weather, like we have some in Tennessee we're doing. It has been raining for three weeks straight so those guys aren't going out there and setting that thing up in the rain. It could be dangerous.

But that one in Georgia I gave you the address for the 201 north via. And you can look this up on Zillow. From the time we purchased the land the time we sold it and got paid was four months in this market with these interest rates.

Like I think the higher the interest rates the better for this kind of thing.

Seth: Other than the foundation itself, what else has to be ready before that home is delivered and installed?

Brent: Driveway culvert. Can you get on the land? Honestly that's been a mistake that happened to me. Our driveway wasn't good so luckily they pull these things in with like equipment like they're they're just on tracks and full drive.

But I got freaked out because I was there. The semi trucks like we can't get on that land. I was like oh my god what do I do? They're like no no we'll just put it right in the road. They'll come with their equipment and I was like.

Thank god like because I was thinking I was like I gotta put like a 30 foot culvert in this thing. He's like, I can never make that swing, you know? So I was like, yeah, but that was a big thing. Access, access is very big.

Seth: So when you say driveway, so you mean like, if it's just like a dirt road going up to the foundation, like that's no good. We need like a cement pad in there or like a—

Brent: Oh no, shoot. No, no, I haven't put cement concrete on any of my, I mean, like, can you get across the ditch to deliver this thing to my pad?

Seth: Gotcha. And when we talk about installation taking five weeks, so like what is involved with installation? Why does this take so long? Is it, I mean it's all the same stuff as a normal site built house right like all the plumbing and electric and all those different people have to come and do their thing right?

Brent: Yeah so once you have the pad built and impacted and it's like actually put in there they show up they anchor it down they put it on blocks. They basically tie it into the earth.

And then after that, like, well, let me back up a minute. They put them together. We have to marry the two together because they double wide. One at a time is delivered. And then they pretty much put in the casing and they drywall it in.

That way you can't see where they married it together. It looks like a clean finish. They put all the baseboards in, make sure the doors can shut properly, take the tape off all the cabinets and the refrigerators.

And then it's really, it's like, does the egg come first or the chicken? Do you put your septic system in first or do you put it in after the home is delivered?

Well, some say put it in after because the trucks will run over your septic system and destroy it. Well, if you don't put that house high enough, you got to put lift stations on your septic system.

So some say you should do it after, some say you do it before. It's a fine line. But little things like that, get your well put in, connect your well to the house, connect the septic to the house, connect the gas to the house.

Right now, I've got four of them. I'm waiting on electricity. Like that's the last thing I need. And then they put the skirting or the bricks around the bottom. So you can't see where it's connected into the earth and in the steps.

Oh my gosh. If people can't get in the house, they can't look at it.

Seth: In your capacity as the licensed mobile home dealer, coordinating all that stuff, you got your plumber, electrician, septic installer. Well, I assume that HVAC or the HVAC is already there, right? Because the ductwork is there. The furnace is probably in the unit.

But of all these different people you need to work with. Is this like your job or are you finding a general contractor to do this? Or does the home manufacturer handle any of this for you? Like how much of this is on you versus somebody else is doing the work?

Brent: Yeah, that's the secret sauce right there. That is having a proper, a very good mobile home installer. And they kind of take care of all that for you. I got one more secret weapon, one more pro tip.

I have a project manager that runs all of them for me, that communicates with all these people. If it were up to me, I would be losing my mind because I got my land business. I got my rental company. I got my coaching company with the Landsharks.

That's my baby is teaching people how to do land deals. But having that mobile home installer that knows what they're doing. And there's several things that you want to do to make sure you have the right person because hiring the wrong person costs a lot of money, takes a lot of time.

And I've seen catastrophes happen where no one can even move into these things. And it's just a waste of money. You could really screw one of these up big time.

Seth: Yeah. So this mobile home installer, is this person in any way affiliated with the mobile home manufacturer or is this basically just a different word for general contractor? Like they're the person that oversees everything.

Brent: In the mobile home business, it's the general contractor. It's your GC.

Seth: Okay. Gotcha. And a general contractor can do it too. But guess what? They're probably going to hire the mobile home installer and you're going to have another expense.

Brent: Oh my goodness. Yeah, you got one of my lessons learned was permits. We paid like four times what we should have paid for the permits because there was a markup on them from the first mobile home installer.

Like, Brent, if you hire the wrong guy, well, your mobile home could leak. And when your mobile home leaks because they don't marry it together and they don't property like roof it. Oh, what a mess. Absolute mess.

Seth: I mean, it seems like a pretty basic thing, right? How do you even mess that up? Like, what are you even doing in this business if you can't marry the two things together?

Brent: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And the sad thing is, it just happened to us on one of our projects. It does happen. It's just a lesson learned and I hope I can help people avoid it.

Seth: So how do you find a good installer? Like where do you even start looking for this person?

Brent: Yeah. One of the things I've learned is talking to the manufacturer, who do you see them doing most of these for you? Like little questions like that. Kind of like when the land sales business, like how do we find a good market?

Well, where are the land sales happening? How do you find a good realtor to sell these? Who's selling all the land in this area? Having conversations, the right words to ask them. And it's just the same thing.

You see that realtor, the one that's selling all the mobile home packages. Who's their installer? Because they're turning them out left and right. You want to look for efficient businesses.

And the efficient businesses are not efficient because they just happen that way. It's because they've gotten through all the mistakes.

Seth: And this project manager, is their job just to make sure the installers are doing their job or are they going even deeper to look at the installers work and make sure that is happening right?

Brent: Like, both, both.

Seth: Okay. You named it like you, you hit it on the head there. It really helps that their feet are on the ground. And what do you have to pay this installer, first of all? Like, is there some percentage on top of the home itself that they charge you? Or how does that work?

Brent: No, they're all different. They really are all different. Yeah, I don't almost want to say a percentage because it's different in every county, it seems like, that I've been in. So I don't really have a rule of thumb for that, personally.

Robert and Chris might. They're my partners in this. They've done way, way more of these than I have, but they're doing a ton in South Carolina. They like to buy land, subdivide it and do it all in one spot to where I'm like individual lots here and there.

I'm doing some across the street. And one thing I do in one area, I got this area, it's like six by six miles, six miles square. I do the same product on every one of them.

Now, I try not to allow you to be able to see that. That way it doesn't look like two of the same houses are on the same road. But it's easy when you do the same product.

You say, hey, I'm about to have 123 Main Street done. You can look at this one, but go drive by and see which land you like. You can pick which one type thing. Same house, economy of scale.

Seth: So if you have two identical properties right next to each other, both one acre lots, one of them has a mobile home on it that you just put there. The other one is still just a vacant lot. Is the one with the mobile home always going to sell faster?

Brent: I would say 99% of the time, yes. Yes. Because your buyer's pool is way bigger. Because that person that's going to buy that land is probably going to build their dream home. And everyone has this.

I mean, I've sold over 360 parcels of land that they all tell me. One day I want to build a cabin. One day I want to build a dream home. Most people never touch it.

So it's like, would you rather buy a car already built? Or I can give you one cheaper. You'll have to buy it on Amazon for half the price, but you got to build it yourself.

Oh, and by the way, the one that's already built, you can get financing on that one too and make payments.

Seth: Is there ever a time when it's better not to put a mobile home on a property? Like it's just more trouble than it's worth. Like you might make more money, but like relative to all the work, it's not that much more. And if so, like, how do you know it's officially worth the trouble or it's not?

Brent: Yeah. We've come across this multiple times with our community members, as well as myself. If I'm going to make, you know, 15, $20,000 just to flip the land, I can always get another piece of land tomorrow if I want to.

Or I can wait and put a mobile home on it and make $45,000, $55,000. But it's going to be a three, four, five month process. I'm going to flip it. I'm going to take the money today.

Rather than the money a couple of months from now, even if it's more. Because the way I look at it again is we're in the marketing business. We can get another land deal tomorrow. There's plenty of land. And there's plenty of sellers that will sell you that land at a discount.

So yeah, if I could just flip it, I'm going to flip it.

Seth: And on that whole discount issue, how important is it to buy it at a discount? Like if you know your plan is to put a mobile home on it and make it worth more in that way, like couldn't you just buy stuff at market value? Or like, no, it's critically you get it at half a market value.

Brent: Yeah, I have gotten stuff at market value. My dad's wholesaled me several parcels of land and I paid him full market value for it. He made an assignment fee. These ones I'm looking at about a 60K spread net profit on each one of them.

Those I'm fine paying market value for no problem. I'm always going to try and get a discount though. If it wasn't my dad selling me those things, I would have beat that wholesaler up.

Because at the end of the day, we've got to negotiate everything in this business. Because the bigger spreads I have on deals, the easier they are. I'll tell you, I'm dealing with like three nightmare projects right now.

There's like no spread on them. I mean, none. I'm probably going to lose money. Well, I'm going to lose money on several of them. Those are the hardest, most time-consuming deals I ever do.

And I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, Seth. I'm sure that's, do you see that as well in your business? Like deals where no money is made or I lose money on them? The ones that we've lost money on and hardly any money has been made are usually the most time-consuming, hardest deals I ever do.

But the ones where I make the seem the biggest spreads are the ones that kind of was like, wow, I can't believe it was that easy. That's my experience anyways. I don't know if that's just because it feels like I'm wasting that time, but I think in general, yeah, you are right.

Seth: I mean, it seems like the ones that go pretty big, like they win in more ways than one. Like the whole thing was just meant to be. Whereas the ones that lose money or break even, it's just like, I should have seen the signs. I never should have gotten into this. So yeah, I think you're pretty much right. That's been my experience too.

Brent: You know, and some of the mistakes were things I knew I should have did, but for some reason or another, I just didn't do it.

Seth: So these are these land home package deals. That's what we're talking about when you say the ones where you're breaking even or losing money.

Brent: Oh no, I'm talking about like other land deals where I tried to make a deal, a deal out of something that it wasn't. Yeah or where it's like oh we're gonna do it because I'm confident and cocky. I'll make money on everything I touch.

Those are the ones that are just turned out to be like a couple year-long projects where it's like gosh how much further in the hole can we get. I don't know if anybody's ever come on and said this but I lost money on many deals. I'm only talking about the good ones today.

Seth: No appreciate your honesty on that. Well on the mobile home thing so how important is location? Because I'm assuming in the land business you're dealing with lots of rural stuff that's kind of maybe not necessarily in the middle of nowhere, but maybe.

So, like, is there a point at which it's like, okay, this location is just too far away from anything. Like, even if I build a house, no one's going to want it because it's so far away. Does it need to be near a city center or anything like that?

Brent: Yeah, obviously the closer the city and if you can do one in the city, you're going to like. But yeah, I mean, I don't really care about the location. I'm looking for the same thing in my land business. Same thing as land. Same thing as land mobile home package.

I want to see stuff selling. If I don't see stuff selling, then that tells me one thing. There's no demand. Well, sometimes there's just nothing available for sale. So that could be it as well. You might have to deep dive that more. But I want to see stuff selling. I don't care where it's at. Long stuff selling.

Seth: So when you are normally appraising or trying to value a piece of vacant land, there's a certain process that we go through for that. But when you know you're going to be putting a home on it, does that like completely change everything?

Like you don't even look at it the way you do for a land deal anymore because now you're just looking at mobile homes similar to the one that you're going to put on there, preferably brand new ones, right? Or what does that process look like when you know what the end plan is?

Brent: Yeah. I mean, I want to see the biggest thing is easy road access. And what's it going to take the electricity in there if there's not already electricity? So really, I want my job to be as easy as possible.

Same thing with flood. I've had some land deals that I could have just almost got taken for free. But since I was planning to develop on them, I was like, no, you know, flood zone X only in Florida, like, because you could bring in so much dirt where it's like, there went all your profit right there.

Another thing is there's certain areas, even in Florida, where you got to know what the water flow ratio is. There's areas where it's like, if we don't have good water flow in this particular location, you basically just doubled the price of your well.

Because now you got to install a second pump and an aerator system to fill a big tank so that we can have water on demand. Little things like that could just obliterate your profit really quickly.

Seth: Interesting. I never realized access to water was an issue with Florida. I just assumed there was tons of water down there.

Brent: Even though I've been in the land business, selling land for years on these parcels, this area. I never realized that until I started developing in there.

Seth: Do you have loans on these things while you're waiting for them to sell? Like, I assume you buy the land cash in most cases, but when it comes to like the mobile home itself, do you have to take out a loan from a bank or something to finance that?

And then you sit until it sells or does the like Clayton Homes, like do they extend you financing until it sells? How does that work?

Brent: That would be awesome. So what I've done was I've used my own cash as well as regular private lenders, like regular people like you and I, not institutions, not banks, not hard money lenders. Like my plumber, my neighbor, my dentist, my father-in-law.

And basically I secure their money with that land parcel. And as we improve it, so if I know I'm going to spend 179,000 on the land, the build out, everything, and I know we could sell it for 265, I will write them a promissory note and a deed of trust or a promissory note and a mortgage to secure all that money for this entire bill.

Seth: That's the hardest part, I think, for people is getting the loans for this. But once it's all done, once you get your CO, your certificate of occupancy, yeah, a bank will be happy to finance on it.

Brent: So it sounds like until that C of O is in place, the bank wants nothing to do with it?

Seth: Yeah, pretty much.

Brent: Okay. There are some banks out there that will, now that we're building a track record, we're getting some interest guys saying yeah yeah we'll we'll finance 95 of it type stuff but they want to see you do a few or at least be teamed up with someone that had done a few.

That's how we're helping some of our our land home league community members. The biggest thing is the funding.

Seth: Do you ever sell any of these land home packages with seller financing? I know you do that with land a lot but once there's a mobile home could you do it there or would that just not make sense because of the financing issue?

Brent: Yeah, it doesn't make sense. Maybe one day, but I have never sold one on seller financing. You know, I'm selling my mobile homes in my mobile home park to my tenants because I just want to own the land. I don't want to maintain a rental that's a mobile home.

I mean, an old mobile home too.

Seth: How big are these lots typically that you're putting the mobile homes on? I saw that one you mentioned earlier, it looked like it was about a half acre, but are they like one acre or like, what does your typical size look like?

Brent: I like one acre. Oh, that one and a half acre. The reason why I was able to get it on a half acre, that one in Colorado was because there was already, well, how do we get away with that?

Because usually Colorado wants to see one acre or more for a septic or a well. You could get smaller parcels if it's got like city water or city sewer or both. Then, you know, that's where we call it mobile home parks.

But I like the one acre because you have to be like, like for instance, Florida is 75 foot from your well to your septic. Now, what if your neighbor puts their septic right on their lot line?

Well, your well is going to be 75 foot away from that. So you got to kind of figure that out. That's where site plans come into play.

Seth: Does it ever happen where the mobile home can hook up to like a city sewer? Or is the assumption almost always you're going to need a well and septic for this thing?

Brent: Yeah, the more rural you pretty much need a well and septic most of the time. But yeah if there's city sewer and or city water that's a plus then we can get them increase on the density, you know, smaller lots.

Seth: Could you ever like rent out these mobile homes? I realize you can, but is that something you've ever explored doing or you're not really looking for that? Like a brand new one?

Brent: Yeah. You know, that's my fallback plan. If something changes or I make a huge mistake on one, I'll just refinance it, pay off my private lenders, or maybe ask the private lender if they want to stick around for a while.

Cause usually there's, it's not like an institution. So they're very flexible. And just like, if anybody's like, well, how do I get private lending. Well, you see what I'm doing? I'm giving all, I'm giving everything away. And I have a call to action.

Like, Hey guys, if you're listening to the Seth Williams podcast, you probably love him. If you want to do some real estate deals together, reach out to me and I'll secure your money with real estate.

And you don't have to worry about watching it on the stock ticker. We secure it with real estate. We pay anywhere from eight to nine, 10, 11%, depending on the deal. And I'm always looking for more lenders to do more deals together. That's how you get money.

Seth: Yeah, no, that makes sense. You mentioned earlier in this conversation, being a dealer, I don't know if you said these words exactly, but it sounded like you could buy these mobile homes in bulk, like buy multiple ones at a time or something.

Does that mean like you're buying them and holding inventory of them somewhere or you just, how does that work?

Brent: Yeah, I don't want to hold inventory. I don't want to be a car lot.

Seth: So you never actually buy like five mobile homes at a time. That's not really something that happens.

Brent: Most of everybody at one time was four, but they were all going on land that I owned. So what you're really doing, you're basically just ordering them and there's already a home for them. It's not like, yeah, someday I'm going to buy these things. It's like, no, I need them right now. Make them and put them there.

Seth: Okay. Hey, I'm closing on these four lots. How soon can you get me these? You talked about this mobile home park. Do you have one mobile home park or do you have any more than that?

Brent: Yeah. Okay. I've got one right now. We're stabilizing. It's been a big pain in the butt, honestly, but yes, I do. Now.

Seth: How big is that thing? Like how many mobile homes are in it?

Brent: Yeah, it's a real small one. It's eight parcels on just at an acre. I'm almost learning everything I shouldn't have done on this. But I guess the most glorious part of it is it'll be paid for in 12 years by the tenants.

Seth: Now, could you do this thing we're talking about where you like buy one lot and put a mobile home on it? I mean, could you just build a mobile home park if you wanted to? Or is that like a totally different ballgame, way more difficult? How would that work?

Brent: I'd be giving you theory because I've never done it. It's getting harder to put these mobile home parks in because of the whole not in my backyard type thing. Where it helps is being a dealer when you need to replace a mobile home in your park. It's a lot cheaper.

Seth: Do you have like a website that shows all of your mobile home listings or anything like that?

Brent: You know, we're actually putting it together right now. I can give just for the purposes of this. It is manufacturedhomesinflorida.com. Well, that link will be up and ready.

But yeah, we're going to be offering the discount pricing to other people. We're starting, this is just for Florida right now. But if you want something in South Carolina, let us know. I can connect.

But yeah, we're getting people, these discounts that we're seeing as well, other investors, or maybe you just want to put one of these on a lot that you own. Because at the end of the day, like we don't have to store these things.

Like we don't have the actual physical inventory. We can get a heck of a discount on these things for people. So that's another thing we kind of just pivoted into as well, because I have a lot of people like, well, I don't want you to train me. I just want to buy one from you. Okay. I guess I need a website. So we're having it made right now.

Seth: And this mobile home, or whatever it's called, the license, the dealer's license you have. It sounds like that's a big deal in your ability to just make more money from this and do it at scale. Is that something you have to get on a per state basis? Or like once you've got it, you're good nationwide.

Brent: No, every state's different. Every state has their own rules.

Seth: Is that thing difficult to get? Like you got to take a really difficult test or something? Or is it like, here, do you have a pulse? Okay, you're approved. How does that work?

Brent: Yeah, that's Georgia, I think. California, like you have to give your first grandchild up. I think it's a little harder on that one. You know, every state, again, it's got like their similarities. Not their similarities, but they're different nuances. I should say.

Seth: Like whatever you had to do in Florida, like did it strike you as man, this is hard or not really?

Brent: I have a lot of dealers. Like, like I personally, just to be transparent, I don't have my dealer's. My partner does. I've actually have two partners with dealers licenses.

One of them already had his car dealer's license so it was a very easy like okay let me go take the test real quick for the mobile home, pay a fee, done.

Seth: Do you know anything about like how expensive it is to keep maintaining that? Is it like an annual fee or something?

Brent: A couple hundred dollars a year. Yeah. It's not much. It's almost stupid cheap.

Seth: The project manager position you had mentioned earlier, is that one of your partners or is that just a standalone employee that you hired to just stay on top of these things?

Brent: Yeah, I went full throttle. My partner, that's my project manager also has his dealer's license and I treat him like a partner. So he gets paid like a partner.

I could get this project management position done so much cheaper. So, so, so much cheaper. You know, at the end of the day that I am happy with who I'm working with. Like that's a game changer.

You know, project manager, I've seen them get paid 10%. I've seen them get paid 5% on the overall sale. There's really no like cookie cutter way to hire.

I'm sure there's other people out there that teach you how to hire a project manager better than I have. I will say this, every deal that we've done together, I've made money.

So that's what's most important.

Seth: That's awesome, man. Well, this has been very enlightening. I've already learned a ton of stuff I didn't know. So I appreciate you being transparent, just sharing how this works.

Before we wrap this up, though, really quick, I wanted to touch on the light industrial investments. So tell me about that. Is this like a building or several buildings or what is your involvement in that space?

Brent: Yeah, it's really small. I have two buildings, two properties, and I bought the second one right next door to it. And if you ask me what my favorite rentals were, it's those, because I don't know the tenants.

Like they're triple net lease tenants, they're blue collar workers. They don't pay for their space. They like, they go out of business, basically.

Like really raw buildings, like they're steel buildings, like not much breaks. And then when it does, the tenants have to fix it. They pay the insurance.

Really all I have to pay for is my mortgage and the interest, the principal and interest every month. And what's cool about these, the second building, I already had the lease for it.

You know, I had the lease for the building and I went to the bank with that. And that's how I got my financing. Now I had to put some money down. Both these buildings will be paid off in like 13 years.

So that's just, and I net money every single month for it. And I did pay a down payment on both of them, but I pay that to invest in my own portfolio rather than giving it to the IRS because I did a cost segregation on both those buildings.

So I have so many benefits. Like I'm making money from the rent. I save money on my taxes. My principal is getting paid down on my mortgage.

And in like 13 years, I'll be collecting almost like, a little over 10 grand a month net profit. It's kind of like you know the best in like investment policy I can ever have.

Seth: Yeah that's awesome. I plan to buy more and more and more of these. They're really high demand in my area.

Brent: So where did you find these things? Was it like listed for sale somewhere? Did you have some like a back doorway to find them?

Seth: Yeah I went on this super like you gotta have a. No I'm just kidding. I went on LoopNet. I'm gonna think of something stupid but yeah it was weird because they hadn't had a showing.

I think something got screwed up. And the old lesson learned, I used that same realtor to find my, tried to use that same realtor that I bought it from that didn't have any showings except for me to lease it out for me.

That was like crickets for like four months on the first one. Well, she never got it listed back on LoopNet for rent. So I hired another guy.

That's like, that's all he lives and breathes commercial real estate. They had me a tenant like a month. So it's just like having the right realtor to lease it out for you as well. It was a lesson learned for me.

Brent: Of those two buildings, just to get a quick picture for like the money aspect of it. So like, what'd you pay for the thing? And then what do you make from it in rent? Like after the whole trip?

Seth: Yeah. So the first one was like $450, $450 for the first one. And the seller financed me an 8% interest over 15 years.

And I rent that one out for $4,033 a month. Every year it goes up by 3% the rent with the CPI. And I have a five-year lease on it with my tenants.

And then my mortgage payment is $3,000 a month, $3,200 a month. And I collect about $4,033 on that one.

The second one, I put more down. Also, I have a 15-year mortgage. I think it's 7% interest. My mortgage payment is about $2,200 a month. My rent payment, again, is also $4,033.

With a 3% increase a year and kind of think of what else to tell you.

Brent: It doesn't sound like it was terribly difficult to find these deals, right? Like, had you been looking for a long time or it's just like the first two you found, you bought?

Seth: Yeah. Well, I wanted the second one because I knew the seller owned that one too. And I worked and worked and like for months at a time, every month I was just, every time I sent the mortgage, I'm like, you want to sell the second one? You want to sell the second one?

And he sold me that one for more. It was $4.65, a little nicer, way nicer building though.

Brent: Well, Brent, it's great talking with you. If people want to find out more about you or connect with you in any way, is there any particular place that you go?

Seth: Yeah, I guess the easiest place is thelandsharks.com. Thelandsharks.com. They'll go right to my calendar. I'd love to hear from you if you got some real estate investing gold and it can point you in the right direction. Might be happy to do it.

Brent: Very cool. And I will include links to some of the stuff we talked about, including one, if not two of those mobile home listings that I was able to find.

It's pretty interesting just to see what those things look like for reference. In the show notes at retipster.com/ 247. Brent, thanks again. Great to talk to you again. And all the listeners out there, we'll talk to you in the next episode.