On this episode of The Mobile Home Park Lawyer, Ferd interviews Ryan Groene. They discuss all things MHP; seller finance deals, joint ventures, partnerships etc. Ryan gives his best advice for those looking to get into the industry and those looking to grow in the field, as well as sharing what he has learned through his operational experience.
“If you don’t have a plan, you don’t know where you’re going to go, so that’s number one. Find a plan, know your numbers with the park, review all of your KPIs.”
HIGHLIGHTS:
0:00 – Intro
1:57 – Ryan speaks about his background, how he got into MHP, and his future plans.
6:42 – Ferd asks how Ryan’s first deal worked, how he structured it, and if it was a seller-financed deal or if it was a bank loan?
12:04 – Ferd asks Ryan if he’s going to look for a joint venture with the same people, new people, or if he is looking for his own project for his next deal
15:23 – Ryan shares some tips from his operational experience
19:33 – Ferd and Ryan discuss how maintaining utilities isn’t easy but can be very helpful when they’re set up correctly
21:34 – Ryan believes the risk profile isn’t talked about enough
23:23 – Ferd believes people don’t properly assess the opportunity cost
24:46 – Managing a park when you have a 9-5 job can be done but it’s difficult and takes longer
26:06 – A ten-space park can make more sense than a 100 space park, everyone’s situation is different
29:01 – Ryan recommends you start speaking with other owners on a daily/weekly basis if you are looking to buy your first park
FIND | RYAN GROENE:
Website: themobilehomeinvester.com
Email: ryan.groene55@gmail.com
Phone: (513)-276-3834
Instagram: @RyanGroene
FULL TRANSCRIPTION:
Ferd Niemann: Welcome back mobile home park nation. Ferd Niemann here again today with The Mobile Home Park Lawyer Podcast. Another great guest, mobile home park owner, operator. He’s got all kinds of tips and tactics on operations, joint ventures. Please help me in welcoming my guest Ryan Groene. Ryan, welcome to the show.
Ryan Groene: Thanks Ferd for having me on. I appreciate it. Happy to discuss mobile home parks, both our favorite topic it seems like. Yours is probably a law more than parks, but hey, here we are. We’ll see.
Ferd Niemann: Mine’s more boring perhaps, but I love operations as well. I wear the suit once in a while, but I like wearing cowboy boots and jeans just as much.
Ryan Groene: Oh yeah. Oh yeah, me too.
Ferd Niemann: Tell us a little bit more about your background. I know you a little bit, but for our audience will too, but the case they don’t tell us kind of your background, how you got on MHP and what you’re doing now.
Ryan Groene: So background is I went to school, I see your baseball bats in the background. I played baseball in college. I got one sitting right here as well. From my college playing days, played in college, went to school for finance, got out, went to work at a Fortune 500 company, kind of as an analyst. Did that for a number of years, read rich dad poor dad in college, kind of had that seed put in my head. Hey, I want to own a business. Corporate life is going to get me some cash investment. Eventually, I’m going to step away. That’s everybody’s goal. That was my goal. You know, and then I woke up and it was four years later, and I just was in a job I really didn’t like. I had a boss that didn’t really like me and or maybe it was just me. I didn’t like it. So therefore it created that. I looked at flipping mobile homes first kind of like everybody gets into it. You know, it’s a cheaper way to get into the business or a cheaper way because you’re buying a home for maybe $3,000, $4,000. You can put grant into it and sell it for eight to 10, right on contract, kind of like the deals on wheels. Ronnie Scruggs is the original in that. Looked at doing that, drove around a million parks in Cincinnati. Looked at doing a live-in flip in a nicer community in Cincinnati where I’m from. That didn’t pan out. And then I kind of just started thinking, Hey, who owns these things? Blah, blah, blah. Went to Frank and Dave Bootcamp, spent two years really looking for parks. I had a few under contract. Didn’t pull the trigger, bought one at the end of 2018. That was a 75-space park. And I’ve owned no other form of real estate. I don’t even own a single-family house to this day. So the first purchase I made was a mobile home park, was well and septic had a problem well, and I don’t recommend that for everybody. I had a little bit more experience from just a standpoint of being involved with some operations, with some other guys and stuff like that. So that’s how I got started. That was two years ago. From that point, I had bought seven parks. I’ve sold two, a little bit over 300 lots total, five or six different States, bought anything from, you know, that first park that had a problem well, and we fixed it and connected to city water to anything that, you know, we’ve done master lease often purchases, seller financing, bank deals. I’ve kind of done a broad spectrum. And then I also run operations for Buckeye communities. I’m the director of operations over there and that happened organically. I’m friends with two of the guys that run the company there. And then when I moved to Cleveland and they needed some help kind of, they had bought a number of parks and kind of needed some help to kind of offload some work and operations. And that’s really where I cut my teeth. I learned how to run parks pretty professionally. And then also I learned a bunch of different systems and how to manage parks effectively, right. Because when you just buy one park, I don’t want to say it’s easy, but it’s easier than running five parks at one time, right? Because you may not have the same systems and processes that you would have if you have a number of parks, because you may still be using Excel, QuickBooks and some simpler items, because to be quite honest, you can get away with that and you can be quite fine. But when you have multiple parks, you need systems, processes, and then you have to pay for those a lot of times. And they’re relatively cheap, but you know, that’s kind of quick 1000-foot view on me. To this day, right now we have one, two, three parks under contract. One that we’re set to close in two weeks, hopefully the first of February. And then two more that’ll put me, hopefully we’ll close those. I also wholesale deals from time to time, right. So if I get a lead in, I don’t want to buy it, I’ll try to wholesale it and make some money that way as well. So that’s what we got going on. That’s what I got going on and looking to push over a 500 to 600 spaces in the next year just to kind of grow. And then my ultimate goals replace myself as operations person and hire that out and replace kind of like a COO at least in my company.
Ferd Niemann: That’s great. No, I think you hit on a lot of good points there. I’m a big fan of the operation side myself. And I tell my team all the time, like we all need to learn operations. It’s crucial. And it’s frankly, it’s something that you can only learn by being in the field experience, even attorneys in my legal office, I think I took them to five or six of our parks one day. And like, literally all we did, I’m like, I’m paying you to learn operations. This way you’re going to be a better attorney. You know what I mean? I can’t teach you law school in a weekend. I can’t teach you mobile home park in a weekend either, but just having that operational experience, getting a feel for it, understand the math, understand the zoning, understand things. It makes everybody more valuable. So that’s great that you’ve been able to do that under a plethora or a breadth of different opportunities, like well, and septic, things like that. How did that first deal works? A lot of people call me and was trying to get in their first deal like you did, you know, 75, 76 space. That’s a pretty good size, first deal. And then with private utilities, that’s got some hair on it. How did you structure that from, you know, and I know you had a good job, so that helps, but you didn’t have an existing portfolio. So from a loan perspective, was that a seller finance deal or were you able to get a bank loan or and, or did you bring in partners on your first deal versus tackle the first year by yourself?
Ryan Groene: So it was a multiple of all those things. So it started in July of 2018, we signed an assignment contract from somebody that we knew. There was like three or four of us going after the same park. And we’re like, Hey, we kind of all know each other already. How much capital do you have a purchase price on that one was 750 at the time that we had it under contract. So, you know, we were looking to put somewhere between 20% and 30% down because it wasn’t going to be a bank deal originally. So basically, I partnered with some people that were looking to get into the space as well, just like me. I emptied my 401k. I had a, I don’t know, I had a decent amount in there and I paid the taxes. I was 27 at the time. So I mean, to me, you know, if I’m going to let it sit there and I’m planning on doing this park thing, I just been, I had already, the year prior, I had been asked to leave my corporate job. So I started another job in Cleveland move cities, blah, blah, sorry. We partnered up, it turned up as a bank deal, but the more and more we dug during due diligence and turned up some more red flags, it wasn’t going to be financeable. So we ended up getting seller financing, 20% down, over five years. And then we knew that city water was available because we had done some due diligence ahead of time. Most counties have a GIS geographical information system that will show where their utilities are. A lot of people don’t know this, it’s just in the key and you can drop it down.
And so we knew that the line ran out there because the next to our property, there’s, McDonald’s, KFC. There’s a grocery store, so you know, those guys aren’t operating on a well, they’re operating on city water. So we knew the line was there. Just how much would that cost, how much was that all going to cost? We actually budgeted for about a $100,000. So end of story, it costs us about $40,000 in all to connect to city water. It was a lot cheaper and the plumber was a lot cheaper than we estimated. The good thing with water is you don’t have to re-pipe your park. You just have to typically run the line from the master meter to tie into your park, which can be more expensive in certain areas of the country, our tap fee was like $25,000 or something like that. So it was relatively inexpensive on a per-lot basis for 75 spaces. So that was one of the items why we chose from Ford because we knew there was an out. Also, the well, the infractions with the well were not finable from the EPA standpoint. It had a combined two 26 and two 28 radium, which is a nuclear sub sense. But it’s not as bad as what it sounds. It’s a natural substance. But basically long story short, we connected the Wells all good. We’re on city water now and we’re actually sub-metering next year probably. And that’s one of my, that’s probably my best deals as far as like, we basically tripled our money and the parks probably worth somewhere you above $1.8 Million probably if not more. So we’ll see, we’ve also infilled some units and brought us new homes, that helped, repaved the streets. So that’s how we came to that decision and we structured it basically, whatever the total capital raise was. So let’s say for instance, it was 200,000 in this instance, let’s say I brought 30, that’s about 12% of the deal is what I got. Just for instance, in this case, we just did a straight JV structure where all of us brought capital and whatever capital you brought equal to the overall capital raise is your percentage. Now we all play different roles. We’re all active. One guy. Does the accounting, one guy does the operations. One guy kind of does some of the you know, financing and leasing and all that stuff. So we all have different roles. Honestly, I don’t recommend this for your first deal. There’s a lot of people, but we all kind of knew each other from one thing or another and it’s worked out. Yeah, I mean, we get it each other from time to time, but we have weekly meetings, weekly updates, and we’re always in constant communication. So I mean, it’s worked out, but I don’t recommend that for everybody.
Ferd Niemann: Yeah, that’s interesting. Yeah. It’s definitely harder. You know, I used to have a banker friend that told me the only ship that doesn’t sail is a partnership. And bankruptcy a lot of bad deals. So you obviously have partnerships, it seems like it’s working out well. I’ve had partnerships and I have different than a joint venture, more of a syndication structure a lot of times too. So that just for our listeners, the big distinction there would be in your case, you and your partners are all putting in money and working actively. In my case, if I’m the syndicator, I’m working actively, I may actually, and I probably do put money in, on all the deals, but not the lion’s share of it. Other silent investors, you know, doctors, lawyers, you know, rich people essentially. Put in the extra cash and they get a preferred return, and we did split, split the remaining profitability in a number of hurdles and things like that. So different structure, but yeah, both can work. That’s good that you got that going. So you said that’s not good for your first deal. What about your next deal? Are you going to still look for a joint venture with some of the same people or different people, or are you looking for your own project or have you considered the more syndication style method?
Ryan Groene: So on my next six deals were all JVs with other people, some of the same people from that deal. And then I have, I’ve had partnerships go bad. I got cashed out of one. I sold my shares based on the entity structure that we had. I got cashed out because we just weren’t seeing eye to eye. There was too many, when I said there’s too many people. That’s why the syndication method works a little bit. Because when you’re raising money, there’s a lot of opinions and you need to have control as the operator. Otherwise, it’s just, it can open up chaos and it’s just too hard to operate a park when there’s five people making one decision for a thousand-dollar home, right. Or something, something like that. You need to have one point of contact or two and then make a decision. And so my next couple of deals, they were all JVs with different people. They weren’t as many, there was typically two or three people. I was still running operations. Now in the future, yeah. Syndication is probably down the line. I don’t rule it out. I just for the deals that I’m typically doing syndication may not be a fit. But that is something that I’ve definitely, I know about I just haven’t done. So you know, maybe on my next deal will be syndication. We’ll see. But that’s definitely an option and I always have that in the back of my mind doing it because there’s positive negatives to doing both. As you know, other podcasts listeners can, if you listen to more episodes of Ferd, he can explain it better than I can. It just depends on who you are, and you got to know your partners more than maybe in a syndication method.
Ferd Niemann: No, that’s a good point. I mean, yeah, there’s definitely pros and cons of each. I mean, if you’re the syndicator, there’s a pro of more control, but there’s a con of, you got a bunch of people who are your boss in some respects, like a board director, you have control, but they’re going to be bugging you, you got to do more reporting to them. And there’s typically more risk, you know, like in my deals, I sign the note. With the joint venture, you may not, you may get enough people in, you can put down more down payment, you’ll have a recourse note, or you can divvy it up pro-rata, you know, for example, but I pretty much sign hundred percent of the note on every deal. So that’s more risk, right? Yeah, pros and cons, for sure. So I know you’ve got a lot of experience in the field and I say, not just in the field, but operationally in the field or at your desk kind of running point on the field, what are some of the best lessons learned? Obviously going through that water transition from private to public had to be a huge project, but what are some other kind of tips you can give from your operational experience that, you know, I’m with you 100%, when you say systems and processes are needed when you grow. I mean, our first part, we had Excel. I’m actually, Excel, I thought it was a great tool. I was like, yeah, it’s not a great tool when you figure it out there’s Rent Manager. That’s a great tool. Obviously, Excel is free rent managers, whatever it is, $500, you know, to get it rolling, $500 a month is what I paid for it. So it was not insignificant by any means, but it’s an amazing feature. That’s just one system, but obviously, there’s processes, you know, procedures, things like that. What quick tips can you give us on that front?
Ryan Groene: I’d say figure, if you’re looking to buy a second park or looking to buy multiple parks, to figure out who’s running the day-to-day, right. And if you buy a turnaround, it’s definitely more of a time suck than a stabilized park. So figure out who’s running the day to day, figure out what system you want to use from a property management standpoint. So we use Rent Manager, just like a lot of people do, it is not for everybody. That’s a property management software that allows you to accept rent, send out invoices. Also it is an accounting system. So if you want to use it, you can use it. We do use it. It’s not the best, it’s a clunky system, but it is better bouncing from two to three systems. So that’s one. Second, what’s your communication platform, right? Are you going to do text messages? Are you going to use Slack? We use a combination of Slack at some properties, and then we use Base Camp for other properties, Base Camp as a project management tool that allows you to track like delinquencies, projects like home renovations, when homes are coming in sales, stuff like that. And then it’s also a communication platform. And it’s relatively inexpensive. I would recommend that for people because it’s fairly straightforward. It’s not as advanced as like some of the other project management tools, like Asana, Trello, monday.com, all that stuff. That’s a little bit more higher-level. And Base Camp is good for a manager interaction with you because it’s fairly simple and straightforward. It’s got like, it’s very like click, you know, click this like a five-year-old can use it. It’s very straightforward is what I’m saying. So choose what you want to, you know, from that, figure out what the goal is financially with the park. If you have five vacant spaces, are you going to bring in five homes, five new homes, five used homes and stick to the plan, right? Plans change. But if you don’t have a plan, you don’t know where you’re going to go. So that’s number one is find a plan, know your numbers with the park, review all of your KPIs as people say, right. Delinquencies, collections, home sales, you know, winter people paying all that good stuff. And then also bill back as many things as you can, as quickly as possible because you know, raising rent is great, but you’d be surprised what your utility bills will add up over time. And even though it’s just a pass through, it creates a better, it gives you probably a basis point on the exit or refinance because you’re passing through expenses. Even though you may raise rent, it looks like you’re saving money on paper when you’re passing through expenses. So people think lower expense ratio when you’re passing through water and sewer and trash and whatever else you can possibly pass through. I’m more for that than jacking up rent because to the resident, you know, if you Jack it up $50, it looks like you’re jacking up the rent $50 versus just filling back trash at $15 and then passing back water and sewer at $30. And it might be the same, but in somebody’s head, it might look different on paper.
Ferd Niemann: Right. I agree completely. Billing back water, sewer to me is, it’s not nearly as easy as raising rent, but it’s much more productive in the long run. Because especially from marketing standpoint, I buy a lot of parks that have tons of vacant lots. It’s nice to be able to say, I just bought one in Alliance, Nebraska and strive communities as a couple big parks there. If there’s competition, I can say, look, there are $150 more than us. If I bill back water, sewer, maybe they’re not $150, maybe they’re a hundred, but the next customer, we’re a hundred dollars below market value, which also shows that there’s a runway to get to the next hundred dollars. So that’s probably a bad city example cause that’s city direct bill water, sewer. So I’m not even in the middle of the water. That’s the ideal, right. Check this place, direct bill, water sewer, trash direct bill, city takes care of the streets. City plows the snow.
Ryan Groene: Yeah. I have some of those parks.
Ferd Niemann: Looks like this is the easiest it could be.
Ryan Groene: It’s not as easy as what you and I have made, like talk about, but in reality…
Ferd Niemann: Relative to, I got another park we’re closing on next week that there’s tons of water leaks. The sewer lines are broken up. The sewer is being spilled into the creek instead of into the sewer system. We need to put in meters, need to fix water lines, blah, blah, blah. You know, it’s just and it’s under market rent too. So like you can’t just push the expense and jack the rent up, right. People can get pitchforks. So, it’s a longer turnaround. But compared to that, the city water, sewer, street, trash has been, it is a good deal for sure.
Ryan Groene: Yeah, that’s a good deal. And I’ve had those scenarios where the park is total trash and I will, I’m okay with buying a total trash park, if it’s direct build water sewer and it’s county-owned roads or city-owned roads. I would rather buy that than that first park that I bought. Because the risks associated with turning around a park while also dealing with utilities is a whole another level of risk. And the reward could be greater when you have a well and septic and you got to connect. It could be, but is it that much greater with the risk that involved for most people, the answer is no. But you know, I was 20 something years old and I didn’t really, I mean, it was okay for me to push all my chips in because that’s what I had to do. And still to this day, right, I still do that a lot, but I can take on the risk because I’m not, I don’t have a family. I live relatively cheap. So I can take on that risk profile and the reward is worth it for me because I’m 30 years old and I’m not, you know, retiring next year or living off this income. I actually live off of other income than versus my park income. So my risk profile is different than some others. So you also, I don’t think that gets talked about enough, right? Sam Zell is great in his book, which I have like right there. And is, am I being too subtle talks about the risk profile? And we learned that in business school, right? What’s the reward risk ratio and low-risk high reward is what you want, but sometimes you know, you got to meet somewhere in between to get what you want.
Ferd Niemann: That I think that’s a great example. I mean, yeah, there’s, that’s, I mean, sometimes I still scratch my head, how some of these REITs and some of these funds are paying the multiples that they are. It was like they have a different risk profile. They have a different investment profile. They have a different yield profile. They have a different time horizon profile. So yeah, risk is probably the most near and dear to us. But to all those need to be taken into consideration. And I was, it wasn’t a disagreement the other day, but I was at a debate if you will with a limited partner, Hey, I used to be a limited partner, want bigger piece of the pie saying Ferd you are getting the loan. So you’re leveraging this property, which puts my cash, you know, junior position with the debt. And that means there’s more risks and which is true. And I said, this is a $2 million recourse note to me. I fully understand the risk associated with this. So the what’s the risk for me is it’s this goes South, you lose a hundred grand. If this goes South for me, I lose my house. Because the banks go massive. So I’m acutely aware of the risk, but in a return, I want to higher reward. And that’s what Sam Zell, that’s aggressive grade book. And I know I could see Frank Ross pitch mind you, Frank always talks about, he talks about that book too, and that risk-reward relationship and that’s, and that’s, that’s crucial. And then another thing that I feel like people don’t always properly assess is the opportunity cost, you know, from economics one-on-one, as you mentioned, the business is, you know, the heavy-lift turnaround park is not twice as much time as the stabilized park. It’s five times or it’s 10.
Ryan Groene: And it is not for everybody. You have to understand your, your, you know, what doesn’t get talked about a lot is, is it okay to buy a 10-space park that’s five minutes from my house and I have the cash to buy it myself. Yeah, it is because you don’t need to buy a hundred space park. If that, if you own 10 space park or 20 say park, it’s okay to buy small. It’s okay to buy, you know, something that doesn’t meet everybody else’s parameters because your investment criteria are different. Like we just talked about then reads private equities guys that have funds, or, you know, even you that are syndicating and me that’s JV, the risks you know, our buying criteria could be a little different. They’re probably the same or very close and very similar because the money that we want, right, our objectives are you know, typically my cash on cash is somewhere between North of 15% and the 21st, 24 months of a turnaround. Typically it’s greater than that, but that’s typically what I look for in like a proforma. So like our buying criteria could be different as well. So I don’t think that gets talked about enough. And just the reality of operating a park. When you have a nine to five job, it can be done, but managing, like you said, a heavy value add where you have, you know, or it’s 50% occupied and you have delinquencies that are, you know, three months old on everybody and the park needs, needs the well-fixed or needs the water line fixed. Like that’s a time suck. And if you think you can manage that while having a family and working you know, a higher paying job, you might be able to, but you’re probably going to take two years to do that. Versus somebody like URI, who has the team, or can do it full-Time, it’s going to take us six months to do. So people just have to understand that time horizons and turnarounds are different based on your profile. So, and I think, you know, the people that do a good job are you people that are realist and Ryan Morris has a podcast, Ryan, me and are good guys. Frank and Dave are great. We all learn from them, but you know, they’re a different buyer than you and I, right. They’ve got whatever, 200 parks, 300 parks, they’re doing it differently than we are. And their buying criteria is different. So I think people just need to understand that, you know, that it’s okay to buy, you know, a 10-phase park, if the numbers work and you’re okay with it, right. It just matters what, what you’re comfortable with. And do your due diligence. That’s the number one thing.
Ferd Niemann: I think that’s a good point when you talk about like a lot of people, you know, and I’ve got clients that fit in this category, that 10 space park makes more sense. It is like, I can own all 100% of 10 per 10 spaces as opposed to a 100. Everybody likes loves that. But if I got to go syndicate it and raise money and check, joint venture and chop it up, I might get 10%. Well, it’s the same to some respect to the same difference. So when you talk about, you know, buying criteria and investment criteria, the thing I agree with you, the thing that I want to do anything to add to it, and you probably agree with this. The distinction of a 10-unit park is it might sit for you if it’s five minutes away and you got the cash, but you got to always think about your exit strategy. And there are a lots of people who like, I wouldn’t buy that 10-unit park from you. Now I don’t live five minutes from you, it was time to me maybe, but I probably, I probably won’t at this point. Because there are some fixed costs associated with smaller parks, like say the same amount of money for a phase one, surveys almost as much, you still got to get an appraisal. You still got to pay for an LLC and you still got to do bookkeeping. You still got to file a tax return, fixed costs, fixed costs, fixed costs. If I jump the rent 10 bucks, it’s a hundred bucks a month, 1200 a year.
Ryan Groene: I agree. I agree. Your exit is totally limited. I, a hundred percent on all that. It’s just a, what I mean is that everybody’s buying criteria is different. That’s the main point that I was trying to get across that, it’s just everybody’s is different in a different situation. And, you know, everybody wants a 50 say far direct build city, water, city, sewer. And they wanted that 10 cap right. In a 2 million-plus Metro. That’s where that comes from. Those days are gone to my knowledge, I’m out there every day, looking at deals. And I haven’t seen anything like that in quite some time. So five years ago when I started, yeah, those were there, and I just missed it. I was too young, too naive. I missed some opportunities that today I’m like, I should have bought.
Ferd Niemann: Yeah, I remember my first couple of deals were like 12 to 15 cap. I remember looking to deal with like a 9.5. Who’s going to pay a 9.5 cap. And now I’m sitting here. Like, I wonder if I go by that for eight cap right now. And you know, and part of that is interest rates change too. You know, the industry macro level is more attractive or there’s much better exit strategies we are talking about. There’s more investors, you know, operations are more streamlined, so heading completely West, but man, it’s like, if I could go back five years from now, I’d be retired by now. You know what I mean?
Ryan Groene: Yeah, me too.
Ferd Niemann: It’s just like, you know, hindsight is 2020, right. So we got to get up tomorrow and do it again. But that’s part of the grind. Part of the fun chasing deals man. This is great, Ryan, what else? I don’t want to cut you off, but what other tips or tactics do you want to share with the group? If there is any that we haven’t covered so far?
Ryan Groene: I mean, honestly, we covered a lot. I would say if you’re looking to buy your first park or you’re looking to grow into more parks if you haven’t modeled yourself after somebody or you haven’t if you’re not networking or speaking with other owners on a daily basis, or at least a once a week, I would start doing that. Because deals are not how they used to be. Can’t just send 10 mailers and get five responses. The game has changed. You have wall street money in this space now. And wall street money does not sleep. And chasing deals has gotten a lot tougher, but there’s a lot more capital in the space, which is great. So the last tip that I would probably say is, is if you’re looking, just understand what you need in your life and what you want from an investment from a park and go try and find that. So if that’s, if you work a nine to five and you make $300,000 a year and you don’t want to be active invest your money with Ferd, right, you’re probably going to get a, I don’t know what your press is, but I would imagine it’s probably North of 6%, so better than what you’re going to earn in a bank. I don’t know. Or if you’re looking to be active, but you don’t necessarily have the operational experience, partner with guys like me, right. That are, we’ll take and Ferd we’ll do the same, but you know, you are going to have to be active, you know, there’s no pref return or anything. So it’s a little bit different of a structure and you may honestly have to sign on the debt, right? I don’t mind signing on debt, but that structure does not go for that. So understand what you need and what you can do if you’re 25 and you got no money, you can go spend the next three years living in a trailer park and you’ll know more than probably 80% of the industry. And you’ll, the guys with money will look at you and be like, yeah, that kid gets it. He’s okay to go all in. And here’s some money, right? I mean, that’s what a lot of guys have to do. I’m not advocating for that. You don’t have to live in a trailer park to be cool, even though that seems what everybody’s doing nowadays. But you know, there’s lots of ways to get into the industry, find out what works for you, find what you’re looking for and just basically go after it. Don’t be afraid to, you know, buy a deal…
Ferd Niemann: Great tips, Ryan. I appreciate it. Hey, where can people find you? How can they find you online or reach out to you?
Ryan Groene: Yeah, I mean, you can find me on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, all under my name. I do have a website. It’s the www.mobilehomeparkinvestor.com. It’s not fancy. It’s just, if you click contact me, it’ll send me an email. My email, if you want to put it in the show notes is ryan.groene55@gmail.com. And I do put it out there from time to time. If you want to text me or call me, my number is (513) 276-3834. I might regret that, but 99.9% I’d never get anything from it. So thanks Ferd having me on the show. I appreciate it. Don’t be afraid to reach out to either of us and good luck.
Ferd Niemann: Thanks Ryan, appreciate it.
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