On this episode of The Mobile Home Park Lawyer, Ferd is joined by business partner and acquisitions specialists, Andy Freeman. Ferd and Andy discuss how Andy went from a car salesman to an MHP owner in less than one year. Ferd and Andy speak about the importance of creating banking relationships, creating trust with sellers, and why partnering will help you grow faster, learn more and get further.
HIGHLIGHTS:
0:00 – Intro
0:44 – Andy gives us an insight into his background and tells us how he got into MHP
2:48 – Andy explains how he transitioned from car sales to the MHP industry and how his skills aided him in the transition
4:41 – Andy shares some advice for those looking to make the move into MHP
9:14 – Ferd asks Andy how having no banking relationships in the midwest created challenges for him
11:44 – Andy speaks about his evaluation of wholesale vs. partnerships
14:13 – Ferd asks Andy about what he has learned from an operational standpoint
18:55 – You have to separate yourself from the crowd in some way other than price when dealing with sellers
21:34 – Andy tells us about an assignment he recently closed on and how he carried that out
28:48 – Andy states that you’re able to get further, grow faster and learn a lot more in the MHP industry by partnering
FIND | ANDY FREEMAN:
Email: Andy@ThridIVProperties.com
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/freemanandy
FULL TRANSCRIPTION:
Ferd Niemann: Welcome back mobile home park nation. Ferd Niemann here again today with another episode of the mobile home park lawyer podcast. My guest today is a friend of mine, business partner, and working together here for about six months. He’s an expert in sales, expert in relating to people, relating to sellers, and also finding deals. Happy to invite my guests on here. Andy Freeman, Andy, thanks for coming on, man.
Andy Freeman: What’s going on Ferd, long time no see.
Ferd Niemann: Yeah, long time No see. Well, Andy, obviously I know you well working together. But for those of us listening that don’t, why don’t you give us a little bit of your background, what your careers look like and then how you made the switch to MHP.
Andy Freeman: Awesome. So basically went to college, got an accounting degree, went 10 years slaving away doing accounting, not really moving up, by, you know, just kind of coincidence I ended up taking a car sales job and with Toyota and, you know, I spent the last five years selling cars and just really gave it my all, busted My butt, saved every single, you know, every single penny. I bought a nice couch and that’s about it. I just save, save, save for five years. But the catch there is when you’re selling cars, you’re only, you know, you’re zero to hero in one month, you have a good month and you got to start all over the next month, take a day off. You’re not making any money. There’s no sitting back at home on the couch and watching any kind of income stream come in. So I kind of came to that realization that I can’t work this hard. You know, it’s not a sustainable long-term plan. And I started listening to podcasts, you know, getting everything I could into my brain on the MHP space and, you know, started during COVID. I started writing out letters and, you know, direct mail to owners, got some deals under contract and then kind of, you know, we’ll go into kind of detail is how I partnered and such. But my goal was just to find some mobile home parks to buy to get out of the car sales business and, you know, kind of takeoff from there.
Ferd Niemann: Yeah. I know also you were one of the top salesman at Toyota and one of the top of the country, even. So how does that translate into MHP? I mean, you obviously had a drive, you had a hustle, you’re making a good income, but as we’ve discussed many times the income, ordinary income commission-based, especially in California gets tax pretty hard versus real estate professional, consider more tax advantages, bonus depreciation, cost segregation, things of that. But how have you used your skills? And then from the beginning, did you use your skills and kind of maintaining a database and maintaining rapport with sellers that in the car business buyers, in the mobile home park business sellers, tell us how you’ve kind of made that transition work.
Andy Freeman: Yeah, so, I mean, I had an accounting background and sales kind of frightened me in a way, so I am definitely not your stereotypical salesman that’s pushy and tries to corner someone. What I really learned was the best way to make a sale is be consistent, follow up, not be pushy, answer their questions, be responsive, respond right away. So I would, you know, I would respond to the customer email at 11 at night, reply back at 11 at night, I wake up in the middle of the night, respond to emails. It just was, that’s just what I did. So I took that over to the mobile home park industry. When I was trying to look for deals during COVID, everyone was, you know, we’re scared, we’re sitting at home, not doing anything we’re free from, you know, we’re off work. I was waking up at six, writing letters, building a database. I mean, I did that. My girlfriend thought I was, what are you doing? You know, because working 12 hours, 15 hours a day just building this database and there’s no immediate results and rewards for doing that. It’s something that it proved to take, you know, prove to be the fruits of my labor. I didn’t recognize until, you know, six to eight months down the road, if not even longer. So it’s not an immediate results that you’re going to see, which is kind of the tough thing that what gets a lot of people discouraged. So basically, I took the car sales kind of hustle. It’s a short, and it’s not a short term. You know, it takes a long-term effort to get the long-term goal. It’s not a quick fix. So yeah, that’s kind of what I did. And then, like I said, did that for about a year of doing direct mail, building the database, and then it’s all kind of come full circle within the last year.
Ferd Niemann: Right now you don’t have to give away your special sauce, but tell us more about the database. I know you’ve got a unique system and it’s worked out really well at finding off-market deals direct to seller and you know, all over the country where you started now, you’ve kind of zeroed in on a handful of states, but if you can share any tips with our audience, please do.
Andy Freeman: Yeah, absolutely. So I kind of just took the approach. I built a database for almost every state. I’m from California, California because I don’t want to be buying real estate in California. The tenant laws favor the tenant big time. And so I just built a database you know, build every state. I pulled just a list of the parks up MH village, but I single, I didn’t hire a VA to actually build the database or plot the locations. I plotted every location on the map, saw and reviewed the park. I got familiar with the parks so that when you’re, you know, you’d call and talking to a seller writing, you know what you’re talking about. You don’t look dumb. So it’s easier possibly to outsource and have someone else do it. But the knowledge you gained while building the database helps you once you talk with the seller. So I literally just, I plotted 30 states, started writing letters everywhere. You know, and then kind of just kept going from there. I got responses pretty well to the letters. They said one tip, I know people send postcards and do printed mail. I do handwritten letters with, I may have a female maybe write them, so they’re legible. And then you know that you get, I got 0% response on a postcard campaign. And then I switched to handwritten letters. I mean, I probably got 5%, which I know sounds low, but for direct mail, it’s pretty high. So that was the best, you know, my first call back, I started getting calls from the letters I had written to sellers and I’m like, wow, this is actually starting to work. And, you know, kind of just kept going from there.
Ferd Niemann: That’s great. And tell us what your goal was at the beginning and then kind of how that goal changed. And there was a lot of guys trying to wholesale deals, flip deals or some guys trying to buy, just, I spoke to a guy other day and he’s like, I want to buy one park in my town, own all the houses and just that’s my retirement. That’s fine. It is difficult. Some people say I want to own 50 parks. And no park-owned homes, others want to own just by themselves. Others want to syndicate. Others want to take a small piece of the deal, and not have to work. Tell us kind of what your goal was and how that started and how that kind of changed over time.
Andy Freeman: Yeah. The goal definitely changed over time. Right now, where I’m sitting, didn’t expect to be sitting where I’m sitting now. But my main goal, so a year before I left the car industry, I decided to sell my house in California. I was going all in on buying mobile home parks, right. So I sold my house, moved in with my girlfriend in a little small condo with her mother. I mean, I had, you know, it was a short, it was a long, you know, sacrifice a year of my life to, you know, work hard towards a greater goal. So saved the money from selling my house. And I was going to plan to buy a mobile home park myself. So I was kind of, I had gotten pretty good responses on my letters and calls, but I was a little bit trying to cherry pick the park I bought. And so long story short, I got three parks under contract, Kansas City, de Moines, and Ohio. And I was going ahead and trying to close them all myself. I was doing due diligence myself. I flew out to Ohio, then went to Iowa. I’ve been to Kansas City. And so I was trying to do this all myself with no experience, I had what I thought was the funds to close it, close these deals. But as I, you know, down the road learned it’s not just about having the money, you know, there’s so much more involved in which I think we’ll get into, but yeah, so my plan was to buy these all on my own. And then that kind of changed over time. As I realized that, I probably wasn’t going to close any of these deals.
Ferd Niemann: One part of the challenge with closing your first deal, especially from out of state is not just having the down payment funds, but understanding what the capital required and having that Cap X money in that cap X plan, but then also a deal, a deal point that hurts a lot of folks is getting the debt. You know, we’re closing on a deal this week here in Missouri and it was a deal from one of my clients. He said, look, I can’t get the debt. I’m not local. And unfortunately that’s what a lot of local banks that I just launched a ministries on lending. So you might’ve listened to that. It’d be worth going back, but there’s this kind of attitude with a lot of local banks. A lot of deals won’t fund the big banks because they’re too small or they’re too destabilize or, you know, something of the sort and local banks. A lot of them just say, I had one deal, I sold, the buyer was a really qualified buyer in my opinion, good net worth, good liquidity, already owned three or four mobile home parks and something like 178 banks told him no. And he’s like, you’re not from around here. We didn’t play baseball with you growing up, you don’t go to, we don’t see you in church on Sunday. You know, your kids aren’t Scouts. And that’s kind of become a problem, if you don’t have a business relationship, small banks, relationship with banks. So you obviously being from California, you had no banking relationships in the Midwest or Ohio. And so tell us how that was, it was a challenge and what you tried to do, and how some of that even was a challenge.
Andy Freeman: Yeah. So I got, I got a couple, you know, I got a couple of leads on banks that might finance MHP, reached out to a couple of people in the space. You know, they seem responsive. They, you know, Hey, give us your personal financial statement, give us, you know, your schedule real estate on, do the whole pitch deck. I did all that. And then they said, okay, well, you don’t live here. So once you have an address here, we’ll process your application. I was like, so basically, they’re saying you have to move here just to apply and not even guaranteed to get the loan. So it’s just all these things you read in the forum you hear from people. I mean, it’s true. It’s probably possible, but it’s very, very tough to have the first part be out of state and get a loan. That’s why, you know, and I actually had a loan broker who I know is successful because he’s helped other people get loans, get nice loans. And he’s, you know, he wasn’t able to come through for me either. So I mean, I was trying everything and then it kind of got down to the point where I was like, I thought I had three deals I possibly, but I figured I was going to buy two out of three deals, maybe drop one. But it was looking like, I’m not going to buy any of these deals. I just spent a lot of time and money, I was doing everything right. I was getting phase one. I was, you know, I had some costs. So yeah, and that kind of reached, well, not necessarily panic mode, but I started looking at alternative options, partnering which at first, I was, you know, I’ve kind of had the concept in my head that partnering meant giving away something that you worked hard for or, you know, giving up a piece of the pie and, you know, not that I was against that, I just kind of wanted to do it all on my own. So that’s kind of how I, so I didn’t end up getting any bank loans on any of those properties on my own.
Ferd Niemann: Right. So then once you realized, I mean, this is common for a lot of folks. Once you realize it’s harder to get the debt on your first deal, you know, that’s why a lot of people do sovereign and his deals. The first deal is typically are deals that have more hair on them, private utilities, destabilized, rural areas. Wasn’t a harder to get loans on. So when, if you, if that wasn’t the case on these deals, which I know they weren’t, then the next option is wholesaling or just assigning the deal through for a fee, which could be 5,000 given 50,000. Depends on, it could be twice that, five times, I guess it depends on the deal. Walk us through how the evaluation of wholesale versus partnership and what that looked like then and what that looks like now in your mind.
Andy Freeman: Yeah. So my strategy all along was long-term. I was looking at big picture. I was making very good income at car business, which, you know, so I could wholesale and take a fee, but it is just the same thing as, you know, a good month in the car business, it costs a little higher, but kind of, like I said, the same thing it’s once you collect that fee, you’re back out looking for the next deal. So I was committed to sticking in the deal. I didn’t really consider wholesaling these deals. I wanted to close them. So the long-term strategy in my mind was buy the park, hold, get the experience. I mean, I really wanted to get the experience and the ownership and, you know, and let him have that carry me down the road versus just getting a quick fee. So yeah, so I didn’t consider wholesaling. I decided, you know, I was going to try to find someone to partner with, and that’s kind of where you and I met went on, you know, where else did you go look for partners? You go on LinkedIn and guys, Ferd mobile home park lawyer, all these connections, looking for mobile home parks in Kansas City. I was like, wow, this guy knows what he’s doing. So I reached out to Ferd, and you know, it was kind of, we talked about, he liked the Kansas City park, and he liked the park. And then, you know, we kind of talked, I guess the first thing was my first goal was to talk to him about the Kansas City park. That’s how we first connected.
Ferd Niemann: Right. No, what’s funny about that is you found me on LinkedIn cause I had this big active presence, but as you know, I had not been on LinkedIn in years. All of a sudden, I had just started, I’m going to get an active presence to help build my law practice. And it worked out really well. The law practice had worked out really well and the deal side too, help you find me and me find you. But what was cool about you too was you were, you said you were all in, like you sold your house, you were committed to move into whichever park you bought, and you moved to Kansas City and you stayed in a hotel for a few nights and I thought you were going to go rent an apartment for six months. And you’re like, Hey, I like your neighborhood. I’m buying a house down the street and within three days or so, you got a house under contract, like, oh, by the way, it’s a 45-day close. And then what do you know? My wife is about as easygoing as anybody. And she’s like, I don’t care. So she let you stay in our basement for six weeks as we were finding more deals. And then you ended up buying the park down the street. And I don’t know, the closing on a deal a month essentially got here six months ago. So it’s been a fun journey, but also one thing that I think you, I think, well, we’ll talk about your database and your strategy to find deals to help. One thing I know that helps find deals is building rapport with sellers, touch on a little bit of what you’ve been able to learn from an operational standpoint and how that’s impacted your ability to relate with sellers, which undoubtedly is in a better way than you were able to six, eight months ago, trying to talk the talk without having to walk the walk.
Andy Freeman: Yeah. So back up a little bit, just to stay in your house, I kind of left that part out. If you’re going to partner with someone and you’re truly going to want to learn the business, you can’t be in California and say, Hey, I’m going to actively participate when the parks in Missouri and so was the operator. You need, I mean, you can’t, you can only do so much remote. You really can’t do that much from afar. So I committed to being all in. Like I said, this wasn’t a, this wasn’t just a talk the talk. I mean, I was going to walk the walk. So I moved to Kansas City, packed up, moved. I mean, my family, some people still don’t know why I moved here, but you know, I moved here to, I didn’t want to try and looking back with hindsight, some of the operational experience I’ve learned so far, there’s, I just cringe it, thinking about being in California and then getting a call that the pipes are frozen. From California I didn’t even know that I didn’t even know about frozen pipes. I’ve never even, I didn’t even know that was a thing until I was back here in Kansas City, dealing with it. Ferd was with me Sunday night, I think it was Valentine’s day. 11:00 PM in the trailer park with the, you know, with the heater thing, salamander heater. And also, yeah, so it’s a lot of, I can’t do that from California. Once you kind of show that you’re that committed, I mean, it helps everyone, helps the partnership. So just want to touch on that, but back to the database and back to actually having that hands on experience that also has helped me talk with sellers. You know, once I know about heat tape, I know about frozen pipes now. I didn’t know that stuff before. The more, you know, I know a lot about private utilities, I’ve seen a lot of private utilities, and private utilities. So the more you know, and the more hands-on field experience you gain, you can go on for sellers for hours and you’re not faking it. You truly know it. You know, in the beginning, talking with sellers, you do have to kind of fake the funk a little bit if you’re just starting out, which is okay. I would say never lie to them. You know, you can use stuff you learned in podcasts, just don’t lie to them. But yeah, a lot of this is building the relationship, talking with them, and not pressuring them. Like you said, like they have, these sellers have no, they have no urgency necessarily to sell. Sometimes they possibly do. But most of the time pressuring a seller is not going to get you anywhere. So, I mean, we’re on a couple of contract, a couple of deals that actually one of the guys that, we have an Arkansas park we have under contract was my first letter I ever wrote that was April of 2020. So, I mean, it’s taken, sometimes it takes a year. I’ve heard stories that take it longer. So the main takeaway is get time in the field. And you know, if that’s going to help you immensely down the road when you’re talking to sellers and just helps you overall as operations, that’s a huge part is knowing the operational side, if you’re going to try to find deals to wholesale or purchase. So that’s my advice on that.
Ferd Niemann: That’s great advice. I mean, being able to talk the talk is so important and then sellers can sniff it out, thinking about that deal. He talked to that guy every six months for five years and it’s a great park and great steal. We said, okay. It was a reasonable price, and he could have sold that to a hundred people, but nobody else could get ahold of, nobody else would sit there and go see him. What you did was you got on a plane and you flew to Independence, Missouri and met the seller. You flew to an island, met the seller. You flew to Ohio, met the seller and that showed you were serious. Instead of just sent a postcard, will call him, you know, it’s hard to have a shotgun approach and do that everywhere. So I think it is one thing we’ve talked about is just you know, get more of a rifle approach, you know, scope in on your target. And then, you know, I don’t need an old trailer park. If I own 50 in five states, that’s okay too. There’s a level of lack of diversification, I guess, with that. But there’s a level of centralization efficiencies and understand your market as well. So whenever your target market is, I think it’s just important to put in the effort to build report because you’re right. Sellers don’t need to sell in this environment. There’s probably, I can’t guess, but I call it 5% of sellers out there that have not been contacted 10 times. You know, those are the guys and gals would be barely be found. But most everybody like they know that we’re talking to a broker the other day. He’s like, yeah, we just made an offer this price in this deal. Like that’s 25% higher than I offered six months ago. So I’m not going to win on price. I got to win on, Hey, I’m different. Here’s why, I met with you. I’m serious. I can talk the talk. I’m a real closer, I have this vision and goal for the community and so on. And you’ve got to just distinguish and separate yourself from the crowd, it is something in some way, other than price.
Andy Freeman: Yeah. I mean, I agree. If you’re just starting out trying to find a deal, a lot of stuff is on market. They’re going to want, you know, they’re going to want proof you can close, they’re going to want, they’re not going to, it’s going to be hard and the pricing is going to be way higher on market. So if you’re just starting out, I mean, that’s the route you kind of have to go is to find a seller that’ll let you know, type a park. You know, there’s, they’re not going to ask you to send proof of funds. A lot of times these sellers, they’ll out of relationship building, you know, they’ll sign a contract with you and then, you know, it’s on you to get that deal closed, but it’s just much more competitive on market. You’re not going to have the track record to have a broker look at you and stuff. I mean, so it’s like I said, it’s like you mentioned also, it’s just rapport building. You don’t have to fly out to every person you meet online or though the phone and visit the park personally. But it’s a good idea to have visited the park, visited the, so that you know you’re putting off on something you’ve seen and you’re not wasting other people’s time. So that’s a good, I mean, the relationship is, not to sound cliche. It’s kind of everything though, as far as, you know, prices a little bit lower and they’ve just spent six months talking to you, they’re going to pick you over some guy that comes in and offers them $200,000 higher on a letter in the mail.
Ferd Niemann: Right. And having spent the time bonding with them. It’s crucial. Now, let’s tie that into an assignment because, you know, sometimes I call you assignment Andy, cause you can be good at that as well, but assignments and wholesales because there’s definitely, you know, a place for that in the marketplace. And we’re closing on deals week that somebody assigned us. I’m grateful for that. I think in general, assignments are more like selling cars and take an equity in the deal and owning the deals more long-term wealth. And I do think that the assignment industry has a limited shelf life because I think, you know, it’s only a matter of time until this industry is consolidated. And once it’s largely consolidated, I think the wholesalers are going to have trouble getting a feed from professional owner and professional owner. How they have the opportunity now to from Mom and Pa to the first professional owner. But if we’re going to do an assignment and then you did one recently in Nebraska tell us how you worked on that deal. And the difference between that and just, you know, a lot of guys get under contract, put it on Facebook forum and then it’s, they just get out of the way and hope it closes and hope to see if they get a Cheque, the way that you did it, how we selected the end buyer, which we’ll keep confidential, who that is, but how we selected the end buyer, how we, you know, and largely you maintain the relationship with the seller, you may walk us through some of that process.
Andy Freeman: Yeah. So I had, you know, it was a park in Nebraska, little far off our way about nine hours from Kansas City, had reached out to the owner, messaged him on LinkedIn, kind of start chatting with him, got that park under contract, 120 space parks, a great park. I mean, nice newer homes. We’d love to own it. It was just a little further than we’d like. But we also knew an owner who owned a park down the street. So we visited the park altogether with that owner, Ferd was there, drove nine hours to Alliance Nebraska. I said, I’m from California, Kansas City is cold to me. But Alliance Nebraska, I don’t know, negative 20 degrees. I had the whole hunting mask that covers my face and everything. But you got to visit this site. If you’re talking with the seller, even if you’re trying to wholesale a deal, I still think you need to be involved every step of the process. Just so the seller, and it enhances your chances of closing the deal. So we did the site visit, did all the due diligence. I spoke with the seller probably daily for a few months. Yeah, I mean just was hands-on and he’s still technically working on it a little bit to help out a buyer. Just out of courtesy. I don’t know. So it’s just, if you’re invested in the deal either way, not look at it as a quick fix and then run, you know, I mean, you have to kind of just do the same steps as if you were going to buy it, right. You want to believe in the deal you’re wholesaling and not just throw it to someone, hope they close, and you get a fee. So it was a park we were interested in buying. We decided, Hey, maybe it’s a little bit too far for us. And this might be better suited for someone that’s already in that market. They can add 120 units that are already 55 units. And so they got a nice portfolio layer, so it was mutually beneficial. And so we’re not anti-assignments in that case, it’s kind of a win-win you get a fee, they get added value to the portfolio. They got a good deal. I mean, we look back, it was probably a little bit better deal than we had realized.
Ferd Niemann: I think the key there is what you did. You know, you kind of you hit it high level, but I want to drill a little bit further. The seller all along the way was working with you. You were the point of contact. You personally went onsite, personally you know nine hours, you personally visited 20 park-owned homes. And then you dealt with the surveyor, you dealt with the title company, you dealt with the phase one environmental, you pulled market comps. You were involved in the budget and the financial analysis and that we weren’t involved, you know, you in particular not involved with the loan as much on this one, because there was different guarantor on the loan. But the point being you were basically evaluating on a regular basis, is this a go-no-go with an end buyer that we had a relationship with that we wanted to make sure it worked out well for him and it was going to be, if it was good, it wasn’t good enough for us to buy, it wasn’t good enough for him to buy. So we continually evaluate the process. And I think that that was the buyer appreciates that. But look, we’ve got skin in the game. We had money up, effort up and we gift wrapped, not just gift-wrapped, but you kind of gift-wrapped a deal that’s been vetted as opposed to here’s this deal, I tied up and I have no idea. I’ve never been there, I have no idea what it looks like, and if it’s any good, but here you go. You go spend money. I think it’s harder to get to closing as a wholesaler when you punt all the work and responsibility to the end buyer. Because if the buyer doesn’t do it, your due diligence clock is burning. But if you babysit the deal and in earnest evaluate the validity of the deal, if it gets through the DD process, it’s going to close. And then of course, it’s also, you want it to close when you get paid. Sometimes you can leave your fee in the deal and still retain some ownership and you can then sometimes you can manage the deal post-closing for a fee. So if you do it all right, a symbiotic partnership with there’s, you know, in-car sales, right? There’s one way you pay yourself. If you’re in a car dealership, you get paid another way. How do you get paid? You sell warranties, you sell finance, you sell repairs, you sell self-service. So, you know, what do car dealerships do? They give you the first 6 oil changed for free. So you get used to coming there and you get in your, you want your tires rotated. On the seventh oil change you might as well go back there, right? So they’ve come up with a system to get paid over and over again, the way you get paid over and over again in the wholesale business, I think is you deliver so much value that you earn the right to sit at the table the day after closing, where most guys disappeared after closing.
Andy Freeman: I mean, that’s a hundred percent. I mean, in like on this deal, this deal had not penciled out. And something came up that we thought was bad. I mean, I know there’s a fee at stake. But I mean, from an ethical standpoint, I mean, I would’ve spoke up and told the seller, Hey, I don’t think this is a go and just, even though we’re going to lose commission, it’s not, you know, they’re going to trust you even more. They’ll, maybe they’ll buy the next deal from you. The key to is to underwrite and truly believe in the deal. That’s good. You know, it should go to close, but it’s bad and, you know, speak up and let that be known. So that was kind of the game plan on that. And just like you said, it’s establish a long-term relationship with that buyer, and you know, so going forward, I think that’s a win-win.
Ferd Niemann: I think that’s yeah, that’s right. You know, you always hear, like you said, cliche relationships are everything, but that’s a great book, by the way, I’ve read that. But reality is they are, and on this particular buyer, you already got an another deal under contract. We underwrote it into the due diligence and recommended don’t buy it. And he listened to you and he didn’t, you had put an analysis and your commission on that is zero, but your credibility is a hundred. So I think, you know, I’ve got that great book. I give out to every, probably given out 50 copies of the long view by Matthew Kelly and just a short book. It’s a speech he gave at Gonzaga years ago, commencement speech and he turned it into a book, and he gives it away for free. I think you’ve paid shipping or something, but it just talks about taking that long view and there’s, that’s what we do here on the wholesale. So I think that’s powerful. I think your stories powerful that you put in the effort, you had a vision, you were systematic and strategic, and you realize, you know taken down a deal by yourself. It may not be for everybody. And if you get a smaller pie of pie, it’s better than all of no pie or you get a smaller pie of lots of different pies. And that’s what you’ve been able to do. It’s been great to see it work, great to see you grow an operational IQ and continue to add value to your parks.
Andy Freeman: It’s been, I mean, looking back at where I’m at now, I mean, I got four parks, closing another one this week, so it’s not a huge, it’s a big milestone in a sense that a year ago I had zero parks and was still working in the car job, actually less than six months ago, I still work in the car job. And by partnering, I had planned to spend all my money on those three parks. Now we have more parks and still have, you know, still have money to spend on other stuff and to live. So, I mean, the partnering until you, I just hadn’t opened my eyes to it. You’re able to get further by partnering, even though it sounds counterintuitive. Partnering has allowed me to grow faster, learn a lot more. If you’re partnering with someone that’s good at operations, I mean, Ferd doesn’t necessarily know every day that, I mean, if I had to ask these questions if someone, while trying to operate a park on my own, I would be asking someone a million questions a day versus partnering with someone they lead by example, or, you know, you pick up tidbits each day. So I’ve learned endless amount of information that would take me probably years to find out on my own. So that’s one of the major benefits of partnering aside from just being able to also get the deal closed. So it’s been a fun ride. And then, like I said, that park in St. Charles was much bigger than I ever thought a park that I could ever take down on my own. And, you know, I think, I just really, you know, feel fortunate, but at the end of the day, you know, it kind of goes back to, there’s a lot of sacrifice in the beginning, you can’t, you know, it’s not an overnight process. It’s kind of people have to realize, but it will gradually progress and letters you wrote at six months ago, might hit, you know, they might sit that letter on their counter and then call you six months later and said they want to sell. So just keep at it. It’ll come full circle before you know it.
Ferd Niemann: Great advice. Great information you share, hopefully inspiring others to follow your footsteps and get into this business, which we love so much. Before we jump, where can people find you? How can they reach out to you?
Andy Freeman: If I’m in LinkedIn, I don’t post a ton, but I try to a lot of people message me about building a database and I’m glad to help out and teach you guys what systems I use, what products, I mean, I enjoy doing it. There’s enough mobile home parks for everyone. I still think maybe in five years, I won’t tell everyone how to find them, but right now I still feel that there’s enough mobile home parks to go around. So you can find me on LinkedIn, or you can email me. It’s andy@thirdivproperties.com. That’s www.thirdivproperties.com. And I’m glad to help. I’d like, I mean, definitely not trying to hold information close to the vest. I’ll share it. Share any information, tricks I have. So appreciate it, having me on.
Ferd Niemann: All right, man. Thanks Andy.
Andy Freeman: See you later.
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