On this episode of The Mobile Home Park Lawyer, Ferd interviews MHP owner Abraham Anderson. Ferd and Abraham discuss how to get into the MHP industry and Abraham gives his best advice for MHP investors.
“Make sure you have a good contract, don’t just get one from the internet and think it’s going to be good. Pay a couple grand or whatever it costs to have an attorney review it and make sure it’s a solid contract for your state before you try to put deals together with that.”
HIGHLIGHTS:
0:00 – Intro
0:44 – Abraham talks about his background and how he got into MHP
1:43 – How to get into MHP and find deals
2:49 – Abraham discusses financing. He advises us to start talking to banks right now and put together a credibility book
3:30 – To find good deals you just need to start calling people
5:28 – Abraham talks about one of the first parks he bought
6:52 – Abraham and Ferd talk about forest-dense parks and why to avoid them
10:43 – Abraham shares the website TruePeopleSearch.com and advises beginners to create some of their call lists from there
14:11 – Abraham discusses the importance of a good contract
19:30 – Ferd and Abraham discuss how to tastefully re-deal
29:04 – Abraham discusses operations.
32:13 – Abraham shares some encouraging words to beginners looking to enter the MHP industry
32:57 – Find out more information from Abraham through his website CapitalCashFlow.com
FIND | ABRAHAM ANDERSON:
Website: CapitalCashFlow.com
FULL TRANSCRIPTION:
Ferd Niemann: Welcome back mobile home park nation. Ferd Niemann here again today, another great episode with The Mobile Home Park Lawyer Podcast. My guest today, he’s a top 100 mobile home park owner. He’s an owner, operator, investor, he’s based out of Tennessee. Please help me welcome my guest Abraham Anderson. Abraham, thanks for coming on.
Abraham Anderson: Thanks for having me Ferd. I’m glad to be here.
Ferd Niemann: Well, for those of you who are listening only in your car, you can’t see it, but I can tell you he’s wearing this rockstar t-shirt with the Nintendo controller, so I have to say I’m a little envious. Growing up in the eighties, I played a little NES back then, Tecmo Superbowl, so I’m excited to see that shirt. But anyway, I know you a little bit, for our audience, they may or may not, tell us a little more about your background and how you get into MHP.
Abraham Anderson: Sure, so I started out in apartments and I did that for a few years and what really killed me with apartments was turnover and repair and maintenance. You know, at the time I had the 20-unit apartment building, and always, you know, I’d get it completely full, I’d think okay, great, I’m done. You know, and then someone would just run off. Okay and I had spent three grand to rehab a unit, get someone else in there immediately, someone else runs off and I was just constantly chasing my tail with it. And I was aware of mobile home park investing, but at the time I thought, I don’t want to buy a trailer park, you know. But after meeting several people in the industry, listening to podcasts just like this, something clicked. I was like, man, this is what I need to be focused on. So since then it’s been about three or four years. I’ve been exclusively focused on parks and I just never looked back.
Ferd Niemann: No, that’s great man. So maybe tell how you got in your first deal. You told us how you’ve kind of converted to this mindset, this is for you, how’d you get started? Cause I know for a lot of guys that get in the business, there’s a challenge with deal flow, a challenge with financial resources, a challenge with bank capacity. And then, frankly, just operational know-how. So it’s a leap of faith for all of us when we take that first leap to buy our first park. But tell us how you got in there. And as we go through that, we maybe get some tips that you’ve learned along the way.
Abraham Anderson: Absolutely. I’ll give you a couple tips on getting into it, finding a deal, and then getting financed. As far as getting into it, just educate yourself, you know, talk with other people that have parks, run it past them and then just go for it. I mean, you’re never going to learn to ride a bicycle by reading a book. At some point…
Ferd Niemann: I’ve read that book actually it’s called, it is at a seminar, and like nobody learned to ride a bicycle in a seminar. So get out there.
Abraham Anderson: I love that quote. So you just got to get into it. You’ll never know everything, and you’ll make mistakes, but you know, hopefully if you’ve done proper diligence and you’re talking with mentors and such as that, they’ll be small. So as far as getting into it, just once you learn enough, go for it. As far as getting it financed, what I highly recommend is start talking to banks right now. If you have any experience in any form of real estate before list that down, I put together, I call it a credibility book. I listed other business experience I have, I listed, you know, assets you know, money I have for down payment. So that gave me some experience there. And I had the apartments, but I know people that have had no experience whatsoever and have gotten deals done. So go to a bank, you’re trying to get a preapproval letter that gives you a lot of credibility either with mom and pop, if you’ve never done a deal yet, or if you are talking to a broker and then as far as finding deals, the key is just start calling people. Call them up whatever method I’m doing, everything right now, texting people, calling them, sending them letters. I even show up at their house if I don’t get a response.
Ferd Niemann: That could be risky. I did that at one time, and I was not welcomed. That was made crystal clear.
Abraham Anderson: In Tennessee, most people are really friendly. In other places it may be different, but when I first started looking for stuff and even before that I was in insurance, so I would go door to door and I was 18 first door I went to, I was terrified. I go up to knock on it and it was a screened in porch. So the guy sees me, he says, come on in. What are you selling?
Ferd Niemann: Wow, that’s a welcome approach. Man, it’s hilarious. One time with an old business partner, we were looking to buy this farm and turn it into retail development. And similar, he knocks on the door and the little old lady was expecting, like her nephew was going to pick her up and take her to the doctor. And she goes, come on in. And we’re like, okay, sit there and talk to her for two hours just trying to buy her farm. And then we find out she’s already given it away to the kids as a trust and it really was a big waste of time. But we thought we were going to get a farm bought that day.
Abraham Anderson: I’ve accidentally went to the wrong house. Didn’t know it, people let me in, and I would sell them insurance before I even realized they were, how do you spell your name? Oh, it’s Jason. You’re not Mr. Jones? Oh, no. Oh, okay. I just kept going.
Ferd Niemann: You must be a good salesman. That’s great.
Abraham Anderson: But yeah, so, I mean, right now I’d say the easiest is just start cold calling and in most of the calls you get, and you won’t get them on the phone and they’ll just say, no, I’m not interested, and you’ll get a few that I might sell. And the key is the follow-up. One park, one of the first ones I bought, well, I shouldn’t say first ones. One of the first guys I talked to, it took two years before he sold to me. Me calling him every month for two years. And then one day I called him, said, Hey, you know, Charlie, you ready to sell yet? And he said, yeah, I think I’m ready to sell. And I met with him and signed the contract and bought two parks from him. So it’s the follow-up.
Ferd Niemann: Well, let’s talk a little about that in little more detail. Cause I hear you say cold calls. I know that’s a common technique, but the key is getting a good list. Can you share anything on how you’re getting the good list and how you’re getting accurate phone numbers, gatekeepers and then on that call, how do you set yourself apart? I mean, five years ago, you set yourself apart because you called them, right? Now, everybody’s calling them, or trying to call them and price is a key factor. And unless you’re the guy willing to pay the most price, you got to build rapport or you got to have some sort of other relationship that’s you know, better than just money.
Abraham Anderson: Yeah. So as far as getting good lists usually I’ll start, MH village has a lot of parks on there. So I’ll go and I’ll just get a list from MH village and they don’t put one out. I just go on there. If I’m looking at a certain city and they list all the parks there and it’s not all inclusive, a lot of it, unfortunately, you’re going to have to build out yourself, just look at Google maps, look at parks. And there, you can see them from space, you know.
Ferd Niemann: They’re very easy. Once you get used to, they’re very easy to identify in Google maps, because they look like nothing else.
Abraham Anderson: I’ve seen some that it was so dense. It looked like a forest. I didn’t even know what park was there. Like all you saw was just a big forest, which is a lot of times you want to stay away from those because trees aren’t very fun.
Ferd Niemann: I just bought my second $3,800 sewer auger to get through tree roots. So I know they are not very fun.
Abraham Anderson: I had one, I know we’re getting off topic, but I had one, it fell and cut a home in half and there was tenants in either side of the home. But thank God, no one got hurt. It just went right down the middle of the home. Cut in half.
Ferd Niemann: It’s my show, right? We can go on sidebars, right? I got a story on a tree. Two stories, one, I owned a house by my old university, it was a single family house. And I tried to buy the house next door that was in foreclosure bank of America. And the only reason I tried to buy it was the biggest tree in Kansas City was next to it. And it was about to fall down and crush that home. And I was going to buy it and not put anybody in there, put insurance on it and let the tree fall. And then I wasn’t sure if that was allowed. But anyway, I couldn’t get it bought, but inevitably the tree fell and hit the home and crushed after home. But then my secondary story, I owned a mobile home, and I was selling it to somebody on terms. This is years ago, there’s a lot of gray area on that now. But tree fell on it. Crushed one-third of the house, you know, a mobile home is a vehicle as a title. Well, I still owned it, so I had insurance on it. I had insurance for like $10,000. That’s what I was selling for. And the insurance company came out and they said, your vehicle is totaled. So they cut me a check for $10,00. And two thirds of the home is still usable. So I said, can I keep the home?
Abraham Anderson: And they said, yeah, but you can’t get insurance on it ever again. So I talked to the buyer and I said, Hey, what if we rebuild the structure, fix the home. If it’s satisfactory you can move back in, in the meantime you move down the street. He said okay. They moved out. We fixed the home in a month, got back in, and told him he couldn’t have insurance. We gave him some form of discount, like 20% or something. And they bought the home for $8,000. So I got the insurance claim, and I sold the house that had abandoned. It had salvage title, but it was uninsurable. But anyway, I was really pleased at that tree fell on their cause I ended up making out pretty good.
Ferd Niemann: Well, this is my only tree story, the one that got cut in half. But I similarly benefited from that. It was very unusual and the guy and, in my lease, I require everyone to have insurance, you know, tracking that’s very hard. I would say probably 95% of them don’t have any, but this was probably the one guy in the park that had insurance on his home. So you had the tree cut in half. I didn’t think it was even could be saved, but insurance company says it’s totaled and gives him a check for $72,000 for a 90 single-wide. I mean, he had it over-insured. So he gets, and then I had one vacant home in the park. I sold him that home for cash. Cause he had this insurance claim, got the money from that, was going to tear the home down. Someone says, Hey, can I buy that home from you? And the guy gave me the title to now that pretty much destroyed home. I gave it to him very cheap and he fixed it up. Look better than it did before. So now I have a hundred percent occupied park and actually profited from the tree falling.
Ferd Niemann: Better lucky than good man.
Abraham Anderson: Yeah. Yeah. As far as, so once you have a list and like I said, first pick an area you like, I mean, a lot of times, for me, I started in my own backyard where I live in Tennessee. I started calling parks around there or going to their house if I couldn’t get them on the phone and I’ll give you one website, this is a good tip here. Www.Truepeoplesearch.com. You can’t run a whole list through there, but you can do an individual search and it’s pretty accurate data and it’s completely free. So I’ve used that quite a few times. When I get them on the phone, a lot of people think there’s some magic formula. She say this, so they’ll sell it to you. It’s really just about timing. And they do have to like you, so just be a friendly person, actually listen to them, you know, don’t come off like you’re trying to sell them something. Cause you’re not, really, you’re trying to give them money, but I’ll just call them up and I’ll say, Hey, my name’s Abraham. I live in the area and, or I own parks. And have you ever thought about selling your park? That’s it you know, and then they’ll say either I’m not interested or yeah, I’ve thought about it or no, I’m going to leave it to my kids, or they call me back in a month. So, and then if the answer is, no, I don’t want to sell it. I ask well, would you look at an offer? And a lot of times, yeah, I look at an offer, then I’ll get the details from them. Or if they say not right now, I said, well, would it be okay if I called you in a month or a couple of months? And I get them to tell me morning or afternoon, is that better for you? And then I’ll just put it on my calendar and call them up again. So that’s really the key to it. And the other key I’d say is just keep your funnel full. If you talk to a hundred people that’s better than 50 and 50 is better than 10. So just keep at it. And eventually you will find a deal.
Ferd Niemann: Great tip. It sounds like you learned that from the insurance business.
Abraham Anderson: There you go.
Ferd Niemann: I sold insurance during grad school, so I’m familiar with it, it’s a similar business model. Can I call you back in and then do it. And then a lot of guys don’t do it. The follow through is set you apart.
Abraham Anderson: Yep, absolutely. And the other I’ll say another great tip is if they are somewhat interested in selling, am I, you know, and a lot of them want to look at you in the face. I mean, most of these people are baby boomers, 65 and up, they’re not used to doing everything over the phone necessarily. Some of them don’t even have computers still. So if they’re interested, I always will try to see them in person go, Hey, you know, I’d love to talk with you further about it, you know, can I come see? And obviously if you’re in California calling the East coast, that might be a little bit difficult, but if you’re within even a few hours, you know, just go see them and it could be a complete waste of time like you mentioned your land story. And I’ve had several like that, but you don’t know until you try, and you might, that might be the one where no one else was willing to do that. One park I bought, the only deal I’ve done that was no money down. Hundred percent seller finance. I think I put down a half of a percent when I purchased the park, I talked to the guy and I met him in person once a week for three months before we’d sign a contract. And it was about an hour and a half drive from my house. So every week I would go see this guy with the contract every time, I don’t know, I don’t want to really want to do it right now. And this wasn’t me like pressuring him, keep going to see him. He kept asking me to come back next week, come back next week. And so after three months he signed a contract, and we got a deal done.
Ferd Niemann: That works, man. That’s setting yourself apart. That’s great. Well those are some great tips and stories. Do you have any horror stories or lessons learned? Don’t do this. I mean, obviously we all make mistakes, but do you have anything that could, a mistake you made that you’ll never make again, that you should share without audience.
Abraham Anderson: Yes, I have. I’ll give you two. One of them would apply to parks, but this was when I was doing apartments. I had, well, I’ll give you the mobile home park mistake first, make sure you have a good contract. One of the first deals I got under contract, excellent deal. I was so excited about it. And then right before closing, the seller gets a higher offer. So they tried to back out on me, and I come to find out that the contract I have is not enforceable. So that was a big experience to me or a big learning, eye-Opener. Make sure you have a good contract. Don’t just get one from the internet and think it’s going to be any good, you know, pay you know, a couple grand or whatever it costs to have an attorney review it and make sure it’s a solid contract for your state before you go and try to put deals together with that. Because, you know $500,000 might sound like a lot, but it’s a lot less than losing out on a park with a million dollar upside because you had the wrong contract. So that was a painful lesson.
Ferd Niemann: That is a good point. The term I think you want in the contract is called specific performance where you make them specifically perform and I’m in litigation right now, not my deal, but a client’s deal that they didn’t have that in there properly. And now the guy didn’t want to close and they’re having to fight him over it. So there’s definitely important. In fact, when I’m a buyer, there’s only a few terms that I absolutely must have, and that is one of them. And then another one would be crystal clear that my earnest money is refundable so long as I terminate within my inspection period. Those are probably, I think those are the two most important provisions in a contract.
Abraham Anderson: Yeah, a hundred percent agreed. And the other tip involves diligence. And this was on my apartment deal I did. The apartments, they were fairly new, they were built between 1999 and 2005, and this was one of my first real estate deals in general. So do my inspections inside the units, all that. I did not even think about, well, I need to check these AC units. You know, I checked when I was in there, all the ACs are working fine. The tenant said they’re good. Well, of course I close on them and it’s like a domino effect. One after the other starts going out, these are $4,000, $5,000 to replace. So I think from the first two years of me owning it. I had seven units go out, you know, to the tune of, you know, $20,000, $30,000. So the key is I have a diligence checklist I’ll go through with parks, you know, and this is applicable really to any form of real estate. And I go through every single line. You know, if there’s park owned homes, check the condition of them, check the utility set up, you know, zoning letter, all of these things, you have to go through every one of them cause you’ll miss one of them and then that’ll be the end. You know, that’ll be the one that gets you and variably.
Ferd Niemann: I agree completely. I think Benjamin Franklin said, diligence is the mother of luck. Be prudent, and be diligence and it’s just, I guess it’s baffling to me people don’t do it. It seems like it’s, it’s a good tip. It’s good advice. But I feel like everybody knows it, but then I see regularly, like, Nope, somebody didn’t know it. What are you doing? I mean, I know a guy that bought a mobile home park, never looked at it. It looked good at the brochure. It was great, but you never, how busy are you that you never went to this and you just dropped a million dollars on it? Now find out the problem. It’s almost too farfetched to believe, but you see it happen on a regular basis.
Abraham Anderson: I talked to a guy the other day, the same situation. He was out of, he was at a different state bought this park. I think he went to it like once and now it’s negative cash flowing several grand a month. He’s having to feed this thing because there’s so many issues that would have, you would have found out in your first couple days of doing diligence on it, but he just never bothered to do it. Now it’s just a huge mess. So do your due diligence, you know, this is a serious thing. And there’s a reason why, I mean, most of the deals that I’ve got under contract I’ve closed, but there’s some that huge things came up like there’s massive septic issues or half the park is in the floodplain, or no one’s paying. You know, if you don’t find these out, these can be detrimental. So just find out you know, you should be scared, but don’t let it stop you from finding parks. And the key is if it’s an issue that can be solved, you know, then go back to them and try to get a concession. If it’s a legitimate thing that you did not know on the front end, for example one park I did, I bought, had under contract and I did my diligence. It turns out there were six less occupied than they claimed. There were issues with, there’s an underground spring that was kept destroying the road. There’s a huge section of the road where water would discuss out of it. And I knew that was, the road was an issue, but so, all that could be fixed though. Lots could be filled, cause otherwise it’s great area everything else, but went back to them, you know Mr. Mrs. Seller you know, we thought it was this many occupied, there’s six fewer, there’s this underground spring we didn’t know about. And to fix these issues, it’s going to be, you know, whatever it is, $50,000, $100,000 and the worst they can say is no, you know, if they tell you, no, I’m not going to give you a credit, then you can decide if you still want to proceed at that point. But you can still buy it at the price you agreed upon. But if you don’t ask, you know, you’ll never know, so do your diligence. And then that solves probably 95% of the issues.
Ferd Niemann: Those are good points. I mean, I think everybody hates a retrade. But sometimes it’s appropriate, sometimes it’s necessary. So it’s just, how do you do it tastefully and how do you do it effectively. And sometimes sellers, I had a seller, the guy wouldn’t budge a penny, he was 90, 95 years old, deaf, he read, he could read your lips. But I had to, I met him once and he could read my lips. But then during all the future negotiation, I had to call his attorney’s office. He’d have to go to his attorney, I’d set an appointment. And then the attorney would talk to him and he is sitting across from me. He’s listening to me. And it was a big translation the whole time. And I was threatening X dollars, it wasn’t even that significant to be honest X dollars of concession because he had misrepresented some stuff and he needed to sell. He didn’t want to, you know, I thought he would cave. He said, I’m not giving a penny. The attorney, I talked to the attorney the next day. Attorney’s like, he needs to cave, it is appropriate. And I’ve recommended to him, he needs to sell his property. His wife was sitting in my office. His wife is telling him to cave. His two daughters flew in, one from Nashville and one from Denver to talk to him, dad sell the property. And he just got on the phone and said, nobody else has a say in this, I’m not dropping a penny. If you want to walk, walk, if you don’t. And it was, and you know what? He beat me and I caved, and you know what? I tried and it was appropriate I thought. And I hate doing the retrade, but that was one instance where I thought it made some sense, but it was a bluff and then he called it. So I was like, I thought I was a good negotiator, but I am against an old man.
Abraham Anderson: Well, yeah, there you go. Yeah, I’ve had that happen. I’ve only added the 14 or actually more than that deals I’ve done. I’ve only twice went back for concessions. One time they gave it to me, yep, okay. That sounds reasonable. Here you go. The other time, same thing. It was a huge issue too. It was 10 fewer occupied and a pretty big park and there were some other issues and he said, Nope, yeah. If you want it, buy it. If not, I’ll sell it to somebody else. And so in that case, I still proceed, and it made sense. And as far as doing it tastefully, don’t just say, Hey, I want 50 grand off just because, it has to be a legitimate reason. On all the other deals I’ve done, I don’t ask for money off. If they, you know, if nothing comes up that I wasn’t aware of on the front end, I had to do it tastefully is like, for example, if there’s a you know, like in this case, the road couldn’t be fixed until this spring was resolved. Get the quotes from several people about, you know, running the lines and doing the front strains and everything else to resolve it, then bring them with you when you go to present them. You know, this is the issue I didn’t know about. This is what it’s going to cost to fix. And that’s a lot more than, Hey, you know, give me $50,000 off the price, because I think I don’t like the way the, you know, the homes look or something. So that would be my tip as far as if you have to retrade, then that’s how you go about it.
Ferd Niemann: Yeah. And I used to do it verbally, either in person or over the phone, typically over the phone. And I felt like that was a heroic way to do it so to speak, as opposed to being like I was going to do the email, but what I’ve learned is emotions are high and tensions are high. And then once you say something, you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. So what I’ve come to do is well-written out analytical, here’s what I found and there’s ranges, you know, and the prices at the bottom, it just like, there’s this big, I don’t even put a number in there at the beginning. I used to do that. I need $50,000. I’d say, look, there’s problems of anywhere between $50 and 200,000 that you didn’t disclose. Those are material. And as a result, I’m not feeling as comfortable with the purchase price. And I’m just going to take a few days and evaluate whether or not I can proceed or what it’s going to take for me to proceed. I ask that you consider the same and we can regroup in a few days and they got time to sleep on it. And then that’s, that has a number of impacts. One is to take some emotion out and they’ll just yell at you and call you everything under the sun and then likewise, but then two, they have to, they start to spin their wheels on the worst case scenario, which is just, oh my gosh, this guy’s going to drop the contract. I’m going to be stuck in this trailer park. I want to get out, I’m ready to retire. And they spent several days thinking about that. Or they have spent several days thinking of, I gave somewhat legitimate proof of 50 to 250, this guy’s going to want $250,000 off. And then we talk again. He says, well, I’m open to a little bit, but I can’t do what you’re talking, that number. I said, well, I had a number of $75,000 in mind and then he’d be like, Oh, let me think about it, you know, and then it happens versus 250. And I’ve had it happen without even a counteroffer. And obviously I’ve left some wiggle room. So that’s been an effective strategy for me. And again, like you, I don’t do it very often. I hate it. And in fact, I purposely recently I had a deal we closed just under 3 million. And I think I could’ve did it some couple of concessions, you know, probably 75,000 or something. But the seller has another park that’s probably worth 10 million and I’d love to buy it from him. And on the day of closing, one of my business partner, when he shook his hand and met him and found the deal, I said, go shake his hand and tell him just for, we just want you to know we didn’t retrade you on price. We do what we said we would do. And I just want you to remember that. And when you’re ready to sell the next park we closed, we didn’t trade price. Just like we said we do. We just want you to remember that. And who knows, it may give me a $10 million deal. It may not at all. Cause I can’t pay 11 million and somebody else can.
Abraham Anderson: Yeah, absolutely. You know, and I always try if ever possible to keep a good relationship with them. And I’ve had situations where even they’ll fight me about several of the deposits or something like that. And if it’s not a great amount, I’ll just give it to them. You know, that’s fine. You know, you can keep it, especially if they’re financing in any shape or form, even if they’re not. I mean, what if you own the park, you know, three years later you have some big you know, a sewage issue or utility issue and you call up mom and pop say, hey where is this line at? I’m having this issue. Don’t ruin that relationship. You know, the relationship is worth more than even a few thousand dollars.
Ferd Niemann: That’s a great point. And first park I bought, and we bought it, we did not cash. I got a bank loan, we bought it with the cash. So we didn’t have seller financing. The seller didn’t need us. We didn’t need them. So we thought, but just being nice guys, we were nice guys on the deal and didn’t think I’d ever talked to seller again and it was our first deal. So we don’t really know what we’re doing. So we were sub-metering. Well when you submeter, what do you got to do? We’ve got to turn off the water to the whole park. Where’s that? I don’t know where that was. And we were on a main city street on the edge of town, but in a city water, and I was like, there’s no shut off valve. I think we’re like direct, wired, or direct piped. And then what? We got to get the city involved and we got to shut off the water. We got to put in a main, we’ve got to put, it’s going to be a huge, it is going to be a $10,000 problem. And we looked everywhere, and we had a survey, but I didn’t know as much then as I do now on table A, wasn’t all my survey. You know, it was, so I was stuck. So my dad calls the seller and said, and asked him, you know, where the water maintenance shut off is? Is there not one? And he goes, Oh, he goes, you’ll never find it. He goes, you know, that Creek on the back of the property, isn’t that the property line? Well, it is the property line, but on the other side of the Creek twenty-five feet into the cornfield, there’s my shutoff valve on the farmer’s property. And we’re like, you have to be kidding me. We would’ve never found that he goes, yeah, but that’s what the guy told me before that, I would have never found it either. So, because we had a good relationship, he told us that saved us $10,000.
Abraham Anderson: Yep. That’s awesome. And thank God I can say with every seller I’ve done so far, I’m on good terms with them and I’ll even still send them Christmas cards and stuff, you know, picture of my family.
Ferd Niemann: I should do that. That’s really creative. That’s a good idea.
Abraham Anderson: Real quick. I had a similar story, same thing, it was a park, and the guy was wanting to keep, I think it was like $4,000, $5,000 in deposits. I’m not going to let him have those, and he had his reasoning for wanting to keep them, but I said, you know what? Okay, you can have them, that’s fine. Well, you know, about a month later started getting the calls this a city sewer park, but kept having septic issues, not septic sewage issues at this one home. And I found out, okay, I need to get another sewage tap. So he told me, I couldn’t find anybody in this town to bring out the equipment and run it. So I called him up to see if, you know, if he knew anyone, Hey, I’ll do it for you. I said really. He said, yeah, he had his own equipment, you know, heavy machinery. So he’s out there the next day, digging it up. He runs the line, does everything, he charged me like so little, I think it was like 500 bucks. So that alone was, you know, with the deposits and I still have a great relationship with him. I only have one other tip as far as operations. And as far as I’m aware, there’s only a couple other Park owners I’ve talked to that have been doing this, but I think it’s becoming more common. We do not take any checks or money orders or any of that. We require everyone to either pay online or at Walmart or Kroger, we use rent manager. So that allows them to do that. There’s other systems where they can pay like at CVS or even dollar general. But we use rent manager. So every property we’ve got, we’re managing little over 1200 lots right now between me and my business partner and every park we’ve never had any issues. We convert them all over. Hey, if you want to pay at Walmart, take this car to them. Do you want to pay online? Here’s the form to do that. And you know, old people, older people that, or maybe not tech-savvy people, they still go shopping for the groceries at Walmart or Kroger or wherever. So they go pay at the store, you know, more tech-savvy people they’ll go online and pay. So never had any issues. That’s been so much of a time-saver and gets rid of headaches. You don’t have any bounced checks you don’t have, Oh, I mailed it, you know, last Thursday and it never got in or the mail was lost, and you don’t have to enter it in. It’s all done automatically. So that’s been a huge time-saver for us in automating the collections.
Ferd Niemann: That’s a great tip. Yeah. I’ve got one on a client that does that. We don’t do it 100%. We do have to pay lease through Rent Manager to do that and I do love it, but we have been forced it as hard as you have. So have you not had anybody get heartburn about it and threatened to leave or actually leave because some people don’t have bank accounts, and there’s fees when you do that, you know, so there’s some pain to it if you will, but it’s definitely easier, it’s much easier and timely frankly, as well from a bookkeeping perspective.
Abraham Anderson: I’ve had two people threatened to leave over it. Like I said, 1200, no one’s left. I’ve had, you know, dozens of people saying, Oh, that’s so cool. I can pay my rent at Walmart. So I’ve had a much more positive response than a negative.
Ferd Niemann: Oh man, that sounds like, I’m going to have to implement that because yeah, it’s definitely easier from bookkeeping. Because it also, I think I’m pretty sure it automatically puts credits to their account, their tenant ledger and rent manager. So you’ve already got the entry done.
Abraham Anderson: So think about the time you spend paying somebody to enter that in. Or if you’re a newer operator, you don’t have many parks doing it yourself. It may save you several hours a month. And then also as far as I know, there are these with it, the way we have it set up and you can basically set who pays the fees. If they pay online with a bank account, there’s no fee to them. So there’s a free way to pay. They can pay it through their bank account one time. They don’t have to set it up for recurring. It pulls the money out and that’s it. You, the property owner pays $1 for that and you can actually negotiate that fee down as well, once you get scale with the units and then if they pay at Walmart with cash or debit card, they does charge them $4. So we tell them upfront, you know, there’s a couple of ways to pay this one’s free. This one cost $4 and those are the options, like I said never had any issues.
Ferd Niemann: Great stuff. Great tips. Appreciate it Abraham. Before we go, anything else you want to share or if not, where can people find you and contact you?
Abraham Anderson: Yeah. So just briefly, you know, anyone can do it parks. If I can do it, you can do it. It’s one of the easier, really real estate classes to get into, seller financing is more prevalent for several reasons. So it’s just an awesome business. I feel like it’s really now starting to take hold and become more professional. And so there’s still a lot of opportunities to get some of these parks that, you know, older operators are running, and they haven’t, they’re not as professional about it. So you know, there’s great opportunities out there and just get started. You know, if you’ve got the information and start calling, you’ll find the money. You’ll find a way to get the finance if you can get a good deal. Whether it’s partnering with somebody or raising the money, just try to find a good deal and just, you know, go for it. As far as where to contact me you can, I have a website, www.capitalcashflow.com, you can email me from there and yeah, feel free to reach out. I’d love to talk to people. You know, it’s a lot of the people have helped me out along the way and I’m happy to talk to others and help out any way I can.
Ferd Niemann: All right. Sounds good. Appreciate it, Abraham.
Abraham Anderson: Thanks Ferd.
Ferd Niemann: Bye now.