Transforming the Housing Market with Affordable Mobile Homes: A Discussion with Franco Perez

Speaker 2: 0:11

Welcome to Side Hustle City and thanks for joining us. Our goal is to help you connect to real people who found success turning their side hustle into a main hustle, and we hope you can too. I'm Adam Kaler. I'm joined by Kyle Stevy, my co-host. Let's get started, all right? Welcome back everybody to the Side Hustle City podcast. Today we got a special guest Franco Perez. Franco, thank you for joining the show sir.

Speaker 3: 0:40

Oh, thanks for having me, I'm excited.

Speaker 2: 0:42

Yeah, I'm pumped too, man. We're going to talk mobile homes today, so if you've seen a big uptick, I guess because you're in the mobile home space are you seeing this as like a growing thing?

Speaker 3: 0:55

Oh, absolutely, it's kind of been the hottest topic lately. I mean, you know, there's a whole affordable housing element to it, there's the whole construction element to it of how it's advancing. I mean it's going to fix a lot of the problems that are coming in the next few years.

Speaker 2: 1:11

I like it. I like it, I mean they're more affordable. They're generally built in a factory right. I actually went to one in Kentucky and they build modular homes. This wasn't necessarily like the mobile home right. They weren't on wheels or any of that kind of stuff. These were just modular homes that they were building and just put them together, and they were way more affordable per square foot than a traditional home.

Speaker 3: 1:35

Oh, absolutely. It's the future of construction. I mean, we have so much construction issues that are happening and part of the whole affordable element is of why cost of living is so expensive is because building this is we're building these homes just like we were 100 years ago, you know, and nothing's really changed. We're just innovating and we haven't really shifted to modular or manufactured or mobile homes. It's just like you know. I use this analogy but cars originally were only built for like the rich and wealthy, until we were able to build it on an assembly line and make it accessible for everyone. And that's exactly what we're doing with these mobile homes as well. As we're building them in factory, we're building them with much less material, much less labor and building them very high quality home at speed, at a much. In the end cost is much less than what you would at a traditional stick built home.

Speaker 2: 2:32

Yeah, exactly I mean and you, you know you weren't born in America, you were born in the Philippines. You came over when you were 11. So you're old enough to remember some of what you saw in the Philippines, which is still, I mean to this day, a very affordable country to live in. But you know, you go to some places. You see real poverty, like you have people in America here complaining about not being able to afford a house or, you know, being poor, this and that it's a night and day. It's a totally different thing. Talk to the audience here, explain to them kind of what you saw there and how that motivated you once you got here.

Speaker 3: 3:05

Yeah, I think it's. It's a whole, I mean, our life is all about our perspective and what we see and how we perceive things. Right and when. When I grew up in the Philippines, you know there were. I remember being a kid and I see people my age that didn't have the opportunity to go to school, right, they were selling cigarettes on the street and the side of the road, but you know, what's weird is that they're also very happy and they're grateful for what they have, even if they have nothing. And then, moving here, I remember seeing people with a roof over their head but find ways to be miserable or stressed. Right, and it's all about how we perceive things. I think that's the first element to it. And yeah, after I kind of grew up here, in high school and in the United States there's there was a weird, unfortunate, a fortunate situation where my parents split. My dad was the main breadwinner, he left the country, and then it was just me, my single mom and my younger sister. When I was like 17 years old, I had to drop out of school, start working right away, and then I was in a in one of the hardest times of my life, just trying to work two jobs just to keep up with paying rent. And it was. It was difficult, and that's kind of where I realized it. There's not. You know, why is this life unfair? You know, I feel like we're good people. Why is it that the wealthy are able to benefit from all these home ownership elements and then the middle class or working class can't really have that attainable? And I really think that's what got me into this whole mobile home world as well is because there's a lot of false stigmas, false assumptions and and pres perceptions about what mobile home parks are whether they're trailer parks or from the media, and what the news shows us versus the reality of it. And and came to find out so many people are starting their wealth building journey through mobile homes. And yeah, that's why we built our business. Really.

Speaker 2: 5:03

I love it, man. I love the journey. What actually struck me is when you sent over your information and you're saying you're being able to price these things $250,000 to $400,000 for one of these mobile homes. These aren't your traditional mobile homes, guys. These things look awesome. How and now is this in the Southern California area that you're able to do this at these prices?

Speaker 3: 5:27

Yeah. So we all started in San Jose, silicon Valley area, right. And I want to express that these I can kind of talk about pricing and like how the mall, like how things work, but keep in mind, silicon Valley is one of the most expensive areas in the country. But when I describe these, these, this housing issue that we're having, it's going to be higher than most, but the ratios are typically the same. But if we express living in San Jose when I was going through that struggle, for example, rent in San Jose is about $3,400 a month for a two bedroom apartment, right. And then if I wanted to buy a single family home in San Jose, median price point is about $1.5 million. And how does somebody that's renting ever dream of purchasing a single family home later down the line when it's so difficult to attain and so high, such a high price and big barrier to entry to get into right. And that's where the mobile home element really becomes a beautiful thing because it's a stepping stone in between getting to help someone get out of that rental rat race and start their home ownership journey, right. So people are chasing buying a piece of real estate because they get to leverage a loan to build their net worth, they get to have the upside of appreciation and they also get tax benefits right. And we can't access that unless we own a home, and with mobile homes it's like a perfect hybrid of ownership and a partial renting as well. So let's say you buy a average mobile home in our area it's about or in San Jose area it's about $300,000, right? So actually I should paint the picture of the home, of a single family home. So if I wanted to buy a single family home and I wanted to put 10% down, it's about $150,000 down payment and my monthly payment would look like about $8,000 a month. Now if we get a mobile home, for example, 10% of that $300,000 is $30,000 down, and then my mortgage would look like would look like about $2,600. And then my space rent is about $1,000. So my total monthly payment is about $3,600, just a little bit more than what I would be paying if I'm renting. However, you're getting a lot of the ownership benefits by owning a mobile home in that area. Plus, you still get to stay in that prime area that you're near your great job or you're in that great school district and you don't have to move away or commute for two hours just to get to that workplace, and that's how we're using it as a stepping stone for people to start to get out of that rental rat race into owning a mobile home, and then, three to five years later, they have an asset they can sell to then buy a single family home later down the line.

Speaker 1: 8:15

So one of the issues and I'm here sorry I had to do my good deed for the day and then I didn't even need to do it so one of the issues that we, as real estate investors, you hear about with mobile homes is depreciation of the value. Are you finding that they hold value because of being in California at the cost of owning a home? So how do you feel like this could scale across the country where these things will appreciate in value and other? I guess you're going to have to keep them near what urban areas, correct?

Speaker 3: 8:50

Yeah, so that's the thing, that. That's one of those big myths that are not always true, right? But most of our business and where we're seeing this make sense are all the metro areas Like I'm doing this thing in Atlanta right now but, yes, so high density area. You're seeing that these mobile homes are appreciating in value very equivalent percentages as real estate housing as well. So in San Jose in the last two years the mobile home price has overappreciated over 10%, which is a big difference compared to what people think is that they depreciate in value a ton, and that's average, even including the old 1970s homes and the newer ones too, I mean.

Speaker 1: 9:33

I would just add them scrolling through your website while we're speaking here, or your promotional stuff here. Those aren't mobile homes, like, I think, a mobile home, so those aren't the kind that we have around here, where they have the Confederate flags and the four and the four cars.

Speaker 2: 9:48

Part car parts out in the front like babies running around with this. This looks like upscale living. These are what I mean. Look at this bathroom with the tub and like.

Speaker 1: 9:58

I mean that kitchen is better than the kitchen in my house, for sure that's awesome.

Speaker 2: 10:01

A barn door Like. You got the barn door game going on in here too. Do you design these? Like? How did you work with an architect? Do you have an architecture background?

Speaker 3: 10:10

So we do the full element of the designing. I'm not an architect myself, I didn't even go to college or anything like that but we really push the limits of what's possible in these mobile homes. And, like you said, like people's stigmas and people's associations with mobile homes are only really what they see in the media. But we're used to seeing like breaking bad or bad news around it. But just like apartment complexes, there's very bad apartments and then there's very nice high end apartments. But just like with mobile home parks, like you said, there's trailer trash looking parks. But then there's also resort style communities and they all shouldn't be written off all as a bad thing. But we have communities as well with tennis courts, with saunas and badminton courts and dog parks and all of that and the same. With the homes. We're pushing the quality of what we can do. We really build these nicer than what single family homes are being built to today. Like you see the finishes there, the standalone tubs, quartz countertops, stainless steel appliances. We have 12 foot high flat ceilings too, I mean you know, and these are inside mobile home parks.

Speaker 1: 11:23

Wow, I mean, it looks like my brother lives in San Francisco. My cousin lives there. Now my brother lives in Oakland and what I just saw there was a gazillion times better than their two bedroom apartments. So it's there's. I mean, hey, there's way more space, seriously, but B the finishes and everything look fantastic. That's I would have. I never know what our guests do, because I like to hear their story while we go in here, because then I don't have any preconceived questions because I'll fuck them up. But this was, this is eye opening. This is something that I even yeah, I don't know how you, how do you? So that's a great question. Then, how do you get over the stigmatization of you know I. You say I'm, I create these mobile homes, I build mobile homes. How do you, how do you get past that stigma of of what we were just talking about in terms of what people have preconceived notions about?

Speaker 3: 12:22

Well, I think there's two elements to that. One is the demand is much bigger than the perception problem. So if people are paying $4,500 a month to rent and knock hit anything back and they really want to better their housing situation and their better their finances, guess what? They're going to explore options. Like I said, unfortunately there's working class people in these metro areas that are making huge sacrifices, like regretful decisions, just to chase that dream of home ownership. They'll buy a home an hour and a half away and realize that it's so difficult to commute and that sort of thing. So once these homes are built and they're for sale, we get a ton of attention and demand on that. And then the second part of that question is getting past the perception, being younger and learning how Gen Z thing and that sort of thing too. We have to understand that me and you are talking on this podcast and we can talk about it all we want, but we learn visually and until you saw it on that screen and you can actually see the end quality product and you can actually see how they're being built. That's what we've been doing and that's why I'm very proud of our media team is creating this YouTube channel. That's popped off a lot and people are super interested about how they're built and how it helps people's finances. But it's really our YouTube and our video stuff that's helped people allow to see what's possible with mobile homes and see the style of living and see that it can be luxurious in a mobile home park and that's really how we're getting past that perception and now that's what's gotten us to grow to LA market, to other markets as well, and we're really looking to do this nationwide also.

Speaker 2: 14:16

Well, we'll think about it. Dude, like you've got old housing stock in Cincinnati real old, I mean like I can't even find something I want. I want something modern that's clean, hasn't been lived in and the stuff you get here is it needs work. I mean we just got old housing stock. You don't have a whole lot of new development, everything. I mean this city, so it's like the oldest city. I mean it was the first. Cincinnati is considered the first real American city Because it was formed essentially right after the Declaration of Independence was signed. So I mean the houses are old and there's no space really to build new houses and the regulations and you probably deal with this in out west as well, maybe not to the extent we do, but there's a problem with doing like infill projects and stuff, because there's always this historic stuff that's happening when you're talking about the city limits. But there are spaces and there's opportunities to build in some of these spots and we just need new housing stock, like the stuff that we got, the options that we've got. Nobody wants to go into a house, spend all this money on a house just to be hit with $30, $40,000 in upgrades that they wanna make. Oh, you want a new kitchen? 20 grand, right. 20 grand Maybe. Well, it depends on how big your house is too. 20 grand, 30 grand, whatever. You want new bathrooms, you're gonna move in there. You want new bathrooms? I'll have 10, 12 grand a pop, right, easy. So I mean you're dealing with that when you could just say you know what, I want something brand new. I got maybe 300 grand to spend. I don't have a half million. I don't have $750,000 to spend, plus upgrades. I want something brand new I could just move into. I can go about my life, I can do my thing. I don't have to sit here and deal with construction crews in my house for the next year. I mean, these are things people need to understand, especially if you guys are thinking about moving here till, say, like the Midwest. I mean these are problems we deal with.

Speaker 1: 16:23

I think also when I see this. I think about my mom, because she you know, my dad died four or five years ago, whatever it is, and now she's 70 and she's in great shape. She's keeping up with the house, but she wants to get rid of it. And she wants to live in a community, but she doesn't want to live in like the one of the you know, seeing your apartment buildings and even those are ridiculous rents now. So she like something like this where she could sell her house, take all of that equity that she has from the house, buy this but be part of a community Cause. That's the big part, that's the. I think that would be the big sell for people downsizing. Is that the community?

Speaker 2: 17:05

See you all time. Yeah, don't be in a condo where you have to go up elevators and crap like that, right.

Speaker 1: 17:10

You have this and then you walk out and you got the swimming pool and you've got a clubhouse and you've got all the benefits that you would get moving into a decent apartment community without the headache of being in the apartment community.

Speaker 2: 17:20

And it's a ranch. It's a ranch style house. This is what they need, right.

Speaker 3: 17:27

So what you said was very key and a lot of our clients have these type of lifestyle choices as well. And, mind you, most of our business is in family parks, but these senior communities we're seeing a lot of that too People downsizing from. They either sell or rent out their single family and then they move to these communities as well. And what's beautiful is really the sense of community, because keep in mind that every person that lives in these mobile homes are actually owner, resident of their home. So you have that relation. They take care of their units, they care about their community and then, especially in the senior communities, they'll host events Christmas events, gatherings, thanksgiving events, that sort of thing and you really see people that take care of their units, they take care of their neighbors and they really have that community element to it that you don't see in apartment complexes. And it's beautiful and it's quite an amazing thing because we have people coming from young to getting a starter home. And then we have people like you said, like hey, they have a two-story, they want to downsize something low maintenance, low upkeep but they don't want to share walls and that sort of thing. Right, and it becomes a perfect use case for people in that situation.

Speaker 2: 18:37

Yeah, and these things are beautiful. I mean, let's compare. So if you were to go, say you're in San Jose, right, you're in Northern California, you got. You know you're looking around for houses, what are you going to have to pay per square foot for an already existing home versus one of these?

Speaker 1: 18:52

Well, they're just 1.5 mil, so.

Speaker 2: 18:55

Oh, I think it's more than that in San Jose, isn't it? Oh, that's just what you said.

Speaker 3: 18:59

Yeah, In our county it's just, it's right exactly at 1.5, like 1.49, something like that is the median count, like single family home. But, like you said earlier, it's like these homes usually come with like 30 to 60 K of fixing when you get in. You know it's old stock as well. Right, the newer homes are going for 1.8 and we got ugly homes for 1.2, 1.3. And and but you know, I know we're talking high numbers here, but I want people to understand that like the ratios are kind of similar, right, Like in Atlanta, medium single family could be 500, average rent could be 1800. And then the mobile homes themselves for the newer ones are like to 180 or 150, $150,000. Right, but the key thing is understanding that this is allowing a stepping stone and then allowing an option for people that most people don't understand is out there, Because you know most people are just renting and going on hoping that one day I'm going to make a large lump sum, more than I am today, to be able to one day afford a single family home. But that target is a moving target and they're not able to better their personal cash flow because they're trapped. They don't have, they can't reach that single family home just yet. But if you can reach getting a mobile home for three, five years, then guess what You're getting? Your cash flow is a little bit better and it allows for you to gather some of those benefits of home ownership, and then it allows for you to have better options later down the line.

Speaker 2: 20:32

Yeah, totally does, and you got something new. You got something clean, you got something. I mean, you got enough headaches when you're trying to build your career and you're young and you've got you know, transportation issues sometimes and you're running around and you're trying to. You know, do your best at work, You're putting in extra hours, you don't have time to be messing around with a beat up house, Like you just need. One of the benefits of renting is is that you got a landlord and if something goes wrong you call the landlord. Well, when you own a house, you don't have those benefits and you're trying to raise kids, like you did trying to raise kids, and you've got to deal with that. On top of all this stuff, Like I mean, it can get stressful and to your point, this is a stepping stone. This is a way for somebody to get into that next level but not have to throw their money away on rent every month.

Speaker 1: 21:13

Well, we were we. I was part of the city vision committee or whatever that they have to. Every city has to do where they have a decade long plan and the major issue that we were running into because of housing costs so much there and comparatively speaking to the rest of this northern Kentucky and basically the state outside of certain pockets like Louisville and Oldham County, is that young families can't afford to move in the Fort Thomas. They just can't. It's just they're priced out a lot. I mean it's along the same lines of basically all of California, like he's talking about. Like. Something like this would be hugely beneficial to the city resupplying the school district with students with, you know, young guys, young families coming back in, instead of old people just living in their houses because they don't have any other options.

Speaker 2: 22:05

Yeah, yeah. Have you worked with any cities or jurisdictions? Because I mean, this is huge, especially when you're talking about a state like California, which is largely liberal. You know they're, they're particularly sensitive to the housing price, housing situations, I would assume, just based on their politics. If you talk to anybody from any of those groups to say, hey, look, because politicians want to want to promote themselves, right, and they're looking for any edge that they can get, I could see you as that edge.

Speaker 3: 22:36

Yeah, no, absolutely. That is something that I actually personally do a lot. You know, I work with the city, the city mayors, and then also I was just at Washington DC pitching to senators telling them how this is creating a social impact for families, the teachers and that sort of thing. We also talked about how the construction elements of this is so much better and we need to innovate on the housing elements as well. But I do a lot of lobbying. I actually do courses where we teach people on how to talk to government entities and showcase why this is important. That's a big thing that we're doing lately. You also talked about what was it that you mentioned? There's something that clicked that I wanted to bring up too. But, yes, it is. It is such an important element.

Speaker 2: 23:20

Oh, with schools, maybe was it with schools and the school districts, and not being able to like oh, what I was going to say is the key thing about this, too, is that it's not really something.

Speaker 3: 23:29

The infrastructure is already there. There's mobile home parks throughout the country. Now, it's just a matter of us redeveloping, upping the quality of these communities and upping the quality of the homes in these communities, right? So, being that these are mobile homes, there's not a lot of permitting or government work that has to be done, because it's already a functioning element that can be done. So what's beautiful is we can pop into a city like Atlanta and there's a community that's there. Hey, how can we partner with the park owner and inform the residents and inform the city that this is something that's really helping the people, allowing a starter home element, and then we use that model to help people get that stepping stone. We'll replace a lot of this old mobile home style homes with the homes that you saw there and causing a whole ecosystem of benefit for people. Right, and that's what we're doing.

Speaker 2: 24:26

I mean, you're kind of playing into the tiny home thing too. I mean, even though these look like they're not tiny homes, but people think tiny homes are sexy, right, there's like the opposite thing of tiny homes. Then there is for mobile homes, right, Like everybody's like oh, tiny homes, those are cool. It's almost like if you just call the mobile home a tiny home, then people are going to be on it. You know, I don't know.

Speaker 1: 24:46

I think it's. I think, too is the fabricated. Look at the mobile home. It looks like most of them, look like the ones that you know. Yeah, they look like when it baggos. Yeah, I mean they totally do, as opposed to this, that actually this looks like you know. It looks like a house.

Speaker 2: 25:01

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 25:03

We push as contemporary as could be. But yeah, so you mentioned a good point and what's interesting is that people gravitate towards what they see on the media and the whole reason why tiny homes are popular because of a show right, but the truth of it is the practicality of these in cities are not actual great use cases. You know it might work in farm areas and that sort of thing and if that's your thing that's cool, but it doesn't really work for a regular family in a metro city or a metro market. You can't really just store a tiny home in someone's backyard all the time.

Speaker 2: 25:36

They're illegal in some cases. Yeah, you can't even do it like legally you can't have ADUs in a lot of places.

Speaker 3: 25:45

So it's all about, like it goes back to, kind of what I said is that it's amazing because when I grew up in in the Silicon Valley, I knew nothing about Mobile Home Parks either. I've never really seen one, not sort of thing. But when you actually go on Google Maps, look up what's around you, they're spread out throughout the country and there's over 64 communities in the Silicon Valley itself, right in that one county, and their truth is that we don't have an excuse to go into one of these communities unless we know somebody that lives there or have been there previously. But what's interesting is that in all of these metro areas you'll find that there are communities throughout the country, and it's quite shocking.

Speaker 2: 26:25

What helps them? So if I'm in a mobile home community, what is beneficial to them? Like, where is the right place to have a mobile home community? In a metro area, so I need to get downtown on a regular basis, maybe my job's downtown. What is it good to go into areas for you, or is it more prevalent to see these mobile home communities where, in cities where they have good mass transportation?

Speaker 3: 26:56

It depends on the area we're talking about, but the answer the first answer to that question is that these mobile home parks, to most of them are built in the 70s and they were really built there before and previously there. So you have to look at the city or the market and see what is currently there. It's only until recently that we started building new communities, and usually these are for these vast growing economies. What we're learning in these cities is that, hey, if, like I was just at this Nevada market where Tesla built this huge Gigafactory and built a ton of jobs, but where are they going to live? They don't have housing. So we're now going to be building a community with mobile homes themselves, and it's that we've realized that, or they've realized that this is the fastest way that we can build a ton of good quality housing and make it available for the workforce. It comes down to this analogy that I was talking about with cars and housing. I can't remember if I mentioned this, but because we're building this on an assembly line, we can pump out a home so much faster than if we were to do stick built. I mean stick built homes take forever. You got to transport the labor, you got to transport the lumber, all the materials, you got to get skilled HVAC, electrical, all that stuff, and you're exposed to the weather elements and permit delays as well, whereas with this it's very easy to just pump out 100 homes and do the same development and get a ton of housing completed at an affordable rate.

Speaker 2: 28:33

The funny thing is is like we've automated our food at this point, like all of our food's automated. Like you go to fast food places, it's automated, right. I mean, the whole system where it comes from, everything is just automated, right. I mean there's so many things that are automated. Now, one of the reasons mom and pop stores in places like that are going out of business is because they don't have the processes that a Walmart has. You know they don't have the processes that you know Target and some of these McDonald's has. Right, you know everything's going to be consistent. You know it's going to be done the same way, no matter if I go to the San Jose McDonald's or I go to Cincinnati McDonald's same thing, right, like they've got the processes in place and it saves money, it saves time. But we haven't done that to houses.

Speaker 1: 29:18

Exactly.

Speaker 2: 29:19

I mean what's going on, you know. I mean it's. It's like you got to get over this big stigma, I think, because when people think, oh, I'm going to build a house, right, they think of the stick build house. They don't think of what you all the reasons you just talked about, like how many times have somebody built a house? Have you heard of somebody build a house? And they're like, oh God, it's over. You know my lumber prices went up 20%. My, you know this went up. That went up, it's. You know there's delays, we can't get the permit to it every time Change orders left and right. Exactly. It's like you know, if I look at your plan, I get that plan. How long does it take to get something from you versus a stick built house of the same say square footage?

Speaker 3: 30:02

So so a resident comes to me with an old unit, wants to replace it with a brand new unit. About a year and a half ago it took me about 13 months to build, but now in the last month, we just broke. I love continuing to break our record, but we were completed. We completed our last home in less than in less than two and a half months. What so? From the old unit, removing it, putting the new one in, finishing it off all the way, ready to move in in two and a half months and it's insane, right. And the cool thing about it is that we can. We can really stack the process of how it's done, because if we look at stick built, there's everything has to all be done on a specific timeline. But because now we're moving to factory built, we can work on things simultaneously. We're doing the removal of the old unit while we're starting the construction of the new unit. And because we're stacking that timeline, we continue to compress how long it takes to do and we continue to build it faster and faster. Right, and because we're doing it at scale with multiple units, we get materials at a lower cost, we get labor at a much more effective cost and we're also saving so much for the environment as well less carbon footprint, less material waste. If you think about the lumber element of it on a job site they cut a piece that they need and they throw it away, whereas in a factory they cut what they need and then what's left over they can stack in store for the next job that's needed later down the line. And it's the same thing where you know it's all process improvement and that's how we're building so much faster and that's how we're going to get to keeping housing affordable by fixing that construction issue. Just like you said, everything we own is built in this process and this stream, like this laptop, cars and that sort of thing. They're built in a factory on an assembly line, because that's the best way to build. But we haven't. We're building homes away. We've built it a hundred years ago and there's no change. And that's scary because, guess what, it's not going to get better. But most of our workforce is 40 years old and older and they're going to retire soon and we don't have young people that are excited to work with a hammer. That's another point. That's another point. It's a huge issue.

Speaker 1: 32:19

What are you looking at building or partnering with factories closer to specific metropolitan areas Like? Will you have, like, a East Coast division and a West Coast division, or I mean I'm assuming right now it's based out of one factory. As you grow, are you looking to be part of the expansion?

Speaker 3: 32:37

Yeah, so what's cool is we work with really infrastructure that's already there so we can plug and play our model within factories that are already building modular and manufactured housing, Right. So you know, that's one of the cool things about this is that's why I'm, like I mentioned, I'm here in Atlanta looking at factories and stuff as well in here. You know there are already factories out in Pennsylvania. There's a factory in Oklahoma that's capable of using this model and doing the same thing.

Speaker 1: 33:10

Yeah, I mean, that's great, you're in Atlanta, you get. If you're in Pennsylvania, atlanta you can handle the whole southeast Pennsylvania, you can handle the mid-Atlantic. Into the Midwest Oklahoma, you can handle Dallas, fort Worth pretty easily. You can get up into Kansas City, you know, up into potentially into Nebraska, maybe Colorado. No problem, that's nice.

Speaker 2: 33:34

Yeah, that's awesome, man, I mean especially here, for you know what you're talking about. When you're in Cincinnati, you know you've got climate issues, you've got, you know, rain. It keeps people from wanting to come into work. Right, all it's raining and can't, you know, can't come into work.

Speaker 1: 33:49

It's snow or we get snow. We get snow for the sleep snow. Yeah, we get the shit snow.

Speaker 2: 33:54

Yeah, I mean there's issues or you just there's, there's, it's too hot or it's too cold, like we do not have a steady climate. I mean it was a hundred and what five degrees a week ago and now it's like 78 out.

Speaker 1: 34:06

And it's gonna be 97 again next weekend or whatever.

Speaker 2: 34:09

Yeah. So I mean it gets crazy and, and I mean when it's the winter time, I mean you could have, you could have a 60 degree day in the winter and then all of a sudden you know a negative five degree day with eight inches of snow. Right, I mean that kind of stuff messes with construction timelines and everything. So I mean you're dealing with that and you, here you are. Like you know, I can get you a house in two and a half months.

Speaker 1: 34:30

Yeah, you can build it. You can build it from, you know, end of May through the summer.

Speaker 2: 34:34

Yeah, and you're going to be moved in and you got a house, you're not going to have to pay rent anymore. I mean, that's the other thing too. Like you're thinking about this, these people are paying for the house while they're building it, right, I mean, they've still got a. You know they got debt, they've got to pay. You know they're. They're they're living somewhere else, right? Maybe renting, so the entire time that's taken them a year and a half, two years to build this house. They're paying two mortgages, kind of right, I mean yeah. I mean, they're not just you're getting it to them in two and a half months. So the opportunity cost of money is something people have to consider. With something like this, too, you know you're throwing money away at rent while you're building your house and paying for the construction. I mean, that's that's. That's an issue that people have to think about as well when they're, when they're determining this stuff. Now, a lot of the people that we deal with on this podcast are people that are they're investors. They're people that are, you know, interested in real estate a lot of times. Are you? Are you taking on any investment? Are you self-funded Like I'm sure people are like man, this sounds awesome, I want to throw some money at him and invest in his company, like what's what's happening?

Speaker 3: 35:44

We did do. We did do a fund around a few years back and did another one last year. Right now we're not actually seeding investors we are pretty self-funded. But we do have something coming in first quarter of 2024 where we're working with partnering, like with park ownership, as well as building out this model. But as of right now, unfortunately we don't have much of that involved. But I think if anything for these investors to look at is really look at the park ownership element I mean, there's so many opportunities there that can be done that way and we partner with them as well, and they can learn a lot of that stuff on our YouTube channel too.

Speaker 2: 36:25

So guys go out there and look for some land. What kind of? What kind of land, like, what size acreage would you say is good for something like this? Like if I went out and I said, hey, Franco, I'm going to go buy a lot in Northern Kentucky, I mean, there's lots, not far from here there's, there's farms.

Speaker 1: 36:44

There's still plenty of area here to develop, where you're within striking distance of downtown. No problem, within 35 minutes, totally.

Speaker 2: 36:51

I mean you go out and you could buy. You know we could buy 50 acres tomorrow. You know if you were to buy 50 acres or somebody listening to this had land and they were able to I guess what would be the process? I would have to talk to you say, hey, franco, I got this project coming up. We're going to build out some, some space here. We're going to have 20, 30 lots that we could put houses on. Do you think you could deliver on that? And then we have to run what we have to call the city, run plumbing to each one of them or electrical to each one of them, all that stuff.

Speaker 3: 37:26

Yeah, yeah. So I mean there's it can be as small as like seven acres to as big as like a hundred acres that we are seeing development. But the average size, like you mentioned, is around that 50 acre unit and it will depend on like what's the land cost, what are the next available utility source and that sort of thing. So one of my good friends is building a park in Bozeman, montana, where it's a very growing economy, and that that was about 60 acres of land and what's cool is that you know all the utilities are already set to that point and it's just the development that needed to get done. And as a park owner, all you're really developing is the utilities and the roads and infrastructure, right. So what's cool is that the owners of the homes themselves they're the ones paying for that and they're also the ones maintaining that you're no longer worrying about a broken toilet, a crack ceiling or that sort of thing. But your maintenance as a park owner entity is really just the utility infrastructure and it becomes kind of a great investment compared to a multi unit investment as well.

Speaker 1: 38:37

And it's, and it's a, it's a big fig leaf or piece offering for all the Californians moving into Bozeman and blowing up the housing market.

Speaker 2: 38:48

That's true In poor Bozee Idaho like what do you mean?

Speaker 1: 38:52

this house is now $600,000?. We make $30,000 a year here.

Speaker 2: 38:56

It's 20 below and it's houses 60. Yeah, I mean. So what do you have any idea? So on 50 acres or 6860 acres, your buddy, how many units do you think he can get on there?

Speaker 3: 39:09

Dude, I wish I remembered the numbers on there, but I believe it's somewhere around 180 units. Oh, wow, the I have to. I honestly can't quite remember, but a typical sized lot itself would typically be about 40 feet wide and about 70 feet deep, so that will allow for us to build a home unit that's about 30 feet wide and then 60 feet deep. So with that that brings it to about like a 1800 square foot perfect three bedroom, two bath home with a beautiful large kitchen and great room in the front.

Speaker 1: 39:52

Wow, I think that'd be great too, because if you go to, you know you want to go to Yellowstone, you know you can rent hotels or this gives Airbnb options for people that are able to you know to be able to just rent out. Just, they're walking up.

Speaker 2: 40:07

You could just do this and make it an Airbnb. That's what I'm saying.

Speaker 1: 40:09

An Airbnb park. Basically, you get all the national parks and just be right outside of them. Oh, that'd be great.

Speaker 2: 40:15

Yeah, and you wouldn't have to drive around and yeah, that'd be really nice. So I mean, but you could totally like go buy some land, like we could go tomorrow, go look for some land like a ducking and go buy it scoop up 50 acres for Red River, half a million dollars. Red River Gorge, you could do it there. You could totally do it there. That'd be a great place for it. And then you put, yeah, you got a quarter acre. Say you know, break it up into quarter acres.

Speaker 1: 40:37

Well, there's nowhere to swim there, like that's, that's a crazy thing. So you go, and you go to these hikes and you can get into the creek if you want to, but you there's no like. There's no like hotels there. There aren't any hotels there with a swimming pool. That I'm there's one, but there's actually two, but the one you swim in is like yeah you don't want it yeah you may come stay away with some

Speaker 2: 40:57

flesh bacteria.

Speaker 1: 40:58

So, yeah, you have, like you could have a place where people can come, you know, rent affordably. I mean, I know this is not the model.

Speaker 2: 41:05

This is model.

Speaker 1: 41:05

I'm sorry, I'm just thinking how loud and then you go swim and actually be in a place where, like this, is really nice being here.

Speaker 2: 41:11

Well, just being the park owner is profitable. I mean it's great. I mean you're renting out the lots. You're not selling the lots, Are you? You're renting those lots, correct, Correct. So they're buying the home, but you're renting them the lot to put it on and then charging them a fee I think this is what my conversation was down in Miami with this guy and then you charge them for like utilities every month. You charge them for like utility hookup and all that stuff every month or whatever.

Speaker 3: 41:41

Exactly that.

Speaker 2: 41:42

Yeah. So I mean you could do yeah, you go get 50 acres in Kentucky. You break it up into say you get 200 units on there, 150 units on there Plus you want to save some of the acreage for amenities. Right, you're going to want to put a little park in there. You're going to want to put, yeah, things like a community room, probably like a community center that may be stick built or whatever, that people can rent and have parties and stuff. So no different than a multi-family building where you're going to have maybe a basketball hoop or something in there too for the kids. But it's, it's kind of like that, right.

Speaker 3: 42:17

Exactly, yeah, exactly like that.

Speaker 2: 42:20

And then I call you and say Franco, I need 200. And then you pop those suckers out, yeah.

Speaker 3: 42:27

Yeah, well, that's, that's essentially what we do for park owners, right, so they'll have that. They need to help with building it out, the infrastructure, getting it sold, getting it in-field so that they have those units filled. So we handle the whole logistics of that and once the park infrastructure is there and we can also help, like you know, based on the metrics of what's the age group and what people prefer in that area, we guide with like, hey, what are the amenities that will really bring the best ROI? What's going to help, you know, get your clientele and more value into your mobile home park investment? We do that same level of skill for these residents that are already living in the community as well.

Speaker 2: 43:08

Well, here you go, guys. I mean, if you're thinking about doing something like this Franco's, your guy. I mean you got, you got the expert right here. That'll. That'll maximize the investments of whoever. If you need investors and you want to buy some land and get everything hooked up, you get an investment group.

Speaker 1: 43:23

So like I saw you on Best Ever and so I'm in that, I'm in their Facebook group and guys are doing talking about mobile home parks all the time.

Speaker 2: 43:33

Yeah Well, man, this has been awesome, this has been eye-opening. I didn't. I almost forgot about that conversation I had with that guy. Apparently he's killing it now down in Miami. Dude, I mean, he's not doing them in Miami, he's doing them all over the place. But hand over fist money, man he's. He's just rocking it out, but you're doing it, for I mean, you're helping people at the same time, which is everybody likes to make money. But if you could help people and do good and provide a much needed asset for folks and help solve some of this affordable housing problem.

Speaker 1: 44:04

I mean God bless you for that. This is something I've never thought of for affordable housing. I was always like, how do you drive down the cost of commodities so that?

Speaker 2: 44:11

you can't right now, yeah.

Speaker 1: 44:12

So that rents wouldn't be so high because it wouldn't cost so much to fix these places. And this is like outside the box of anything I ever totally is, totally is.

Speaker 3: 44:21

It really is a beautiful thing and I think for people out there too. It's like I think a lot of people in our space are always kind of chasing that, that like, how do I make it Get some amount of month, and that sort of thing. But what's really helped me kind of get driven was realizing when I helped that first family get something that they could have never afforded, and and it's I still tear up today and once I saw that happen, I just wanted to multiply and help more families. Right, how can I help create more success stories for a family that couldn't afford and get them to be able to afford? And that's what drives me every morning to work late nights and and it really gets me excited versus how much we're going to make, versus that sort of thing. And I think there's a lot of people out there where that's really the driver that they need and I hope more people can can do that as well.

Speaker 2: 45:10

True entrepreneur right there, franco, we really appreciate it. Man, this has been awesome. Tell people how they can reach out to you.

Speaker 3: 45:18

Yeah, so all of our links where you can see like what they look like, 3d tours, that sort of stuff, it's on wwwfrancotv or you can just Google us at Franco mobile homes and see our YouTube channel there.

Speaker 2: 45:30

Man congratulations man. Immigrant comes to America 11 years old, killing it. I love it. It's a great story, man.

Speaker 3: 45:39

Thanks for having me, guys.

Speaker 2: 45:40

Yes sir, yes sir, Thank you. Thanks for joining us on this week's episode of Side Hustle City. Well, you've heard from our guests. Now let's hear from you. Join our community on Facebook, Side Hustle City. It's a group where people share ideas, share their inspirational stories and motivate each other to be successful and turn their side hustle into their main hustle. We'll see you there and we'll see you next week on the show. Thank you.