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574: Parking Lots and Mobile Home Parks: Do They Have a Real Estate Future?
About this Episode
Are You Missing Out on Real Estate's Best-Kept Secrets?
Imagine investing in properties where:
-Tenants fix their own roofs
-You can boost income with a few tech upgrades
-Most investors are too scared to even look
This episode reveals two underground real estate niches that could change your wealth strategy forever:
Mobile Home Parks and Parking Lots
Special Guest: Kevin Bupp, an investor with over $1 BILLION in real estate transactions under his belt shares how everyday investors are building wealth in places others overlook.
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Show Notes:
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Complete episode transcript:
Keith Weinhold 0:00
Welcome to GRE. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, talking about first mobile home park investing and then investing in parking lot assets. What makes them profitable? What gets investors excited about mobile home parks and parking lots? What are the risks and what's the future of both of these real estate asset classes? All with a terrific guest today on get rich education.
Keith Weinhold 0:28
You know, most people think they're playing it safe with their liquid money, but they're actually losing savings accounts and bonds don't keep up when true inflation eats six or 7% of your wealth. Every single year, I invest my liquidity with FFI freedom family investments in their flagship program. Why fixed 10 to 12% returns have been predictable and paid quarterly. There's real world security backed by needs based real estate like affordable housing, Senior Living and health care. Ask about the freedom flagship program when you speak to a freedom coach there, and that's just one part of their family of products, they've got workshops, webinars and seminars designed to educate you before you invest. Start with as little as 25k and finally, get your money working as hard as you do. Get started at Freedom family investments.com/gre or send a text now it's 1-937-795-8989, yep, text their freedom. Coach, directly. Again, 1-937-795-8989,
Corey Coates 1:40
you're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world.This is get rich education.
Keith Weinhold 1:56
Welcome to GRE from Burlington, Vermont to Burlington, Washington and across 188 nations worldwide. I'm Keith Weinhold, and you are inside get rich education. We are all firmly in the fall season. Now, autumn, if you prefer. And as we often do, we're discussing residential real estate investing today, but it's two different and distinct niches within that, and I guess they both have to do with wheels, as it turns out, mobile home parks in the first part of the show and then parking assets later today. I think there's a compelling future use case for at least one of those two to speak to our international audience for a moment, but this will actually help clarify things for you. If you're a North American too, though it's called a mobile home, well, it doesn't really have that much to do with wheels. There might not be any wheels on it. And if a resident lives inside one of these for, say, a decade, well then it's probably going to remain attached to that same location on the ground all 10 years. That's why a mobile home is often referred to now as a manufactured home. What it is is it's a factory built residence, constructed on a permanent chassis and then transported to a site. I mean, that's what we're talking about here, and they are a less expensive alternative to traditional homes that have, say, a cast in place, concrete foundation. So therefore, understand, mobile homes are affordable housing, highly affordable housing, and that's really important in this housing affordability crisis. And I've talked quite a bit about that on the show, and the meager national supply of that all types of affordable housing, they are recession resilient. I mean, that's just one reason why we love affordable housing types here at GRE where we're often buying rental property just below an area's median price. You know, people think of mobile home parks MHPS, that they're all crime ridden and that there are slumlords. But that is not true in every case. There are actually nice ones. If you're an MHP investor, you often only own the land beneath the structure, and not the mobile home itself. The resident owns the mobile home itself. So therefore, if there's a leaky roof or a window needs replacement, or flooring needs replacement, that is on the resident to fix, not you. MHP dwellers, they often don't have to pay property tax, though, because, like I said, they don't own the land. The landlord, or the community, therefore, is the one that has to pay the property tax. So there's some thoughts on mobile home parks for you, parking asset, real estate that's still settling into its post pandemic pattern with Return to Office mandates that aren't really fully matured yet. We're still settling in and seeing how that is going to look. And then when it comes to parking lots, you got to wonder about its future. When you consider the proliferation of autonomous cars, will that make parking lots obsolete? I'll have our guest address that longtime GRE listeners, you might remember episode 13 of this show, yeah, almost 11 years ago, that episode was about how autonomous cars will affect your future and your real estate and the very need for parking lots and a lot of what I discussed there in early 2015 that is beginning to come true, but this autonomous car adoption that is way slower than a lot of people thought. I mean, most Americans, they still have not been inside an autonomous car at all. A lot of people are still saying that they don't trust that that should change soon. But as for now, I'm just guessing that fewer than one in 10 Americans have been inside an autonomous car, probably quite a bit less than that. Today's terrific guest has over $1 billion in real estate transactions under his belt. This should be interesting. He is a specific investor in both mobile home parks and parking assets.
Keith Weinhold 6:26
Today's guest is a seasoned real estate investor entrepreneur, and he's a prominent voice in the space, because he hosts the real estate investing for cash flow show. He's built a strong reputation as an expert in two niches that have less competition than some other investments, and we'll discuss those two today. They are mobile home parks and also parking asset investments too often overlooked yet pretty profitable niches, and he and I have a lot in common. I'm on the Forbes real estate Council. He is on the Forbes Technology Council. He and I are both native Pennsylvanians. It's been quite a few years. Hey, welcome back to GRE it's Kevin Bupp.
Kevin Bupp 7:06
Hey, Keith, thanks for having me back. And yeah, excited to be here, my friend, and excited to finally get caught up. When you referenced that, it was nearly eight years since we last spoke. I was taken back a little bit because A lot's happened in past eight years.
Keith Weinhold 7:21
I know that's wild with where things are at. People didn't even know the meaning of the word pandemic when you were last here on the show, Kevin, let's talk about really the case for mobile home parks. I know they can be a strong, cash flowing asset once people are really dialed into them. I think what's interesting is, since you were last here on the show, really, from the pandemic on, it's been a well documented national story where lay people just know about how the supply of housing just is not adequate in order to meet demand, and what that usually means, just talking about the single family space is, of course, they're building, but they're not building fast enough to keep up with population growth and housing demand. But what's so compelling about mobile home parks is, I mean, they're barely even building them anymore, like they are contracting in supply in a lot of areas. So tell us more about the compelling case for mobile home parks.
Kevin Bupp 8:16
Yeah, well, you had a big one. You know? It's an asset class that has a diminishing supply, right? We can get into the reasons behind that. But, you know, just from a high level perspective, one of the other factors as it relates to, you know, available homes, available housing for the growing population, is that while they are building stick boat homes, they're not fulfilling the needs of those that actually need affordable housing. So there's not a lot of the average working household can't necessarily afford the starter home any longer, and so mobile home parks are unique. I truly feel they're the best vehicle to help us fill this void of housing, affordable housing that is really needed throughout the entirety of the country. I mean, there's very few markets in this country that are still affordable. There's some places you can still go buy. You can probably go to Flint, Michigan, buy a home for 50 or $60,000 but generally speaking, I think the median home price today, I think it's crested over 400,000 I don't have the exact number, but I do believe over $400,000 and the average starter family, or even folks that are, you know, just working two jobs, making 40, $50,000 a year, they can't afford to purchase that type of home, a $400,000 home. And so again, these mobile homes you had mentioned, they're not building mobile home parks any longer. However, they're still building new mobile homes, and it's kind of interesting what's evolved over the past 10 years. The quality of the product is it's like a night and day difference of what it looked like 1015, years ago, of the homes themselves to what they look like today, and what you get for your money. You know, the average single wide that we might be putting into a community, brand new home, 13, 1400 square feet. Someone could come in and for roughly $80.70 $80 a foot, can buy a brand new home that's never been lived in before, that's unheard of, that's absolutely unheard of when you compare it to the average or the median home price across the US today. So it really is kind of the last frontier, and it's typically any market that we're in, if you take the same comparable quality of an apartment complex in the same, you know, area of town, the same school districts, we're typically about 20% less all in cost to actually own your own home, versus that of even renting the comparable size apartment. So it's a very compelling reason for folks that are looking for an affordable place, but not just affordable, but clean, safe and quiet. I mean, like we run very respectable communities, they're in the really good school districts. They're places that folks are proud to live and raise their families, then,
Keith Weinhold 10:22
yeah, that's true. This would really help meet that affordability challenge, another problem that's been so well documented. Talk to us more about what makes mobile home park investing different from investing in single family rentals or even a fourplex or a 20 unit apartment building.
Kevin Bupp 10:40
A lot of the fundamentals are similar, and I would say that it's probably more comparable to that of an apartment complex to a certain degree. Just think of it as a horizontal apartment complex, where units aren't stacked on top one another. They're just layout horizontally more wider than they are tall. But the bigger difference is in most instances, we don't actually own the homes, so the residents own the mobile homes, whereas we as community owners own the infrastructure, we own the land. We own the roads, when the sewer lines, the water lines, the common areas, if it has a clubhouse, if it has amenities, so we maintain and we own all that collective area where the folks basically come and they bring their home, they fix it to the ground, and then ultimately pay a slot rent to have their home there on that premise. And so for us, it's very attractive in that the resident that's in their home, if they have a Roofing Leak, they have a plumbing leak, they have their HVAC system go out. They're not calling us like they enter an apartment complex. It's on them, yeah. So they're homeowners. And a couple other really attractive elements of that that come as a result of having residents that live there, not just renters, is that they're very sticky. And so just like in a standard single family subdivision, where you've got folks that might have lived there for generations, you just reference that your parents literally live in the same house, and so they've lived there a very long time. It is quite common to find residents and even multi generations of the same family that live in our communities. And a couple come to mind. We just celebrated a woman's 50th year of living one of our communities in brendalin. And so you've got sticky resident base. There's not a lot of turnover. And then the last big piece of it that is really attractive us is a homeowner mentality is very different than a rental mentality as far as upkeep. And so you got folks that they plant flowers, they ensure that their units have curb appeal, right? They put flags out, they put decorations out during the holidays. It's a lot more warmth than that of what you might find in a traditional rental apartment complex.
Keith Weinhold 12:26
So what all does the tenant pay for? You mentioned that they pay for the lot rent. What other expenses do they have? How does that look for them?
Kevin Bupp 12:36
Typically, you know, utilities. So they'll have their own individual meter. They'll pay, you know, direct to the utility company, utility provider, water and sewer as well. They'll pay for their water and sewer usage. And that can come in many different forms. Sometimes, where our communities have public utilities, where it's built directly by the utility provider, sometimes it's more of a private system, where we're actually acting and participating as utility provider and building them back for their usage. Really the standard things that you might pay for if you live in a single family home. I think so the areas where it might differ. And honestly, this is really community by community for us, some of our communities, literally, the residents, they pay for the utility use, but outside of that, literally, we mow the grass, we shovel their driveway, we shovel their walkways, we handle all those type of elements, whereas some other communities, the residents we might require that they actually maintain their own grass so they their own grass, so they have to mow it, or hire a a third party vendor to come in and mow it. They might have to actually shovel their own driveway. And a lot of how we run a community really is depend on how it used to be run when we took it over. You know, if it's not broke, we don't fix it. And so a lot of times we don't like shaking things up too much. If they're used to a certain way, we just keep it status quo and continue rolling on of how the prior ownership used to manage it really similar elements of what a folks, an individual living in a single family home, might pay for so very similar.
Keith Weinhold 13:48
Okay, so they pay you the rent for the lot. This puts nearly all the maintenance and repair burden on them. So is there any sort of HOA like body here?
Kevin Bupp 13:58
Not in our community. You do find some communities, and most of these that have an HOA are typically a community that's gone through more of a co op type arrangement to where the actual individuals only like fractionalized share of the community, the residents that live there, and so then they have a the oversight from an HOA that's managing the daily operations, managing the financing, managing the budget, things like that. But in our communities, no, there is not an HOA, I'd say the one other thing that's typically included in lot rent is they don't have property taxes, right? So we own the land, and so the individuals that live in these units aren't paying individual property taxes. A lot of states require that they have a registration fee, just like you do in your vehicle, that they would have to pay on an annual basis. And then most of them have insurance as well. You know they're covering you're carrying homeowners insurance on the actual dwelling itself. Outside of that, it's, again, just pretty straightforward,
Keith Weinhold 14:47
yeah. So here we are in this low competition, low supply niche that we're talking about here we think about communities and nimbyism and building, not in my backyard. ISM oftentimes that's a sentiment that residents of a certain area have, residents say something like, ah, we don't want this new 200 unit apartment building or mobile home park here in our single family home neighborhood, like, that's nimbyism. But in mobile home parks, to me, it seemed like nimbyism is often at a different level. It's at the government or the municipal level, like your town or city, might not want one, because it doesn't generate as much property tax revenue as a new single family neighborhood would. Is that the reality? Kevin,
Kevin Bupp 15:31
that's absolutely the reality. And that's why you don't see new parks getting built. I think last year, ones that I know of, there are about a dozen that were built, many more than that. They're actually shut down, you know, for redevelopment purposes. And so that is absolutely huge part of it. In fact, you know, it's frustrating, because pretty much every municipality across the country the topic of affordable housing, it's on the radar, and it's probably one that is discussed quite often. And in all reality, again, these mobile home parks really would help resolve that challenge at most of these you know, municipalities are the shortage of homes, affordable homes, that they're facing across the country. And so, you know, another big piece of it, you mentioned the tax basis, absolutely, you know, the municipality would make, they'd have much better tax revenue from pretty much anything else that could be built there. And so that's a big barrier. But the nimbyism piece of it, I think a big part of that is it's unfortunate. I think it's getting better over time. There's bad operators in our space, just like they're bad operators in the apartment space, just like there's bad operators landlords that have single family homes that just let them deteriorate over time and don't repair things. Unfortunately, we kind of get lumped all the mobile home parks get lumped in that bad bucket. And so while there's, you know, I always joke and say there's mobile home parks that are on the wrong side of town, wrong side of the tracks, right? You don't want to go to and during the daytime. Well, guess what? There's subdivision, the single family home, neighborhoods that are the same thing, and there's apartments that are like that as well. You don't go anywhere near them. And you've got the middle of the road, right? You've got just the good, hard working, blue collar folks that want to send their kids to good public schools. We've got those communities apartments are that way too single family home subdivision, you got white collar stuff. You got some higher end stuff. Unfortunately, we kind of all get lumped in that bad bucket. That's where the assumption that's made by folks that don't understand mobile home communities have never driven through one. They just assume that it's all, you know, basically, drug, sex, rock and roll, the wrong element that we do not want in our neighborhood. We don't want anywhere near us. It's going to devalue our home prices. And for that reason, you just don't see them getting built. It's unfortunate, but it's the truth.
Keith Weinhold 17:20
Yeah, I'm just thinking about the mobile home park that I drive past most often. It's sort of walled off. There's maybe an eight or 10 foot high wall around it. I don't know if that's something that the municipality erected to sort of screen its appearance off, or something that the mobile home park built, which is my guess as to who built it, but not all mobile home parks look blighted
Kevin Bupp 17:43
absolutely, yeah. And I don't know the case that you just referenced there. I mean, it could be for sound deadening purposes, if it's off of a busy road. It could have been something put up as far as just to kind of shield off so folks that are driving past don't see the community. My guess would be that's probably not the the reason that was built. But in any event, these are, there's, you know, we've got a number of communities, Keith, that if you drove through, and I didn't, if I blindfolded you and you drove in, so you went past the entrance, you went past a sign that said manufactured home community, and I took you down a road, you wouldn't believe that you were actually in a mobile home park. Some of these homes, they're double wide homes, and they look like ranch homes, and so they're actually laid out perpendicular to this, or parallel to the street, and then they have two car site built garages that are attached to them via breezeway. So they look like your traditional ranch style home, but they're absolutely 100% mobile homes that could be moved if you wanted to move them, and for a fraction of the price of what a neighboring single family home might sell for. So there's all different qualities. They all come in different shapes and sizes. But to my point earlier, some of these communities, they're not even affordable. There's actually, there's down here in Florida, we've got what we call lifestyle communities. It's very common out in Arizona as well, where it's a lot of times a second home for snowbirds, you know, retirees that want to come down and want to live an active lifestyle. You know, they want to have two swimming pools. They want to have an activities director. They want to have, you know, shuffleboard and pickleball courts and tennis courts, and they want to live this lifestyle. And those units are anything but affordable. In fact, there's many. There's a community down the road for me that, you know, their lot rent is $1,200 a month, and so you factor that in with probably a house payment. And you know, you might be looking at 2000 to, you know, $2,300 a month, all in for the house and the lot rent. And so not necessarily in the affordable scheme of things, but they come in all shapes and sizes and again, unfortunately, we just get lumped into that bad bucket. It's unfortunate because I do think that we could really help start making a dent in this affordable housing crisis. I don't how it's going to happen any other way. I really don't, because we can't build affordable products at this point in time. It's not possible
Keith Weinhold 19:37
a posh an exclusive mobile home park there that you're referencing in Florida. As paradoxical as that sounds, tell us, Kevin, how that really works, because I know you help investors get in to mobile home parks. Does this mean an investor owns a full Park? Or I wouldn't imagine you're just doing it at the level where you just own one lot and then have One dweller pay you the lot rent. So tell us about how it works from the investor angle.
Kevin Bupp 20:05
We have fund structures that we typically roll out through sunrise capital investors and any one individual fund will own somewhere between nine to 13 somewhere, typically in that range, mobile home communities. These communities can range in size from maybe as small as 80 or 90 lots to the largest community we own at present time is 780 lots. And so it's quite large. I mean, the size of a small town. But essentially, investors come in and they own a based on their investment. They own a proportionate share of the various properties that are owned underneath that fund umbrella. And so one, an individual, might come with 100,000 and own a smaller proportion share than someone that comes in with a million dollars. But they are owners. They're absolute owners. They participate in the cash flow, they participate in the the upside, and they participate in the proceeds. When we have capital events, either cash out refinances or potential sale events.
Keith Weinhold 20:56
Tell us more about why it's so profitable. Why do mobile home park investors get excited,
Kevin Bupp 21:01
as with anything, Keith, you know, you got to buy it, right? And, you know, we look at a lot of deals, and a lot of deals don't pencil like, if we bought it for what they're asking, we would make money. We might lose money. And so the money's made on the buy, just like with any other type of real estate investment. But I think the one factor that really has allowed mobile home parks to be an attractive investment vehicle over the past, really, the last decade, it's grown the attention of lots of different private equity groups, institutional investors, that 15 years ago, they weren't in the space, and the biggest reason is a lot of these. It's a very fragmented niche, and so there was no consolidation that existed 10 years ago. There was really only two public traded companies outside that. It was mom and pops, mom and pops, that typically owned one, maybe sometimes two or three communities, but it was just a very fragmented niche. And what you find those fragmented niches that there's a lot of inefficiencies that exist in the operations. There's a lot of inefficiencies that exist with regards to utility management or managerial oversight within the community, or even keeping up with market rents. And so very often, we'll get into a community we just bought one at the end of last year, and right outside of Ann Arbor, you know, great sub market in Michigan. It's it literally has never traded hands. It was built back in the 80s by the gentleman we purchased it from. He was a subdivision developer, but he got into the manufactured housing space, so he built this, what looked like a subdivision, but it was mobile homes and and he basically owned it up until we acquired it last year, but gorgeous community, well maintained, needed some upgrades, different amenities that just were a little worn out and tired. But the biggest element within that community was that the market rents in the local area were roughly $800 a month. $800 a month for lot rent, and when we purchased it from him, the average lot rent throughout the community was $477 so there was a significant loss lease that exists. And we see this quite often with just over time they've owned it, free and clear, they go 567, years out, doing rent increases, and sooner or later, they find themselves in a situation where they are severely below the local market rents. And so there's typically a lot of loss, at least recapture, that we find going into these communities. Sometimes we'll also go in and we'll find there's a lot of waste with the water and sewer cost. It might not be billed back for usage to the residents, to where if you're not paying for something, sometimes you're abusing it. And a lot of times we can go in and put individual meters in and almost send entirely that savings down to the bottom line and find it as additional noi on our PNL. And so it's just inefficiency of operations, and again, quite common, given the mom and pop nature of this asset class. But it's very quickly becoming consolidated. Now it looks very different today than what it looked like as far as the ownership groups. When I go to an industry event 10 years ago, those other guys like us, and then a lot of mom and pops. Now it's, you know, the likes of reps from Blackstone and Carlisle group and and got lots of other institutional groups that are showing up there. So just it's very different world, and probably more akin to that of what the apartment sector looks like, as far as ownership groups and the consolidation that's happening.
Keith Weinhold 23:52
You're feeling more of that competition. Kevin and I are going to come back and talk about another, I suppose, real estate investment that has something to do with wheels, and that is investing in parking lots. I'm your host, Keith Weinhold
Keith Weinhold 24:07
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Keith Weinhold 25:59
welcome back to get rich education. We're talking about two real estate investment niches with Kevin bump today, an expert in both mobile home park investing and in parking lot assets. And Kevin, I got to tell you, I am more skeptical about parking lot investing than I am about mobile home park investing, but you can probably help me with this. I think we know that. I mean, gosh, just historically, ever since Henry Ford did his thing. I mean, mass transit adoption is really slow in most US cities. But anymore, one needs to wonder, okay, can autonomous cars disrupt the parking model? A Robo taxi can just constantly stay on the road, dropping off and picking up passengers where, you know, some people foresee a day in the not too distant future that people won't even need to own cars. They'll sort of have a subscription to a car service, but now this is where your expertise is. So I'm sure you thought above and beyond that. So what are your thoughts there, just for the need for parking spaces?
Kevin Bupp 27:11
You make a valid point. I think the adoption of that, it's, I think it will be very different from market to market, say, the city, whereas, if you want to maybe look at one area. We have a parking garage today in downtown Phoenix, Arizona. Phoenix is very much a driving city. It's parsed out very far the public transit. It's not great there. And again, it's just it's a wider state, whereas, if you compare it to like a San Francisco, the adoption of Robo vehicles and robotaxis and things like that autonomous vehicles is much, much faster than that of a of a phoenix. But also San Francisco is much a much more consolidated marketplace as far as the urban core. And so for that reason, you know, we look at parking, it's got a there's a couple things also that feed into that. So I want to back up a little bit. One of the major changes that has been really playing out over the past 15 years within the parking sector is that building departments within now, I think it's over 100 cities across the country. Denver just announced last week that they're also adopting this policy. And that policy is that historically, if you were Keith, you're going to go on, hey, I want to build this in downtown. I want to go build this apartment complex, condo complex, mixed use property, whatever it might be. Historically, they would have required you, whether you wanted to or not. They would have made you put in a certain amount of parking per 1000 square feet, every municipality would have a formula. And what, what a lot of these cities realized a couple decades ago is that, based on their, you know, antiquated formulas, they had a surplus of parking available on a lot of these downtown areas. You know, it wasn't being used. And given the developer an opportunity and the choice to say, Hey, do I want to build 20 more parking spaces that aren't going to get used? Or I want to build want to build 10 more apartment units, they're going to choose the apartment units. And so the parking mem requirements have been taken away, have been eliminated in a lot of cities over the last decade plus. And so that's created a shrinking supply of parking because now when developers build something, they're building only as much as they need, sometimes not even as much as much as they really need, because then they can still rely upon other ancillary parking structures within the immediate marketplace. And so, so there's a shrinking supply of parking. And every city that we own in today there's a massive shrinking supply of parking. So that's big piece of it that we know that inevitably, if we get the location right, an area where literally, you wouldn't be able to afford, based on the cost of construction and the cost of lands, they wouldn't be able to afford even building new parking structure, if you so chose to. And now that there's also a shrinking supply, diminishing supply, of this parking that we can be comfortable in our demand for our product, and so to the point of like autonomous vehicles and things of that nature, I do think there will be a time. I don't know how long that time is. I do think that there will be a time where we'll see some sort of impact. I don't know what that is. And so how we underwrite deals is we feel very confident over the next 10 years. We have to have a absolute confidence level over the next 10 years that there's going to be continual demand based on the various factors within this marketplace, the demand drivers that are servicing that garage, like, who's parking there, why they're parking there. But second to that, when we. Buy something. We need to have the air rights. We know that there inevitably will be a higher and better use. So Location, location, location, it's got to make sense today as parking. We got the underwriting has to stand on its own as parking, and we have to have a comfort level that 10 years, there will be sufficient demand throughout the duration of the next decade, in the event things start changing down the road, we know that, literally, the lowest use that it could ever have is its present use, which is parking because it's just a concrete structure, sometimes just an asphalt parking lot, to where, once you go vertical, that's where you're going to be able to unlock a lot of additional potential. And so we don't underwrite the future. We look at that as icing on the cake. But we know, based on the the location, the proximity to, you know what else is happening in that marketplace, that location will be in demand, not just today, but many decades to come. So I'll stop there and see if you have any clarifying questions.
Keith Weinhold 30:51
I think about how for the parking lot investor, Jamie Dimon has been really good for you. He is so hard on the return to Office. Mandate?
Kevin Bupp 31:01
Yeah, I'd say one thing that's important to make note is, I don't know what the future holds for office I tend to make the argument that wherever picking office building in a marketplace, wherever they're at with occupancy today, I think it's probably as good as it's going to get. We don't have to go down that rabbit hole. But I just I feel like it's been long enough since covid. And don't get wrong, there's gonna be a few companies that are going to be pressed that are going to be pressing, you know, in a big way, to get people back, but I think 80% of them that we're going to go back are already there. And so any parking asset that we look at, if it's got more than 10 or 15% as far as relationship with an office building or multiple office buildings in immediate vicinity, then we typically pass on it. And on top of that, it's got to have a variety of demand drivers. So it just can't be supportive of one or two different demand drivers. We have have at least five. And so it can be a courthouse, municipal buildings, sports arenas. It's got to be a 24/7 city where there's something happening, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, hotel, valet, restaurants, retail, things like that. And office has to be a very minimal part of that makeup, or else we just move on, because I don't know how to fix it. How to fix that problem yet. I don't know what's going to you know what the future holds for your traditional office towers, especially the ones that are, you know, 50, 60% vacant at the present time? Yeah, that's interesting, because when you look at a parking lot and you're evaluating its potential and its current use, yeah, you're basically thinking about, what is that tenant mix. You don't want 100% of it to be for one office building. You would probably want a number of uses. That's correct. Yeah, absolutely. Again, like I said, Five is our minimum. I mean, the more the merrier. And I'd say another big piece of it, if we had to look at the different demand drivers and put a value or a hierarchy of what we feel, what are the highest priority demand drivers, transient is the best. I want to know that the folks that are coming there, there's enough attractions in immediate vicinity, and we need to know what those attractions are, and better understand those attractions. But there's a variety of attractions in the immediate vicinity to where it's going to continually attract transient parking. So it's not just it's not a reliance upon one thing. And so, for example, we just closed on a garage in historic Philadelphia, and so it's a block away from Liberty Bell, two blocks from Independence Hall, any of other museums. I mean, like it's it is we talk about location, location, location. It's there that part of Philadelphia has been in demand by tourism for hundreds of years, and I don't foresee that that changing anytime soon. And so 70% of the makeup of the traffic in that garage is made up of transient traffic, so folks that are visiting the various attractions and immediate vicinity. So even if one of those attractions went away, which most of them are historical, they're not going to go away. If one or two did, it still wouldn't have that significant of an impact on the parking demand.
Keith Weinhold 33:36
That's interesting. Okay, a transient customer, not one that's showing up and parking there every day to go to work. And yes, the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, there's going to be a long term demand to see those sorts of things in person. So that's an interesting way to think about that. And Kevin, while we've been talking about parking, at least in my mind's eye, a lot of times, I've just been thinking about one paved at grade parking area, but we're talking about parking garages as well. Or what are some of the trade offs there between parking garages and an at grade parking lot?
Kevin Bupp 34:08
Yeah, I mean, at grade parking lot is, can't get any simpler than that. I mean, typically they're asphalt or sometimes just crushed gravel, but that's it. So as far as future capex requirements, there's not many, right? It's very, very minimal. Whereas a parking garage, especially if it's in a colder environment, where there's snow and you've got salt on the road, salt that's making its way up the concrete, seeping into the cracks, you've got structural rebar issues to worry about, things of that nature. So weather can take a major toll on parking structures if they're not maintained well. Whereas you know the worst that could happen the same weather, you know, the weather takes the same toll on these asphalt parking lots, but it really only equates to maybe a pothole that you have to fill in, and a parking structure could be deteriorated to the point of no return if it's been neglected long enough to where it might be unsafe, structurally where you know now you're you're getting condemned or shut down. So big considerations there, it's interesting. We Own, the one we own in Phoenix, the Phoenix, it's a desert. It's a desert climate. They get very little moisture. And that was that parking garage was built in the 60s, so very long time ago. It's the oldest thing we have in our portfolio, but it better condition has been preserved better than that of of a recent garage we purchased that was built in 1990 that's all the environment that's in. You know, there's really not much that can deteriorate concrete once in the desert.
Keith Weinhold 35:22
Was there any last thing on parking lot investing like something that gets an investor really interested in this asset class? What's really compelling and profitable about it?
Kevin Bupp 35:33
It's very technology driven business, and what we have found is a lot of these parking assets, of either they're owned by, you know, an individual investor, or if they happen to be owned by an institution, they've never been viewed as the primary investment vehicle. A lot of institutions that own parking garages, they happen to own them by default, because maybe they bought the two office towers years back, and it just happened to come with parking right? And so a lot of times, they've been somewhat neglected, like the PnL has been neglected. They haven't found ways to really extract all the value out of these parking facilities. And so very commonly, we'll go in and we'll find that the technology that's in place is 10 years old. And think about what a computer 10 years ago look like, right? Like it's you're not catching all the license plates. You're not able to log in and adjust pricing in a dynamic manner based on supply, demand factors. And so we can simply go in and just create a more efficient pricing model and find sometimes, you know, 10 15% of additional revenue just from doing those simple things, like literally a few $100,000 worth of upgrades and technology, we can add millions of dollars of value. There's other factors, you know, just simple things folks want to park in a not just clean and safe, but well lit. You know, they want to feel safe in lighting. And we'll find parking facilities that still have old halogen lights. Half of them are burnt out. If you start serving people, they're actually not parking there in the evenings. They're finding somewhere else to go because they don't feel safe. And so just going in and doing a revamp, you know, an upfit with LED lights, making it nice and bright, bright and clean and letting everyone feel safe, we'll find a instant increase in demand and Parkers in the later evening hours. So I mean just little simple operational tweaks that we can make that just have simply been overlooked for many, many years by the prior ownership groups.
Keith Weinhold 37:15
That's really interesting, that oftentimes the owner of a parking lot owns that parking lot as an afterthought, because they were in it to purchase the building that accompanies the parking lot. So it would make sense that when you focus on that parking lot, you could really add value and profitability to that lot. Well, Kevin, these have been interesting chats between mobile home park investing and parking lot assets. I think that the commonality here is that you the investor, are just owning a lot, and therefore the maintenance and hassles with these things are really low. This gives our audience an awful lot to think about. So Kevin, are there any last thoughts that you have about this space overall, and then please let us know how our audience can learn more.
Kevin Bupp 38:02
No additional thoughts. I don't believe I'd say that if you have an interest, if we've piqued your interest at all, we've written a number of white papers on both asset classes, both parking as well as mobile home parks. You can download all that for free on our website. Invest with sunrise.com We've got a number of other case studies on our website. We're pretty transparent. Well, what we buy, what we've owned, what we've exited out of. We'll go as far as providing appraisal reports and third parties and things like that on our website. So if you just want to get a sense of not just who we are, what we do, but just have a better understanding of the investment thesis behind parking and manufactured housing, there's tons of resources that you can download from the website.
Keith Weinhold 38:37
Well, that's a great way to learn more about Kevin, what he does, and then maybe even invest alongside him. Well, Kevin, it's been valuable and eye opening. It's been great to have you back on the show.
Kevin Bupp 38:46
Yeah, thanks for having me, Keith. Been a lot of fun, my friend. Good seeing you again.
Keith Weinhold 38:57
Yeah? Good stuff from Kevin there. The MHP space becoming more consolidated and corporatized too. You know, single family rentals are different from mobile home parks in that way. I mean, 90% of single family rentals are owned by small mom and pops, which means those people that own between just one and five properties, Kevin used the term loss to lease a few times. That phrase loss to lease being a real estate education show what that term means is really a lot like how it sounds. It is the potential income that a property owner misses out on because the actual rent collected is less than the current market rent. That's what loss to lease means. Though, I like the long term future of mobile home parks more than parking deals. You know, Kevin did, though, have some great answers for why he still likes parking. He focuses on a 10 year horizon. He. Looks for at least five use types for the parking. And then another great point is that in a lot of cases, the land that the parking occupies is its lowest use. So therefore, when they sell the parking area, they can get some nice exit income. That makes a lot of sense. And being two native Pennsylvanians like we are, I am familiar with that part of Philly that he's talking about. In fact, what's funny is that, in producing this show today, I guess cookies are doing their thing. This parking lot deal in Philly just appeared in my Instagram feed next week on the show, it'll be back to no guest. It's going to be all me, and you're going to hear some things that you wouldn't expect to hear Until then, I'm your host, Keith Weinhold, don't quit your Daydream.
Dolf Deroos 40:51
Nothing on this show should be considered specific, personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own. Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of get rich Education LLC, exclusively.
Unknown Speaker 41:19
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