In the beginning....

I think before we get started with the actual blog style updates of what’s going on in the mobile home park each week, I believe it would be helpful for some to understand how I got started in the business, where I’ve been and where I am today.

Roughly 8- 8 1/2 years ago I was supporting a wife and children and living paycheck to paycheck like so many other Americans. I always had a desire to try my hand at real estate type investments but found it difficult to sometimes come up with the funds for down payments etc.,etc. Some how I was able to buy a couple of rental properties through out the years, this just didn’t really excite me after I got a taste of the cost of down payments, repairs, bad tenants , non payer’s, people destroying your property, and the way you had to jump through hoops to satisfy the banks. For me the rental thing just didn’t work.

Then one day I came across a little book called Deals on Wheels, written by a man named Lonnie Scruggs, Lonnie is known to many of us in this business as the grand father of mobile home investing, we refer to the way Lonnie structures his individual mobile home deals as Lonnie deals. The book caught my attention, the structure of the deal seemed simple enough, the concept seemed sound , but who lived in trailers, I didn’t know anyone that did, so who would I be selling them to, who would buy one of these wobbly boxes ? Even though I had all these doubts I couldn’t stop thinking about many of the things Lonnie had said in his book and wondering could this idea really work. I noticed during reading the book for the third time that Lonnie’s phone number was printed on the inside flap of the book, so one day I called Lonnie, I asked if I could come spend a day with him and see what the business was all about. Lonnie graciously agreed and at 7 AM on the appointed morning I arrived at Lonnie’s house had a cup of coffee with him and off we went.

We spent the better part of the day visiting mobile home parks, at the first two Lonnie asked if the manager knew of any mobile homes for sale, they both answered no. At the third park the manager said there was a home for sale, the people had already moved out and it was still for sale, she even had the key. So off we went to look at the home, during the course of looking at the home I asked many questions, I had come prepared to pick Lonnie’s brain that day. As we finished and were walking away, Lonnie turned back to the home, then looked at me and asked me what I saw, at that point in time all I saw was an older run down mobile home, so that’s how I responded, I was then asked the same question again, and because I didn’t know any better I gave Lonnie the same answer , at that point Lonnie took some time to explain to me that the home I was looking at was what he called a money machine, he went on to explain a number of the strategies in his book. As time has passed I have come to realize that in that one day Lonnie planted a seed that would over time help many of my personal and business dreams come true. From the seed planted that day I purchased several mobile homes each year for 8 years until I had done a total of 45 Lonnie deals.

For me it didn’t take very long to realize that if could own a mobile home park, not only would I have the income from the park for each lot but I could continue to create income streams by doing Lonnie deals in my own park any time I could purchase a home that went up for sale. I knew then that it would take a lot of self discipline to save , study, and work toward that goal, one that at the time I was unsure I would be able to achieve, but I like to dream big. At this time the Lonnie deals were working for me so I kept moving forward, with a bigger dream in mind.

As I’m sure many of you can easily see, my day spent with Lonnie Scruggs was truly a life changing event for me, it made me a believer that what he was doing could work for anyone who went out and really applied his concepts and themselves to the task. I can’t thank Lonnie enough for the many ways he has helped me.

About two years ago I would experience another life changing event through several people I can never thank enough for all they have done for me. I was attending a real estate seminar more for the networking and the joy of sharing with others than anything else. The event was being held in Atlanta,GA,, as I browsed around at the different programs I came across one I was not familiar with so I started talking with Ernest Tew and Steve Case about the program which led to me discovering they were involved in mobile home and mobile home park investments, exactly the kind of people I enjoyed meeting. During our conversation I learned that Ernest had helped mentor Steve through his first park deal. During further conversations I asked Steve if he would assist me if I found a park for sale, Steve agreed but made sure I understood he was not always available due to family and job responsibilities.

I don’t remember talking to Steve until I called him 8 or 9 months later to say I had located a park in Petersburg ,VA that I thought looked pretty good. The wheels started turning, Steve assigned me the job of gathering certain information required to determine whether it was worth looking at further , in other words I was doing the first phase of the due diligence. When completed the results were good, so we moved on to phase two, this required a little more experience than I had at the time ( OK maybe a lot more) so Steve being unavailable to come himself asked Karl Warner to fly in from Florida to assist . Karl is one of the several people I referred to earlier as well as Ernest and Steve who have had such a huge influence on my life. Steve and Karl are experts when it comes to due diligence, I can’t explain how much I learned from that day as well as the phone conversations we had the following week, after completing the second phase of due diligence we determined this was a park purchase we should pursue, which we did. The short of the story is that this park was being auctioned, it sold for roughly $300,000.00 more than we had capped it at, so we passed on it, disappointed, yes very much so, what I did learn was that paying to much for what is a good investment will certainly turn it into a bad investment. I forgot to say this was a 183 space park with I believe had 70-75 empty spaces.

During the next 8 months or so several opportunities came along. I traveled out and did the initial due diligence on them , but no cigar, then one day Steve called me and asked if I would go look at a park he had been made aware of , mind you I was living in Norfolk,VA. The park Steve wanted me to take a look at was in Albany,GA. he described it as 185 spaces, 80 vacant spaces, what he termed as a turn around park, we all know what that means don’t we , so I agreed and made the arrangements. I flew into Albany’s little airport in the afternoon, by the time I got settled I decided to wait till morning to go take a look . In the morning I located the park on a map and headed out to find it, as I neared the park I felt a degree of excitement rising, as I turned into the entrance only one sentence flowed through my mind, turn around and go home. As I slowly started to look around I wasn’t sure what to think , then I made a decision, go get some breakfast, you really shouldn’t look at something like this on an empty stomach. After breakfast I revisited the park several times in between doing some of the due diligence Steve had not been able to complete , my decision after going home and weighing everything out was to come on board as the entrepreneur part of the partnership.

So here we are , I’ve been here going on 7 months , I have experienced many very interesting and sometimes shocking things over the past 7 months, most have been great learning experiences, some have been quite surprising to even me, others have just been every day things that go on when running a mobile home park. I plan to share these experiences with you one by one, I think you’ll find them interesting to say the least and hopefully a great learning experience.

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