Todd from Ohio built a huge single-family home portfolio and then lost most of it during the Great Recession of 2008, as did most Americans during that dark period in American history. Then he found a new investment he felt worthy of his talents: mobile home parks. In our next Lecture Series Event we’re going to explore the inspiring story of how Todd re-invented his investment career into a more stable and growing line of business known as affordable housing. And his success has been tremendous in building a solid portfolio and creating value with it.
If you are interested in mobile home park investing and want to hear how an individual went from a concept to a multi-million dollar portfolio, then this event should be of definite interest.
If you want to learn skills that Todd used to succeed with his parks, attend our Virtual Mobile Home Park Investor's Boot Camp. You’ll learn how to identify, evaluate, negotiate, perform due diligence on, finance, turn-around and operate mobile home parks. The course is taught by Frank Rolfe who, with his partner Dave Reynolds, is one of the largest owners of mobile home parks in the U.S. To learn more Click Here or call us (855) 879-2738.
From Housing Crash To Mobile Home Park Success: Todd 2.0 - Transcript
Frank Rolfe: Welcome to our lecture series event. We’re awfully glad you're here. We have a very special time that we’ll have together here with a guy named Todd Kraner. Todd, how are you doing today?
[00:12]
Todd Kraner: Hey, doing great, Frank. Thanks for having me.
[00:15]
Frank Rolfe: Glad to have you. I’ve really known Todd for… Todd came to our boot camp back I guess 2014 roughly and he’s a super individual. He’s done very well with his portfolio, getting out there, putting what he learned into good use. Buying parks, building up lots, building up value. But he also has an interesting story because prior to this he was in the single family world as many people were. So we thought we’d kind of go over his story and then we’ll go into more of the micro mechanicals of his portfolio, and then his lessons learned. He has quite a few lessons learned to share with everyone. Todd, let’s first talk about how the heck did you get into the mobile home park business? What was happening to make you suddenly say, “Oh wow, mobile home parks, I want to do that.” How did that first occur?
[01:09]
Todd Kraner: Well I was still in single family homes and apartment complexes, and then I heard you speak. Then I went to your boot camp in 2014 and decided hey, I like that space. I love the expense ratio and the fact that we can let our residents own their home for affordable living, where I couldn’t do that with my single family rentals or our apartments. The residents didn’t have that owner mentality. So yeah, that’s why I wanted to jump into it, but it took me two years to find our first deal.
[01:42]
Frank Rolfe: Todd, tell people about the, you originally had an earlier career in single family, you were a hardcore single family investor correct?
[01:53]
Todd Kraner: Yes. Yeah sure. You want me to tell you about that one? I started in 1996.
[01:57]
Frank Rolfe: Go ahead. Tell us the single family story.
[02:00]
Todd Kraner: Okay. 1996 went full time into single family homes. That means rentals, flips, and we loved it. We just loved it, but then came ’08 and ’09, and 60 of 62 houses we had to get out of. Had to go find a real job, did that for five years, and then 2012 some of my financial partners that were with me in those single family homes came to me and said, “Hey Todd, do you want to get back into the business fulltime?” I was blessed. I said of course, of course. Then of course got to meet… we started doing apartments in 2012. Then met you in 2014 at your first boot camp, and then our first park was 2016.
[02:48]
Frank Rolfe: Gotcha. You know Todd, I often share that story of back during the Texas S&L crash which I survived, but am permanently scarred from because there was so much that went on there, and so many people who were caught into the craziest mess of all time. The Texas S&L crash you had, I’ll give you an example, a dentist that I knew he built his practice, everything was going great, and he had started building… He thought he enjoyed farming so he fancied himself a gentleman farmer. So he started buying more and more farmland, always in a smart way, never bad, never overextended himself. So basically his assets were he had this large dental practice, he had a really nice house in a nice suburb of Dallas, and then he had all this farmland. Well, the Texas S&L crash came, and the bank demanded immediate payment of all of the farm loads. You know how un-liquid agricultural land can be, and said, “You’ve got to be freaking kidding me. I’m completely current on my payments. I’ve been banking here for a decade or more,” and they didn’t give a rat’s rear. They said, “No, give us the money right now or else we’re foreclosing on the farm.” The long and short of it is by the time the smoke cleared, they had wiped out his farm, they had wiped out his dental practice, and just completely wiped him off the map even though this guy was a very, very prudent investor, never did anything wrong. The S&L crash was so depressing because everyone you knew had been wiped out in some manner. Everything. Every building in downtown Dallas had been posted for foreclosure. I’m roaming around the streets of Fort Worth with my wife. I went to an old used bookstore and found the book The Man Who Bought The Waldorf: The Life of Conrad Hilton, read the book in the hotel, and it inspired me to pull out of my funk - this was back when I had the billboard business - and start doing what Hilton had done during the Great Depression and see it as a buying opportunity. So I then said I’m going to use this as a once in a lifetime buying opportunity. Back in the darkest moments of the great recession, what gave you solace? What did you find that picked up your spirits back during that period, that maybe people right now are having problems as aftershocks from COVID might find interesting or reassuring?
[05:25]
Todd Kraner: Frank, it was tough. It took my man card. It humbled me. But the dear Lord just my faith got me through it, a great family, four great kids. But it hurt the family. It was a really tough time. All those lessons I learned back then it came back to help me be a better business person and help so many more people. I’ve been able to help a lot of people with pre-foreclosures, that kind of thing just to help them through life and save their homes. Because of that pain it makes us stronger, right? But yeah, just the faith and getting it through. I don’t want to see anyone go through that.
[06:05]
Frank Rolfe: And after you have that you look at life a little differently don’t you, at least I do. In other words when I see people with expensive homes, expensive cars, I know that all that could be lost in a moment, right?
[06:16]
Todd Kraner: Oh yes sir.
[06:17]
Frank Rolfe: Life is a strange thing, so it really harkens to the fact you really need to have greater underpinnings in your health and your family, and thingsoutside of that material world because it can really be a shocking moment. Many people don’t realize if they haven’t been through a recession and the one sad part is many young people have never actually been through a recession at this point, since you have the Great Recession was now 13 years ago, so somebody in their 30s for example was not there, was not an adult during even that recession. I think it’s important for all of us who have been through recessions… I was living, I mean I was in college, during the 70s recession under Carter. Then I lived through the Texas S&L Crash, dotcom bust, the Great Recession. I’m older than you are, but again it’s important people remember these things. It also will help if you remember what happens with them, it makes building a more stable life easier because you know what does and does not work when things get bad. Obviously, I think in some ways that probably is what made you narrow the field into mobile home parks because you probably thought affordable housing is something that you'll have an ever bigger demand for as the world crashes, which it will again at some point in the future. That’s how the world works. We have cycles all the time.
[07:48]
Todd Kraner: Totally agree.
[07:49]
Frank Rolfe: So now tell us about Todd’s portfolio here. Tell us each property, how you found it for starters, how you financed it, and then what was the plan. Start with property one. How did you find it, how did you finance it, and what was the plan with it? Was it to fill vacant lots, raise rents, clean it up, cut costs, what was the plan?
[08:14]
Todd Kraner: Okay. The first two came together as a packet listing from a realtor that sold us single family homes and apartments through the years. It took us a year to get to the closing table. Seller financing because the seller knew… he had to foreclose on his two properties to get a bad partner out of it, so we stayed in there with him. And then during that time my two financial partners at the time, there were 30 some vacant homes out of 80 homes, just said, "Hey, this is enough for us." So I had to go out and find another financial partner to jump in with me to get that deal done, and we did. But the end on that was raise lot rents, fill all those vacancies, rehab. A little bit later I'll show you were my kids were out there in 2016 de-trashing homes, learning what they don't want to do in life, but that turn around was and still is, it got hit by a tornado. We lost seven homes so we're still feeling that getting back up, but that's the first two from a pocket listing, frank.
[09:16]
Frank Rolfe: And let's talk about that for a minute. For those who don't know what a pocket listing is, that's a listing where the broker knows of a deal but it's not publicly advertised, correct?
[09:25]
Todd Kraner: Yes, sir.
[09:26]
Frank Rolfe: The only way to get those is to ask for them, right, so at some point you told this broker, "Hey, I'm looking for mobile home parks. Do you got any?" And he said, "Well yeah, I might kind of have one that's not listed." Is that kind of how that went down?
[09:38]
Todd Kraner: Exactly, exactly.
[09:41]
Frank Rolfe: Why a year on that first one? Why such a long time slot?
[09:46]
Todd Kraner: Because of our due diligence we shared with the seller, he was being embezzled by his property manager and he had to foreclose on his other partner to get us clear title, so we had to wait that out to be able to close, to get clear title.
[10:00]
Frank Rolfe: Gotcha, okay. So it was a title issue, all right.
[10:04]
Todd Kraner: Here's a good lesson, Frank. On that, we started lot rent was at $280 so July 1st that park will be at $415.
[10:12]
Frank Rolfe: Right.
[10:13]
Todd Kraner: So just to give you an idea, we're really slow on getting it raised but just to give us an idea
[10:20]
Frank Rolfe: That's a very healthy rate. Going from 2-something to 4-something, that's a pretty good amount.
[10:26]
Todd Kraner: But that's been since 2016, so not big chunks, it was little chunks.
[10:30]
Frank Rolfe: I like it. It's perfectly reasonable. So tell us about the second park. So where did the second park come in?
[10:37]
Todd Kraner: That's a thank you to you and Brandon. That park, that was 2017, came from your Deals We Pass On, and it was a kind of like you were sharing about the dentist, it was a dentist out in North Carolina. He went on a deal using his Roth IRA, had a bad partner, put him in a heck of a spot, and he was just in hot water. So that one was filing lots. 60 lots, only 30 some homes, had druggies, you know our usual park. Had druggies, people sharing the bin there, and that's been a good life learning lesson with us bringing new homes in, Frank, that you teach us about versus used. So right now out of those 60 lots we have 58 homes, so we're getting close to fill.
[11:22]
Frank Rolfe: That's impressive. Now park one was in Ohio, correct?
[11:25]
Todd Kraner: Yes, sir. All of my parks are Ohio, yes.
[11:28]
Frank Rolfe: All your parks are in Ohio, okay. Is that by design or has it just turned out that way?
[11:33]
Todd Kraner: No, kind of design. Everything is at least two and a half hours or closer to me. I'm still one of those guys I like to touch it, I like to drive out and see if I can help at all. I need to get out of that. I get on the business instead of in the business, but all my direct marketing, I'll share that with you, but the realtor I knew was close to where I live. That's the pocket listing. Yours it was onlytwo hours away. Didn't even know the little city, but it's a metro of Cincinnati there.
[11:59]
Frank Rolfe: Okay. And then what about park number three? Where did that come from? How did you finance that one?
[12:04]
Todd Kraner: That was 2018, direct marketing. Oh, it's what Frank would teach us is the perfect park. It's on a cul-de-sac that the city owns the street. Single family homes on the other side of our street, 32 lots, 20 homes, 10 vacant. All direct bill water, sewer and now trash, and gas and electric. So it's the perfect park you told us.
[12:36]
Frank Rolfe: Gotcha. Very good, okay. And then what about park number four? Where did that come from?
[12:40]
Todd Kraner: Let's see, that was also direct, my last four were direct market so postcards and I'll share that with everybody later, but post card. At the closing table I had to ask them, Frank, I said, "Hey, what made you call us?" And he goes, "Well you kept sending me your postcards and I got a $6,000 water bill and it pissed me off." He was a second generation owner. His mom and dad built it, and that's why I love dealing with mobile home parks because we're dealing with second or third generation of owners. And he was just burned out. So we got that water bill from $6,000 down to right now about $3,300 and we bill back with Metron meters which I'll talk about later. That was a good success turn around. We're just bringing some more homes in. We had 14 vacant lots, we brought three in and we're still bringing some more in, Frank.
[13:31]
Frank Rolfe: Gotcha. And then what about park number five?
[13:36]
Todd Kraner: Let's see, that would be post card, third generation owners. It took me a year to build that rapport and work with the two sons to trust us. A smaller park. 36 lots, we have 34 homes in there now. But seller financing again. Sorry, I should have shared that. Everything has been seller financing except number four, which was I just put a private lender loan on it. But this again is an owner financed deal, and it's raising rents. Rents when I called you to say, "Hey Frank, go over this one with me," $135 a month lot rent. Right now, July 1st we'll be at all new residents $300.
[14:26]
Frank Rolfe: Right, okay. Now is there a park number six? Is it five parks?
[14:31]
Todd Kraner: Well because the two came together, so I kind of count those two. So the last one up north came from a postcard. He was not a generational owner. He owned it for 14 years. He lived up in Michigan. All that 1970 inventory, small lots, things that aren't sexy. But he just wasn't running it correctly. That was he had 23 park owned homes. We did what you taught us. We gifted them and took lot rent from $230 up to $350 for those people that we gifted the homes to. Then of course metered all water and sewer, and bill back trash.
[15:15]
Frank Rolfe: It sounds like everyone has their own way to find parks, you had an abnormally high ratio of direct mail. Is it because you think your direct mail postcard is better than most people or is it just you're more consistent? What do you think the reason would be that you had so much success with direct mail?
[15:34]
Todd Kraner: I'm blessed and I'm lucky, Frank. It's not me. The eighth one that we have under contract now, because our parks average about 49 lots, it's 46 lots. She was a postcard and I asked her, "Why did you call?" I took my mother out to meet her, meet the seller, and my mother connected with the seller phenomenally. She goes, "I liked what you guys were about." When she called the first time, my fiancée and I were driving down for vacation and so even my fiancée kind of bonded with her, and then that first site visit with her. She said, "I had multiple offers. I want you to buy it." So I'm just blessed.
[16:14]
Frank Rolfe: People are going to say so you obviously have some magical spell that the seller calls in on the direct mail. Can you give people an idea of what youtell a seller when they call in? They call up and say, "Hey Todd. I got your postcard." How do you get that bonding going there?
[16:33]
Todd Kraner: Sure. I think it goes back to the postcard. I learned from another mentor, I'll show it to you in a little bit but it is my kids pictures are on there, de-trashing mobile homes. That's the bond, so when they call me, I thank them for calling and say, "Hey what's your story? How'd you buy it?" And then if they ask I'll share that yeah I'm struggling, I have this many parks. I'll find something to bond with them that's a challenge, and then try to give them something like, "Oh, have you ever heard of Metron meters or solar lights?" Just trying to give back to them, and then it's a bond, it's more of a relationship up front than, "Hey, I want to buy your park." But no true secrets. Just trying to treat people right and do bonding. Because I love these. These sellers are still good people to me. I love talking with them, because I give them updates and that kind of stuff because they're all seller carried financing for us.
[17:27]
Frank Rolfe: Gotcha. On the note of sharing thoughts and information with those park owners, I know you had a whole bunch of tips and thoughts you wanted to run by people. I don't know if Brandon can go ahead and put that up on the screen. We'll go through those. I have terrible vision here, Todd, as far as being able to read those myself so you'll have to talk me through them as we go. Give us your first item you wanted to talk with people about.
[17:55]
Todd Kraner: Okay. Drone videos have worked so well for us in the apartment business and the mobile home park business. The reason why is we use it as marketing. It gives that potential resident coming in a vision of what our community looks like. And also now we're getting ready to do some refinances. The banks love it, it makes us look professional, it's getting cheaper to be done. We have it on our websites to help us market, so just think about when you're ready a drone video. Now, my last point on that, next time I do all my parks we are going to paint all those damn metal roofs to make them look nicer because-
[18:37]
Frank Rolfe: Yeah, and I agree. Drone videos are cool. We also utilize them. One nice thing about a drone video is it shows the park from a degree of elevation so you can't see the individual problems, right? So you can show the park from up in the air and up in the air you don't see the mowing issues, non running cars, things like that. So it's kind of like the way that developers use those old drawings of their development because they didn't want to show exactly how it would look, because it always looked a little bit better in conception than the final version, so yeah I agree. Drones are a good idea. So go to the next one, Todd.
[19:16]
Todd Kraner: Trespass List. We are successful in our communities getting druggies out and people shouldn't be there because we team up with the sheriff and thepolice force. So this is we have this on our community board at every park, it's called a Trespass List. Any time that someone is disrespectful to somebody in our community, we will put them on this list. If we evict them, we ask our attorneys to get trespass within the file of the eviction, and as you see on the bottom of this, thisis a true form I just took our park name off of it, but then we email this update to whatever police that are working in that town, and then also this goes and gets laminated and gets put into our community board so that way our residents can call if they see one of these people in our community, and get the arrested for criminal trespassing. It's a beautiful thing to clean up our park.
[20:06]
Frank Rolfe: How do you get someone on this legally? In other words how did the people you're showing on the list, how did they make your list? How was that accomplished?
[20:18]
Todd Kraner: Yeah sure, great question. They're known to do drugs. The police would even tell us oh you don't want that person in your community. Residents could tell us. Some of these have been evicted and it wasn't good evictions. And it's just drama. People with drama, we are about families, we're about safety, and we're about giving value. This has really helped us keep those people out of our private communities out. The police have been great about it. Now, we haven't been challenged. Two people have been truly arrested for criminal trespassing, but it didn’t go… they just got charged. The police do tell me, “Hey Todd, it’s a grain of salt that you can do this,” because it is private property. But it’s worked really well cleaning up parks.
[21:01]
Frank Rolfe: Okay. Let’s go to the next one.
[21:03]
Todd Kraner: Thank you, Brandon. Can you go down a page or am I driving, Brandon?
[21:09]
Frank Rolfe: Good question, Brandon. Can we go to the next page here?
[21:13]
Todd Kraner: Oh here you go. I think I’m driving. Text Only Helpline. I’m a huge, thank you Frank, huge rent manager guy and that text only helpline, it drops right into our residents personal rent manager accounts, and our whole team can see it from regional managers through the park managers. So we can be there to help those residents as fast as we can, as professionally as we can, but yet delegate it that the park manager should do it first, then comes down to be the regional manager, or the bookkeeper, or myself. So if you look into doing text only helplines, and we can do mass group texts of course. The residents can’t see who we’re all texting to, but we can say, “Hey, water has to be turned off,” just trying to show them respect and communicate that.
[22:01]
Frank Rolfe: Sure. Now we also have a helpline. Ours is by email or phone, and in fact we actually have a live phone bank. It’s not really a bank, it’s an individual. It’s actually a community manager who part-times as our helpline person. Why did you choose to do your text only as opposed to phone and email, for those older residents?
[22:23]
Todd Kraner: No, that’s okay. I’m an implementer. You taught me. We have the help phone line, but we find people love to text. So our regional manager answers the help phone number line for the older people that don’t like to text. But we found that this is beautiful. The older generation are really getting with it to text, and it’s just more streamlined, faster for us to react to help our residents.
[22:45]
Frank Rolfe: Perfect, okay. How often do you get, Todd, a tip from a resident regarding a manager problem coming on the helpline? Not at all? A couple?
[22:54]
Todd Kraner: No, no. we terminated one park manager because we learned she was embezzling. She told them, “No, you have to pay cash for the sales tax. You have to pay cash for that amount.” So we caught her kind of early we believe, but thanks to this kind of technology.
[23:13]
Frank Rolfe: We’ve had the same so. Anyone watching this, I can tell you right now that I don’t care how big your park is or how many parks you have, you've got to have a helpline because the helpline is the outreach program to your residents where they can bypass the manager. The number one thing you get on the helpline that you can’t get without one is really important insider information on your manager’s behavior. We get probably, of all the actionable calls we get, it probably comes in like the number two position besides things that are broken. People will turn the management… not necessarily do they even know they're getting the management in trouble. They'll just it'll be some complaint or weird thing, and then we know when we get several of them it must be going on because you would not have multiple people doing that. So yeah, definitely everyone needs to have a helpline. There's no one today should have a mobile home park without a helpline.
[24:13]
Todd Kraner: Again, thank you. That came from you and your magnets. We give magnets with the phone number of the helpline.
[24:18]
Frank Rolfe: Absolutely. Definitely benefits the owner as well as the resident. Let's go to the next one you've got.
[24:23]
Todd Kraner: Sure. This is a sexy tool for us. It's these tablets like an iPad. So every park manager has it. Now there's no reason something can't get done. We can capture potential residents. We accept no paper applications anymore because we just couldn't read their handwriting. A park manager can, if a potential says, "Hey I'm not really good with technology," they can step up and say, "Hey, I can help. Here we go. We're going to do it right now for you." Well I don't have an email. "Well, do you have a family member with an email? Let me help you still do it." So it helps with that. It helps the regional manager if they want, eventually we haven't done this great yet but they can just do cameras so they can see it through Facetime or Zoom, however they want. We don't have to go onsite as often. The managers can see all the texts coming through instead of on their cellphones. They see it through the tablet to show them a little respect for private time. I give a couple of different reasons here.
[25:17]
Frank Rolfe: Yeah, totally agree. We also use tablets. We use them for trip reports. I assume you probably do trip reports on tablets. There's no question that's again another tool that allows you to manage your parks better. I would definitely agree with that. What's your next point up?
[25:32]
Frank Rolfe: Pet screening. So petscreening.com. This has really been valuable to us. March 1 we finally went totally anyone new coming into our communities have to do this. So what this does for us is, and even if they don't have a pet they have to register. It's free for them, but they have to register and it drops right into Rent Manager that they've done it, and they said they have no pets. Because we all know how many dogs they try to sneak in on us. The other thing if they have a pet it's $20 for the first pet per year, $15 for the second. But they have to load pictures of them. They have to show if they have a service animal, they have to prove to Pet Screening that they have the right documentation, and they push back. So it's taken that liability off of us and letting us know what animal should be in the park, and not getting these dogs snuck in overnight and saying, "Oh, it was here. It should be grandfathered in." So that's been a really good help to us, Frank.
[26:34]
Frank Rolfe: Good. All right, yeah. And in fact I heard of this the first time from you, Todd. I don't know where we are in our organization in pet screening, but I turned it over to our people because I had not heard of it prior to you.
[26:48]
Todd Kraner: I learned it through David Tilney. Just a great guy that has mentored me on management of single family homes, and I take it to apartments and take it to mobile homes. I thank David Tilney for bringing me that. So yeah we did our first park that everyone has to do it, all existing clients, and we're having a couple push backs but that's the one with 58 homes. I think only 15 haven't done it. We're just following up to get it done, to help them create those.
[27:15]
Frank Rolfe: Gotcha, okay. Let's go to the next one.
[27:17]
Todd Kraner: The next one, because I know we don't have much time, the next one is installing TVs in the management onsite offices. I have pictures. This is from the apartments. Why we do this is you can show your drone videos, and then if we stage like an apartment or something like that, this really helps us be a little bit more professional for that potential resident coming in or that buyer/resident. We don't rent any of our mobile homes. We do like you do, Frank, they have to buy them. We want that owner mentality. The next one is "banner's work" for us. Now this is one where we are having apartments, we were having some vacancies. Now that's just renting, we have some vacancies so we offer this TV and oh my gosh, it worked really well. Just showing you banners are cheap, and they're effective. People asking in the past, "Hey, what happens with that TV? Do you ever get it back?" We have a TV concession addendum that those residents sign, but you can see how big the banner is compared to the sign of that apartment complex there.
[28:15]
Frank Rolfe: Let's talk, how much does it cost you to make one of your nasty, trashy, rotting old offices look pleasant and inviting like what we just saw in the pictures? What's the total dollar investment to make an office attractive do you find?
[28:31]
Todd Kraner: Less than $3,000 and that's with new vinyl. As you know it's so inexpensive.
[28:38]
Frank Rolfe: We've been on the same kick because mom and pop for some reason never realized that this is where you're showcasing the first impression of that customer, and they would have people coming in to these old, mildewed, typically gray or brown walled things with stains, they stunk, rotted carpet. Typically there was a pot from a plant, the plant was dead, the pot was still there, one wheel broken off. Metal folding chairs, just unbelievable. It is mindboggling that people don't just go in, paint and carpet. As Todd said, it's very inexpensive because it gives you a much greater first impression. All right, so what do you have going on here, Todd?
[29:23]
Todd Kraner: And thank you to you, we just implemented, you turned us on to this. We use this in almost every park as we buy them. Tornado took a couple out. The representative was great. Here's his contact information if anybody wants. He's been great to us. We need to order some more. Also, this was a great, I'm chasing another park and this was a great bond that I shared this gentleman, first generation owner builder, had all those pole lights out there that you teach us oh don't rewire them. So I gave him this idea and that really helped him kind of bond, so I'm hoping that we get to purchase that property.
[29:59]
Frank Rolfe: So folks know, these are Gamma Sonic street lights. We use them both in the street light and coach light format. In both cases, and I don't know if Todd you'd agree, the bulk of the benefit is the appearance and the ambient light. Their streetlight does not put out anywhere near the lumens of a city street light, so don't be thinking that they're breathtakingly bright. But in the applications we put them in, they're just fine and dandy. We're trying to give people a sense of security so they can see what's around them, see the way to their car, that kind of thing, but they're not blindingly bright. The only thing is if you install blindingly bright street lights, you will invariably every time you install one get two or three residents who are incredibly mad at you, come to the office yelling because they can't sleep at night because of the light shining through their windows. Perpetual park problem, because most people in mobile home parks, they kind of like that country feel, the quiet dark country lane feel, and they don't like the super bright light. So we found the Gama Sonic is the fact it’s not as bright can actually be a benefit because the kind of ambient light I'm trying to throw out there is so people can see what they're doing. I'm not trying to make it like daylight. In the old days, park owners would try to almost have a sports stadium look. I don't know if you've seen some of those parks Todd, but some of these guys they thought the safest environment would be one that was daylight 24 hours a day. Residents hate that stuff. No one wants that stuff. No single family, no place where you have bright light like that at night is a sports stadium or a prison, and neither is very good. So yeah, I agree with you on the Gama Sonic. So go to the next one there, Todd.
[31:48]
Todd Kraner: All right. Landscaping, we're getting away from mulch and using this nice looking stone. Again, this is an apartment situation we're showing you but we were afraid hey, kids are going to start throwing these stones, but we haven't. So for example, I go back this example, we were spending $6,000 a year mulching. Big investment up front, but after that it's not. So just kind of think about that. This used to be all mulch here and we just replanted it with grass and then put the stone look up there, just looks so much better.
[32:21]
Frank Rolfe: Yeah. Another part of it also would tend to go with the setting that you got it in, right? In these cases these are fairly small confined areas. You wouldn't be gravelling a big old field, but an application like this, yeah that would be fine.
[32:39]
Todd Kraner: This came from you and I just want to let other, as people are starting to build their parks as we have C Corp, they're one management company that we created that we had to start back in 2016. They control all… they hire all employees. All park managers, the good residents that mow the grass, they're all on our payroll that way. That way in case we have a problem we can shut it down, start another one. But another big benefit I learned in the apartment business is on that side I have professional management, is they would have to charge us a little bit more than what I could pay. If you look here just really quickly, that's $4 an hour on a 2080 fulltime job, that's $8,300 a year on top I was paying. So that's about $100,000 on an 8 CAP by keeping the employees to us. What I've learned there too on the apartment side of things is because it's professionally managed, they report to that professional manager but if there's something that I should know, they know we sign their paychecks so they call me just to say heads up, you needed to know that. So just want to let people know that's been a real benefit. So thank you, Frank, for steering us that way when we started.
[33:51]
Frank Rolfe: Sure.
[33:52]
Todd Kraner: You taught us this, that sub-metering. Oh my gosh, talk about sexy in our business. This is really conserving, doing the right thing, and just the tools that Metron have given us. There's my contact is Luke. I still have Guardian in some apartments in 2015, they're still there, but I've changed out two parks that I installed Guardian water meters to Metron, and now I love them thanks to you, Frank. They have that temperature gel in them so now we know if they're going to freeze up. Then as hopefully people know this is a graph here that every resident can have a free account so they can see their usage. So what happens there is Metron just emails the regional manager. She gets an email every morning that says, "Hey, you have high usage or no usage." She will then forward that to the park managers or maintenance, and say, "Hey, please check with these families. Let's help them try to save some money." So it's just trying to do the right thing. Then the next slide I think here, this is that one I shared with you I asked the gentleman, "Hey, what made you sell and to us?" And he got that $6,000 water bill. So you can see how high he was running here. So if we do that math, I show you another bill we're down to $3,300. He was the second generation owner. So if you take that, he was not billing back. What we did and you taught us as you start billing back, everybody cares about their running toilets and their leaky sinks, and like you taught us we will fix that for free just to help them because it saves us all time, effort, and money. But if you look at this and put a cap rate on it, just this one park, the value that we added to that.
[35:38]
Frank Rolfe: How much would you say the water consumption reduces when you put in those meters? People say a third. Have you experienced a third roughly?
[35:47]
Todd Kraner: Yes. Look at this one, this is about half so 50%.
[35:54]
Frank Rolfe: Yeah, it's an interesting point because in other words people always criticize park owners that we're greedy, and always raising rents. This is one time it's hard to criticize us because we actually are fostering conservation. As you've seen in the news here in the last few days they're truly running out of water in the west. They can't run the power grid now because there's not enough water to run the dams, to make the hydroelectric plants work. So clearly as a nation, just think of the western part of America, everyone needs to be sub-metering. That's a narrative any park owner can do with very little pushback. So let's go to the next item there, Todd.
[36:32]
Todd Kraner: To add just really quick on that, we bill back trash. We bill back trash and that really helps us too. So okay, next one after that, let's see what else we've got. Community board. So these have been really effective for us. I know you do this too. They've been really effective. On my next slide I just show you who we bought them from so you can tell we've been using them for years so there's that contact for people. Postcards and direct marketing-
[36:58]
Frank Rolfe: Let's go back to community boards for a minute here, Todd. In other words who is doing the material in those community boards? How are you managing the content? Is the manager doing it? Have you had any problems with the manager doing that? That's always the problem you have when people put them in. some people put them in and they just take an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper and a thumbtack, stick it in the middle. You're obviously using the space well and we also try to use the space well. Do you have any tips for people on how to use the space well?
[37:25]
Todd Kraner: Yeah. We have one person that all she'll do from now on is she does it in house at her home office. She laminates them and then she'll mail them out to those park managers asking, "Hey, please change these out." That has been the best effect for us. Of course our BWC certificates, they're our park license, they're our dealer licenses there. The site map is there. But what we did learn is we have to laminate those to make them last longer.
[37:54]
Frank Rolfe: I agree. Go to the next one.
[37:57]
Todd Kraner: And it's really when I go out to a park, I'll try to be prepared and have them too if I think that it needs it and the park manager didn't get it done. Okay, let's see. Postcards and direct marketing. This is just a couple of postcards we've been using. As I shared with you, four of our parks came from these kind of postcards. And then my eight park came from a postcard. So here's a good one about finding homes, finding use homes. We struggled but I've been blessed enough that we've found 27 used mobile homes since December that we moved into our parks. We're still filling lots. And this postcard has really helped me just offering other park owners that we'll get it transported out for free. We don't charge them anything. It's hard finding transport companies to do that for us, but then we get it on our site and fix it up, and sell it. Because our parks we are learning that the new homes we brought in, I'm sitting at $40-50,000 invested and that monthly payment on top of our lot rent is just too much for some of our families. We're going full in to used homes, 14 foot wide of course, no 12 anymore. These postcards really, and hopefully build rapport that when that seller is ready, I know we've been able to get five from one second generation owner. Hopefully when he thinks of selling, maybe he'll think of us, and give us the opportunity.
[39:24]
Frank Rolfe: I think what also helps, a lot of your postcards Todd are very personable. You're taking the gamble by injecting people into the pictures, and it's a gamble because some people might like the people in the picture, other people would say, "Oh, I hate those people. I hate kids, I hate whatever." But again, in an industry where it's 99% failure rate is the norm, why not try it? I had somebody a while back who sent a postcard series, it was a picture of them having a picnic with their kids. It had nothing to do with mobile home parks. He had a picture of a mobile home park and then he had that picture, but the postcard did well because you've got to stick you neck out a little on this stuff. I like the picture you've got in here with family kind of setting, because again you've got to be a little bit of a risk taker to make these work. If you send just a good old boring postcard with no photos or just an old mobile home on it, it doesn't really engage the reader. I think that's probably why you're doing so well with that. I would call you off that postcard. It looks like you'd be a fun guy to talk to based on the vibe from the postcard. All right, let's go to the next one now.
[40:36]
Todd Kraner: That just gives you an idea of our cost. All about rent payments. So COVID really helped us, meaning that we don't accept anymore… we had two parks where we would allow people to drop their money orders into a drop. So now they can only pay at the local bank or pay online through Rent Manager. So yeah, just want to share that. That's been really effective for us, and we love it when they pay online because that way it's less for the bookkeeper, just drops right into their file. We do urge them to pay using their routing number and checking or savings account number, because it's only $2.95. If they use a credit card it's really high. We want to save our residents money, just to give you an idea.
[41:20]
Frank Rolfe: I don't know if you've tried this Todd but we do, we have a thing it's a club for those who pay online. If you pay online you get to join the club. I think you get $50 off or something for joining. That's helped us get a fairly high degree of people joining the online payment plan.
[41:45]
Todd Kraner: Thank you, thank you, because we’re trying to find out how to get more people to do that, so yeah I wrote that down.
[41:50]
Frank Rolfe: You just get to seem exclusive to do that. Not everyone can do it because you have to obviously have a checking account to do it, but nevertheless it's a great thing if you can do it, so I agree. Let's go to the next item.
[42:02]
Todd Kraner: That's brilliant. This is what we used to do. People mailed us payments, but this I learned from a great Kentucky landlord when I was doing single family homes. Pre-print them, because when your resident forgets to put the stamp on them, the post office will still send them back to you, your rent check because you have it here. But the biggest thing he taught us, and this saved me, on the back, you can see we use different colors for different parks, but we use this because we want to know if they've changed their phone number, a new email, and this saved me, I had two single family fires in my lifetime and one mobile home, and both times we had envelopes so I'm not saying that they would have sued us and said it was something bad, but that really helped us. So if you're still collecting think about doing something like that. Another thought, learned from you, we have one park left out of seven that has dumpsters just because trucks can't come in for poly carts. But one thing I did learn, and I've got to give credit, it was one of my sellers is we put these. We go to Fast Signs and we have them print this. I don't ask permission from the trash company, but that way because these darn things we get a lot of illegal dumping in them so it has really worked. Then go to the next step is poly carts like you taught us, it just makes our community feel better to our residents. Here's a true example. We had two dumpsters on this site in the back, cats galore. Kids wouldn't throw the trash in the dumpster for their parents. They were only paying $10.62 a month. We went to poly cart. We didn't give them a decision, we just said we're going to do it, and look at that, $27.09. We only had one grumpy person complain. Everyone else loved it because they had their own trash can like you taught us, right there by their house. So thank you for that.
[43:49]
Frank Rolfe: Do you know, Todd, have you ever seen a single family, you had I don't know 100 single family homes, have you ever seen one that had trash delivery via a dumpster?
[44:01]
Todd Kraner: That's a great point, Frank.
[44:03]
Frank Rolfe: In the industry where we're trying to convince people that we're quality and that we're more single family than multi family, I don't even understand the concept of a dumpster to be honest with you. It's demeaning to people. How do you, I mean I'm spoiled, I have a poly cart. I mean how do you even do a dumpster? I mean how do you get the trash to the dumpster? Who wants to put their trash in their car? Who wants to walk 100 yards? It's just demeaning. We have also tried to go all poly. Now we can't. There’s some parks we simply can't as you have because there's no way the truck can get through. The poly cart trucks, they have certain radius restrictions, et cetera. Then we have other parks we can't use poly carts because of bears. New Mexico and portions of Colorado, you can't use poly cart because the bears can break in, or you have to get an extremely heavy complicated poly cart, but yeah I think the industry should totally go all poly cart. I've never liked dumpsters. They're stinky, they're gross, they're demeaning to people. All right, so go to the next item, Todd.
[45:07]
Todd Kraner: All right. We were lucky enough to find 27 used homes. Now I'm working my butt off to do that, but I just want to share with people that you can do it, and it's all through just marketing and everything else. These are some pictures of the new homes we brought in but the lessons learned were I can find these used homes, get them onsite. In the state of Ohio it costs me about $6,000 to get it set, $1,800 to transport it, and fix it up. But I can have $12,000 to $20,000 in these homes, and give a great value to that next home buyer. We get the same lot rent. Brand new at $50,000 and I have a mortgage on it versus we pay cash. So just still trying to learn, give people hope that you can find those used ones. It's just tough. Competition is hard as we know.
[45:50]
Frank Rolfe: Sure.
[45:51]
Todd Kraner: This is just kind of fun. I'm blessed to have great teams. At a city down in Kentucky closed a park on a second generation owner and we were lucky enough to get those homes out. This is a team of eight that helped me. Fun part of our business. That tornado took seven of our homes, but dear Lord no one was hurt. It was a hard recovery but we're doing it, but just some pictures. It had hurricane straps and everything. Picked them up, moved them over, dumped them right there. Both were vacant. We just had this a couple months ago, a house burned because of a faulty plug heater. Unfortunately that resident owner didn't have insurance, we had to help her get back on her feet. Now I've got to go find another mobile home to replace that one.
[46:36]
Frank Rolfe: Was that the Dayton, Ohio tornado?
[46:39]
Todd Kraner: Yes, sir.
[46:40]
Frank Rolfe: Yeah, that was a crazy tornado. We have parks in Dayton. We had no damage from it. I went out to visit the parks like normal. I don't have any hotel reservation because who needs a hotel reservation in Dayton, Ohio. Get in just about anywhere you would figure. Every hotel, I didn't know what was going on. The hotel checking in, "Oh, I'm sorry we're sold out." I'm like that's weird. I go to the next hotel, sold out. I had to drive an hour out of Dayton. FEMA had rented every hotel room within an hour of Dayton to house the people from the Tornado. It was very strange. You don't think of Ohio as a tornado place, and I didn't know Ohio had a tornado like that, but I'd like to point out Dayton is already pretty much put back together. I don't even see a sign of the tornado now. If that had been a flooding event like Katrina, it'd be like two decades later they'd start breaking ground or something. But it's just odd that you'd have a tornado in Ohio. It's strange. Go ahead, I'm sorry to interrupt you.
[47:42]
Todd Kraner: This is where we talk about sexy parts of our business. This has been great for us. Metal artwork and just something simple. My fiancée and I go, we'll go to Hobby Lobby, they'll have sales on this stuff, so I'm paying only anywhere from $10 to $40, and our team will spray it with an enamel to make it last longer. But you can just see really quickly that these are used homes in a couple parks, how much it just adds a little bit of classiness.
[48:12]
Frank Rolfe: Yeah, we haven't done that in many parks but down in Florida where we have our park that is a very common thing. They actually have stores because there's so many mobile homes in Florida that just basically specialize in selling giant metal art to go on mobile homes. If you go online, they make, the ones you make here are smaller and more tasteful. They make ones the entire size of the side of the mobile home virtually. It's crazy.
[48:43]
Todd Kraner: And here's another lesson I learned, Frank, and you can see 70s or 60s homes, is we now cut off those tongues before we do new skirting, but as you can see some cuts there it doesn't look great. But because of the heat when we're grinding them off we've got to be really careful to not cause a fire. But okay, so I always joke I'm not that smart of a guy, just implement really well. You know where this idea came from, right Frank? You probably don't.
[49:09]
Frank Rolfe: No.
[49:10]
Todd Kraner: It came from you. I've attended six of your boot camps because every time I come my mind is in a different point of where I'm building the business or trying to build a business and have different struggles. So this is that nice lady in Orland, Florida that has the sex offender parks. You were letting us to her. That was my first boot camp with you that my fiancée and I came out to this one with you, and we took a picture of that, and that's where this all came from, so thank you.
[49:38]
Frank Rolfe: Gotcha, very good.
[49:39]
Todd Kraner: Got your Florida home right there. Then the lesson learned above it is don't underestimate any of our residents. This lady when she first bought a home from us, she was a pain in the rear end. I was still self managing then. But now look at her. She bought another home within our park. It might be gaudy to some, but to her it's beautiful. It just really cleans up the neighborhood. That's her sister's home right next home. She got her to clean it up. So just a lesson.
[50:09]
Frank Rolfe: You know it's interesting Todd I found how you can often get your first impression off of some of these residents, and I'll peg people, I'll put them in boxes like most people do based on past experiences, and I'll have residents that I'll put this is a troubled resident, and then over the years they'll morph into a perfect resident. You can't just judge people. I mean a lot of times the troubled resident is troubled because the former owner never did what they were supposed to do, so they're just hostile because they called the old owner, "Fix this, fix that," wouldn't do it. Was disrespectful towards them, whatever, but a lot of times with mobile home park residents they really get a raw deal. We've had many cases where the resident, you would think on the front end it'll never work out, this person is never going to pay, they're never going to behave, and they turn out to be the model citizen, so I know exactly what you're talking about here. We have that happen all the time.
[51:11]
Todd Kraner: Good, good. So thank you for that. So the last couple, you know my father is a great lesson to me, there were a lot of them, but one was "Learn what you don't want to do in life." Of course that's three of my kids when we first bought our first park. Their job that summer was to de-trash stinky old mobile homes so they're not doing it anymore. They wanted to do other things than real estate, so proud of them all. Another thing my accountant turned me onto this. This is the best desk out there, stand up desk. I have it right now but it allows me to have, I can put it down, put it up, but I stand most of the day at my office when I'm working from my home office. Then I put two monitors on side by side. Those are two 32" TVs, so just for guys with bad eyes, it's been great so I wanted to share that with people.
[51:57]
Frank Rolfe: Todd, I'll take one further. I'm on a kick now I try to walk about 14,000 steps a day. Yeah, I started doing that really during COVID and I find I can pace that much in a day. So in other words, I just don't sit down but just pace. It's allowed me to lose a lot of weight, feel much healthier. It puts you right into keeping with what the government recommends you do to keep your heart healthy. But I agree, standing desk. I like to when I'm on the phone I constantly pace back and forth when I'm on the phone. A lot of people don't realize if you need extra exercise you can kind of do it by just getting up. Just don't sit down, stand up. You'll naturally move around, pace. You'll look at your iPhone later in the day and it'll tell you how many steps you paced. You'll be shocked. You'll say my gosh I've worked 10,000 paces today and I haven't left a room. Yeah, I totally agree with you on that. Go ahead.
[53:03]
Todd Kraner: Okay, last couple. DocuSign I know everybody is using it. We love it. We even use it for letters of understanding when residents fall behind on the payment plan. Just want to make sure people know it's a beautiful thing. Thing I struggle with and that's why I need mentors and a great counselor, life coaches, I work "in the business" too much. I'm finally getting "on the business". Thanks to you, I finally hired a regional manager, a project manager, and just trying to get on the business so I can help those residents be more respectful of improvements rather than just running the business. One thing that we're still struggling with but we're trying, we're still revamping, is our website. We're trying to make that a communication tool better than I ever did before. Brandon, you were phenomenal doing all the websites you did for us, thank you for all those years. What we're doing right now is when park managers are meeting with potential residents or our current residents, or they call in or they text in, this website has all these frequently asked questions. We're trying to do our best to answer those, because we're learning also people don't like to talk to us all the time. They just want to know the information really quickly. This has been really good. I'll just flip through, and we're still building these website. Now next step from another mentor that's one of my investors, we're going to start doing video. I'm going to do the video of the lot lease, the rules and regulations, and they're going to have to check off that they read them and understand them. Just one more thing to try to communicate to be good to our residents so they know what they're signing up for. What else do I have in there for you? That's it, Frank. That last thing, thank you thank you.
[54:43]
Frank Rolfe: Obviously you're having fun with the business. You're growing the portfolio. What's the future here? Where does Todd go from here? Do you have any goals as far as number of lots or properties? Will you ever venture outside of Ohio? What are your thoughts?
[54:59]
Todd Kraner: I'm content, Frank. I'm content. As a lead comes if I can buy another park we will. But I'm very content. We have a lot more work to do in these parks, so I've got to keep my focus there. To me that's actually part of chasing the deal, so I'm trying to focus back on the business and take care of the parks that we have because I owe it to my financial partners too. But no, I'm content. I could stop now. What you've taught us, once we get these lots full the cash flow it will generate will refinance all those sellers out, I just thank you. Thank you and Brandon, and your team.
[55:37]
Frank Rolfe: You've got Todd, right now as I recall from macro perspective, you've got is it how many occupied lots total?
[55:49]
Todd Kraner: Let's see, 342 lots, about 305 are occupied right now.
[55:56]
Frank Rolfe: Right, and you took your lot rents up an average of about $100 since purchase on a macro scale, correct?
[56:00]
Todd Kraner: Yes, sir.
[56:02]
Frank Rolfe: Which is about $30,000 a month of cash flow beyond when you bought them. Your turnaround program is basically I think 20% vacancy, so you've got some lots to fill, some rents to go. What have you learned the difference has been between this industry and single family? You raise the rent on a single family $100, even as large as you were prior with 60 something single families, that wouldn't be a fraction of the cash flow differential between the single family and the mobile home park. What are your thoughts? So many people are into single family. It's probably the number one real estate investment of Americans I imagine, certainly not their own home but seemingly everyone is speculating in stick built homes, buying them, fixing them, flipping them. Shows like that are all over HGTV. What are your thoughts now that you've done both? There's an old saying in psychology or sociology that the only one who can actually tell you the difference between things are people who have actually experienced both. What are your thoughts on mobile home park versus single family?
[57:20]
Todd Kraner: To me it's bottom line efficiency, economies of scale, pride of ownership versus I could never give that to a resident that was renting it. But in our mobile home owners own their homes. The one thing that we'll look at with single family homes or apartments, I could have those professionally managed. I still have my own management company. I know there's some great ones out there, I just can't afford them yet. I want to get there at some point. But that is one struggle in our mobile home park business is I had to create the management team to make that work, and it's been a lot of work. For us, although we're making cash flow, we're putting it right back into the parks by fixing infrastructure and bringing more homes in. our financial partners have been great.
[58:15]
Frank Rolfe: Uh oh, Todd, you've frozen there. Hold on here everyone. We've lost connection with Todd. Just a moment here. We've still lost connection with Todd.
[58:35]
Todd Kraner: I'm found again.
[58:38]
Frank Rolfe: All right, you're back. Excellent. Okay. Sorry about that. We missed you while you were gone. Go ahead.
[58:42]
Todd Kraner: I think that was about it. Yeah, just thank you.
[58:49]
Frank Rolfe: Now tell us about Ohio for a minute. We also own parks in Ohio, Pennsylvania, all around those areas. A lot of people from the coast might poo-poo that and say Ohio, that's a rust belt, going nowhere kind of state. What are your thoughts on Ohio?
[59:08]
Todd Kraner: I was born in Ohio, farm boy from Ohio, love it. Best working people. Yeah we have some crazies, but we have crazies everywhere in the United States. I wish I didn't have the cold, but in Ohio we can have all four seasons in one day. We did. But Ohio, for me it's just apartment, single family homes and now the mobile home park business - my biggest part of the business - I love the demographics of Ohio.
[59:34]
Frank Rolfe: Do you ever go to Dayton and Cincinnati and say oh my gosh, it's a run down, rust belt of a town? I don't think people know Ohio, because when I drive through Ohio which I do all the time, it seems to be booming. I see things being built and I see all the modern conveniences of anywhere in America. Is there any reason for concern in Ohio? And what would you tell people to try and dispel this narrative that Ohio is a lesser state than the other states? What are your thoughts on that?
[60:04]
Todd Kraner: No, no, we're out there. I'm proud to be an Ohioan. We have great leadership. Don't always agree with the leadership but we have great leadership. They're really reinvesting into the communities. I couldn't ask for more. We've raised four kids and great education, great parks in the community. So yeah, Ohio just come. We've got enough mobile home parks.
[60:27]
Frank Rolfe: What about your lot rents? Again, you're up $100 from inception. Where should mobile home park lot rents go? I always say that I think they should be around $500 in most markets. Right now they'd still be a great value for people. You'd be at half of the apartment cost of a similarly sized apartment. I don't know why our product is considered so lowly we can't be at least half as much as the apartment product. Where do you see rents topping out? Where can you see the rents of Ohio being in the years ahead? Can you get to $500? Higher than $500? You're already in the $400s in some of these aren't you?
[61:08]
Todd Kraner: In metros we're at $415 effective July 1st. Frank, I'm not that smart, I rely on you, sir. I follow you. You share with me.
[61:16]
Frank Rolfe: Let me ask you this, when you're talking about professional management, wouldn't you need to be to get apartment/single family professional managers, don't you think a $500 rent probably models to where you can start getting better quality management by and large?
[61:34]
Todd Kraner: By far, Frank, by far. Yes sir.
[61:37]
Frank Rolfe: So where you do see the future of the industry as we kind of get up to $500, change the management structure? That's kind of the best thing for the industry at this point because one of the problem with low rent is you can't really put money back in the properties, but you also can't get good management because you can't afford high quality management. But so you think $500 is achievable in your properties? We certainly think they are in ours. We are up now to I think our average rent is at $385 or we may have already broken in nationwide into $400s. You've been raising the rents. How much pushback have you had once you've been raising rents so far?
[62:15]
Todd Kraner: Every year, not much, but we're always improving our parks, showing value to our residents to be fair. We only do it like July 1st is $15, last year was $15. Sometimes like a new park we'll go $30, but what you taught us is park owned homes, rent is really low, we'll gift those park owned homes and then lift it to the market rent, and that's been successful so thank you for those lessons.
[62:44]
Frank Rolfe: Sure. And what about COVID and collections? How bad did COVID hit your portfolio's collections?
[62:52]
Todd Kraner: It wasn't COVID, it was residents that just when they got stimulus checks they decided to go buy the big screen TV. We were hit a little bit but we had great community. We needed help but we had great community that helps some of our residents with back rent and we're just very fortunate and very grateful for that. But we weren't hit that bad because they own their homes, they wanted to stay. But then some of those residents that took advantage of the system, those were the ones that we didn't renew their lot rents and we evicted them. We had no problems with evicting because in our industry it is a 30-day lot lease, and we were evicting on that, not on failure to pay.
[63:30]
Frank Rolfe: Right. Okay, so a couple items here. Number one, for those people who have gone through the pandemic, depressed from the pandemic and impacts they've had to their business, life, whatever, as a survivor of the great recession any words of encouragement for people who may be coming out of depressing times here?
[63:58]
Todd Kraner: I'm inspired where we're going. Affordable living, we need it so bad. I'm not about Section 8 so I think what we're doing, giving value is so… I feel very confident that I can go to bed at night knowing that we're helping these families, giving them good value that they can buy and own their home and the best value that they can for affordable lot rent.
[64:26]
Frank Rolfe: On that Todd would you say, because obviously you're a nice guy, would you say there's a win/win aspect to our industry that most people don't understand? Do you go to bed at night thinking you're Simon Legree because you raised rent $100 or are you thinking I'm a good guy because I provide a good quality of living that's a super affordable price? What are your thoughts every night? Are you a good guy or bad guy in your opinion?
[64:52]
Todd Kraner: Good guy because what I couldn't do in the apartments and what I couldn't do in the single family homes is I couldn't show them affordable home ownership. Here we can and I can keep those lot rents low and efficient for us, and fair. Everybody at the apartments are paying for their water, sewer, and trash. Everybody in the single family home pays for their water, sewer and trash so it's not like we're taking advantage of our residents. We're just asking them to conserve and pay their share of water and sewer and trash. So no, I feel like this is, I love this industry so thank you. I still love the apartments to be professional managed, but the mobile home park industry has just been great for us.
[65:34]
Frank Rolfe: And for anyone watching Todd who is like you were back in 2013, thinking of going into the industry, now that you've been in the industry would you have any words of encouragement for anyone who is watching this because they're pondering, they're kicking the idea around? What would you tell people who are thinking about mobile home park investing?
[65:56]
Todd Kraner: For me, this is the best space out there. When we had one self storage facility, we sold it, but it's the best for me out there. But do what other people do, come take your boot camp, learn it up front, learn from your mistakes and your wisdom, and then implement. That's what I love to do is learn from you, learn from your other students, other park owners, and implement. But yeah, it's a great space. It's not easy though. I'm not painting it's easy. It's a lot of late nights but it's worth it.
[66:31]
Frank Rolfe: And Todd, if people watching this wanted to reach out to you directly, would you be nice enough if someone was to email us, for us to forward it on to you and you would respond?
[66:41]
Todd Kraner: Oh sure. I'd love to give back, certainly.
[66:44]
Frank Rolfe: So again, if anyone wants to reach out and ask Todd a question, all you have to do is just email it to Brandon and Brandon will forward it on to Todd. I'm sure Todd would be the super nice guy he is will happily respond. So again Todd, really appreciate you being here sharing your thoughts on the industry. A lot of great points. Appreciate you taking the preparation to put all that together as well. And again, we really appreciate having you in the industry. I know that you shared the fellowship of good will that all park owners have, just like a big club at this point. We're glad you're in the club. Again, that wraps up this lecture series event. Todd, we really appreciate you being here. Appreciate everyone taking the time to be here. And we'll see everyone again real soon.
[67:34]
Todd Kraner: Thank you Frank. Thanks Brandon.