How Flipping Manufactured Homes Let's Jason Travel The World 3 Months At A Time

Jason Veley: I had not two pennies to rub together. This stuff is hard. When you know why you're doing it, who you're doing it for, it's fun. It's a blast. I wasn't one of those guys that was like, okay.

Let me line up every single detail beforehand to make sure I can do it right before I go out and do anything. You know, it's much more the build your parachute on the way down kind of approach. Mhmm. We still profited a little over $26 on that flip. And for at the time with what I was making and for how much work I had to put into it, that was that was game changing.

That was that was a proof of concept for me. He blew my expectations out of the water that so much so that I was like, holy crap. You gotta chill out. Like, I cannot keep up with how many deals you're locking up for us right now and giving you guys free game right now. We're gonna net close to $200,000 on that one deal just because that wholesaler didn't have

Steve Trang: Welcome, Welcome, and thank you for joining us for today's episode of disruptors where millionaires are made. Today, we have Jason Veley with Cape Fear cash offer. And Jason flew in from Wilmington, North Carolina to talk about how flipping manufactured homes is allowing them to travel three months at a time. Guys, I wanna mission to create millionaires. The information on this show alone is enough to help you become a millionaire in the next five to seven years.

If you'll take consistent action, you'll become one. And before we jump on, if you're here to learn how real entrepreneurs are are building real empires, make sure you hit that subscribe button because every year or I'm sorry, every episode, we're sharing lessons that help you create your first or your next million. And right now, you've got maybe a 100,000 quarter mil, maybe more sitting in your CRM. Resurrect all your old and dead leads with our, AI caller. Text cash to the phone number 33777, to unlock the money that's hanging out inside your CRM.

You ready? Yeah, man. Alright.

Jason: Thanks for

Steve: having me. Well, thanks for coming on. For sure. I I think this is, something that we were talking about, I think, probably, like, half a year ago now. We were talking about you coming on.

So I'm excited that we are able to make this happen. Let's talk about what was your life like before you got into real estate?

Jason: Yeah. So before real estate, I went to school for finance Mhmm. And got my finance degree and got my series seven in '66. And

Steve: Oh, really?

Jason: Yeah. I was a licensed financial advisor for a short time, and then I went into work with institutional trust funds, specifically in the death care industry. So pre need funeral trust funds Yes.

Steve: Care Death care. Industry.

Jason: Yes. I think now I think they've recently stopped referring to it as that in the recent years. I think now they call it the funeral and cemetery industry.

Steve: Yeah.

Jason: But when I was in it, it was called the death care industry. Wow. Okay. But it was just handling pre need funeral trust funds and cemetery perpetual care trust funds. Pre what?

Pre need funeral.

Steve: Pre need.

Jason: Right. So when you go into a funeral home to prepay for Uh-huh. You know, your burial expenses and stuff, that's a pre need contract.

Steve: Oh, I see.

Jason: There's each state has different laws and regulations that they have to abide by that a certain percentage of that money has to go into trust.

Steve: Gotcha.

Jason: It's a super niche, super boring side of the finance world. Yeah. But that's what I did. That's what I was doing when I started getting into real estate, until until I left the finance career altogether.

Steve: Okay. So, I mean, that's a that's a very serious commitment to do series a, series 66. That's not, like, something you just kinda do, like, on a whim. Right. So what made you decide to leave the the finance sector and to get into real estate?

Jason: Right. So the honestly, I didn't I I didn't expect to. I didn't plan to. I just thought, you know, I'd I had seen these guys around town that were 60, 70 years old and they had 20 or 30 paid off rental properties in retirement and they were doing really well. They were bringing in $20.30 grand a month in rental income, no mortgage payments.

They were doing good. And I thought that's that's what I would do. I thought I'd save up a little bit of money, buy one rental property, wait another five years until I've saved up some more money, buy another one, and then keep my w two the whole time while I'm doing this. And then when I'm retired one day, I'll have 20 or 30 paid off rentals. That was the plan.

Mhmm. But then somebody threw a huge wrench into that whenever I went to a friend's wedding one day and somebody there that had flipped a few houses, we got talking. And he introduced me to the Bigger Pockets podcast.

Steve: Okay.

Jason: And then from there, it was it it was game over. I started listening to that and then I learned about things like hard money and private money. I'm like, wait a minute. You mean to tell me all, like, all I gotta do was find a good enough deal and somebody out there will give me all the money for it? Yeah.

And I was crazy enough to try it.

Steve: When was this wedding? When was this whole deal going down?

Jason: I would say towards the 2019, like mid mid to late twenty nineteen, probably.

Steve: Alright. So you're at a wedding. You hear this guy. He's talking about how he's flipping houses. And then you just jump on bigger pockets and that's it.

Like, that's just, put it right into your veins. Like, you're all in.

Jason: Yep.

Steve: Alright. So then did you immediately buy your first deal? Did you wholesale? Did you market? Did you do more research?

What did you do then?

Jason: Yeah. So I wouldn't say that I was immediately all in on real estate. I just thought, okay, this is a way that I can reach those long term goals a little bit faster. Yeah. But I didn't know how fast.

And that and that's another reason why I I couldn't really set goals in the beginning. Because every time I would think I'd have a goal of, oh, maybe I can be a millionaire by the time I'm 45. And then something else would happen or my net worth would jump pretty quickly, and I was like, oh, well, maybe I can do it by 40. And then something else would happen, and I'm like, okay, this is gonna happen, like, by the end of this year, you know, kind of deal. Sorry, I got sidetracked.

What what was that?

Steve: Was the first thing? So you get on the Bigger Pockets podcast. You're listening to it.

Jason: Right. Right.

Steve: Yep. So what's what's the first decisive action you take buying real estate?

Jason: Yes. So I spent a few months trying to find a deal. I didn't really know how. I was, you know, I was just looking on Zillow and things like that. And then one day, my wife and I were just walking through the neighborhood with, the, I think, two kids that we had at that point, which, by the way, we are expecting our sixth now.

So that was a long time ago. And I saw this house in the neighborhood that was abandoned. Like, the mailbox was, like, taped shut with electrical tape. The grass was, like, four foot tall, and there were, like, two rundown cars just rotting there in the driveway. And so I took a picture of that, and I made a post in our neighborhood Facebook group.

And I said, hey. Does anybody know who the owner of this property is? It's clearly vacant. I'd love to see if they'd be interested in selling it.

Steve: Walking around your neighborhood.

Jason: Yep.

Steve: Took a picture of a house and you posted it in a neighborhood Facebook group.

Jason: Correct.

Steve: That rocket science.

Jason: But curveball, nobody answered that question. However, the way I got a deal from that was because somebody else in the neighborhood Facebook group saw the post and then private messaged me and said, hey. We're actually about to sell our house in the neighborhood too. Would you be interested?

Steve: Okay.

Jason: You know, so that's just another lesson for the folks starting out there. Just just do the do the work, you know, just ask. Just look for the deals and just putting in the effort. You'll find them whether it's the way that you expect it to or not.

Steve: Right. Yeah. The the luck favors. Yep. So nothing came from that post.

Did you ever figure out what happened with that house?

Jason: No. I got up with I think I got up with the owner at some point down the road, and she said that she wasn't interested in selling it because her daughter was using it for storage of all things, an entire house. And Unfortunately, that's not the first time I've heard something like that either. Yeah.

Steve: So do you buy so a neighbor someone else in the neighborhood says, I am interested in selling. Talked to you. Would you be interested in buying? And you bought that house.

Jason: Yes.

Steve: Got it. Okay. What was the story with that house?

Jason: Yes. So she asked me that. She said, hey. We're moving in with my mother-in-law who's legally blind because we have to take care of her because her husband recently passed. We can't afford to keep paying this mortgage and pay her mortgage on her house.

We need to sell quickly. And I just said, okay. Do you have an idea of what you might want for the house? And she said, 65,000. And I knew because it was literally my neighborhood, so I didn't need to check comps or anything.

I knew exactly what they were worth. So I was immediately like, okay. Yeah. I'd love to come see it. And so I went and looked at it, and I asked her.

I said, hey. If if we can handle all the paperwork for you, we cover all the closing costs. Will you let us do 60 instead of 65? And she talked to her husband for a second, and she's like, yeah. As long as you cover all the closing costs and you help us through this process because we've never done this before without a realtor or anything.

We don't know how it works. And, so that's what we went under contract. I knew we'd probably put 10,000 to 15,000 into it and the ARV was gonna be around $1.20. So I already knew the numbers based off of what I had learned from listening to podcasts. I knew the numbers should work.

And so he locked it up and granted, at this time, it's important to know, like, I had no money whatsoever. I had not 2 pennies to rub together. I didn't have money to pay a contractor. I didn't have money for materials.

Steve: You're still working this whole time. Right. Exactly. With no cash.

Jason: Exactly. And so I lock it up and then I'm like, holy crap. How am I gonna pay for this? Like, where am I gonna get the money? You know, I I wasn't I wasn't one of those guys that was like, okay.

Let me line up every single detail beforehand to make sure I can do it right before I go out and do anything. You know, it's much more the build your parachute on the way down kind of approach. Mhmm. So then I just started looking for hard money lenders and calling a bunch of them. And I knew I needed to find one that would fund a 100% because I didn't have money for a 10% down payment.

And then I ran into the issue of, oh, this is a manufactured home. We don't do those.

Steve: Oh.

Jason: So then it took me more calls and more calls and more calls. I finally found a hard money lender based out of Charlotte that even though it was my very first deal, I had no track record. And even though it was a manufactured home, they agreed to fund the 100% of the $60,000 purchase price and the $10,000 rehab budget that I gave them. So the $70,000 loan.

Steve: Wow. They took a fire on you.

Jason: Right. And what is even crazier is, again, when when a hard money lender gives you $10 for the rehab cost, they don't give you that money upfront, you know. It's on a draw schedule. You gotta do the work first And again, I had no money, and and I didn't have money to cover their points and closing costs upfront either. So I don't think you can do this anymore, but here's a little trick that I did.

I I took a credit card attached to my Venmo account and then I would send money through the through Venmo attached to the coming from the credit card. I would send money to my wife's Venmo account and then and it would charge the, like, extra 3% or whatever And then I would just send it back in cash from my wife's Venmo account back to my Venmo account. And then I would cash it out of my Venmo account into my bank account. So basically using a workaround through Venmo to do a cash advance on a credit card to come up with the $8 that I needed to get the deal closed. So I came up with the $8.

I got the deal closed. Well, then I still ran into the problem of how am I gonna fund the renovation, you know, before I get the draw money. So that I then use the credit card to buy the roughly $5 of materials. And I told the handyman, because he was a guy that lived in the neighborhood, I told him before, said, look, I don't have the money to pay you right now, but it's on a draw schedule. Here's the paperwork.

As soon as the work is done, they're gonna release that $10 to me, and then I can pay you your $5 for labor, whatever that was. And he was like, okay. No problem. This is a small enough job. It'll take me, like, a week.

I'm good with that. And so that's exactly what we did. It took him, like, a week to finish the work. I then requested the draw money from the hard money lender. They gave it to me.

I used that $10 to pay him his labor and pay back off the $5 of materials on the credit card. And then we listed it 01/01/2020.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jason: It's exactly when COVID was going down.

Steve: Well So Not quite yet. It's on its way.

Jason: Well, yes. Everybody everybody was already realizing it was happening.

Steve: Something's happening. Right.

Jason: So that's that's when we listed it. We go under contract not too long after and then people start losing their jobs everywhere. So the first buyer we had under contract lost their job, had to back out of the deal. We got it back under contract. That buyer loses their job.

They had to back out. Third buyer, we get under contract, almost loses her job too. We were a just barely able to salvage it. So even though it was fourteen days from the time that we closed on the purchase to the time it was relisted, that's how fast it was. Wow.

It still we still held it for a total of five and a half months because we basically had to sell it three separate times, you know. But all that being said, even with those extra holding costs and everything, we still profited a little over $26 on that flip. And for at the time with what I was making and for how much work I had to put into it, what my time was worth, that was that was game changing. That was that was a proof of concept for me.

Steve: Gotcha. How much were you making?

Jason: Around that time, I was only making, I think, around, like, 41,000 a year. By the time I eventually quit three and a half years later, was right around a $100,105, somewhere in that range.

Steve: Yeah. See, because this is complete ignorance on my end. Because I figured it'd be closer to the 100 k than it would be the 40 k. Right. So with all those certifications.

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Jason: Yep. Yeah. It it was because after I got the licenses and stuff and became a financial advisor, I didn't stay in that role long. And and the reason was I got into it under the impression that it was a investments job and an educating job, and both of which I enjoy. I I love how money works, and I love helping other people explain how money works and what the different types of accounts are and the tax implications of them.

I'm a nerd for that kind of stuff. But after I got the licenses and got into it, I learned pretty immediately that what I was getting into with that company was 100% a sales job. It was it was nothing but sales, sales, sales, sales, sales. They flew us out to their headquarters. They trained us on all sorts of sales tech techniques and stuff, which don't get me wrong are great.

I've I've benefited from those, but that's not what I thought I was getting into what I wanted. So I left that and had to go into that that $41,000 position originally was more of like a a financial, like, operations type role, like, more entry level type, position into the trust world. It wasn't until my division in the funeral and cemetery trust department got acquired by a different company that I got a promotion and started making a good amount more.

Steve: Gotcha. Okay. So you do your first deal. Proof of concept. Yeah.

This is real. 26,000, gross profit, feeling pretty good. Now what?

Jason: After that, it Especially because

Steve: it's an interesting time. Because, like, what I'm hearing in your world is that North Carolina definitely treated COVID significantly different than Here, like, it didn't happen. Didn't exist out here.

Jason: Really?

Steve: I mean, like, people wear masks and stuff, but, like, no one was losing their jobs. Like, we've closed I think, like, I closed my office for, like, three weeks. Like, I was holding holding live events here in 2020. Wow. So, like, that's why I'm like you're you're telling me that people are losing their jobs.

Like, it's just not calculating me because, like, I we're insulated in this bubble in Arizona. We're like because, like, people would come here from California, right, during COVID because, like, everything was shut down in California. Right. But come to Arizona to vacation because you could do whatever out here.

Jason: No. That's surprising. No. Most stuff got shut down, you know, most restaurants and things like that. So if you and that was the type of house that the buyer of that type of house is gonna be a lower income, somebody working at a restaurant or something like that.

Steve: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the we had a joke. Very dark joke. Right?

Curious out here. Okay. So proof of concept. Yep. Right now, like, now what?

Jason: So after that, I continued looking for deals, tried networking with people at investor events and things like that. Never never did any sort of paid marketing, immediately after for quite a while, but it took me eight months to find that second deal. It was a very long time, and then probably another six months or so by the time I found the third one. And the ironic part is after after that second one, that second one was pretty we ended up still making decent money on it, but it was so stressful and a lot of work and took so long. And there was a good amount of risk, because I I gave somebody too much control.

I I gave somebody that had a little bit more experience than me control to be, like, a project manager, and I made him a deal. I said, hey. I'll pay you x amount, like, minimum to manage this project, or best case, I'll pay you a percentage of the net profit if you use your guys and you fix it and stuff. But unfortunately, he was he was one of those guys that's very, very, very talented at design, you know, HDTV style stuff, fantastic, but absolutely atrocious at staying within budget. Wow.

Yeah. Exactly.

Steve: That kinda goes hand in hand.

Jason: Exactly. Yeah. And and I didn't I didn't know any better. So Yeah. That one, it we just kept spending more and more and more money.

And then it's like, okay, do you stop the bleeding or do you really feel like you have to do this because you've already done this, this, and this? It it it was hard for me to figure out. And then by the time we were done, we were priced so high over other comps in the neighborhood. We were really pushing the market. And what's wild to me, and this is this is why appraisals are just so ridiculous to me, is we listed this house at $3.79, which was really high for that neighborhood, but way different than anything else that's ever sold in that neighborhood.

Well, the when we got under contract, the buyer's first appraiser that went out there, he appraised it at $3.00 5. $74,000 too low. Well, the buyers luckily wanted it so badly, they changed lenders so they could have a new appraisal done. The new appraisal came in at $3.79 and we changed nothing. $74,000 difference with between a a few days or a week difference between two appraisers, and that's what it comes back with.

So, honestly, I feel like we just got lucky that we got a good appraiser the second time that was willing to be flexible. Because while I don't feel like it should have been as low as the first guy said, I also wouldn't really argue too much that the other appraiser could reasonably justify as high as he did either.

Steve: Well, I mean, there's a reason why they call it an opinion about it. Right. Okay. So I'm curious. You're listening to BiggerPockets.

Do they not talk about and I'm I'm speaking, like, with complete naivete. Right? Because I don't do they not talk about, like, how to market, how to find deals, and so on or, like, the the bigger pockets forum? I'm I'm I'm curious why it took so long between your first deal and your second deal to your third deal.

Jason: Yeah. I think it's a couple of things. I think, one, I wasn't super focused on it. It was more of just a side thing at the time. But also I was broke.

You know, I didn't Yeah. Didn't have the money to comfortably spend to, you know, do bandit signs or anything like that. You know, that was a cheaper form of marketing. Even though I made $26 on that first flip, that all immediately went away to, like, pay off debts and credit cards and things like that. So I was right back to square one.

Yeah. So I would say that's probably, you know, lack of money and just me not spending enough time being serious enough about it. Sure.

Steve: Okay. So you do a second deal, you do a third deal. When do you, like when does it when does the story change?

Jason: Yeah. Well, what's funny is after that second deal, I go home and I tell my wife, like, I don't think I'm gonna flip any more houses after this. Like like, it's just too stressful for the amount of return. We got too much risk involved. I I think I'll just, you know, do rentals slowly over time or something.

And then here we are now, and that's mostly all I do is flip houses. So I would say it was probably around maybe the fifth deal or so that things really started to click. I started figuring out how to find deals off market. I started having more credibility with wholesalers in the area, started going to more meetups. And because really, at that time, if you were going to a meetup and you had only done one deal, you were already further ahead than 80% of the people that showed up.

They were impressed with you. And Yeah. So I found that, you know, one good tip, you know, for newer people that have more time than money to find deals is spend as much time as you can trying to network with the aspiring or the wanna be wholesalers or newer investors. Because if you go to these meetups, if you're active in the local Facebook groups and stuff for real estate investors, you're gonna find these newer people doing deals or trying to do deals. If you give them the time of day where you're answering their questions, you're trying to help them comp something, etcetera, when they do if they do actually find a deal, which don't get me wrong, a lot of them won't, you'll just end up wasting a good chunk of your time.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jason: But for the ones that do get lucky and find a good deal, you're gonna be the person that they bring it to. Because you spent the time with them and they're brand new, you're probably the only buyer that they know in that market yet. So that was a big part of it is just networking with wholesalers. The other big thing that really set me apart in those early stages was when I found PPL. PPL was my just magic jet fuel because nobody knew about it yet.

It it was the the quality of PPL leads back then was way higher and the cost was way lower because nobody else knew about it yet. And so I was spending, I don't know, a 100 to a $125 per lead, and I was getting deals completely inexperienced, no sales training or anything. I was getting deals out of every 12 PPL leads back then when they were that cheap. And so back then, I wouldn't even mention PPL to anybody in my market. I would not talk about it at all, you know.

Today, I don't do it at all because most of it's trash. But back then, that that was what really helped, set me off initially.

Steve: Yeah. And I think people people's great. Right? Like, if you're starting off because, like, the alternative is PPC, right, which requires even more investment. PPL is where you can kinda, like, start getting your feet wet.

So you said around your fifth deal, things started getting real. And then you were going to meet ups, and you're having people send you deals. All along the way here, were you focused strictly on manufacturer or were we, like, single family? What were you doing?

Jason: Yeah. No. I never had an intention to focus solely on manufactured homes. Mhmm. That just happened to be the first one that I did.

Mhmm. And I didn't know enough to know that there were extra things I should look for or be careful with with those. I just knew I lived in one at the time. It was in my same neighborhood. Why wouldn't it work kind of deal.

And so no, it wasn't an intentional focus, but it did become one of those things that I became known for locally. A couple of the guys started calling me Trailer King. I'm like, it could there's there could be better names than that. Right? Yeah.

You know, but,

Steve: Hey, man. Beyond the niche.

Jason: Hey, it it worked. And so there was there was just most investors in our area back then didn't wanna touch those. They didn't know enough about them. They didn't think they'd be worth enough. They didn't know that you could get the same con conventional types of financing on them on the back end.

You know, all those little things, they just didn't know, so they stayed away from them. Now I may have shot myself in the foot by talking about it too much locally because now everybody locally is is doing them. But, you know, hey, there's enough for everybody to Yeah. I mean have some.

Steve: I remember there was a stretch. We were doing so well with manufacturing because no one wanted to do them. Right? We were doing really well with them. I remember there was a period of time.

I think we had, like, 200, 300 k on the board. And then I learned, like, we were underwriting these terribly.

Jason: Mhmm.

Steve: There are lots of lessons, things you gotta know Yep. If you're gonna be purely king. Right? Right? So for someone who's listening here and they're like, hey.

Okay. Maybe we just have to shift our focus a bit. We gotta do more manufactured homes. What do you need to know, if you're gonna start focusing on manufactured homes?

Jason: Oh, man. How much time do we have?

Steve: Two hours. We got two full hours.

Jason: Yeah. Now so so no. I say that jokingly. There's really not that much. There's there's a small handful of nuances that you wanna know, but if you just know those handful of things, you know, you can do it safely.

The biggest, like, I guess, differentiator that, you know, something that you need to know that I I hear people get wrong all the time, and I'm sure you've seen it too, is most people don't understand the difference between a manufactured home and a modular home. Most people, at least around my area, whether it's lenders or realtors or newer investors, whatever, most people think that once you put a manufactured home on a permanent foundation, then it's considered considered a modular home.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jason: And that's just that's just not the case. They're totally different things. And so to give you just a real quick difference, manufactured homes are, like, single wides or double wides, and they're regulated by the Department of HUD. They're built to HUD codes, to to HUD standards. So they don't necessarily have to meet your local building code standards.

So that's why, like, even if your local building code standards say your your wall studs need to be 16 inches on center, that's why it's still okay for a double wide two by fours to be 24 inches on center. And so modular is different. So manufactured, they're built to HUD standards. They're usually built on a big steel chassis, and then they're shipped in one or two big pieces. They're put on the blocks on the foundation.

They remove the tongues, the wheels, the axles, and then they put some sort of skirting around it. But just because it's on a permanent foundation doesn't mean that it's not still a manufactured home. Now if you wanna get into semantics, maybe you can make that argument that it's no longer a mobile home because it doesn't have wheels anymore, but that doesn't really matter. Mhmm. Big difference is modulars are different.

They modulars are never on a frame with wheels and axles. Modulars are built in sections in a warehouse Mhmm. And delivered on-site and put together, you know, like a puzzle. So, you know, if you were to look at my house, my house is two stories, six bedrooms, 3,600 square feet. You would never think that it is, but it's a modular home.

Doesn't look anything like a double wide or a single wide. And there are plenty of modular homes that look that's, like, actually, probably most modular homes look like double wides. And so the the big difference there, the reason that matters is because if you're somebody getting into something and you think that it's a modular home and you're basing your ARV off of modular home comps, you risk getting burned. Because modulars, as far as appraisers are concerned, are comparable construction to stick built houses, Whereas manufactured homes are not. They're lower quality of construction and thus, they sell for less.

In our area, you know, comparing the two, if if they're both around the same age, say they're 20 or 30 years old or whatever, you're probably looking at about a 30 to $40,000 premium on a modular versus a manufactured where we are. That's the biggest thing to know is just those two are are separate. One of the other things is with manufactured homes, it it's gotta be on a permanent foundation. If if you wanna be able to exit on the back end, you're selling it to a retail buyer that's using it, that's gonna buy it with a conventional loan, FHA, USDA, VA, etcetera, then it needs to be on a permanent foundation. The tongue and the wheels and the axles need to have been removed, and there has to be some form of skirting.

Now another common misconception with the skirting that I come across, even with very experienced realtors and lenders alike, is a lot of people think that the skirting is part of the foundation. Like, they'll they'll post it online or on the MLS and they'll say, you know, new double wide with a brick foundation. And I'm like, no. The the skirting is not part of the foundation. It doesn't hold up any of the weight at all.

You know, the the whole purpose of the skirting, it the main purpose is just to keep rodents out, to keep possums and cats or whatever from being able to get underneath there and chew stuff up. And so when it comes to financing, most agents and lenders and stuff that don't know any better, they think that if they see a single wide or a double wide with just that cheap vinyl skirting around it, they think that that would not qualify for financing, but they're wrong. Mhmm. It does. As long as it's strong enough or there's a a piece of wood behind it or something to give it enough strength to where a rodent couldn't push underneath it Mhmm.

Then that's good. And then, appraiser for VA or FHA or whatever, they're gonna pass it. Yeah. Another big thing to keep in mind as far as, like, big potential landmines is if it's been moved or not before. If it's ever been moved from its original location, to my knowledge and obviously, fact check this for yourself.

But to my knowledge, if it's been moved once, it's disqualified from every type of financing except for VA. VA loans will allow a trailer to have been moved once from their original permanent location. And then it's my understanding that if it's been moved a second time, then it's disqualified from VA as well. Now you run into the issue of, well, this might be a thirty year old double wide that's been here for twenty years. How in the world would an appraiser, anybody for VA or FHA ever know that it was moved Mhmm.

Twenty years ago? That's a fair point. They may not. You know, I think most of it depends on if the appraiser has any reason, that he's suspicious that it's been moved. If there's any signs of, you know, dirt that's been rustled or whatever Mhmm.

Then he might go and look further into it. If he doesn't, you're probably gonna be fine. But if he does, you could be in big trouble. So that's why if if you do, in fact, know that it has been moved at some point in the past, it might be one you wanna steer clear of unless you're just getting such a killer deal on that you're fine just selling it to a cash buyer on the back end.

Steve: Yeah. And that was our our experience. It was, for us I don't remember if it was VA or whatever specifically, but I know, like, we can move it once here. If you move it twice, forget about it. It's mobile home.

It's treated like a mobile home. Yep. And then the other one was the year. Or was it 1974 or whatever?

Jason: '76.

Steve: Yeah.

Jason: July 15. Yeah. So 07/15/1976 is when HUD started regulating manufactured homes. So if you buy one from before then, you're not gonna be able to qualify for any sort of conventional financing. If you buy one after then, they should have a little metal HUD tag on each section.

So if if it's a single wide, just one HUD tag. If it's a double wide, two HUD tags.

Steve: Yeah. And I think, like, the amount of time we've lost is looking for those damn tags. Yeah. You got any nightmare stories with with these manufactured homes?

Jason: No. Not really. Not not with those. There there could have been early on if something would have been wrong that we didn't know to look for. But, luckily, while we were ignorant of those things, we didn't have any of those issues.

But well, I guess I guess I can give you an example of something that has been an issue in the past is when you so North Carolina is what we call an attorney state. So we have to have an attorney to close our real estate transactions.

Steve: Yeah.

Jason: So there's plenty of times where you get an attorney that's not very experienced with closing manufactured home deals that they don't do all the title work correctly. They don't search for an open title with the DMV. They sometimes, if if you as the actual buyer don't explicitly tell them that, hey, there is a manufactured home on this property, then they might not know that or care enough to go look for it, and they might just do a title search on the land. And then here you are, you're getting a title insurance policy. If you're not checking through that policy to know what it's covering Mhmm.

You you may think that they check the whole title on the trailer as well and that you have title insurance on all of it, but then you really don't. And we've had that happen before when we've had a wholesaler that was just adamant that we had to close with their attorney. And now I don't do that anymore at all. Now when we have wholesalers bring us a deal if I want it, I'll tell them the only way I'm buying is we close with my attorney. I'm not using yours.

And when we've done that, if the attorney has messed up, we've had it happen where we we closed on that. And then when we are going to sell it on the back end, the attorney that's representing that buyer does do the title search correctly, and they find out, oh, there's still an active title on this double wide with the DMV. Oh, and by the way, there's also a lien against that title too. And I'm like, are you kidding me? How did the other attorney not find this?

And then so that can be a mess. With the title work, you wanna make sure the attorney you use really knows what they're doing. You wanna make sure they're taking, ideally, you wanna find, a data plate from the inside of the trailer. It's usually about the size of a full sheet of paper. And it'll have a serial number or a VIN number on it.

And typically, the data plate is gonna be glued onto the inside of a kitchen cabinet underneath the sink or inside of a laundry cabinet or maybe about chest height in a closet somewhere. Sometimes though, if somebody's replaced the kitchen cabinets and didn't keep that, the data plate may not be there. If that's the case, the best workaround for that I'm giving you guys free game right now. The the best workaround for that is you go outside to where the siding is in the corners of the house. As long as the siding hasn't also been replaced and disposed of, there should be those little metal HUD tags with the little code on it.

You take that. You can go on ibts.org, type in the HUD tag number, and if they have that data plate in their files, they'll email you a digital copy of it. If they don't have it, they'll email you, IBTS certification, and either one of those is sufficient for the closing attorney to be able to use that information to search with the DMV and check that out. So check for a data plate. If you don't have a data plate, order a replacement through IBTS.

If they if they don't have the data plate, they'll send you the IBTS certification. And then make sure your closing attorney is actually checking for that. And if there's not an active title, the DMV should provide them with a letter that says and also just to clarify this, everything that I'm saying is only relative to North Carolina. Yeah. I don't know if Arizona's DMV is any different, if that works differently.

That's how it's done here. And then the other thing to make sure the title's clear and that it can qualify for financing is that if there is an active title on the double wide is that it gets canceled with the DMV. And at least where we live, there's also a form called declaration of intent to affix to real property. That's a form that gets recorded with the county that tells the county, hey. We have canceled the title with the DMV, and thus, you are now allowed to consider this as real property, as real estate, and now you're allowed to tax us on the value of the building as well.

Because before doing that, when you still have an active title on the double wide or the single wide, it's still considered a vehicle. Mhmm. It's considered personal property. So you get taxed by the DMV for that. You only get taxed by the county for property taxes on the land.

But when you record that intent to a fix, you're telling the county, hey, you can tax me on all of it now because the DMV is no longer taxing me on the trailer. So the title's canceled, the intent to a fix gets recorded, you've got clean title. You're you're good to go. You're gonna have no problems getting it sold on the back end.

Steve: It's all great information. I wish I knew. But I'll still do manufactured homes. So that one where again, your attorney did do a good job. You covered by title insurance?

Did you have to come out of pocket? Like, it was your fault for not reading your title commitment?

Jason: You know, I'm not sure what could have been. It it's possible it could have been. I was very fortunate that the seller that I had bought the property from was still alive and willing to help. And I was able to get him to order, like, file for lost title with the DMV. So they sent him that lost title, and then he was able to sign it over to me.

And then I was able to take it to the DMV and get it canceled myself. So we were able to get it All worked out. Cleared up. It it was fine, but those what ifs do scare me for sure.

Steve: So you didn't make a clear, like, I'm gonna be the trailer king person, but you became trailer king person. So, like, what happens right now, I'm in Wilmington and I find a single family home. Do a call. What do you do on those properties?

Jason: Oh, we flip those two.

Steve: Flip those two? Okay. So you're not saying we don't do anything else. It's just this is the brand. Do you go by Trailer King or only other people call you that?

Jason: No. No. Just a couple of the local guys do.

Steve: Gotcha.

Jason: Yeah.

Steve: So then are you primarily doing deals from wholesalers or you're doing because you say you stopped doing the PPL. Did you do marketing or do you just split deals that people send to you?

Jason: Yeah. So we do probably about a third of our deals come from wholesalers. Mhmm. The other the rest of it comes from our own marketing. So we do, Facebook ads, Instagram ads, and PPC, primarily.

Mhmm. Occasionally, we'll throw something else in there to try it out, the billboard, radio ads, whatever.

Steve: Yeah.

Jason: But, and and SEO. Is it so we do Facebook, Instagram, PPC, and SEO. SEO has been just just crushing it lately. I mean, we're we're in a smaller market. I don't even though we're only flipping on average around 50 houses a year, I don't know anybody that's doing more than that in our market.

Yeah. So SEO, it's it's absolutely crushing it. I'm I'm astounded with with how well that's doing. The other thing in the last, like, year and a half that's been a really cool unexpected deal source has been out of state wholesalers. And it's because we do so much volume in our area through our main LLC that our name is all over the public records.

So when you have these websites like PropStream or BatchLeads or whatever that they're you're pulling up cash buyer lists, When out of state wholesalers get some random one off deal in our area, we're usually at the top of that list, so they find me. And so I get I get at least at least one deal a quarter from an out of state wholesaler, and they're usually some of the best ones because they don't know the market as well or or maybe they're just weren't a a lot of great comps. Or I've got one right now that we're under contract to sell. It's a double wide on six acres in the little town that I live in about twenty five minutes north of Wilmington. And the wholesaler from out of state found me.

Never heard of him before. Never talked to him. Probably never will again. He's in he lives in California. And we close on this deal.

I subdivide off five and a half acres onto its own, and it already had an existing septic system and a a water tap in place. And there was the double wide that was still there. We subdivided that onto it. It's, like, three quarters of an acre ish lot. We renovated it.

We're under contract to sell it right now. And then the five acres, we were under contract recently. That fell through. So we're that's back listed for sale right now. But all that to say, once those two sell, we're gonna net close to $200,000 on that one deal just because that wholesaler didn't have the market knowledge of our area and also just didn't know how to look at the property as a whole and because, really, the market shouldn't matter.

You should have been able to know, like, oh, you can subdivide this and sell this and make a whole lot more money, you know. But, hey, I'm glad he didn't know it because Oh,

Steve: but then he'd also have to do it. So I don't know. Perhaps. Yeah. Because, you know, California is doing this fine.

Get that nitty gritty for being a specialist Yeah. Is certainly helpful. So right now, like, if I go investor list, investor base, or resi, or anything else, I got a deal in Wilmington, North Carolina. You're saying you're just one of the people that pop up because you're how many properties you've bought over the years.

Jason: Right. Once once you get past the, like, Clayton Homes and Oakwood Homes that are always at the very top of those lists Yeah. Then, yeah, we're we're always up there.

Steve: That's like that's not SEO but kinda SEO. It's just like you just create a brand or people just go to you. Yep. That's pretty slick.

Jason: Yeah.

Steve: That's cool. Okay. So, you know, we're talking about, like, being able to travel. So, you know, you're saying, like, a, I don't not, like, the biggest player all all in all, but, like, the biggest player in your market, and you're still able to travel. Right?

Like, what did you build in place? Because, like, we get into this business, for, like, time freedom, financial freedom. We don't want anyone to ever tell us what to do again. Or we do ever want whatever we want. That's the story we get into business for ourselves.

Right? But then once we get into business for ourselves, it's not about any of those things. It's about, like, how big can I get? How many deals can I do? How much revenue can I drive?

How many doors do I own? It was all these other things. And you're beating yourself going crazy, and you forget why you started. Right? But it sounds like you've got your head on straight.

You know, talking about traveling, you were gone for three and a half months.

Jason: Yeah.

Steve: Right? Which I don't think I don't know a lot of business owners that can just take three months off or leave for three months and still everything's still going. Right. So let's talk about what are the systems you have in place? What does your business look look like right now so that you can just travel the world?

Jason: Yeah. No. Honestly, you may be surprised at how unstructured my business is. Yeah. It's it's way less, you know, SOPs and specific systems and processes and a lot more of just really good people on our team.

And mostly, you know, checklists on spreadsheets, you know. Like, most of what we do is is super simple. We don't we don't, you know, yet have much of any AI stuff, you know, although definitely planning on chatting with you about that soon. But no. Right now so just before I left, we had myself and three full time employees.

We had two guys on the sales team, and we had the one project manager. Mhmm. Well, the one one of the guys on the sales team, we parted ways right before I left on

Steve: the trip. And His choice was yours?

Jason: It was mine. I still I'd still consider him a great friend.

Steve: So Yeah. But it's a major decision right before leaving.

Jason: It it was. It was and it wasn't made easily, but, it was the right thing, I think, for both of us. I I really do mean that. So when I left, we then only had one sales guy and one project manager. And

Steve: No back office. It's just sales guy and project manager.

Jason: That's it.

Steve: K.

Jason: That's it. And I wanted to hire an executive assistant before I left, but the before I left, but the things that happened trying to hire and the timing of it, it was just getting too close to leaving that if I had if I had a brand new hire while I was gone, it would just make more work for me than while I was than me just doing it myself. Mhmm. So I postponed that hire and hopefully, I'll pick that up here soon. But right now, it's just, actually, my dad is my full time project manager.

And, there's this a guy, Anthony, that's our sales guy that he, right now, is handling all of it. He's handling lead management, acquisitions, and even transaction coordination to get those closed. And he he's an animal. He's absolutely killing it. I mean, I I started out on that trip the first roughly half of it being able to get away with only working, you know, thirty minutes to an hour or so per weekday.

But then he because when the other guy, got let go, Anthony was the one that stepped in because the other guy was acquisitions. And so then Anthony stepped up and was covering both, and he crushed it. So he blew my expectations out of the water that so much so that I was like, holy crap. You gotta chill out. Like, I cannot keep up with how many deals you're locking up for us right now.

And it went from me spending half an hour to an hour per business day to, like, really needing, you know, two to three to three and a half hours per business day.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jason: Because, basically, he he does everything from from getting the lead to he doesn't do the marketing, but when the lead comes in, he does everything from qualifying the lead to getting it closed except for lining up the private money. I line up the private lender, and, he went to all the closings while I was gone. He signed for them as soon as it was closed. My dad took over the project management side. He met the contractor out there, changed the locks, talked about what needed to be done, got it done.

He then he just emails me when it's ready to be listed, then I just email the realtor that we're gonna use for that one and say, hey, this one's ready for photos and and go from there. We really we're we're definitely not organized enough and systematized in a way that, like, a business would be sellable at all. Mhmm. But we're set up in a way where we can move extremely efficiently and very fast and still be pretty relaxed and have fun at the same time.

Steve: Oh, I mean, what I'm hearing, you're really lean. Right. Right. I mean, you got a sales guy. Is he commission only?

Jason: Yes.

Steve: And then you got your dad. He He's commission only also. Commission only. So I'm not hearing a lot of fixed expenses. No.

So you're living a pretty good life and you're able to travel travel. We were talking before the show, not just travel, but travel with your wife. Five kids.

Jason: Yes.

Steve: So, to be able to do all these things, it's pretty wild. Right? To because, because, again, like, you, you know, you talk about, like, once you get into the business, you think, oh, I gotta keep this person, keep with that person. Well, in order to keep with that person, I gotta have this many people on staff. I gotta have this much in overhead.

I gotta have this much in marketing. Right? And I need to have, like, these crazy CRMs and I need to have this, that. All these things, all these obligations, expectations, and, like, you gotta you're required to do, which makes it harder because now you gotta do more to make sure you you're you're profitable, which makes it harder to just leave completely. Right?

You're able to leave completely and disconnect. Not, like, unplug, but able to run everything remotely.

Jason: Yeah.

Steve: Were there situations where they were like, I can't like, this this feels unsustainable or it just goes pretty smooth for three and a half months?

Jason: It was it was mostly smooth. There there are a few things that I had to make a keep a list of that, like, hey, I I don't wanna try to implement this new thing or do this one thing until I get back. Mhmm. And some of those have to do with specific projects, like, you know, we own a a RV park that we're doing some major infrastructure work on right now. I don't want my project manager to have to get involved with that or learn that how to do it or who to use or any of that because I already know how to do it.

Mhmm.

Steve: You

Jason: know, and plus, he wouldn't be getting paid on it because we're not selling it. So there's no commission to be made. And so there's a few things like that that, you know, do I necessarily have to be there myself? No. But I kinda want to be.

Mhmm.

Steve: Gotcha. And somewhere along the way, you picked up some, ocean property.

Jason: Yes.

Steve: Talk to me about, about the ocean property.

Jason: Okay. So the most recent, like, really killer deal that we did was a oceanfront beach house in Carolina Beach, North Carolina. It's thirty minutes basically from my house. Mhmm. It's three stories above the stilts, so four stories, five bedrooms, three or three and a half bathrooms.

And we bought it from a wholesaler for $8.65. The wholesaler had locked it up for 800, so he made 65,000. We paid $8.65. We put around $2.10 into renovations.

Steve: 210,000.

Jason: Yes. We did it up. Now a huge portion of that was we had to replace all three HVAC systems. We had to replace all of the exterior windows and doors with impact rated glass windows and doors. You know, so just between all the windows and doors and HVAC, you're probably, I don't know, 80 or $90 alone.

Steve: Wow.

Jason: That that was a lot. The the rest of it was mostly just major cosmetic. But we did, like, really nice high end finishes, like, nice quartz kitchen countertop with the waterfall edge and quartz up the backsplash as well. Mhmm. So we did it really nice.

I used an interior designer for all of that because I absolutely suck at that. Like, all of our flips are like, okay. We're doing the same color paint, same color LVP, same finish for light fixtures and everything. But this was different. And so and then we so we spent about $2.10 on the renovations and then probably, I think, around 45,000 in furnishings.

And so altogether, withholding costs and stuff, we were into it for right around, like, 1.15. It appraised shortly after when we did the cash out refi at 1.545. And, honestly, I think that was a little conservative. I think even up to 1.7 is still pretty realistic, pretty reasonable. But even with that, we were able to cash out refi.

We got back all of our money except for about $30. And now a buddy of mine that owns a short term rental property management company out there shout out to Joe if you see this. He's incredible. He's managing it, and this property is doing so much better than we could have ever imagined. Like, my hope was that after the refi, it would at least just do enough to break even and pay for itself on an annual basis.

It's already at a point where it's easily gonna do that plus net us another 40 or 50,000 a year on top of that, at least. I mean, this thing is on pace to probably gross 250,000 or more. I mean, it's it's nuts. And so now and now, you know, we also because I own it, we get to use it. So now this past December, my family stayed in it from, like, December 16 through, like, January 2.

So, like, Christmas and New Year's, we got to stay in it, and we're gonna make that a tradition. I've already got those dates blocked off for us to stay for this year. And so that's just really cool. We get to use it. It's it's a trophy asset.

It's diversification for our long term portfolio too because I've got an RV park. I've got apartment complexes. I've got a few single family rentals and stuff. But this is the only short term rental, and it's oceanfront. So it's gonna appreciate way more rapidly, you know, and plus it's given me massive tax benefits for, you know, last year.

And even better than that, we're right now under contract to buy a 12 unit, boutique, beach motel that is only about forty five minutes away from that one, three rows from the ocean, turnkey, doesn't need any work. It's worth a minimum of 2,000,000, like, very conservatively 2,000,000 as it is. We're under contract to buy it for 1.2 right now, and the seller agreed to give us a quarter million carryback at closing. So we're gonna use a bridge lender to fund the 1.2 purchase and then his $2.50 carryback for all of the holding costs and closing costs and stuff, the holding cost to get us through this upcoming off season, then we'll get it running and operating, cash out refi, get all our money back, probably extra on top of that. Mhmm.

And then it'll be more than breakeven as well. So that that'll be another one to talk about, you know, another year from now, give you an update on. He picked up this,

Steve: beach property, from a wholesaler. Yep. So how did he find you?

Jason: They he already knew me, but he didn't bring it straight to me. He ran it by a couple other local investors first, and one of them was my property manager. And and granted, he wasn't my property manager for anything before because I didn't have short term rentals prior to this one. But he's a really good friend of mine. And so when the wholesaler brought it to him, he said, hey.

I'm too busy growing the management business right now. I can't take on something like that. But I know Jason's been looking for something like that for a few years. Why don't you run it by him? And so the wholesaler then brought it to me.

And the wholesaler, he said that he thought the ARV was only like 1.3. And I was immediately just like, you're wrong. There's no way. I mean, I didn't tell him that. But I just knew, you know, as a that's one thing that I've always felt like I've been really good about is listening to the numbers because this deal was brought to several other people locally.

And and they were experienced people that could have done it, that had the resources to do it, had the connections, could get the funding for it. But because of the size of the the project, the dollar amount, they were all too scared to do it. They they were just too risky in their minds, which is totally fair and nothing wrong with that. But for me, I looked even with some of their feedback and even one of the guys that was, like, no, I wouldn't I wouldn't do it. Even with that, I listened to the numbers instead.

I felt comfortable with what the numbers were showing me.

Steve: Yeah.

Jason: And now, I'm really glad I'm I did. And and I think most of them now wish that they they would have too.

Steve: Yeah. Especially when they listen to this podcast.

Jason: Yeah. Yeah. For sure.

Steve: Yeah. You gotta make sure you send it to them. And then the the the 12 unit beach motel.

Jason: Yes.

Steve: How'd you get that deal?

Jason: That one so I got that one because of the beach house that I bought, believe it or not. The broker that was representing the seller or is representing the seller on the hotel is just a pocket listing. The broker, he was originally trying to buy the hotel and another property across the street that the same people owned. That fell apart. He wasn't gonna be able to buy it.

So then he just said, hey, let me represent you to sell the hotel. I'll get it sold quickly. And because this broker so happens to own and live in the beach house immediately next door to my beach house Mhmm. That's how we knew each other. Oh.

Because when I prior to that, we didn't know each other at all. When I bought the beach house, he called me. He found my info and he called me. He said, hey. Would you have any interest in selling that to me for a profit the way that it is?

You can just walk away, not have to do anything. I'll pay you a good amount more than what you bought it for. And I was just like, nah, man. Sorry. I'm already emotionally attached to this one.

That's not gonna happen. But because of that and he saw he saw that I had the resources and ability and people to close on the property, get the funding for it, get it renovated in a reasonable amount of time, get it refinanced, you know, a successful exit, and then get it managed successfully because since he lives there, he can see all the guests coming in and out every few days. So because he saw that level of execution, he thought of me. He brought the deal to this is all what he told me, why he brought it to me. He brought the deal to me, and at first, he was asking 1.4.

And I was like, that already seems like a pretty great deal, but, like, short term rentals aren't really my thing, especially not a hotel. I don't I don't know about that. Let me just throw him a crazier lower offer and he'll probably just go away. And so then I offered 1.15 with the quarter million seller carry back and he came back at 1.2 with the quarter million carry back and I'm like, are you kidding me? Like, I never thought you would actually go for something like this.

Yeah. So, yeah, that's how that happened. Now I'm under contract to to buy it. And, I mean, it's a it was built in 2013. It's gorgeous.

Steve: So I'm hearing a lot of it is just doing the right things over and over again. The luck Yeah. Luck will favor you. Right. Yeah.

Wow. Okay. So you're having deals sent to you. Sounds like you're top of mind. You're you're going to your Rios and top of everything else.

Not only do you have this reach, but, like, people find you organically.

Jason: Right. So I'm

Steve: trying to think, like, what are the lessons? Someone's watching this.

Jason: Or what are the lessons they

Steve: can take from this? Right? Like, buy things in your name.

Jason: Right. Or at least the same LLC name.

Steve: Same LLC. Right. Over and over again. I guess, because you because you're we process a lot of transactions through your company. Do you wholesale or is it so everything you flip everything?

Jason: Flip or whole tail. Yeah.

Steve: Flip or whole tail. Everything. Yeah. So I mean, it sounds like you just keep doing things and it'll it'll work itself out as long as you're executing and people can see that you're

Jason: Absolutely.

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Steve: Now you, you're also working on something else, a debt fund.

Jason: Yes.

Steve: Walk me through what's going on with the debt fund.

Jason: Yeah. So we've got an attorney helping us create a SEC regulated debt fund right now. Mhmm. And the the main purpose is just mainly to well, one, to lower our cost of capital, but also to streamline processes. Because right now, we already work with probably, I'd say, 15 to 20 different private lenders, you know, and some of them only have $35,000 with us.

Some of them a few of them have over $1,000,000 each with us. So with all of our flips, you know, we have $5.06, or 7,000,000 at any given point, amongst all of our deals that are going on. And the goal with the debt fund is to be to get it to where we have all of the investors, the private lenders in that fund, all at the slightly lower interest rate, perhaps, than what we're getting, you know, our our average interest rate right now. But also, a big part is to streamline everything. Because right now, the way our process works is we get a deal under contract, then I have to reach out to one of our private lenders with the info and say, hey.

Do you wanna fund this one? They look at it. They say yes. I send their info to the closing attorney. Closing attorney preps their loan docs, charges me $650 to do that, and then, sends the loan docs to the private lender to review, sends them to me to review, and then we close on it.

And then when we sell the property, the attorney has to bother the private lender to get a payoff statement. And there's just a lot of steps involved, a lot of different things. You know, you gotta make sure that your private lender is listed as lost payee on your insurance policies for all these properties and all these different things. Whereas, if you had a debt fund where all the money was in there and the debt fund was the sole lender to the flipping business, then we can streamline all of that. We can use the exact same loan docs every single time that we prepped ourselves so we can save $650 per transaction there at the closing.

And then we don't have to bother the private lender with the getting the payoff statement or reviewing loan docs or any of that stuff. And, you know, one of the biggest benefits to the private lenders too is that even if they are getting a slightly lower interest rate than what they were used to getting from us before, their money is staying invested twenty four seven.

Steve: Always running.

Jason: Right. So even if even if you're getting 10% in the fund instead of 12% outside of the fund Well, outside of the fund, your funds may have been back in your pocket uninvested for one, two, or three months before the next appropriately sized deal came up for you to fund again. Yeah. Whereas in the fund, it stays invested the entire time. You know, and the fund would still have deeds of trust against the properties, you know, all those kinds of things.

But, yeah, that's what we're we're working on right now. If anybody is interested in learning about it, they can go to jvwithjv.com. Mhmm. Thought that was clever to get that URL.

Steve: Yeah. I like

Jason: it. Yeah. But, yeah. Happy to chat.

Steve: And then, I also saw here what's interesting is that you've got almost a 100 doors, but you don't keep single family homes.

Jason: Correct.

Steve: So walk me through the mindset there.

Jason: Right. So this goes back to listening to the numbers. I knew from the beginning, the very first flip that I did, I was looking at it and I was looking at my return on equity. And I knew my return on equity was not gonna be good if I kept it as a rental. And so ROE, you know, basically, in most markets throughout The States, the the the sales price of a property is so much higher than you know, the ratio just doesn't balance what you can sell it for versus what you can rent it for.

And so I looked at it and I said or or and let me just give you an example. Let's say let's say I flip a house. I've got $70,000 in equity in that house. And let's say I, you know, sell it, pay some closing cost, commissions, or whatever, and I'm walking away with $50,000. Well, if I can take that $50,000 and invest it in the multifamily or part of a down payment in the multifamily or an RV park or something like that, how much of a return do I think I can realistically get versus the alternative of if I refinance it where rates are as high as they are right now, especially, and have it as a rental with rates as high as they are right now, I am lucky if I can get a pure net of a $100 a month.

You know? So let's just say if I can even get a $100 per month pure net, that's $1,200 a year. $1,200 a year based off of my opportunity cost of the 50,000 I could put other elsewhere, that's a, you know, what, 2.4% return on my money. Like, some people might be okay with that. They may be fine.

They may say, trying to find another deal to put it in is too stressful for me. You know, I don't wanna do it and that's fine, you know. Or if they say, I wouldn't put it into real estate and therefore, I would have huge taxes from the sale, well, then that's another reason you may consider keeping it. But in my case, I knew if I'm selling real estate and I'm buying bigger real estate, I can do cost seg accelerate depreciation, take all that, offset those gains from the flips anyway, and then my return on equity is gonna be much higher than 2.4%. Because you have multifamily, you have a much lower cost per door if you're buying those right.

Mhmm. You know, so the amount of rents that you can get per, you know, dollar or spending on the purchase price is higher and thus, in the end, your return on equity is better. So nearing multifamily predominantly? Yes. 60 of our doors are multifamily.

There's an eight unit, two different 16 units, and a 20 unit complex.

Steve: And it'd be another 12 unit?

Jason: Yeah. 12 unit little beach motel.

Steve: Yeah.

Jason: And we have a 33 pad RV park right now.

Steve: Gotcha. Alright. And then, Marcus Crigler, who we just mentioned a moment ago, has, I guess, has made a profound impact in your business. Am I reading this correctly?

Jason: Yes.

Steve: What what exactly how exactly did what his talk affect your business?

Jason: Yeah. So it was at one of the Collective Genius events, I think roughly about a year ago, where he walked through the the four, you know, primary phases of business, you know, ownership. And, you know, phase one is is hustle. Phase two is, stabilize, I think. And then three is scale, and four is exit.

Well, he talked about the problem is what we all do every entrepreneur seems to make this mistake. If you found one that hasn't made this mistake, please let me know. Is that we started the hustle phase and we skip the stabilized phase. We jump straight to the scaling phase Of course. Before we have the stuff in place that we need to be able to manage that growth.

And the biggest aspect to that that phase, number two, the stable phase is managing your liquidity and and your cash. And for me, that's something earlier on. So those 60 apartment doors were the first in our rental portfolio. And it was a long time after those before I bought anything else to hold because I did exactly that. I scaled too quickly.

I'd I'd be successful flipping houses, generating capital, and then I'd immediately take a huge chunk of that capital and say, oh, let me put here's a good deal on a complex. Let me put that as a down payment. And then six months later, I get into this this money crunch where I'm like, oh, crap. These deals didn't sell on time that I expected to, and then these expenses were higher and this and this. And all these things that, you know, could go wrong timing wise did go wrong.

And I'm like, man, how am I gonna just cover overhead for the next month until these three things sell? And then you're going to, you know, a private lender and saying, hey. I this is what's going on. Would you be willing to lend me $50 or a $100 unsecured for, you know, one month or two months? And then as soon as these three deals sell, you know, I'll get you paid back plus interest.

And thankfully for me, I had those relationships with those lenders already where they trusted me and they were willing to do that. And so I was always able to make it work when I got into those, you know, tight money pinches temporarily. And they and they never lasted long, but it took me several times of that happening before I finally learned that mistake. Because, eventually, I got to the point where one day my liquidity was really low and I was stressing out, like, man, are these all of these checks that are floating out, they're gonna clear this week because if all of them try to clear this week, one of them might bounce. And I was I was taking that stress home with me.

And I finally got to the point where I was just like, what am I doing? Like, this is all 100% self inflicted. I've been through this low liquidity position two or three times in the past and I still did it again. What is wrong with me? And so I was already kind of on that journey before I heard Marcus's presentation.

I was kind of already on that journey of building up very healthy reserves and getting to that point, but it was his presentation that really nailed down the importance of it and also gave me, like, more specific numbers or or percentages to target, like percentages of debt to have as reserves and things like that.

Steve: Yeah. You say two or three times. You're a lot smarter smarter than I am. I I mean, for me, it's easily over double digit. Because, like, every time you feel like you gotta figure it out, then you stretch yourself to, like, crap.

How did I do this do this myself again? And it's also really easy to do that when you're flipping. Right? Like, the flippers are the ones that have to be the most financially responsible. I mean, like, everyone has to be financially responsible, but the flippers, you got earnest money, down payments, draws, contractors, labor.

There's just always money out on the street.

Jason: Right. It's

Steve: a lot hard as a flipper.

Jason: The big benefit for us with all of our private lenders because they trust us so much is I don't have any draw schedules. They all give me a 100% of the rehab money upfront. And so that makes that makes things a whole lot easier to to forecast.

Steve: For sure. I mean, yeah. Definitely, if you have a good relationship with a lender, because that's like I always borrowed purchase price, plus closing cost plus rehab all upfront.

Jason: Yeah.

Steve: If you guys aren't doing that, consider it. Definitely consider that. And also no payments. I don't know about you. Purchase the sale.

All that plus I didn't pay you anything.

Jason: Yeah. About half of our lenders are that way. The others, I think might live off of the monthly interest payments.

Steve: Yeah. And then, last question here is, you use, you have a methodology, strategies you like for attracting private lenders. What is your go to strategy? How do you generally attract lenders into your world?

Jason: Yeah. No. Honestly, I'd I've never been super intentional about it. I just honestly do things like this. Get on podcasts that are super credible Mhmm.

And go to meetups. I'm I'm on the board of the largest meetup in our area, and I'm Okay. I'm usually the one that's hosting that event. Not not speaking, but just being the host of it. And so I get that, you know, level of credibility, you know, having been in that position of authority in front of people, that instantly attracts people, gains their trust.

And then stuff like this, you know, getting on the bigger podcast. I don't even know if I mentioned this, but a couple years ago, I had the honor of being on the Bigger Pockets podcast, which was just really That's

Steve: another real estate podcast.

Jason: Yeah.

Steve: Yeah. It's a great podcast.

Jason: No. It was it was just a full circle moment for me because that's that's where my journey started, you know.

Steve: For sure. For sure.

Jason: And, but because of that, a a private lender that works at Tesla and lives in Silicon Valley heard it, contacted me, and now he's got over a million dollars out with us right now. You know, he's been lending with us for, I think, a couple years now. So Yeah. Just getting out in front of people, meeting people, letting people know what you're doing. And, also like other people say in this space, don't be a secret agent, you know.

If you're doing deals, let people know what you're doing. That's why I post, at least a Facebook and Instagram story every single time we get a deal under contract to purchase, I always post a picture of it and say, just locked up another double wide in Rocky Point or just locked up this condo in Wilmington. Whatever whatever it is, like, stay top of mind with people. And, look, I'm no influencer at all. I don't care to be.

I have, like, I don't know, 1,500 followers across everything, you know. But just even if it's just in your own local market, just be present and do whatever you need to do to to stay top of mind.

Steve: Yeah. One of the lessons I learned from my, coach my very first coach when I got into real estate not when I got into real estate, but first coach in real estate was you wanna be the Hulk in your pond. Right? Don't try to be a big someone big in the ocean, like, difficult in the ocean. But, like, if you could be the Hulk in your pond, your neck of the woods, people are gonna know.

And that's how you get these opportunities, like the, oceanfront property, beach motel, and so on. I want you to think about some, last message, I believe, while the listener is with. Guys, in just a a few months, September, Stephanie Butters with Left Main REI, Jordan Flaming with smartphone, and myself, we're doing a, two and a half day event. REI Tech Unlocked. We're basically gonna be bringing in all the real technology providers, all the AI thought leaders, and sharing in a playground REITEC, playground where you can interact and see which part makes sense for you and your business.

We still have some early bird, tickets available. Go to reitechunlocked.com. Check it out. See if it makes sense, for you and your businesses. So, what are some last thoughts you wanna leave all the listeners with?

Jason: Yeah, man. Before I do that, I just wanted to thank you for having me on and I I had another gift to give you. Okay. I know you're, you're a big Phoenix Suns fan so

Steve: I am.

Jason: I got you some goodies here.

Steve: Oh, wow.

Jason: Oh, holy crap. I didn't know if you were into sports cards at all or not.

Steve: Oh, I mean, look, Charles Barkley, I'm a very big, very big Charles Barkley fan. My friends used to say, like, because, you know, during the 1993 run, my youth my friends used to say, like, Charles Barkley looks. I look like Charles Barkley, which I I don't even understand. We got KD. This is awesome.

This is an amazing card. Wow. Can't believe this. Finest auto go gold geometric, autograph cards. We got a Barclay autograph card, KD, and then, my favorite, Steve Nash.

Awesome. Thank you.

Jason: Absolutely, man. Man, this is a lot. Else, hold on to Mez Investments. They're all three PSA tens, so it doesn't get better than that.

Steve: Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm definitely holding on. There's no question about that. You know, I used to make the joke, you know, if there was ever a fire, I'm gonna go grab this Curry jersey and everything else can burn in the building. I don't care.

Right? But now it's, like, the Curry and the Nash jersey. But now it's gonna be Curry, Nash, and these three cars. We're gonna have to put, we're gonna have to upgrade our security system. Take make sure we remove our address, from everywhere online.

That's awesome. Thank you so much. Yeah, man. Appreciate that. Absolutely.

It goes well with this other one. Yeah. This other Kathy brought for me. Artificially intelligent. Yeah.

Jason: I just figured you like it.

Steve: Oh, that's great. That's great. Yeah. Thank you again. What are some last thoughts we're gonna leave all the listeners with?

Jason: You know, just do good business and and know why you're doing it. You know, for me personally, I'm a Christian and, you know, one of my favorite verses is second Corinthians nine eleven that says that you'll be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion so that your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God. And, you know, if, I I don't know. If if you don't have a bigger reason why you're doing what you're doing, then you're gonna you're gonna burn out. You're not gonna enjoy I don't care what business it's in.

This this stuff is hard.

Steve: Very hard.

Jason: But Yeah. When you know why you're doing it, who you're doing it for, it's fun. It's a blast.

Steve: Yeah. That's a powerful message. And, you know, like, we had, Travis Johnson on a couple weeks ago. We've got you on and, like like, I love the the the story you guys have because you guys are living the lives that you want. We had, for the longest time people were saying, you know, what is your favorite podcast episode?

For years, I was saying it was the one with, Haim. I was like, who's Haim? Right? But, like, he was a flipper. And if it didn't clear 6 figures, he just wasn't doing the deal.

And for him, like, he was the only one who started the business for a reason and then remembered that reason. Right. Right? And so, like, recently, we got, Travis and we got yourself. And I think it's such a powerful message because it's really easy.

Like, I know I get caught up in the rat race. I know that I'm still chasing things. You know, I got my own issues. And And so I think it's such a powerful, message for you to come on and share your story. If someone wants to connect with you, what's the best way for them to do that?

Jason: Yeah. Thank you. They can find me on Facebook or Instagram. There's not many Jason Bealeys in the world, so really easy to find me. Or you can if you're interested in talking about the debt fund, like I said, jvwithjv.com, that's pretty much it.

Steve: Great URL.

Jason: Thank you.

Steve: Alright. Thanks so much. Thanks for coming on.

Jason: Thanks, man. Thanks for having me.

Steve: Yeah. You're very welcome. Thank you guys for watching. We'll see you guys next time.