April 4, 2025 • 44 mins
Summary
In this conversation, Mario Dattilo shares his remarkable journey in real estate investment, highlighting a significant deal where he purchased a property for around $650,000 and later sold it for $6.5 million, achieving a 10x return on investment in just five years. His experience emphasizes the potential for substantial profits in real estate when strategic decisions are made.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Real Estate Investing
02:11 Mario DiTillo's Journey in Real Estate
07:54 Wholesaling: A Gateway to Real Estate
14:57 Transitioning into Mobile Home Parks
19:55 Understanding Mobile Home Parks vs. Apartments
23:06 Navigating Mobile Home Park Investments
25:07 Challenges and Setbacks in Real Estate
28:35 Common Mistakes New Investors Make
32:16 The Importance of Coaching and Education
35:30 Mindset and Consistency in Real Estate Investing
44:00 New Chapter
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
So I ended up pursuing that dealand bought it.
I ended up buying that park for all in about 620-5650, right in
that range, and then ended up selling it for six and a half
million dollars five years later.
So it was an absolute home run and you know, it was a big win.
So I wish every deal was that, but it was literally a 10X the
(00:21):
price five years later. Pretty awesome.
Welcome to the Real Prop Pro Podcast, where strategy,
innovation and wealth converge to redefine real estate
investing. Hello and welcome to the Real
(00:45):
Prop Pro podcast. I'm your host Ian Deiler, fix
and Flip investor, JV partner and rehab project manager based
in Sacramento, CA. At Realprop Pro we teach all
aspects of real estate investingfrom tax deed, tax lien
investing, wholesaling to fix and flipping.
(01:05):
We also teach creative financingand multifamily.
We don't just teach you, we equip you with the proper
software, mentorship and step byPlease visit realproppro.com to
get free resources, learn about live events, and see how to
start building your real estate investment Business Today.
(01:28):
Today's guest is Mario Datilo, amobile Home Park investor with
16 plus years of real estate investment experience.
He is the host of the Mario Datilo Show and founder of
multiple investment companies. He not only owns a large
portfolio of mobile home parks, but also actively coaches new
(01:51):
real estate investors on how to enter this powerful niche with.
We'll talk about the mindset it takes, how to get started in
mobile home parks, and how Mariohelps others make it happen.
Mario, welcome to the show. Hey and glad to be here man.
(02:13):
Thanks for the invite and excited about what you and and
your company are doing from an education and technology
standpoint. Just excited to hang out with
you for a bit. Let's talk shop.
So Mario, before we dive in, I'dlove for you to introduce
yourself in your own words and kind of let the listeners know a
(02:35):
little bit more about you. Not just your bio, but your
story, your style and what you do.
Can't say I've got a lot of style, but I can definitely tell
you my story. So Mario Datillo, live in
Florida, been been investing in real estate for a long time,
longer than I care to admit, butit's given me a lot of
(02:57):
education, I guess you could say, You know, the longer you do
something and you work on your skills and you keep, you know,
bumping your head, just the better you get at it, right?
There's really no better better education than time.
And so I got started in businesswhen I was still in high school
and I was 18 years old started amarketing business with a couple
(03:18):
of buddies of mine and it went really well.
I ended up having ton of success, didn't ended up didn't
end up going to college and thenthat the company that we started
was actually contracted by a larger company.
We had one client essentially and that company ended up filing
bankruptcy which wiped us out completely too because they were
(03:40):
our only income stream. So I learned a hard lesson very
early on at about 20/20/21 yearsold, just went into complete
financial ruins and I got wiped out financially.
You know, I thought I was invincible.
I thought I was going to be retiring by the age of, you
know, call it 25 and be done. And I ultimately had to start
(04:02):
all over. But I'll tell you what, if
you're going to, you know, go into a financial collapse or
really bad financial situation, do it young because you got just
a ton of runway to rebound. So I'm really thankful for it
because although it sucked, it was great opportunity to learn a
lot of very difficult things early on.
So the first thing that I went into is a mortgage business with
(04:24):
my partners Like OK, well how dowe make money?
Well, at that time, this is probably 2006, I want to say
maybe 2005, we had, you know, everybody was in the real estate
business. So we started a mortgage
company. I was never really a big fan of
the mortgage business. To me it just seemed like, you
know, trying to find the right fit for a product and that will
(04:46):
really wasn't me. But as we kept growing, a lot of
clients were coming to us and actually asking us what real
estate agent should I work with because we are the finance side.
And so we kind of realized we should really start a real
estate brokerage. And we did.
And I offered up, I said, look, I'll, I'll do the real estate
side. I had never been an agent
(05:07):
before. I'd done a couple of wholesale
deals and signed some option contracts essentially.
And I was like, look, that's waymore up my alley than the
finance side. So I ended up becoming the
managing partner of that business and ran a mortgage, a
real estate brokerage for a couple years and then the market
tanked. So in 2008, we all know what
(05:28):
happened and I started helping investors by, you know,
distressed property in in doing that, I watched a lot of people
make a lot of money and that wasgreat.
I was excited to help them, but I realized that if I'm, if I'm
handling the acquisition side and the disposition side for
them, then why don't I just go buy these properties myself?
(05:50):
And so I went to my dad who was actually in the construction
industry his whole life. And I said, look, I, I can find
a steals and I can sell a steals, but, and if I can even
raise capital if needed, but I'mhorrible with construction.
So why don't you partner with me?
He was a custom home builder anda bunch of other things.
And so we went into business together.
I got out of the brokerage business and flipped houses from
(06:12):
about 2008 to about 2013, started looking kind of on the
tail end of that to get into some sort of reoccurring
commercial property because I knew that flipping houses was
just a job. Like I just had to keep on
buying another house and anotherhouse, another house.
If I couldn't find one, I was out of money, right?
(06:32):
Like the business came to a halt.
And that's, it's good when it's a distressed market, but when
the market started to dry up andit was kind of more of a retail
market again, it was pretty scary.
And you catch yourself trying to, you know, overpay just to
get a deal. That's, that's not a good
business model. So started looking for
apartments, had a very hard timefinding a good deal on apartment
(06:53):
buildings and stumbled across a mobile Home Park and bought
that. And that's kind of what opened
up my eyes to the mobile Home Park slash commercial real
estate world. I've been doing it ever since
about 2013. Own mobile home parks, a lot of
mobile home parks on some self storage on some light industrial
and RV parks as well. And I've touched probably, like,
(07:13):
I don't know, probably owned 8 or 9 different, yeah, probably 7
or 8 different property types over the years.
So, yeah. And then I have an education
business that teaches people howto invest in mobile home parks
and a fund and all kinds of fun stuff.
So I'm excited to talk to you and give your listeners a ton of
values that they can go take action on.
Man, it seems like you've done alot and you know, a fairly short
(07:36):
amount of time. You can do a lot over a long
time now. Yeah, Most people haven't been
in real estate for, I mean, whatis it?
It's 2025, technically almost 20years in real estate.
It gives you some runway to havesome fun and make some mistakes
for sure. Yeah, Yeah.
So kind of along that, along that point, can you kind of talk
(08:00):
about your first, maybe we'll start with your first real
estate deal overall it sound like you were doing maybe some
wholesaling. Can you kind of talk about how
that went? Also it seems like a lot of
people just getting started, just starting out in real estate
investing kind of gravitate a little bit towards wholesaling.
(08:20):
Can you talk a little bit about that first deal and kind of what
you know what, what attracted you to wholesaling?
Yeah, yeah. I think wholesaling is a great
way into the business, but I think it can also be a long term
profitable strategy as well. It doesn't have to be just for
newbies. I think what mostly happens is
people get into wholesaling because it's low cost, low risk,
(08:41):
and almost anyone can do it if they can find a good deal.
But then they kind of in their mind graduate and they say, OK,
I want to start flipping houses now and I want to start
rehabbing and I find money and Ican make bigger spreads and then
I want to buy and hold. That's all great.
But in many situations it's probably better just to
wholesale the deal and not actually take ownership.
(09:01):
Nothing wrong with wholesaling. I think it's a great business
model. We actually wholesale commercial
property now. That first deal was kind of
interesting. I'd read some books and
self-taught, I guess you could say and came across a deal.
This is early on. Think like 2005 S early, early
(09:24):
Internet age and I found a deal online and no, I'm trying to
think how did I find that? No, I did mailers.
I I mailed a bunch of distressedowners.
I think they were either tax delinquent this forgive me, 20
years ago, right? So going off of memory here, but
yeah, I think I was doing some mailers and it was probably tax
(09:47):
delinquent or evictionless. And I got somebody to call me
and it was a home. I lived in the Twin Cities area
of Minnesota, like around Saint Paul, Minneapolis area at the
time. And there was kind of a tertiary
market, a market of maybe an hour and a half away that had a
golf course, 1 golf course, And there was a home on that golf
(10:09):
course that this owner called meabout.
He happened to be in the mortgage business as well.
And, you know, he had bought it and thought he was going to move
into it and decided not to. And I tied it up with an option
contract, which is kind of funnynow that I think about that.
I was much more comfortable using option contracts than
purchase agreements because I felt like I was obligated to
(10:31):
perform with a purchase agreement where I wasn't
obligated to perform with an option agreement, right?
It's unilateral versus bilateralagreement.
So I, I went into it with an option agreement, tied it up and
I ended up making like $14,000. I took it, I put it all over the
Internet, you know, and again, early world of the Internet.
(10:52):
I think I put it on some, you know, for Sale by owner sites
and things like that. And I got a bite and I was it.
Posted on AOL. No, it wasn't AOL, but it was
definitely in that in that time period.
But it was, it was like a for Sale by owner type of site and
ended up getting a buyer for it.I made I think $14,000 on that
deal and that was just incredible to me.
(11:13):
I mean $14,000 to send out a piece of paper and get it back
and then find somebody else to buy that piece of paper off of
me and that was it. And then the next deal I ended
up doing was significantly larger.
I found a, a builder in the TwinCities area that had I think the
sale price was like 750,000. So I went from a, you know,
(11:37):
$180,000 house to a $750,000 house and I was able to
wholesale that. And I want to say I made like 70
or $80,000 on that deal and I was like, OK, I'm on to
something, right? And I did that with an option
contract as well, which is crazy.
I can't believe the builder let me do it.
But worked out great. And I think it was 74,072 or
(11:59):
$74,000 I made on that deal and I was off to the races.
Keep in mind that's when that's when I had a mortgage business.
So I had a full time job I guessyou could say because I was
working in the business recruiting cold callers and
running a call center and you know I was partnering that, but
it was is a full time thing. So that just kind of goes to
(12:20):
show you that anybody can reallywholesale or do any real estate
on the side if they really want to.
You just have to be willing to put in the effort.
Yeah, I would. I, I, I really want to move on
to mobile home parks, but just before we do, I really like what
you touched upon there. People who are just getting
(12:40):
started. They don't have to quit their
job to do real estate investment.
You shunk a little bit. Can you talk a little bit about
that? You just said that you
shouldn't. Can you elaborate on that and
kind of explain where you're coming from from for as this as
a seasoned investor? Yeah, I would say, you know,
(13:02):
flipping houses, wholesaling houses, you can definitely make
money, right. But until you really got a good
business system figured out, youprobably shouldn't quit doing
what you're doing because it's going to be rocky.
You're going to have mistakes, you're going to learn the hard
way and a lot of things. And if you go quit your job just
(13:22):
to start wholesaling or flipping, you might have some
rough months. And so it's just, it's important
to understand that in that world, especially a trading type
business, it is a business. I think what a lot of times
people do is they go into real estate with the mindset of I'm
becoming an investor. No, you're not.
(13:43):
You're going into real estate asa real estate entrepreneur.
You're starting a business in the real estate investment
world, OK? Flipping houses and wholesaling
is not investing. That is a trading business, OK?
It's the same as buying, yeah, you're buying cars and selling
cars. You're buying widgets and
selling widgets. And how you do that doesn't
(14:06):
matter what you're selling it. You're in a trading business
model. You are not an investor, OK?
And that's OK. It's not a negative.
You're not a real estate investor, OK.
So especially on the wholesalingside because you're selling
contracts. But regardless, my point is
until you have the business system really honed in, you're
(14:28):
going to have, you're going to have some tough months.
So that being said, you don't need to.
Now other people say, yeah, well, I'm going to go buy a
bunch of rentals and then I'm going to quit my job.
Chances are just being real single families, you're not
going to quit your job for a long time buying single family
rentals. It's a horrible thing to hold.
(14:48):
OK, there's a few times in a market that you might want to
buy and hold single families forrentals.
Generally speaking, they're horrible investments and you
should only be flipping and trading those, OK, and
wholesaling those, if you want to call it that, right.
And I forgot what your initial question was, but I think the
biggest key here is don't quit your job.
(15:09):
Build a business model and then once you've got it really honed
in, then consider quitting your job.
Yeah. That was exactly what I was
trying to, you know, learn from you is like that whole process
of how do you transition into the industry, not quitting your
job Is is sounds like what you're recommending for anyone
(15:31):
who's just getting started. I mean, if you're like a stay at
home mom or you have some other part time job, yeah, you can
probably put a lot more time into it.
But if you're providing for yourfamily and you know, you're
trying to build up some wealth, you wouldn't want to stop.
What is the consistent income stream Now being an entrepreneur
(15:52):
at heart, I'm like I always say,burn the boats, right?
Like go all in. But I, I think most people can't
do that. They, they need that stability.
And so you need to know yourself.
You know, I, like I said, I started businesses since high
school, but most people would want to do it on the side 1st.
(16:12):
And I, I'm much, I, I used to beat least much more comfortable
with risk and just going all in and saying I'm going to make it
work. And I think you can do that when
you're in your early 20s becauseyou've got low risk, low
responsibilities. But in my 40s, I would never do
that. You know what I mean?
I'd build the I'd I would keep what I have coming in first.
(16:35):
Great stuff, I really appreciatethat advice.
What first drew you into the mobile Home Park business?
Accident. Got you into that?
It was an accident. Nobody.
It's a joke in the industry. Nobody ever grows up saying I
want to get into the trailer park business.
(16:56):
They just don't, right? Like #1 you don't think about it
because it's not really a business that's in the forefront
of your mind. But also, it's not a sexy
business. Everybody wants to be an
astronaut or president, right? So that being said, I was
looking for apartments and I wasstruggling to find apartment
buildings. And a buddy of mine who is a
commercial banker called me up and he said, hey, now you're
(17:18):
looking for apartments, but there's a bank near you that's
got a mobile Home Park that's coming that's defaulted on their
loan and they're interested in selling you the mortgage.
And we won't get into the details of like how mortgage
transactions work and buying debt.
But essentially he said, do you want to buy this mobile Home
Park instead of an apartment building?
And I, no, I don't want to deal with trailer parks.
(17:38):
Like that's not, not even I'm, I'm, I'm going to buy apartment
buildings. And it was in my backyard.
So I went and checked it out andthen I looked at the numbers.
I'm like, Dang, this is way better deal than any other
apartment building I've ever seen.
This is a no brainer. It had some hair.
It had some risk on it for sure.It was a complex deal, but it
(17:59):
had major upside. And so then I started looking at
it closer and did some homework on kind of how they operate.
It's like this is very similar to apartments.
And so I ended up pursuing that deal and bought it.
I ended up buying that park for all in about 620-5650, right in
that range, and then ended up selling it for six and a half
(18:19):
million dollars five years later.
So it was an absolute home run and you know, it was a big win.
So I wish every deal was that, but it was literally a 10X the
price five years later. Pretty awesome.
So that was your first mobile Home Park transaction?
Yes. Now I'd bought mobile home parks
(18:40):
shortly after that, so it's not like I bought that one, waited
five years, sold it and then bought more.
I'd bought that one and then just kept buying them.
But we ultimately exited that deal in five years and made
millions. Yeah, pretty awesome.
And I would say that's that's probably an eye opener to some,
but that's not that crazy. I mean, the multiple is crazy,
(19:01):
don't get me wrong. But you know, in commercial real
estate, it doesn't take a lot ofdeals to build up your net worth
into the millions. Like it really doesn't single
family, and I'm not picking on single family.
I think it's just important to recognize this.
It takes a lot more deals and a lot more time and a lot more
(19:21):
effort to build up that wealth. And you know, have a multi
$1,000,000 net worth in single families.
You do a few deals, one deal, you should be able to make at
least $1,000,000 on it. Like we're typically looking at
deals that we will net across the lifetime of the deal at
least, you know, 7 figures. And that sounds braggy, but it's
(19:45):
not. I'm just saying that's kind of
how commercial real estate works.
Bigger deals, but they're slowerdeals, you know, It's just
different. Yeah.
How would you kind of mentioned that mobile home parks are
similar to kind of like a multi family like apartment type of
(20:05):
thing. Can you talk about the how
they're different? Sure.
Yeah. I mean, apartments, you own all
the structures, right? You own the apartment building
and the tents, just rent it. You're responsible for all the
maintenance. You're responsible for, you
know, everything in that building where with mobile home
parks, for the most part, you typically don't want to own the
(20:25):
homes. The residents own their homes.
They pay lot rent to have their home sitting on your land.
So the only thing you're really maintaining is the land, the
infrastructure, the common area and the amenities.
The residents maintain their homes, you know, so you don't
get calls about toilets and you know, all the different minor
maintenance and repair items. Another way that it's different
(20:47):
is when somebody moves out of anapartment building, you have a
vacant unit and you almost always have to put money into
that unit to make it ready for rent again.
Well, in the mobile Home Park world, because they own their
home, they typically sell that home to another buyer and we act
more like an association would where we just approve that buyer
(21:09):
to buy that home and live in thecommunity.
They buy the home and they just keep paying the rent.
Excuse me? Like we don't miss a beat and we
don't have to touch the home in most transactions or when most
people move. We also have a lot less moving
out and moving in. It's just a slower moving
business because people own their home.
So they'll live there for, you know, 1015, thirty years where
(21:35):
an apartment on average people turn every year and a half,
right? So every 18 months on average in
apartments, you're seeing that unit turn.
We may have somebody that never moves for the entire time that
we hold that property. So it's just a lot less
turnover. There's a lot of benefits, or I
guess you could say differences in the mobile Home Park world,
(21:56):
but those are probably the biggest, most noticeable ones
for someone who's going to operate it.
And what would you say are some of the downsides as compared to
apartments? So what's, what's a negative
about mobile home parks comparedto apartments?
Yeah, I would say that, you know, apartments you can lease
up much faster. You know, you own all the units,
(22:19):
you can maintain them, you can control them.
Where when you don't own the home, there's a process that you
have to go through to hit them with a violation to improve
their home. So like, let's say you've got
somebody with a bunch of junk intheir yard.
If I own the apartment building,I can just go clean up the junk.
If someone's leasing the lot forme, I have to do a violation
(22:39):
notice and then go through a process for them to get that
corrected or if I want them to paint their home or something
like that. It's a process.
It's kind of more like a homeowners association.
You have control, but there's it's a lot more, it's a lot
slower, you know, to get that resolved where on apt I can fix
it, right? It's it's my unit.
(23:01):
And also, you know, if you thinkabout if you've got a vacant
lot, in order to make that an economically occupied lot,
meaning paying a lot, I typically have to buy a home,
bring it in, set it up, and thensell that home, which is much
slower and much more capital intense than when I've got a
(23:21):
down unit and an apartment. I might spend a few $1000 to get
it up and and rentable again. And I'm back online.
So you know, we don't see many homes come out of communities,
but to fill up existing vacant lots.
It is capital and time intense. Now, does someone need to have a
(23:42):
prior real estate experience like other investments like
single family homes are like that?
Or are you able to have, you know, students come to you that
know nothing about real estate investing and, you know, get
right into mobile Home Park investing?
Yeah, I, I would say the majority of our coaching clients
(24:05):
came from some real estate background, not all, not all and
some have been successful without real estate background.
But I would say if you've got some sort of experience with
single families, you're going to, you're going to transition
easier. You know, there's, there is a
learning curve in general to go to commercial real estate, any
type of commercial real estate. So if you understand how a title
(24:28):
works, if you understand how youknow a simple transaction, a
single family home transaction, simple transaction works, it's
easier to then convert that intoa commercial real estate because
there's just a lot of basics that you already know.
But that being said, you don't have to have the experience.
Somebody who has a business background or single family real
(24:49):
estate background would be, you know, they're going to have a
faster learning period, but not necessary.
Yeah. I would say there's going to be
some things that you know, single family real estate
investor is going to pick up on quick.
Can you talk about one of the toughest deals or biggest
(25:10):
setbacks you've had to get through?
Yeah. I mean, I would say some of the
biggest setbacks are deals that we've had to kill.
We've put it under contract. We've spent months and months
and months doing research. I mean, like it's not.
So the difference between a single family home and a
commercial property a lot of times is time and the amount of
(25:33):
due diligence that goes into it,right?
Single family home you can put under contract close as soon as
titles clear almost in most cases where with commercial
property there's just you're it's like you're buying a
business, OK. So there's a lot of
complexities. You're looking at the financial
aspects of it, you're looking atthe legal aspects of it, you're
(25:54):
looking at the physical aspects of it.
You're dealing with zoning, you're dealing with, you know,
just all these different things that you don't have to deal with
on single families. So you can put in literally your
inspection period might be 3 months.
You know, in some cases it's notthe norm, but you're probably at
least 45 to 60 days for due diligence or inspection period.
(26:17):
And it can sometimes go six months.
Like I've had deals that went 9-9 months just to get a deal
closed. So I would say one of the
biggest challenges is you go spend a bunch of time and money
on these and then the deal fallsthrough and you're like, I just
wasted six months of my life on this deal right now.
That being said, dodged a bullet, right?
(26:39):
It's probably because we found something that made it, you
know, less attractive than we initially thought.
And that's why you do you have athorough due diligence process
that you follow to make sure that you're checking all the
boxes and you're not making mistakes and you're buying good
assets. But it doesn't mean that you
don't have, you know, a rough day that day when you have to
cancel the contract and you justgo, I can't believe we just
(27:03):
spent all that time on this, butit is what it is.
I also bought a deal that that was in a location early on that
the demographics really didn't fit the business model, meaning
we want to have a property that has all the tenants owning the
homes and paying us lot rent. We really don't want to be in
the rental business where we ownthe homes.
(27:24):
And I bought a community in an area that really supported more
of a rental model just because it was a lower income area.
And I didn't really understand the importance of those
demographics. And once we bought it, you know,
we'd rehab the homes, we'd sell them off the ones that were
rentals, but then people would buy them and then they would
default like 6 months, 12 monthslater.
(27:46):
And we would go all the way backand start all over again.
And the property had just tons and tons of turnover.
The whole reason you buy a mobile Home Park is so that it
isn't as management intense and you don't have the turnover like
an apartment building. And this location was just
always going to have that turnover.
And ultimately we still have it,but it's just a grind.
(28:07):
I mean, it's one of those properties where it's it's
profitable, but it's just a headache to deal with.
And our team gets burnt out on it.
And it's like you, as soon as you think that you've turned the
corner, you've got more evictions coming up, it's like
we're going to get those units back.
And it's just, you know, it's not, it's a, it's a major
(28:27):
operational burden to deal with.So yeah, I'd say that's probably
a direct mistake that we've made.
What's the most common mistake that you see newer investors in
this space make? Well, there's a bunch.
One of the main mistakes is theythink that they are just buying
(28:50):
dirt and renting dirt and that it's going to be easy.
They underestimate the effort that it takes to turn around a
mobile Home Park. Now that being said, once the
property is stabilized and running smoothly, they are a lot
less work than buying a lot of other property types.
But most aren't buying clean, stabilized, high quality
(29:12):
properties. They're typically buying those
that need the turn around, that need to be improved and have a
lot of operational issues. And so they get into it and they
go, oh, I'm just renting dirt. No, you're going to be a busy,
busy person for one to two yearsand you're going to earn every
penny of that upside that you you know that you're going to
(29:34):
earn, but it is super profitable.
So I'd say they underestimate the work.
We saw a bunch of people kind ofcome from the apartment and self
storage space right after COVID.They were kind of looking for
cash flow because they couldn't get it in the other property
types. They'd come over to mobile home
parks thinking it was easy and they just they were like, OK,
this is this way different than I thought.
Another thing that I would say is they two things, they either
(29:58):
over analyze and research or they under analyze and research
and neither is good. What I mean by that is they they
over research to the point wherethey will never buy anything
because they don't have a clear buy box and they're just
researching and researching and researching and they don't have
(30:20):
the confidence to actually pull the trigger on the other end.
They under research and they buybad deals because they think
they're just buying a single family home.
And they don't do a phase one environmental, they don't do
zoning reports. They don't do a lot of the
things that you need to do to protect yourself.
And then they get into it. They go, whoa, yeah, now I know
(30:41):
why the seller, seller financed this deal to me at 95%, you
know, 5% down, whatever. It's like, oh, there's a hook
there. He he was just trying to get out
of it. It was too good to be.
True, It was too good to be trueand they just didn't know what
to look for. So I would say that sweet spot
is, you know, understanding whatyou're buying and then doing the
(31:02):
proper due diligence with a clear target of what you're
trying to aim. It is either a good deal or it's
a bad deal, right? There is a difference.
And a lot of times, probably oneof the most common questions I
get is how do you know if it's agood deal?
Well, number one, what is your what?
What do you define as a good deal from a return metric
(31:23):
standpoint? Does it meet all the returns
metrics that you're aiming for and the requirements that you're
looking for that define it as a good deal?
And then secondly, do all the due diligence boxes check off.
If you can cross those, you're good.
But I think if you don't hone inon your buy box and specifically
what a good deal is and know theproper due diligence, you're
(31:43):
always going to struggle with either one end of the spectrum
or the other. Yeah, I love that you talked
about it in that sense because you're right.
You know, it's either people analyze too much and don't take
action, or they take action and they really shouldn't have.
So I'm glad that you kind of talked a little bit about that
and explain to our listeners that you do need to have the
(32:06):
correct amount of research due diligence, and it also helps to
have someone know that business a little bit more.
So can you take a little bit of time and talk a little bit about
what you do to coach students, alittle bit about your program
and how it works? Yeah, Before I get into that, I
(32:27):
would say that, you know, with your wholesaling homes, you can,
you can kind of wing it, right? Like there's not a lot of risk
there. There's not a lot of money on
the table and that's what makes it so great.
You do not want to take that same mindset into any type of
commercial real estate, whether it's mobile home parks or other.
(32:50):
You're buying a highly complex asset that has, you know, income
going on. It's got, you know, zoning and
environmental and all that stuffthat you need to understand.
And so getting that baseline knowledge and working with
somebody who's done it a lot is going to protect you and it's
(33:12):
going to make sure that you actually are confident when you
do pull the trigger that you bought a good deal, right?
And and I don't want to make this a pitch fest.
So I'll just say that, you know,my education company, Real Cash
Flow is really just an opportunity for people who are
really serious to buy their first or their next mobile Home
(33:32):
Park to be able to work hand in hand with me on a weekly basis
where we look at deals, I do deal reviews, I get on weekly
calls with them, I partner with my coaching clients.
And it's literally like having somebody on your board of
directors that has, you know what, 12 years of experience
(33:52):
doing it and 100 million plus and acquisitions experience
sitting there and looking over your deals with you to say, yes,
that's good. Watch out for this, whatever.
I mean, it's, it's, it's very hands on and it we actually have
it done for you process as well where someone can say, I don't
have time to do the cold callingbecause I have a full time job,
but I need the lead flow coming in at the top of my funnel.
(34:14):
And so we actually have cold callers that can dial for them.
They can get that. We can provide the data so that
the leads come through and then for them and it's it for the
most part, we found that when people do that, they actually
get more results because they don't have to worry about
finding people to skip trace data and do the, you know, they
(34:35):
don't have to find the time to do the cold calling or have all
the skills needed to just sit there and dial for hours and
hours. It's like teed up for them.
So Long story short, we're seeing a lot of success.
Just had a couple of clients that bought their first park was
109 mobile, 109 site mobile HomePark in North Carolina.
They just closed last week. So like we're we're seeing a lot
(34:57):
of success every week, pretty exciting.
That's great and it's fun for mebecause I get to talk shop all
day with these guys. Yeah, yeah, that's great to
hear. I mean, with our coaching
students, I feel like the confidence is kind of one of the
the things that they're missing the most.
So yeah, that's kind of what we help them with, right?
We have the experience, we have the knowledge.
(35:19):
We've, you know, we've seen the ups and downs, like you said, we
know what to look for and what to avoid.
And so we're really big on trying to build their confidence
because we think that that's kind of the piece that's missing
most often and one of the thingsthat really helps their mindset,
right? Can you talk a little bit about
(35:39):
the mindset of what the type of mindset that's really important
to have in real estate investing, kind of along the
lines of, you know, how do you get past failures?
How do you teach your students that, hey, this might not work
out, but if it does, you're going to learn something and
you're going to, you know, hopefully move on from it.
(36:00):
So can you talk a little bit about the mindset about not
giving up even if you do fail? Yeah, I would say there's
probably one of the biggest killers of high potential people
is they ride the roller coaster.And what I mean by that is they
(36:20):
work hard when they are excited and feel good and they mentally
and physically take a break whenthey don't feel good about it or
they're not excited and they're not emotionally pumped up about
it, OK. And the problem with that is if
you look at your business, your real estate investing business
(36:41):
as a pipeline, as soon as you lose pressure, everything starts
to flow backwards, right? And so you need to keep the
pressure on. And if you realize that what
you're doing today is likely going to produce a transaction
either a month, three months, six months, 2 years from now,
(37:02):
every time you pause, you lose momentum and you lose those
leads and you have to start all over again.
And so, you know, if you think about it this way, if I've been
can, if I call a seller one time, I might as well not have
called them at all because the amount of follow up that I need
(37:23):
to have, at least in our business is consistent over and
over and over. I have to build a real
relationship. Calling someone one time and
then having a bad day and like, I'm going to take, you know, I'm
not going to do anything for a couple of days.
And then you go a week, two weeks, month, and then you're so
far behind on your follow up andeverything, it just, you'll
never get traction. I mean, that's really any
(37:44):
business, not just real estate investing.
You have to do the work, you have to have a plan.
You got to know the exact steps to follow from an actionable
standpoint, like daily that's going to produce the results top
of funnel right? That moves through your pipeline
and then you have to actually doit regardless of how you feel
like. I'll, I'll be honest, there are
(38:05):
some days, I'd say at least oncea month, maybe twice where I
just say screw it, sell it all, be done.
I don't need to do this. It's not worth the stress, the
headache. I could be hanging out with my
family, doing whatever, and the next morning I wake up and I put
(38:28):
my butt to work. Like I just do it anyways.
And what's interesting is that once you get in the routine of
doing the work and you remove the emotions, you'll do that
naturally. Like, yeah, I might pause in the
afternoon if I just, I'm having an insanely bad day because
everybody has that. Every once in a while I might
(38:50):
feel like, you know what, it's 4:30.
I'm just done with all this for the day and then I rest my mind
and then I get back on track thenext day.
I just don't even think about it.
The next day. I'm like, yeah, yesterday
sucked, but boom, I got to go back to what I was doing because
that's how you create the momentum.
So get out of the emotional side.
Quit thinking about what's working and not from a from an
(39:10):
energy standpoint, like just do the work anyways.
Doesn't mean you don't tweak anddon't critique and tweak what
you're doing to improve, but youdon't stop and start based on
what how you feel. Yeah, that's great advice.
That's that's really important for people to understand that it
(39:32):
really is about just putting in the work.
It is about just grinding it out, doing it repetitive.
And like you said, make it become a habit.
Once it's a habit, it's a lot easier to to do that stuff every
day, you know, you know you needto do it.
You know what it is you need to do.
And like you said, you know, just push through if you're
(39:53):
having a bad day or whatever, just go through and do do do
your task, you know, do the steps that you need to take to
get to those goals. You know the equation that I
always give everybody in our group is volume multiplied by
consistency equals results. What I mean by that is if you
(40:14):
don't have the volume of lead Gen. that you need or the volume
of anything really, but let's just talk from a lead Gen.
standpoint to create deals. If you don't have the volume,
meaning let's say if you need totalk to 1000 people a month and
you know cold calling, whatever,and you call 10 a week, you are
not going to talk to enough people to get the odds in your
(40:38):
favor to get the deal, right? So you could, it doesn't matter.
You could call 10 people every week forever and you're never
going to get the result. Why not enough volume, right?
But it's a numbers game. On the other hand, you could
call 1000 people this week, but not call anybody next week and
(40:59):
not be consistent at it. And again, you touch them one
time, it's not enough. You are not going to get
results. You might as well have never
called anybody in either one of those scenarios.
You've got to have high volume and you've got to have high
consistency and you'll get the results.
And you might say, well I have afull time business, I have a
full time job. I can't call 1000 people a month
(41:20):
or 2000 people a month or 500 or200 people a month.
I don't have time for that. Well, then you have to recognize
that you're running a real estate investment business and
you have to find someone who cando it for you, or you have to
find a way to create that high volume, high consistency
marketing in order to get the results.
(41:41):
Otherwise you will not get the results.
Wow, what a great chat. Thank you so much for sharing
all this amazing information andwisdom.
We really appreciate it. I want to talk a little bit
about the, I want to talk about the free book giveaway that
we're doing at for each episode.We're giving away some real
(42:04):
estate books, business books andfor listeners to enter just like
the episode from wherever you'relistening to and comment which
book you would like to receive. So you have up to five days from
the air date to enter and 1 lucky winner will be chosen and
we'll ship the books straight toyour door.
So here's some of the ones we have available.
(42:27):
The 10X rule profit from real estate E myth.
That's a good one. Robert Allen creating wealth.
Rich dad, Poor dad. You got some cash flow quadrant.
You got all the winners. What's the bottom one?
What was that bottom one? Can't see it on the screen,
Dean. Yeah.
Sorry, Dean. Dean.
(42:48):
OK right now. Never read that one.
I. Actually haven't read that one,
I'll be honest. But if someone's interested,
we're we'll send it to your house for free if you like and
comment on the episode. Yeah.
So thanks for thanks for the interview.
Thanks for the time. I just want to leave people with
a little bit of a final thought here.
(43:09):
A lot of people assume that mobile Home Park investing is
out of reach. Maybe it's not mainstream, it
feels complicated, and it can seem like a later in your career
type of strategy. But as Mario shared today,
mindset beats experience. You don't have to be a flipper
or realtor to start. You just need to commit, learn,
(43:29):
and take action. The mobile home space is full of
opportunity, but like anything else in real estate investing,
it rewards consistency and creative thinking.
Start with, start with where youare, get some guidance, and stay
persistent. That's the winning mindset.
Thanks for joining us today, everyone.
(43:51):
Thanks again Mario for your time.
Thank you, Ian. This was a great chat and I
really appreciate it. So it's just fun.
Have a good. Day everyone.
Thanks.
So I ended up pursuing that dealand bought it.
I ended up buying that park for all in about 620-5650, right in
that range, and then ended up selling it for six and a half
million dollars five years later.
So it was an absolute home run and you know, it was a big win.
So I wish every deal was that, but it was literally a 10X the
(00:21):
price five years later. Pretty awesome.
Welcome to the Real Prop Pro Podcast, where strategy,
innovation and wealth converge to redefine real estate
investing. Hello and welcome to the Real
(00:45):
Prop Pro podcast. I'm your host Ian Deiler, fix
and Flip investor, JV partner and rehab project manager based
in Sacramento, CA. At Realprop Pro we teach all
aspects of real estate investingfrom tax deed, tax lien
investing, wholesaling to fix and flipping.
(01:05):
We also teach creative financingand multifamily.
We don't just teach you, we equip you with the proper
software, mentorship and step byPlease visit realproppro.com to
get free resources, learn about live events, and see how to
start building your real estate investment Business Today.
(01:28):
Today's guest is Mario Datilo, amobile Home Park investor with
16 plus years of real estate investment experience.
He is the host of the Mario Datilo Show and founder of
multiple investment companies. He not only owns a large
portfolio of mobile home parks, but also actively coaches new
(01:51):
real estate investors on how to enter this powerful niche with.
We'll talk about the mindset it takes, how to get started in
mobile home parks, and how Mariohelps others make it happen.
Mario, welcome to the show. Hey and glad to be here man.
(02:13):
Thanks for the invite and excited about what you and and
your company are doing from an education and technology
standpoint. Just excited to hang out with
you for a bit. Let's talk shop.
So Mario, before we dive in, I'dlove for you to introduce
yourself in your own words and kind of let the listeners know a
(02:35):
little bit more about you. Not just your bio, but your
story, your style and what you do.
Can't say I've got a lot of style, but I can definitely tell
you my story. So Mario Datillo, live in
Florida, been been investing in real estate for a long time,
longer than I care to admit, butit's given me a lot of
(02:57):
education, I guess you could say, You know, the longer you do
something and you work on your skills and you keep, you know,
bumping your head, just the better you get at it, right?
There's really no better better education than time.
And so I got started in businesswhen I was still in high school
and I was 18 years old started amarketing business with a couple
(03:18):
of buddies of mine and it went really well.
I ended up having ton of success, didn't ended up didn't
end up going to college and thenthat the company that we started
was actually contracted by a larger company.
We had one client essentially and that company ended up filing
bankruptcy which wiped us out completely too because they were
(03:40):
our only income stream. So I learned a hard lesson very
early on at about 20/20/21 yearsold, just went into complete
financial ruins and I got wiped out financially.
You know, I thought I was invincible.
I thought I was going to be retiring by the age of, you
know, call it 25 and be done. And I ultimately had to start
(04:02):
all over. But I'll tell you what, if
you're going to, you know, go into a financial collapse or
really bad financial situation, do it young because you got just
a ton of runway to rebound. So I'm really thankful for it
because although it sucked, it was great opportunity to learn a
lot of very difficult things early on.
So the first thing that I went into is a mortgage business with
(04:24):
my partners Like OK, well how dowe make money?
Well, at that time, this is probably 2006, I want to say
maybe 2005, we had, you know, everybody was in the real estate
business. So we started a mortgage
company. I was never really a big fan of
the mortgage business. To me it just seemed like, you
know, trying to find the right fit for a product and that will
(04:46):
really wasn't me. But as we kept growing, a lot of
clients were coming to us and actually asking us what real
estate agent should I work with because we are the finance side.
And so we kind of realized we should really start a real
estate brokerage. And we did.
And I offered up, I said, look, I'll, I'll do the real estate
side. I had never been an agent
(05:07):
before. I'd done a couple of wholesale
deals and signed some option contracts essentially.
And I was like, look, that's waymore up my alley than the
finance side. So I ended up becoming the
managing partner of that business and ran a mortgage, a
real estate brokerage for a couple years and then the market
tanked. So in 2008, we all know what
(05:28):
happened and I started helping investors by, you know,
distressed property in in doing that, I watched a lot of people
make a lot of money and that wasgreat.
I was excited to help them, but I realized that if I'm, if I'm
handling the acquisition side and the disposition side for
them, then why don't I just go buy these properties myself?
(05:50):
And so I went to my dad who was actually in the construction
industry his whole life. And I said, look, I, I can find
a steals and I can sell a steals, but, and if I can even
raise capital if needed, but I'mhorrible with construction.
So why don't you partner with me?
He was a custom home builder anda bunch of other things.
And so we went into business together.
I got out of the brokerage business and flipped houses from
(06:12):
about 2008 to about 2013, started looking kind of on the
tail end of that to get into some sort of reoccurring
commercial property because I knew that flipping houses was
just a job. Like I just had to keep on
buying another house and anotherhouse, another house.
If I couldn't find one, I was out of money, right?
(06:32):
Like the business came to a halt.
And that's, it's good when it's a distressed market, but when
the market started to dry up andit was kind of more of a retail
market again, it was pretty scary.
And you catch yourself trying to, you know, overpay just to
get a deal. That's, that's not a good
business model. So started looking for
apartments, had a very hard timefinding a good deal on apartment
(06:53):
buildings and stumbled across a mobile Home Park and bought
that. And that's kind of what opened
up my eyes to the mobile Home Park slash commercial real
estate world. I've been doing it ever since
about 2013. Own mobile home parks, a lot of
mobile home parks on some self storage on some light industrial
and RV parks as well. And I've touched probably, like,
(07:13):
I don't know, probably owned 8 or 9 different, yeah, probably 7
or 8 different property types over the years.
So, yeah. And then I have an education
business that teaches people howto invest in mobile home parks
and a fund and all kinds of fun stuff.
So I'm excited to talk to you and give your listeners a ton of
values that they can go take action on.
Man, it seems like you've done alot and you know, a fairly short
(07:36):
amount of time. You can do a lot over a long
time now. Yeah, Most people haven't been
in real estate for, I mean, whatis it?
It's 2025, technically almost 20years in real estate.
It gives you some runway to havesome fun and make some mistakes
for sure. Yeah, Yeah.
So kind of along that, along that point, can you kind of talk
(08:00):
about your first, maybe we'll start with your first real
estate deal overall it sound like you were doing maybe some
wholesaling. Can you kind of talk about how
that went? Also it seems like a lot of
people just getting started, just starting out in real estate
investing kind of gravitate a little bit towards wholesaling.
(08:20):
Can you talk a little bit about that first deal and kind of what
you know what, what attracted you to wholesaling?
Yeah, yeah. I think wholesaling is a great
way into the business, but I think it can also be a long term
profitable strategy as well. It doesn't have to be just for
newbies. I think what mostly happens is
people get into wholesaling because it's low cost, low risk,
(08:41):
and almost anyone can do it if they can find a good deal.
But then they kind of in their mind graduate and they say, OK,
I want to start flipping houses now and I want to start
rehabbing and I find money and Ican make bigger spreads and then
I want to buy and hold. That's all great.
But in many situations it's probably better just to
wholesale the deal and not actually take ownership.
(09:01):
Nothing wrong with wholesaling. I think it's a great business
model. We actually wholesale commercial
property now. That first deal was kind of
interesting. I'd read some books and
self-taught, I guess you could say and came across a deal.
This is early on. Think like 2005 S early, early
(09:24):
Internet age and I found a deal online and no, I'm trying to
think how did I find that? No, I did mailers.
I I mailed a bunch of distressedowners.
I think they were either tax delinquent this forgive me, 20
years ago, right? So going off of memory here, but
yeah, I think I was doing some mailers and it was probably tax
(09:47):
delinquent or evictionless. And I got somebody to call me
and it was a home. I lived in the Twin Cities area
of Minnesota, like around Saint Paul, Minneapolis area at the
time. And there was kind of a tertiary
market, a market of maybe an hour and a half away that had a
golf course, 1 golf course, And there was a home on that golf
(10:09):
course that this owner called meabout.
He happened to be in the mortgage business as well.
And, you know, he had bought it and thought he was going to move
into it and decided not to. And I tied it up with an option
contract, which is kind of funnynow that I think about that.
I was much more comfortable using option contracts than
purchase agreements because I felt like I was obligated to
(10:31):
perform with a purchase agreement where I wasn't
obligated to perform with an option agreement, right?
It's unilateral versus bilateralagreement.
So I, I went into it with an option agreement, tied it up and
I ended up making like $14,000. I took it, I put it all over the
Internet, you know, and again, early world of the Internet.
(10:52):
I think I put it on some, you know, for Sale by owner sites
and things like that. And I got a bite and I was it.
Posted on AOL. No, it wasn't AOL, but it was
definitely in that in that time period.
But it was, it was like a for Sale by owner type of site and
ended up getting a buyer for it.I made I think $14,000 on that
deal and that was just incredible to me.
(11:13):
I mean $14,000 to send out a piece of paper and get it back
and then find somebody else to buy that piece of paper off of
me and that was it. And then the next deal I ended
up doing was significantly larger.
I found a, a builder in the TwinCities area that had I think the
sale price was like 750,000. So I went from a, you know,
(11:37):
$180,000 house to a $750,000 house and I was able to
wholesale that. And I want to say I made like 70
or $80,000 on that deal and I was like, OK, I'm on to
something, right? And I did that with an option
contract as well, which is crazy.
I can't believe the builder let me do it.
But worked out great. And I think it was 74,072 or
(11:59):
$74,000 I made on that deal and I was off to the races.
Keep in mind that's when that's when I had a mortgage business.
So I had a full time job I guessyou could say because I was
working in the business recruiting cold callers and
running a call center and you know I was partnering that, but
it was is a full time thing. So that just kind of goes to
(12:20):
show you that anybody can reallywholesale or do any real estate
on the side if they really want to.
You just have to be willing to put in the effort.
Yeah, I would. I, I, I really want to move on
to mobile home parks, but just before we do, I really like what
you touched upon there. People who are just getting
(12:40):
started. They don't have to quit their
job to do real estate investment.
You shunk a little bit. Can you talk a little bit about
that? You just said that you
shouldn't. Can you elaborate on that and
kind of explain where you're coming from from for as this as
a seasoned investor? Yeah, I would say, you know,
(13:02):
flipping houses, wholesaling houses, you can definitely make
money, right. But until you really got a good
business system figured out, youprobably shouldn't quit doing
what you're doing because it's going to be rocky.
You're going to have mistakes, you're going to learn the hard
way and a lot of things. And if you go quit your job just
(13:22):
to start wholesaling or flipping, you might have some
rough months. And so it's just, it's important
to understand that in that world, especially a trading type
business, it is a business. I think what a lot of times
people do is they go into real estate with the mindset of I'm
becoming an investor. No, you're not.
(13:43):
You're going into real estate asa real estate entrepreneur.
You're starting a business in the real estate investment
world, OK? Flipping houses and wholesaling
is not investing. That is a trading business, OK?
It's the same as buying, yeah, you're buying cars and selling
cars. You're buying widgets and
selling widgets. And how you do that doesn't
(14:06):
matter what you're selling it. You're in a trading business
model. You are not an investor, OK?
And that's OK. It's not a negative.
You're not a real estate investor, OK.
So especially on the wholesalingside because you're selling
contracts. But regardless, my point is
until you have the business system really honed in, you're
(14:28):
going to have, you're going to have some tough months.
So that being said, you don't need to.
Now other people say, yeah, well, I'm going to go buy a
bunch of rentals and then I'm going to quit my job.
Chances are just being real single families, you're not
going to quit your job for a long time buying single family
rentals. It's a horrible thing to hold.
(14:48):
OK, there's a few times in a market that you might want to
buy and hold single families forrentals.
Generally speaking, they're horrible investments and you
should only be flipping and trading those, OK, and
wholesaling those, if you want to call it that, right.
And I forgot what your initial question was, but I think the
biggest key here is don't quit your job.
(15:09):
Build a business model and then once you've got it really honed
in, then consider quitting your job.
Yeah. That was exactly what I was
trying to, you know, learn from you is like that whole process
of how do you transition into the industry, not quitting your
job Is is sounds like what you're recommending for anyone
(15:31):
who's just getting started. I mean, if you're like a stay at
home mom or you have some other part time job, yeah, you can
probably put a lot more time into it.
But if you're providing for yourfamily and you know, you're
trying to build up some wealth, you wouldn't want to stop.
What is the consistent income stream Now being an entrepreneur
(15:52):
at heart, I'm like I always say,burn the boats, right?
Like go all in. But I, I think most people can't
do that. They, they need that stability.
And so you need to know yourself.
You know, I, like I said, I started businesses since high
school, but most people would want to do it on the side 1st.
(16:12):
And I, I'm much, I, I used to beat least much more comfortable
with risk and just going all in and saying I'm going to make it
work. And I think you can do that when
you're in your early 20s becauseyou've got low risk, low
responsibilities. But in my 40s, I would never do
that. You know what I mean?
I'd build the I'd I would keep what I have coming in first.
(16:35):
Great stuff, I really appreciatethat advice.
What first drew you into the mobile Home Park business?
Accident. Got you into that?
It was an accident. Nobody.
It's a joke in the industry. Nobody ever grows up saying I
want to get into the trailer park business.
(16:56):
They just don't, right? Like #1 you don't think about it
because it's not really a business that's in the forefront
of your mind. But also, it's not a sexy
business. Everybody wants to be an
astronaut or president, right? So that being said, I was
looking for apartments and I wasstruggling to find apartment
buildings. And a buddy of mine who is a
commercial banker called me up and he said, hey, now you're
(17:18):
looking for apartments, but there's a bank near you that's
got a mobile Home Park that's coming that's defaulted on their
loan and they're interested in selling you the mortgage.
And we won't get into the details of like how mortgage
transactions work and buying debt.
But essentially he said, do you want to buy this mobile Home
Park instead of an apartment building?
And I, no, I don't want to deal with trailer parks.
(17:38):
Like that's not, not even I'm, I'm, I'm going to buy apartment
buildings. And it was in my backyard.
So I went and checked it out andthen I looked at the numbers.
I'm like, Dang, this is way better deal than any other
apartment building I've ever seen.
This is a no brainer. It had some hair.
It had some risk on it for sure.It was a complex deal, but it
(17:59):
had major upside. And so then I started looking at
it closer and did some homework on kind of how they operate.
It's like this is very similar to apartments.
And so I ended up pursuing that deal and bought it.
I ended up buying that park for all in about 620-5650, right in
that range, and then ended up selling it for six and a half
(18:19):
million dollars five years later.
So it was an absolute home run and you know, it was a big win.
So I wish every deal was that, but it was literally a 10X the
price five years later. Pretty awesome.
So that was your first mobile Home Park transaction?
Yes. Now I'd bought mobile home parks
(18:40):
shortly after that, so it's not like I bought that one, waited
five years, sold it and then bought more.
I'd bought that one and then just kept buying them.
But we ultimately exited that deal in five years and made
millions. Yeah, pretty awesome.
And I would say that's that's probably an eye opener to some,
but that's not that crazy. I mean, the multiple is crazy,
(19:01):
don't get me wrong. But you know, in commercial real
estate, it doesn't take a lot ofdeals to build up your net worth
into the millions. Like it really doesn't single
family, and I'm not picking on single family.
I think it's just important to recognize this.
It takes a lot more deals and a lot more time and a lot more
(19:21):
effort to build up that wealth. And you know, have a multi
$1,000,000 net worth in single families.
You do a few deals, one deal, you should be able to make at
least $1,000,000 on it. Like we're typically looking at
deals that we will net across the lifetime of the deal at
least, you know, 7 figures. And that sounds braggy, but it's
(19:45):
not. I'm just saying that's kind of
how commercial real estate works.
Bigger deals, but they're slowerdeals, you know, It's just
different. Yeah.
How would you kind of mentioned that mobile home parks are
similar to kind of like a multi family like apartment type of
(20:05):
thing. Can you talk about the how
they're different? Sure.
Yeah. I mean, apartments, you own all
the structures, right? You own the apartment building
and the tents, just rent it. You're responsible for all the
maintenance. You're responsible for, you
know, everything in that building where with mobile home
parks, for the most part, you typically don't want to own the
(20:25):
homes. The residents own their homes.
They pay lot rent to have their home sitting on your land.
So the only thing you're really maintaining is the land, the
infrastructure, the common area and the amenities.
The residents maintain their homes, you know, so you don't
get calls about toilets and you know, all the different minor
maintenance and repair items. Another way that it's different
(20:47):
is when somebody moves out of anapartment building, you have a
vacant unit and you almost always have to put money into
that unit to make it ready for rent again.
Well, in the mobile Home Park world, because they own their
home, they typically sell that home to another buyer and we act
more like an association would where we just approve that buyer
(21:09):
to buy that home and live in thecommunity.
They buy the home and they just keep paying the rent.
Excuse me? Like we don't miss a beat and we
don't have to touch the home in most transactions or when most
people move. We also have a lot less moving
out and moving in. It's just a slower moving
business because people own their home.
So they'll live there for, you know, 1015, thirty years where
(21:35):
an apartment on average people turn every year and a half,
right? So every 18 months on average in
apartments, you're seeing that unit turn.
We may have somebody that never moves for the entire time that
we hold that property. So it's just a lot less
turnover. There's a lot of benefits, or I
guess you could say differences in the mobile Home Park world,
(21:56):
but those are probably the biggest, most noticeable ones
for someone who's going to operate it.
And what would you say are some of the downsides as compared to
apartments? So what's, what's a negative
about mobile home parks comparedto apartments?
Yeah, I would say that, you know, apartments you can lease
up much faster. You know, you own all the units,
(22:19):
you can maintain them, you can control them.
Where when you don't own the home, there's a process that you
have to go through to hit them with a violation to improve
their home. So like, let's say you've got
somebody with a bunch of junk intheir yard.
If I own the apartment building,I can just go clean up the junk.
If someone's leasing the lot forme, I have to do a violation
(22:39):
notice and then go through a process for them to get that
corrected or if I want them to paint their home or something
like that. It's a process.
It's kind of more like a homeowners association.
You have control, but there's it's a lot more, it's a lot
slower, you know, to get that resolved where on apt I can fix
it, right? It's it's my unit.
(23:01):
And also, you know, if you thinkabout if you've got a vacant
lot, in order to make that an economically occupied lot,
meaning paying a lot, I typically have to buy a home,
bring it in, set it up, and thensell that home, which is much
slower and much more capital intense than when I've got a
(23:21):
down unit and an apartment. I might spend a few $1000 to get
it up and and rentable again. And I'm back online.
So you know, we don't see many homes come out of communities,
but to fill up existing vacant lots.
It is capital and time intense. Now, does someone need to have a
(23:42):
prior real estate experience like other investments like
single family homes are like that?
Or are you able to have, you know, students come to you that
know nothing about real estate investing and, you know, get
right into mobile Home Park investing?
Yeah, I, I would say the majority of our coaching clients
(24:05):
came from some real estate background, not all, not all and
some have been successful without real estate background.
But I would say if you've got some sort of experience with
single families, you're going to, you're going to transition
easier. You know, there's, there is a
learning curve in general to go to commercial real estate, any
type of commercial real estate. So if you understand how a title
(24:28):
works, if you understand how youknow a simple transaction, a
single family home transaction, simple transaction works, it's
easier to then convert that intoa commercial real estate because
there's just a lot of basics that you already know.
But that being said, you don't have to have the experience.
Somebody who has a business background or single family real
(24:49):
estate background would be, you know, they're going to have a
faster learning period, but not necessary.
Yeah. I would say there's going to be
some things that you know, single family real estate
investor is going to pick up on quick.
Can you talk about one of the toughest deals or biggest
(25:10):
setbacks you've had to get through?
Yeah. I mean, I would say some of the
biggest setbacks are deals that we've had to kill.
We've put it under contract. We've spent months and months
and months doing research. I mean, like it's not.
So the difference between a single family home and a
commercial property a lot of times is time and the amount of
(25:33):
due diligence that goes into it,right?
Single family home you can put under contract close as soon as
titles clear almost in most cases where with commercial
property there's just you're it's like you're buying a
business, OK. So there's a lot of
complexities. You're looking at the financial
aspects of it, you're looking atthe legal aspects of it, you're
(25:54):
looking at the physical aspects of it.
You're dealing with zoning, you're dealing with, you know,
just all these different things that you don't have to deal with
on single families. So you can put in literally your
inspection period might be 3 months.
You know, in some cases it's notthe norm, but you're probably at
least 45 to 60 days for due diligence or inspection period.
(26:17):
And it can sometimes go six months.
Like I've had deals that went 9-9 months just to get a deal
closed. So I would say one of the
biggest challenges is you go spend a bunch of time and money
on these and then the deal fallsthrough and you're like, I just
wasted six months of my life on this deal right now.
That being said, dodged a bullet, right?
(26:39):
It's probably because we found something that made it, you
know, less attractive than we initially thought.
And that's why you do you have athorough due diligence process
that you follow to make sure that you're checking all the
boxes and you're not making mistakes and you're buying good
assets. But it doesn't mean that you
don't have, you know, a rough day that day when you have to
cancel the contract and you justgo, I can't believe we just
(27:03):
spent all that time on this, butit is what it is.
I also bought a deal that that was in a location early on that
the demographics really didn't fit the business model, meaning
we want to have a property that has all the tenants owning the
homes and paying us lot rent. We really don't want to be in
the rental business where we ownthe homes.
(27:24):
And I bought a community in an area that really supported more
of a rental model just because it was a lower income area.
And I didn't really understand the importance of those
demographics. And once we bought it, you know,
we'd rehab the homes, we'd sell them off the ones that were
rentals, but then people would buy them and then they would
default like 6 months, 12 monthslater.
(27:46):
And we would go all the way backand start all over again.
And the property had just tons and tons of turnover.
The whole reason you buy a mobile Home Park is so that it
isn't as management intense and you don't have the turnover like
an apartment building. And this location was just
always going to have that turnover.
And ultimately we still have it,but it's just a grind.
(28:07):
I mean, it's one of those properties where it's it's
profitable, but it's just a headache to deal with.
And our team gets burnt out on it.
And it's like you, as soon as you think that you've turned the
corner, you've got more evictions coming up, it's like
we're going to get those units back.
And it's just, you know, it's not, it's a, it's a major
(28:27):
operational burden to deal with.So yeah, I'd say that's probably
a direct mistake that we've made.
What's the most common mistake that you see newer investors in
this space make? Well, there's a bunch.
One of the main mistakes is theythink that they are just buying
(28:50):
dirt and renting dirt and that it's going to be easy.
They underestimate the effort that it takes to turn around a
mobile Home Park. Now that being said, once the
property is stabilized and running smoothly, they are a lot
less work than buying a lot of other property types.
But most aren't buying clean, stabilized, high quality
(29:12):
properties. They're typically buying those
that need the turn around, that need to be improved and have a
lot of operational issues. And so they get into it and they
go, oh, I'm just renting dirt. No, you're going to be a busy,
busy person for one to two yearsand you're going to earn every
penny of that upside that you you know that you're going to
(29:34):
earn, but it is super profitable.
So I'd say they underestimate the work.
We saw a bunch of people kind ofcome from the apartment and self
storage space right after COVID.They were kind of looking for
cash flow because they couldn't get it in the other property
types. They'd come over to mobile home
parks thinking it was easy and they just they were like, OK,
this is this way different than I thought.
Another thing that I would say is they two things, they either
(29:58):
over analyze and research or they under analyze and research
and neither is good. What I mean by that is they they
over research to the point wherethey will never buy anything
because they don't have a clear buy box and they're just
researching and researching and researching and they don't have
(30:20):
the confidence to actually pull the trigger on the other end.
They under research and they buybad deals because they think
they're just buying a single family home.
And they don't do a phase one environmental, they don't do
zoning reports. They don't do a lot of the
things that you need to do to protect yourself.
And then they get into it. They go, whoa, yeah, now I know
(30:41):
why the seller, seller financed this deal to me at 95%, you
know, 5% down, whatever. It's like, oh, there's a hook
there. He he was just trying to get out
of it. It was too good to be.
True, It was too good to be trueand they just didn't know what
to look for. So I would say that sweet spot
is, you know, understanding whatyou're buying and then doing the
(31:02):
proper due diligence with a clear target of what you're
trying to aim. It is either a good deal or it's
a bad deal, right? There is a difference.
And a lot of times, probably oneof the most common questions I
get is how do you know if it's agood deal?
Well, number one, what is your what?
What do you define as a good deal from a return metric
(31:23):
standpoint? Does it meet all the returns
metrics that you're aiming for and the requirements that you're
looking for that define it as a good deal?
And then secondly, do all the due diligence boxes check off.
If you can cross those, you're good.
But I think if you don't hone inon your buy box and specifically
what a good deal is and know theproper due diligence, you're
(31:43):
always going to struggle with either one end of the spectrum
or the other. Yeah, I love that you talked
about it in that sense because you're right.
You know, it's either people analyze too much and don't take
action, or they take action and they really shouldn't have.
So I'm glad that you kind of talked a little bit about that
and explain to our listeners that you do need to have the
(32:06):
correct amount of research due diligence, and it also helps to
have someone know that business a little bit more.
So can you take a little bit of time and talk a little bit about
what you do to coach students, alittle bit about your program
and how it works? Yeah, Before I get into that, I
(32:27):
would say that, you know, with your wholesaling homes, you can,
you can kind of wing it, right? Like there's not a lot of risk
there. There's not a lot of money on
the table and that's what makes it so great.
You do not want to take that same mindset into any type of
commercial real estate, whether it's mobile home parks or other.
(32:50):
You're buying a highly complex asset that has, you know, income
going on. It's got, you know, zoning and
environmental and all that stuffthat you need to understand.
And so getting that baseline knowledge and working with
somebody who's done it a lot is going to protect you and it's
(33:12):
going to make sure that you actually are confident when you
do pull the trigger that you bought a good deal, right?
And and I don't want to make this a pitch fest.
So I'll just say that, you know,my education company, Real Cash
Flow is really just an opportunity for people who are
really serious to buy their first or their next mobile Home
(33:32):
Park to be able to work hand in hand with me on a weekly basis
where we look at deals, I do deal reviews, I get on weekly
calls with them, I partner with my coaching clients.
And it's literally like having somebody on your board of
directors that has, you know what, 12 years of experience
(33:52):
doing it and 100 million plus and acquisitions experience
sitting there and looking over your deals with you to say, yes,
that's good. Watch out for this, whatever.
I mean, it's, it's, it's very hands on and it we actually have
it done for you process as well where someone can say, I don't
have time to do the cold callingbecause I have a full time job,
but I need the lead flow coming in at the top of my funnel.
(34:14):
And so we actually have cold callers that can dial for them.
They can get that. We can provide the data so that
the leads come through and then for them and it's it for the
most part, we found that when people do that, they actually
get more results because they don't have to worry about
finding people to skip trace data and do the, you know, they
(34:35):
don't have to find the time to do the cold calling or have all
the skills needed to just sit there and dial for hours and
hours. It's like teed up for them.
So Long story short, we're seeing a lot of success.
Just had a couple of clients that bought their first park was
109 mobile, 109 site mobile HomePark in North Carolina.
They just closed last week. So like we're we're seeing a lot
(34:57):
of success every week, pretty exciting.
That's great and it's fun for mebecause I get to talk shop all
day with these guys. Yeah, yeah, that's great to
hear. I mean, with our coaching
students, I feel like the confidence is kind of one of the
the things that they're missing the most.
So yeah, that's kind of what we help them with, right?
We have the experience, we have the knowledge.
(35:19):
We've, you know, we've seen the ups and downs, like you said, we
know what to look for and what to avoid.
And so we're really big on trying to build their confidence
because we think that that's kind of the piece that's missing
most often and one of the thingsthat really helps their mindset,
right? Can you talk a little bit about
(35:39):
the mindset of what the type of mindset that's really important
to have in real estate investing, kind of along the
lines of, you know, how do you get past failures?
How do you teach your students that, hey, this might not work
out, but if it does, you're going to learn something and
you're going to, you know, hopefully move on from it.
(36:00):
So can you talk a little bit about the mindset about not
giving up even if you do fail? Yeah, I would say there's
probably one of the biggest killers of high potential people
is they ride the roller coaster.And what I mean by that is they
(36:20):
work hard when they are excited and feel good and they mentally
and physically take a break whenthey don't feel good about it or
they're not excited and they're not emotionally pumped up about
it, OK. And the problem with that is if
you look at your business, your real estate investing business
(36:41):
as a pipeline, as soon as you lose pressure, everything starts
to flow backwards, right? And so you need to keep the
pressure on. And if you realize that what
you're doing today is likely going to produce a transaction
either a month, three months, six months, 2 years from now,
(37:02):
every time you pause, you lose momentum and you lose those
leads and you have to start all over again.
And so, you know, if you think about it this way, if I've been
can, if I call a seller one time, I might as well not have
called them at all because the amount of follow up that I need
(37:23):
to have, at least in our business is consistent over and
over and over. I have to build a real
relationship. Calling someone one time and
then having a bad day and like, I'm going to take, you know, I'm
not going to do anything for a couple of days.
And then you go a week, two weeks, month, and then you're so
far behind on your follow up andeverything, it just, you'll
never get traction. I mean, that's really any
(37:44):
business, not just real estate investing.
You have to do the work, you have to have a plan.
You got to know the exact steps to follow from an actionable
standpoint, like daily that's going to produce the results top
of funnel right? That moves through your pipeline
and then you have to actually doit regardless of how you feel
like. I'll, I'll be honest, there are
(38:05):
some days, I'd say at least oncea month, maybe twice where I
just say screw it, sell it all, be done.
I don't need to do this. It's not worth the stress, the
headache. I could be hanging out with my
family, doing whatever, and the next morning I wake up and I put
(38:28):
my butt to work. Like I just do it anyways.
And what's interesting is that once you get in the routine of
doing the work and you remove the emotions, you'll do that
naturally. Like, yeah, I might pause in the
afternoon if I just, I'm having an insanely bad day because
everybody has that. Every once in a while I might
(38:50):
feel like, you know what, it's 4:30.
I'm just done with all this for the day and then I rest my mind
and then I get back on track thenext day.
I just don't even think about it.
The next day. I'm like, yeah, yesterday
sucked, but boom, I got to go back to what I was doing because
that's how you create the momentum.
So get out of the emotional side.
Quit thinking about what's working and not from a from an
(39:10):
energy standpoint, like just do the work anyways.
Doesn't mean you don't tweak anddon't critique and tweak what
you're doing to improve, but youdon't stop and start based on
what how you feel. Yeah, that's great advice.
That's that's really important for people to understand that it
(39:32):
really is about just putting in the work.
It is about just grinding it out, doing it repetitive.
And like you said, make it become a habit.
Once it's a habit, it's a lot easier to to do that stuff every
day, you know, you know you needto do it.
You know what it is you need to do.
And like you said, you know, just push through if you're
(39:53):
having a bad day or whatever, just go through and do do do
your task, you know, do the steps that you need to take to
get to those goals. You know the equation that I
always give everybody in our group is volume multiplied by
consistency equals results. What I mean by that is if you
(40:14):
don't have the volume of lead Gen. that you need or the volume
of anything really, but let's just talk from a lead Gen.
standpoint to create deals. If you don't have the volume,
meaning let's say if you need totalk to 1000 people a month and
you know cold calling, whatever,and you call 10 a week, you are
not going to talk to enough people to get the odds in your
(40:38):
favor to get the deal, right? So you could, it doesn't matter.
You could call 10 people every week forever and you're never
going to get the result. Why not enough volume, right?
But it's a numbers game. On the other hand, you could
call 1000 people this week, but not call anybody next week and
(40:59):
not be consistent at it. And again, you touch them one
time, it's not enough. You are not going to get
results. You might as well have never
called anybody in either one of those scenarios.
You've got to have high volume and you've got to have high
consistency and you'll get the results.
And you might say, well I have afull time business, I have a
full time job. I can't call 1000 people a month
(41:20):
or 2000 people a month or 500 or200 people a month.
I don't have time for that. Well, then you have to recognize
that you're running a real estate investment business and
you have to find someone who cando it for you, or you have to
find a way to create that high volume, high consistency
marketing in order to get the results.
(41:41):
Otherwise you will not get the results.
Wow, what a great chat. Thank you so much for sharing
all this amazing information andwisdom.
We really appreciate it. I want to talk a little bit
about the, I want to talk about the free book giveaway that
we're doing at for each episode.We're giving away some real
(42:04):
estate books, business books andfor listeners to enter just like
the episode from wherever you'relistening to and comment which
book you would like to receive. So you have up to five days from
the air date to enter and 1 lucky winner will be chosen and
we'll ship the books straight toyour door.
So here's some of the ones we have available.
(42:27):
The 10X rule profit from real estate E myth.
That's a good one. Robert Allen creating wealth.
Rich dad, Poor dad. You got some cash flow quadrant.
You got all the winners. What's the bottom one?
What was that bottom one? Can't see it on the screen,
Dean. Yeah.
Sorry, Dean. Dean.
(42:48):
OK right now. Never read that one.
I. Actually haven't read that one,
I'll be honest. But if someone's interested,
we're we'll send it to your house for free if you like and
comment on the episode. Yeah.
So thanks for thanks for the interview.
Thanks for the time. I just want to leave people with
a little bit of a final thought here.
(43:09):
A lot of people assume that mobile Home Park investing is
out of reach. Maybe it's not mainstream, it
feels complicated, and it can seem like a later in your career
type of strategy. But as Mario shared today,
mindset beats experience. You don't have to be a flipper
or realtor to start. You just need to commit, learn,
(43:29):
and take action. The mobile home space is full of
opportunity, but like anything else in real estate investing,
it rewards consistency and creative thinking.
Start with, start with where youare, get some guidance, and stay
persistent. That's the winning mindset.
Thanks for joining us today, everyone.
(43:51):
Thanks again Mario for your time.
Thank you, Ian. This was a great chat and I
really appreciate it. So it's just fun.
Have a good. Day everyone.
Thanks.
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.