Upward Communities is for the beginners
Mobile home parks take work
Mobile home park partnership deal
Mobile home park beginners & park owned homes
Podcast Transcript
Jason Sirotin:
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Mobile Home Park Expert podcast. I’m Jason Sirotin, here with Glenn Esterson. Glenn, how’s it going?
Glenn Esterson:
It’s another beautiful day.
It is. It is. And we’re very lucky to have our guest today, is John Jacobus from Upward Communities. John, how are you?
John Jacobus:
I’m doing great. Jason. Thanks. Glad to be here.
Jason Sirotin:
Yeah. Thanks for being on the show, man. So the reason we got in contact was, you do something a little different in the mobile home park space, which might be for me, a neophyte to the mobile home park world, as a easier entry. You help people get their feet wet by partnering on deals with them. Can you kind of take me through what Upward Communities does and maybe a little bit about your history?
John Jacobus:
Sure. Yeah. So you’re right, Jason, we do like exploring partnership opportunities to allow new operators sort of ease into getting involved in day-to-day operations. Just background on Upward Communities, we started about a year and a half ago. We focus on turnaround parks between 35 and 80 spaces that have some level of work required. So whether that’s vacancies, whether it’s operational problems, whether it’s problems with the utilities. That stuff, we’re finding value in, and we like doing the hard work.
John Jacobus:
We’ve been using our own money to date to take down these projects. We’ve got a portfolio of about five parks now, primarily in the Southeast. And we’re getting to a point where we’re running out of our own money and we’re still seeing some good opportunities, and being creative about how we can still pursue and grow the portfolio without having to go through the headache and regulatory overhead associated with raising private capital. We’ve started to reach out to newbie investors, operators who are interested in getting involved on a more hands-on basis in operating parks but may not have the confidence or the experience to go out it alone.
John Jacobus:
So we’ve done two projects now with people that have the interest, and we’re looking to sort of join alongside an experienced team of operators so they could learn the ropes themselves and allocate some of their own capital in the hopes that, in a future point in time, they could go out it alone. So we’ve had some success with that, finding partners, and we like teaching others how to be successful. And we also can use help, I mean, these park turnarounds are heavy lifts, so it takes a lot of-
Glenn Esterson:
They’re not easy.
John Jacobus:
… yeah, brain and muscle. So with five parks under our belt, we’re capped and have a lot to do. And so if there was other capable people that have the interest and the brain power and the muscle the capital, we’re just… that’s what we like to do, current state and always looking for creative ways to help each other out for their own cause.
Jason Sirotin:
So what does it look like… Oh, go ahead, Glenn.
Glenn Esterson:
Well, I was just going to tag on to that. How does that kind of help you out? So John and his group, they like to do kind of heavier lifts on projects that will ultimately lead to a higher yield if done correctly and exited properly. And for a guy like you, I would never allow you to invest in a heavy lift on your first deal, for you taking it on with everything you got going on in your life and just your inexperience in doing that.
Glenn Esterson:
Whereas John’s model gives a guy like you the opportunity to participate at whatever level that you’re trying to participate in that deal and learn the business, but without having to take your eye off the ball of all of the other balls you’re juggling. And you can get into a heavier deal, which would have more value add and more upside on it and go through that process from that angle. Whereas if you were buying a park just by yourself, I’m instructing you that I want you to buy something easy and something that you can baby step into and make a few mistakes and not lose.
Glenn Esterson:
So that’s one of the real advantages of using John and his company for people that want to try and get a bit more yield and have a bit more access to a larger deal without having to go through the brain damage of learning how to do it. Now, John’s had a lot of success for a guy who just started a year and a half ago. It’s five parks, almost 300 units or so under their belt. It had been successful so far with these turnarounds, and we’ll let John speak more to that in a little bit. But I just wanted to add a little color for you, so you can get a bit more understanding of how that relates to you.
Jason Sirotin:
Yeah. So if I want to learn and I’m into getting my hands dirty, this is a good fit because I’m going to learn from some of the best in some of the worst situations, right? But if I don’t want to get my hands dirty, this might also be a good option for me?
Glenn Esterson:
Yes.
John Jacobus:
Not necessarily. I think you’d still have to, I think do some active work. Now, we can define how active you want to be. So if it’s doing some marketing for some intel or some lighter touch, there’s a spectrum in terms of involvement. What we currently don’t explore is truly passive, where you’re allocating your capital and not doing anything. Because then that’s where we face… we’re basically selling a security and we’re subject to the syndication rules.
Jason Sirotin:
Got you.
Glenn Esterson:
That’s how you’re navigating that. Okay.
John Jacobus:
Yeah.
Jason Sirotin:
I see.
Glenn Esterson:
That makes [crosstalk 00:06:03] sense. So you-
Jason Sirotin:
But the work doesn’t have to be… I’ll tell you, I think my biggest problem is I keep thinking of myself, like having to go to the park and deal with gross situations that I’m uncomfortable with, or people that I’m uncomfortable with, which seems to be a running theme of a certain kind of person. I feel like Glenn could go to any park and like become friends with everybody and tell everybody what to do at the same time, and be like totally comfortable with it. I’m not that guy. And so, I’m really worried about that part of the business, even though there’s something very appealing from a voyeuristic perspective of hearing Glenn’s stories, but getting down in the dirt, I’m just not so sure of yet.
John Jacobus:
Right. Yeah. So whether you have appetite to be shaking hands with a tenant or not… And that’s where it’s quite flexible in our case. We’ve got people that want to be front lines and others that just, they want to be active but play a behind the scenes role. So one of the good things about [crosstalk 00:07:10]-
Glenn Esterson:
Learn the business side of it.
John Jacobus:
Right. Exactly. So one of the good things about these terms, there’s a lot to do. And if they cut… The to-dos come in a lot of different flavors. So in one of our partnerships, we have a person who’s, I think, a bit more like you, Jason, where they don’t want to be front lines, and so what we have them doing is we’ve got quite a bit of vacancies in our parks and so they’re scouring Craigslist, the local newspaper, Facebook Marketplace, all sorts of channels to find some used homes to bring into the park. So that can just be reaching out to people via email, calling, whatever.
Glenn Esterson:
[crosstalk 00:07:47] that.
Jason Sirotin:
Yeah. That’s right up my alley.
John Jacobus:
So and then like [crosstalk 00:07:51]-
Jason Sirotin:
Okay. That’s cool.
Glenn Esterson:
[crosstalk 00:07:52] with technology.
John Jacobus:
Right? Then, “Hey guys, I got one,” you know, “Hey partners, I’ve got one. What do you think?” Right? It’s just sort of doing some sleuth work online, which is really helpful and productive because every used home that we bring in is incremental value added to the value of the asset. And similarly on once we have these homes brought in and rehabbed and ready to rent, that person is also posting ads to Craigslist and to Facebook saying, “Hey, we’ve got this available spot.” We’re looking for tenants and helping with the list of activity.
John Jacobus:
So that’s a pretty meaty role in many of the parks, we’ve got at least 20 to 30% vacancy. So there’s a lot of time and energy that can be spent there. And it’s a meaty role, it’s an important part of the business, finding used homes, bring them in, and lease them out. And it’s very different in terms of dealing with the day-to-day collection issues or rule violations or managing the manager.
Jason Sirotin:
That sounds super attractive to me, because I can focus on what I’m good at and still be involved in the business. And maybe even come up with new technologies that scrape sites and pull listings down for me, so I don’t even have to search and make the job much easier.
John Jacobus:
Exactly.
Jason Sirotin:
My big question is how does a deal like this structured, right? Like let’s take a million dollar deal and I’ve got a hundred thousand cash, is that a deal I can enter in? And what do I get?
John Jacobus:
It is. Yeah. So we’re pretty flexible on the terms. We’d give you usually a straight dollar-for-dollar equity state. So if you’re bringing in capital to the table, we’re going to give you credit for each dollar that you’re bringing in as part of the equity. And then depending upon how active you want to be in doing the work, we would assign some equity split to recognize the work that’s being performed.
Jason Sirotin:
Well, how do you guys make money? Like, are you putting in on all the deals, too?
John Jacobus:
We do put in at least 10 grand into each… between 25 and a hundred grand we put into each of the deals that we take down. We’re always investing alongside our other partners. But we’re also taking a significant equity cut because of the heavy lifting that we’re doing. So we’re primarily the lead operational partners on all the projects that we pursue. And for that we’re able to carve out a portion of the equity, specifically for taking our lead and driving the operations.
Jason Sirotin:
John, pardon my ignorance. But I want to walk through this, because I feel like other newbies might have the same question. If it’s dollar for dollar… And I want to understand your business because it’s interesting, too. How do you guys carve out equity for yourselves? It’s not clear to me.
John Jacobus:
Yeah. So let’s see. Let’s try to come up with an example here that makes sense. So if we were to take out a hundred thousand or a million dollar deal, and let’s just say we’re going to finance it, 75% loan to value, right? So that means there’s a $250,000 equity gap that we would need to fill, right? If you were to bring 50%… So in this case, it may not be dollar per dollar. But if you were to bring a hundred grand to the table, right, you would bring a hundred grand in equity, and that would leave the remaining $150,000 equity gap. We’d probably, as Upward, we’d probably bring 50 to the table and then have to find another partner to fund the other 100,000, right?
John Jacobus:
So let’s say we’ve got three groups. We’ve got you, we’ve got us, and we’ve got another third partner bringing a 100,000. Upward Communities, we’d probably take 30% of that equity just for our contribution of dollars, and then also for the work that we’re performing. Depending upon how you’re coming in, you’d at least have a third of that plus between five and 15% for the actual role that you’re going to be doing. And then we’d explore the same type of construct with a third partner.
John Jacobus:
So that’s sort of how we navigate. Every partner is playing… We’re trying to determine an active role that they would be playing, and size a split of the equity accordingly, and then give them credit for the dollar contribution that they’re bringing to the table.
Jason Sirotin:
Yeah. You’ve got a tough job, man, because you got to bring people in and then you have to assess what values they’re going to bring early on. And if they mess up, you’re screwed, right? I mean, I’m sure you have conditions and all of that, but that sounds challenging. And now I understand like how you guys… I always like to know how the people who are putting the deal together make money, because it makes me feel more comfortable understanding, “Okay. Well I know everybody’s got to make money, but how?”
John Jacobus:
Yeah.
Jason Sirotin:
Hey, Glenn, have you ever done a deal like this or have been part of these kinds of deals?
Glenn Esterson:
I’ve been a part of various deals that were like that, especially when I first started investing in real estate. I used to, back in the day if I was selling like an apartment building or an industrial building or something, I would often take half of my fee and use it as some of that equity gap to take a piece of ownership, usually it’s one to 3% ownership of the deal or something like that, and help fund that way. But I wouldn’t be involved with the day-to-day.
Glenn Esterson:
Other partnerships, going further back in some of the real estate deals like on single family housing and townhouses and stuff I used to play with, I’d have like a 50-50 partner in money, but then I would do most of the work and then get an extra piece of the pie for that work that I was doing, essentially a management fee. There’s a thousand ways to carve up these deals when you start using partners, and each of them has their own advantages.
Glenn Esterson:
The syndicators often tend not to make too much money until the deal gets completed. And that’s where their payday tends to lie. It’s a lot of, given away things from the earnings of the park that haven’t yet been stabilized, and forgoing transaction fees or syndicator fees and things like that to help the deal push along. So the syndicators often take a back seat to the front money, so guys like you are getting your preferred equity or your preferred payments or whatever the term that is being thrown around you. So every month or quarter, you’re getting your payout if there’s cash flow, or if you’ve just given them hard money to borrow on, they’re paying you the interest on that. [crosstalk 00:15:12]-
Jason Sirotin:
And that’s what John is? John, you’re a syndicator in this respect?
John Jacobus:
We’re not. No. We don’t syndicate the equity. So the main difference, right, this syndication versus this JV, joint venture partnership is, with the syndication, you were exchanging a promise for return for capital. And so as a participant in a syndication, as a passive investor, you’re going to give your money to a sponsor in exchange for a promise for a return and for a promise not to have to do any work.
John Jacobus:
So you’re relying on others’ [inaudible 00:15:47] for you to benefit. In what we’re doing… and there’s a lot of… And that’s basically a security, right? It’s essentially a security. And as a result, it’s governed by rules that are put together by the Securities and Exchange Commission, and it can be costly and a compliance nightmare to deal with.
John Jacobus:
So for us, we’re pursuing these smaller projects between 30 and 80 lots, it just doesn’t make sense for us to go through the legal paperwork and bear the cost and the complexity of compliance. So what we’re trying to do is find people that can do the work and are willing to be active and carve out… As Glenn was saying, there’s a million different ways that you can carve this out so that it makes sense for people involved. So if you’re bringing a line share of the capital, great, you’re probably going to own a bunch of the equity in the project. We’re making some portion of the equity split because we’re bringing our processes, our technology infrastructure, and the know-how to the table. And we may not fill the entire capital gap, but that’s… It’s just different ways to slice up the pie where two people can join together and co-operate the park.
Jason Sirotin:
Right. The joint-
Glenn Esterson:
And the model that guys are using, Jay, and the model that they’re using is by having the partner actually participate in the labor involved in these things, whether it’s on the back end office, or it’s on the front lines of the park, that’s the model that they’re doing to not have it just be a silent partner that would require some SEC stuff. So by kind of holding hands together as the deal, pretending it was us three that we’re doing a deal, we would all have separate obligations on the business and operational side, plus we would all have our own cash put into it. And that wouldn’t be something that would trigger any SEC compliances.
Jason Sirotin:
Yeah.
John Jacobus:
Exactly.
Jason Sirotin:
You know what’s very similar is in… I’m in the film business. So when we make a movie, if I don’t want to pay a screen actors guild wage, I can get away with making the person a producer and giving them a different set of rules. It sounds like just another work around to just make it all work and make it easier.
John Jacobus:
That’s right. Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Jason Sirotin:
And it’s great because you’re actually learning something, and you’re moving forward. So I 100% get it. And this actually… Glenn, I think this is, from everything we’ve talked about, by far the most interesting to me, because I can add value, which is key to me. Because that means that we can get a better payout.
Glenn Esterson:
Yeah. Without having to be on the frontline.
Jason Sirotin:
Yeah.
Glenn Esterson:
And you don’t have to go [crosstalk 00:18:42]-
Jason Sirotin:
Without kicking out a drug dealer and a prostitute, you know?
Glenn Esterson:
Right.
John Jacobus:
Yeah.
Jason Sirotin:
From our good and bad and ugly stories. Nightmare stories.
Glenn Esterson:
We’ll let [Jacob 00:18:55] do that.
John Jacobus:
Yeah.
Glenn Esterson:
We’ll let Jacob do that because I don’t want to do that anymore [inaudible 00:18:56]. I’m tired of that game.
Jason Sirotin:
So, John, let’s go back in history a little bit. So we were talking before we started, when I was having all my technical problems, about kind of where your past was and how you ended up here. And I really want to understand what was the past, and then what made you decide to really make the transition, and why do you think that this is the place to play right now?
John Jacobus:
Sure. Yeah. Yeah. So going way back, about 20 years ago, when I got started just investing in real estate in general, I got started… I’m originally from the San Francisco Bay Area in California, currently live in New York. So in the early 2000s my dad, brother, and I got started onto, look, small partnership and did a couple of single family fix and flips down in Southern California.
John Jacobus:
At the time, Southern California was still recovering from the defense downturn in the ’90s, and so we just seized an opportunity. It was my dad’s way of sharing with his sons and demonstrating a different way to create wealth and explore the entrepreneurial zone. And so that got… I took the bait, hook line and sinker, and got really interested into this cool, new thing of buying real estate, fixing her up, adding value, and then selling it and doing it again. So that’s more [crosstalk 00:20:28]-
Glenn Esterson:
And making [crosstalk 00:20:29]. That’s good. That’s a good dad. That’s a great dad.
John Jacobus:
Yeah.
Jason Sirotin:
A great dad.
John Jacobus:
Yeah. I was a teen, right. I was 18 when that was happening. I was still going to school and got an early start there. And that sort of set my path for the next couple years, acquired a couple of long-term buy and hold in the Southwest. And then over the years, just sort of slowly scaled up into larger and more significant projects.
John Jacobus:
In about the 2010 to 2012, got really interested in multifamily projects in the Southeast and took on a couple of larger projects, about a hundred units, and got more active there, started joining with other partners and helping them raise capital, and just progressively inched along. Until about 2016, ’17, when we’ve gotten late in the cycle, and the opportunity to find value was really limited, and facing a lot of competition. Just real challenges in finding good opportunities. [crosstalk 00:21:38]-
Glenn Esterson:
Yeah. It happened to you too, huh?
John Jacobus:
Yeah.
Glenn Esterson:
It seems to be what a lot of guys [crosstalk 00:21:41] about there, about ’16, ’17. [crosstalk 00:21:44]-
John Jacobus:
Exactly. A lot at the same time, I had heard about a variety of different options, self-storage, even owning small businesses, oil and gas wells. And I’ve just always been interested in these other strange niches that have attractive economics. I also happened to learn about other really successful investors like Sam Zell, and Warren buffet, who are in the manufactured housing industry in a big way.
John Jacobus:
And I think it was just Saturday afternoon or something, I said, “Huh, there’s got to be something more to this mobile home park thing.” Warren Buffett being the owner of Clayton Homes, the largest manufacturer of mobile homes in the country and being in the financing of mobile homes in a big way through 21st Mortgage. Same way Sam Zell owning Equity LifeStyle, and being the largest owner of manufactured housing communities in the US. I thought, “Hey, these guys are onto something.” I respect them as investors, they’re in the business in a big way. There’s got to be something to this. What are they seeing that I haven’t discovered yet?
John Jacobus:
So I just started reading and learning about other operators in the space, understanding economics. And the more that I dug into things, the more attractive, and the more bells went off in my mind. I really like things that are unloved and fragmented and hard. Nobody talks about owning mobile home parks at cocktail parties because it’s unpopular and kind of messy. But that’s the kind of [inaudible 00:23:18]. I mean, if this is cash gushing and it creates an opportunity to build wealth, I don’t care how unpopular it is in the public side. Those are things that I want to own.
John Jacobus:
So, yeah, getting to know other people that were doing it. And, Glenn, before the show we’re talking about, Ekaterina and her team, there’s… I live now in New York, and there’s quite a robust community of owner-operators, investors in New York. And so I’m starting to get to know them and collaborate, discuss opportunities and just in the spirit of getting to know more about the industry. Ekaterina and our partners had an opportunity that they were passing on, because they had some other priorities, and I seized that as an opportunity to dig in, and we eventually closed that deal. And that was our first park that we had under ownership.
John Jacobus:
So that’s a long journey from early 2000s until now. And as we got that first deal, everything expanded after that. The deal flow started to come through in a major way. We started to learn, the lessons learned from the first deal, what we would do differently if we took on our next one and our next one. And that’s where we are in the journey. It’s just continuing to move forward, figuring out where our strengths are, where we can do things better, being opportunistic and just keeping things open and remaining flexible and open-minded. So that’s where we are today.
Jason Sirotin:
Yeah. Well, what’s the biggest thing you learned from MHPs so far? What would you tell the viewers is the biggest thing to be aware of?
John Jacobus:
So, I think, in some cases, the investments in MHPs are marketed as a passive investment opportunity. Primarily because in a perfect world, you own the dirt and you simply operate the property like a parking lot, and you don’t really need to do anything other than collect checks on a monthly basis from your residents who own their homes, and you just on the dirt. Well, in some cases that may exist, and that certainly is an appealing factor if you can find it. We haven’t experienced that. It’s quite a heavy lift and it requires a lot of hands-on ownership.
John Jacobus:
I know, Glenn, you’ve shared countless stories of just how much work it takes to operate these things. And so to new people that have an interest and are looking at considering getting involved, I would say, I mean, this is a business that requires a lot of hands-on work. And you don’t necessarily have the benefit of other professionals in the industry that you can rely on for management. So in contrast to apartments where you do have quite a robust capable network of third-party management companies, we haven’t found ones and we haven’t heard of really solid vendors, third-party managers, for mobile home parks. So that means [crosstalk 00:26:33]-
Glenn Esterson:
There’s a couple around the country, and some of them are very effective and some are more effective than others. There’s one group that’s, it’s very nationally known and used by a lot of the big guys. And they exceed expectations on stabilized parks. They do a great job with them. But on a heavy value adds from a third-party management view, very, very few third parties are going to be able to effectively exercise that upside. It’s just so challenging.
Glenn Esterson:
So a guy like you does have to get knee-deep in it to be able to make that work. But when you get it to 85% or better, that’s about when a lot of the management companies that are available, and there is just only a few that I know of will start coming online for you. In the meantime, you better get up and go and make that work out because they’re sitting there waiting.
John Jacobus:
Yeah. Yeah. That’s right.
Jason Sirotin:
It sounds like it’s never ending.
John Jacobus:
Yeah, it is. I mean, it’s always something. There’s just so many small things that you need to pay attention to and handle. And as you start to grow a portfolio, those small things really add up and it’s a lot to stay on top of.
Jason Sirotin:
Which is hard-
Glenn Esterson:
It is. And do you guys own park on homes?
John Jacobus:
We do. Yeah, we do. I mean, we’d prefer to have tenant on homes throughout all our communities, but just the natural part of the business is you find yourself with some homes. So yeah, we’ve got park on homes, and we rehab them, and we’ve got home renters in there. And that comes along with some challenges.
Glenn Esterson:
That adds to the level of work that needs to be done, especially when you own these boxes wrapped in a thin coat of metal built with OSB, with a roof that’s deliberately trying to separate every day of the week sometimes, if you have an older home.
John Jacobus:
Right.
Glenn Esterson:
One good rainstorm that you don’t think too much about, and it starts a little leak and you come back a month later and you realize, “Oh man, I don’t have a floor anymore in this place. I don’t have a window. I don’t have a wall. I have to redo the electricity.” So that could really eat up time and be very aggravating doing it over and over again. But there’s climate like the Southwest and Southern California, like where you were at, where these homes will last forever and stay in great shape, and there’s a lot less maintenance involved. But here in the Southeast, specifically, we get a lot of weather and it seems like the shelf-life of our homes here is shorter than the life span of these ones out in the Southwest.
Glenn Esterson:
So, you know, more things to consider when you’re buying these parks, guys who are listening is, location does have an impact on that. And as you’re hearing it from a strong operator, that it takes a lot of work to keep these things in line until you get to that cherry, A-plus, turnkey thing, it’s, they take a lot of work. And when you add layers like houses into it, it’s going to add some more work to you. And as usual, I’m going to tell you, don’t underestimate the level of hard this business is to stay on top of.
John Jacobus:
For sure. Yeah. A hundred percent agree.
Jason Sirotin:
This is a random question. So when I was a kid in Sheridan, Indiana, we lived in a modular home. Right? Is a modular home different than a mobile home park home?
Glenn Esterson:
Oh, yes.
John Jacobus:
It is.
Glenn Esterson:
Oh, yes.
John Jacobus:
Yeah.
Glenn Esterson:
We’re about to put under… We’re hopefully hoping to list the park in Pennsylvania. That is a beautiful park. And there’s a section that’s older mobile homes, traditional kind of mobile home park style. But the whole 70% of the rest of the park, and it’s a fairly large park, is modular homes and it straight up looks like a subdivision in there. And it’s very pretty, very laid out. These homes that she has in, they’re about $180,000 a piece. And they have garages and all that kind of stuff. It’s a beautiful thing that she has over at her park.
Glenn Esterson:
That is so easy to finance when you have it down to that and much less work to get into. I mean, really you’re ended being more of a homeowner’s association type of landlord, where you’re dealing with just general maintenance and all that kind of jazz. It’s, the whole park is usually built a lot differently. And the overall qualities is going to give you less headaches to have to deal with. But it takes a minute to buy your first park that way. Most guys-
Jason Sirotin:
Because they’re more expensive, right?
Glenn Esterson:
You’re not going to get a lot of extra… The more expensive, there’s less upside in them. I mean, this one has upside because it has vacant lots, but at the same time, it’s an expensive house to purchase and it will take a minute to fully build out, but for what it is, it’s a really, really nice deal. [crosstalk 00:31:45]-
Jason Sirotin:
Do they depreciate at the same rate?
Glenn Esterson:
No. No. They have a much higher standard of building from what I understand. And I’m not the expert on the manufacturing side of these homes, but the modular homes last. They look like a real house. They act like a real house. They last-
Jason Sirotin:
Yeah. I know. Ours seemed real.
Glenn Esterson:
Yeah. They tend to have a very long shelf life. It’s not just a tin can with OSB right behind a 16-inch of metal. So they’re built considerably different.
Glenn Esterson:
Now, the new mobile homes today are built at a much higher standard, but as most of our audience, I’m assuming, knows, we’re typically talking about stuff pre-1995, and typically talking about like C-class, C-minus class type of parks that we’re here to add value to and take them up to a nicer grade park, but still not these class A, modular home subdivision type of communities typically for this show. Although, we can definitely talk about that whole side as an investment, but I think most of the guys who are more like John who are looking for some strong value in a way that they could expedite the upside and move on to the next deal or keep it for cash flow, however their exits kind of look like.
Glenn Esterson:
These other ones are not so much that style for what I’m assuming is most of our audience who I don’t really know because we don’t track those guys.
Jason Sirotin:
We’re not tracking them yet.
Glenn Esterson:
I would think that they’re not going after that kind of stuff. It’s-
Jason Sirotin:
Well, guys-
Glenn Esterson:
Sorry to go off on a rant there.
Jason Sirotin:
No. No. I’m the one who brought up the random topic and I have like three others, but we’re running out of time. So I want to thank John Jacobus from Upward Communities. And if people want to get in touch with John, which John, I’m sure I’m going to be contacting you at some point, you can go to upwardcommunities.com, and then you can email John directly at [email protected]. John, thank you so much for being on the show today.
John Jacobus:
Yeah, thanks guys. It was a pleasure.
Jason Sirotin:
Glenn, thank you.
Glenn Esterson:
Absolutely. Hey, I would like to say one thing.
Jason Sirotin:
Yeah.
Glenn Esterson:
Jason, I’d like to say one thing real quick. John touched on a group of investors in New York city. I forget the little area of New York city that they’re in, but there’s a great group out there for those of you that are listening, run by Ekaterina Stepanova. And I think it’s called the MHP Tribe.
John Jacobus:
That’s right.
Glenn Esterson:
And they get together every month or every six weeks and talk shop and there’s some great guys and girls that are in that meetup. And I would highly recommend looking them up on Facebook and just, I think, it’s MHP Tribe on Facebook.
Jason Sirotin:
That’s cool.
Glenn Esterson:
And if you’re in the area, say hi. She’s great. She’s doing a great job in this business. And it sounds like John had a nice, healthy start with her too. If you’re in that area, I recommend saying hi.
John Jacobus:
Yeah. [crosstalk 00:00:35:00]-
Jason Sirotin:
Awesome. Awesome. So thank you all for listening for the Mobile Home Park Expert Podcast. I’m Jason Sirotin here always with Glenn Esterson. We’ll see you next time.