Ep. 47 Investing In Mobile Home Parks And Parking Lots With Kevin Bupp

Welcome to the Next Level Income show where it's our goal to take your income, your investments and your life to the next level. Chris I'm your host, Chris Larson. You can get a copy of my book for free@nextlevelincome.com just click on the book link. On today's show we have Kevin Bupp. Kevin is a Florida based real estate investor, top itunes podcast host and serial entrepreneur with over 200 million of real estate transactions under his belt. His extensive investment experience spans the gamut of multifamily office, retail, raw land, parking lots, and his favorite and by far the most profitable mobile home parks. You're not going to want to miss this show today as Kevin shares how he he built a $30 million empire, lost it all in the Great Recession, and then has rebuilt what he has today. He also shares what has been his really core focus that allowed him to pull through that time and also what his inspiration was to have him start his 72 hour to key west annual bike ride that helps feed thousands of families a year. You're not going to want to miss this episode. So after this quick message, stay tuned for my interview today with Kevin Bupp. Kevin, welcome to the show.

Chris. Thanks for having me, man. Excited to be here.

Likewise. Man. It seems like a whole eternity ago when we last saw each other in February before COVID hit out in Colorado, but I'm getting fired up. I'm looking at taking trips out west to do some skiing here.

Yeah, yeah, me too. I know as we were talking about February, we were out there, went skiing after the best ever conference and then did a trip to Park City and literally like two days we got back from Park City, everything shut down and we've been stuck ever since. But I'm looking forward to getting back out there. I already got literally have three trips planned out west here over the next couple of months. So I'm to get back on the skis. Well, actually snowboard, not skis.

Excellent. Yeah, I told my boys, my boys have been skiing. I picked up skiing again with them. But I told them once they can ski the whole mountain and I figured it'd take a few years, then we'd start snowboarding and son of a gun lat out there at Keystone. My son, he did the whole mountain with me. I was like, well, I guess that's it.

There you go. Awesome.

So Kevin, I feel like we were talking before the show. I feel like I've known you for years because I listened to your podcast in the past, all your work with Mobile home parks. I really admire the charities that you support and I think we share some similar passions in not only cycling but also bourbon. So for those in the audience that don't know about your story, perhaps you could share more with us.

Yeah, sure thing. And thanks Chris for having me here. I'll try to keep it somewhat condensed, but I've been investing real estate. I'm 41 now. I've been investing in real estate since I was 20. I got introduced to real estate when I was 19. Kind of studied underneath a gentleman who became my mentor. It was a very accidental situation, I guess. Right place, right time, right. Because at that point in my life, Chris, I was attending bar, going to school, local community college. I had ambition, I'd always hustled at a younger age. I had a paper route. I would go mow lawns, I shovel snow. When I was 14 I learned how to install car stereos, my brothers cars, and build speaker boxes. Like all these things. I always like to make my own way and be able to buy my own things, you know. But as I got a little older and graduated high school, started going to school, I knew I didn't want to, I didn't know what I wanted to do and I knew I didn't want to go away to school and waste my parents money. I knew that if I went away it would be $25,000 a year. And I sure my parents weren't rich at all. We were very middle of the road, blue collar and so I did the responsible thing and stuck around. However I, they know what my future path is going to look like. And then just kind of by accident, you know, I started dating a girl. And this girl, her mother had recently gone through a divorce and started dating a guy by the name of David. David, local real estate investor. And so just being over at their house, you know, on a regular basis, became friends with David and just got to learn more about his business, what he did. He lived a very different lifestyle. I was used to growing up, you know, he drove a really nice car, always dressed really nice and seemed to have a lot of flexibility in his, in his day, you know, like I would, I would come see him over at the house in like odd parts of the week, like Wednesday afternoon, like 1pm when you know, my parents were at work, right. Like they worked at 9 to 5. And so it was really odd for me to see him around. He wasn't unemployed, he was, he actually had money but he got to kind of choose his, his days, right. And how he Spent them. And so that was very intriguing to me. And long story short, Dave and I, you know, we struck a friendship, just again, got to learn a little bit more about what he did. I didn't really comprehend it or understand it. I just, I mean, I understood the basics from level, but didn't really know the, you know, the micro level details of how he did what he did and how he accomplished all that he had. And so a few short months after our friendship, you know, I think David, I always ask him questions. I was always interested, always just trying to like peel back layers. He obviously noticed that and he invited me to a three day workshop or a bootcamp down in Philadelphia. Ron LeGrand. Ron LeGrand's still around today? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Ronald Legrand still around today. But I went down to this boot camp David invited me to a couple thousand dollars for it. His business partner couldn't attend and so he invited me to go. And I had no idea what it was, what it was going to learn, but I said yes. I didn't even hesitate, I said yes and I did with him. And what I realized during those three days together is that number one, there was a lot of people there that were making, you know, what I. What to me was a lot of freaking money. And just a couple hundred thousand dollars a year was a lot of freaking money to me. Like my parents both made somewhere between probably $25,000 a year, my dad maybe $60,000 a year. So again, very blue collar the road, neither of them ever broke that six figure annual income. And so this was a whole different world to me. And what I realized, making a lot of money. Number two, a lot of the folks I met over those three days didn't seem to be all that much smarter than me. I mean, they knew a lot more about real estate because they had been doing it, but just generally speaking, they didn't seem to possess any additional skill sets that I couldn't ultimately learn with a little bit of help from David and guidance. And so I left that three day boot camp excited, overwhelmed, you know, just seeing dollar signs and you know, really more so feeling like this was it, like this was something I could wrap my arms around. Like nothing had excited me up to that point in my life as far as like, you know, future dreams, future goals, career. Nothing else had really excited me. And I surely wasn't all that excited to go to school. It just, I've never been an overly studious person, at least back then I was. And now I'm much more. I But it just going to college wasted time for me. And so anyway, I continued going to classes. I attended bar part time. But what I did is I went back to David a couple of weeks after we got back from this boot camp. Essentially I knew that if I didn't have help that I would lose this energetic feeling it would leave me and then I would be back beginning stages again, just understanding this real estate thing, but not really knowing what the next steps were. And so I continue with that enthusiasm. I went to David. And David, he was about 25 years older than I and I went to him with a plan of, you know, basically I wanted to be around him more, I wanted to be in his business during the day. But how could I help him? How could I kind of give value to him so that in turn he would teach me what he knew and I could be around him more and get to learn his business. And again, being that he was a little older than I, he wasn't as good with technology. He wasn't as good with even setting up an email or creating a PowerPoint presentation. He just, it wasn't his thing. He was a paper guy. And so I offered to help him were in his business. And I did find that that void existed in the technology side. And so I basically offered to be his admin assistant, be whatever he needed from me. And so I did a little bit of everything. I mean from you know, picking up signed leases or delivering sign, you know, delivering leases and picking up signed leases from, from tenants doing showings for him on his properties. He was kind of a one man band. He kind of oversaw everything, would go on, meetings with him, with contractors and I was just around him as much as possible. And so about a year thereafter I learned a ton. It was just engulfed in it on a daily basis. I learned a lot. And I felt that it was time I had saved up bartending money and it was time to buy my own property. Kind of a leap of faith. And that was scary as hell to me because I had never bought anything more than maybe a car or a dirt bike or something like that in my life. I never spent tens of thousands of dollars on something and I had money saved up, but it was all I had and it took me quite some time to save it. But I bought that first single family home when I was 20 years. It was a completely rundown mess in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, downtown area.

Harrisburg, Pa. Yeah.

Really, really rough area. Even a rough area today, you know.

Right off 83, right?

Yep, right off of 83. Just it was a row home, your typical row home, you know, three story row home, and purchased that property, utilized a lot of David's resources to renovate it. You know, he had a lot of those relationships I had, I had gotten to know them over that year of working together, allowed me to leverage a lot of those resources that he had already created. And you know, my intent originally was to kind of follow David's model. I, you know, I didn't want to fix what wasn't broken. And David's model was a buy and hold. He was much further along his business. I didn't understand that right away, but I was like, I'm going to be a buy hold investor as well. I'm going to buy for cash flow. Right. However, I used all my money to buy that property. And so that couple hundred dollars a month I received in cash flow once I rented it out, and it was going to take me a very long time. I quickly realized to have enough money to buy another property, I quickly changed that model to basically wholesale. Wholesale. A couple properties, buy one, keep it. Wholesale. A couple properties, buy one, keep it. So that became my model until I had the ability to really focus more on long term holds. And it took a couple years to really get there before I had the capital sources. And that's when private money came into the equation. And then we really became a buy and hold investor where we for the most part bought with the intent of holding and turn.

I love it.

Yeah, I can continue, but I'll let you, I'll let you interject here for a moment.

Yeah. Well, I think there's so much about your story that I love, Kevin. First off, both of us came from fairly humble beginnings. I grew up just south of Baltimore, not too far from you down there. You got me beat, though. I was 21 when I bought my first property. But the young investors that I mentor now, we have this conversation, they look and they're like, you know, I'm going to build my passive income and I'm going to make 200 bucks a month off this property. It's like, well, how many do you have to buy to get there? And shifting from that mentality. So for those that aren't listening, wholesaling is essentially, what do you do with a wholesale versus a buy and hold?

Oh, you're asking me the question. I mean, with a wholesale deal, how's.

A wholesale deal different than just going to buying a rental?

Yeah, I mean, a wholesale deal is just really tying up the paper and selling the paper up at a, at A below market price to where there's enough room for that next investor to come in and actually do the rehab and make a profit on it. So that's ultimately a wholesale, then whole for us was we'd buy it and then we'd renovate it, you know, get it and you know, move in condition and then again, you know, turn it into a long term rental.

Yeah, I think that's a great strategy. So if you're listening and you're not familiar with this and you're trying to figure out how am I going to get some capital, maybe this is your side gig. That's a great way is to go out, meet other investors that are looking for buying holds and doing that. So, all right, so you're going along, you're wholesaling deals, you're buying single family. Kevin, this is all in Pennsylvania. When did you make your move to Florida?

I moved to Florida in 2002. So I wrapped up school, I bought a number of properties up in Pennsylvania and I just, even growing up there, I mean, Pennsylvania is a beautiful place, don't get me wrong. But I never ever got used to the cold and I never got used to the gray winters when the sun doesn't really ever come out. Just kind of a gloomy day. I just, it drove me from the time I was young until I was old enough to say I'm going to get out of here and go somewhere else where it's sunny. And so I chose to move to Florida. You know, I did some, I did do some reading. Wasn't just, hey, let's go to the sun and the fun. I did some research as to vibrant markets where, you know, real estate was trending upwards. You know, Harrisburg was a, I wouldn't call it stagnant, but it. Not a lot of action happened there. It's a little different, it's a different place today than what it was, you know, 20 years ago. But back then, I mean, you'd be lucky if your home shaded 2% any one given year. I mean, you'd be doing really well. And so it's just a very linear market. It's just kind of slow moving. And so I wanted to go somewhere where it was a little bit more progressive, where there was opportunity for me to plug in with even real estate investor groups. I mean, I had to drive to Philadelphia or Baltimore to get to the closest real estate investor meeting, which is those that don't know. It's about two hours to either one of those cities from where I grew up. I identified Tampa, Florida as an opportunity. I mean Tampa was very different 20 years ago than what it is today. Had a lot of growth potential, lots of plans. They are revitalizing downtown Tampa and downtown St. Petersburg and just there was Multiple different Fortune 500 companies and 100 companies moving here or plans to move here. And it was close to the beach, right? I mean it was close to the Gulf of Mexico and absolutely a gorgeous area. So I moved down to Tampa and immediately plugged myself in. There was literally, I think like four different weekly real estate groups that within a 45 minute radius I could go to multiple different groups, plug into a lot of different networks. I came down and hit the ground running, started buying within a couple months started buying property and establishing those relationships and it went a lot faster down here just because it was. I felt like I was the oddity in small town Pennsylvania. Like you kind of knew the other handful of real estate investors that you know that owned more than maybe three properties. But in Tampa it seemed like there was a lot of people that owned investment portfolios. And so finding those private money resources and private lender seemed to happen a lot quicker for me down here. So I just started buying. I started buying up a frenzy. And so from 2002 to about 2007 I ended up acquiring just over 120 single family homes as rentals. Yeah, ones that I kept like that. Literally rental units. I had wholesaled a number along the way. But again and my focus when I got down here was really buy and hold. I wanted to stay true to that model and I'd have to.

That was over how long of a period there?

So 2002 to 2007. And then I also.

You bought 120 properties and also had.

Just shy of 500 apartment doors and some miscellaneous, you know, odds and ends, commercial real estate. But mostly the model is built around the single family stuff and then the apartments. Most of them were joint ventures or partnership. Have you that got involved and. But yeah, did a lot of great things in a short period of time and then everything was going up. That's all people knew. I mean Florida was on fire and we were very. I was very conservative about my leverage. You know I. My average leverage across the board about 66%. So I wasn't over levered. However, Florida got into a very precarious situation leading up to the crash in 2008. There was a lot of speculative building going on. I don't know if you remember back in the day when literally a pre construction home would get flipped five times before it actually was, was fully built, things like that were down here left.

And right and strippers buying two and three houses.

Yeah, you know, and yeah, it was, it was absolutely crazy. There was, you know, thousands of rooftops being built for populations that weren't even here that you weren't even necessarily coming. They never came. In fact people left because there was no jobs here for a period of time. All the construction workers left and things like that. And so we went through a period where over a period of months we lost a great deal of occupancy. The one of the big things that killed us was we owned a lot of property, older properties, old homes, 30 year old homes and areas where a lot of these spec homes are being built and a lot of these builders to kind of COVID the cost. No one knew how long this was going to go on. They're renting these brand new 3, 2, 2s out for more than what we were renting our older home. And so we, we had a big hit in our occupancy. And that was really the, that was really like the nail in the coffin. Like we lost a good percentage of our occupancy. You know, we weren't renewing leases, we had to give concessions. And then it literally was just a spiral effect. I mean I'll leave it at that effect. And we got to the point to where we, we couldn't pay debt service and, and it got, you know, we had to make some tough decisions with our property and it gave back to the banks, worked with a lot of the lenders. I mean we did as much as we could to kind of work through it, but it was ugly to say the least. Yeah, I lost my portfolio within a period of a year and a half. You know, lost, you know, majority of a $30 million portfolio and you know, I took a couple years hiatus after that. It was damage control for a couple years. Started a few other businesses outside of real estate just to keep a roof over my head. I mean my home, my personal home was in foreclosure and you know, just really day trying to through mentally work through and stay tough, trying to see the light at the end of the tunnel which when you got a sub 500 credit score and you've got credit server process servers knocking on the door all the time became very challenging. But I really turned to my health and fitness at that point. My life started a few businesses that were directly in line with health and fitness. And I just, I figured that if I could keep my mind really strong and my body, you know, really strong and put the right things in it and at least good physically every day when I woke up that, that I'd be able to get through this a lot better than that if I, you know, turn to, you know, turn to the bottle, start drinking like crazy and eating crap and feeling crappy. And so that's what I did. I just tried to maintain a positive focus and knew that things would ultimately turn around at some point in time. And you know, long story short, I. The fire of real estate, it never left my belly. I just wasn't in to really, I wish I would have been to get back in in 2010, 2011 and really buy up a lot of the opportunities that were there. But we ultimately dove back in in 2011, late 2011 and at that point it was really, I look back at what I would have done differently, right. Given the opportunity and what I realized is that I worked my ass off to buy those hundred plus properties, the single family homes, like butt off. I wasn't married enough kids and I had the time to do it and had fun doing it, but, but I had like 500 apartment units, so I almost had five times the amount of apartment units. And I didn't really work hard at all to buy those, but I worked incredibly hard to buy the single family properties. And the single families are the one that they were the ones that challenged me the most when times got really tough. And so I kind of vowed to turn to multifamily to rebuild things. And that's when I stumbled across mobile home parks selling back in 2012.

2012. Yep, yep, yep.

Just like anything. Yeah, go ahead.

I love you. Hit a couple points there. Again, a lot, a ton of good information there. Kevin. I think you know, a lot of people, you know, whether it's, whether it's your health, your family, your career, if you have something that's the cornerstone. And for me it's always, it's always been my health. If you have something that you can constantly focus on, stay in that routine. It's amazing how that can pull you through the tough times. So you know, if I'm listening to you correctly, so you're looking at, you're looking at the single family versus the multifamily. Obviously I went through the same transition. I didn't have 120 properties, you know, single family, but I realized that cash flow property withstand these downturns a lot better because I took a huge hit as well, you know, 12 or so years ago. So you started in mobile home parks that's in 2012. Where are you today with your portfolio with the mobile homes?

Yeah, so we've got communities in 11 different states. We've sold out of a few states. We're kind of steering clear now of some of the more blue states just with rent regulations and things like that. And so we've scaled down. We're in 11 different states. We've got just, we've been teetering around like this 2000 total lot number for like two years now. We buy some and then we ultimately sell some, what have you. But so we've got just right around, I think just 2000 lots throughout 19 communities and just closed on another community last week and. Yeah, so that's our. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. It was kind of interesting. We had intended to roll out another fund offering. We typically do funds and so we intend to roll that out in March. We all know what happened in March and we put that on delay and so really we focused on our existing portfolio for the most part of this year just making sure that that was in good shape, that we were making it through and that just there are so many unknowns, uncertainties and going through this before you can imagine, I probably much risk averse than even my business partner. He hadn't gone through a downturn. So I was like, let's just put the brakes on. It's okay. There will always be deals to buy. Let's just put the brakes on. Let's find out how this is all going to play. Right. It's about two and a half, two and a half, three months ago we started getting a little bit more comfortable that, you know, our portfolio is doing great, you know, still high demand for affordable housing and inevitably we started buying again. Again just a couple months ago.

Yeah, I love, I think, you know, personally, I think, I think mobile home parks are a phenomenal option for mult for affordable housing, which is really, really becoming a true issue in this country. So what criteria, Kevin? So when you're looking and for us in my book, I talk about how we target different MSAs, different metropolitan areas and how we develop our criteria for multifamily. What are your criteria for buying a mobile home park? How do you figure that out?

Yeah, it's a great question and I will say that the criteria, it's a little bit more expanded than that of a typical multifamily investor. And the reason being there's just not the sheer number of mobile home parks like there is a multifamily. So I don't know the accurate number, but this number gets tossed around. 50,000 mobile home parks in the U.S. of that 50,000, there's really probably only about 25,000 that are 50 spaces or larger. Right. And so it's a fairly small number in comparison to that of multifamily. And so we've got to be a little bit more expansive. So that's why we're in 11 states. And for us it's not just a matter of focus. One or two or three markets. We basically, we will go to where the deals are. So long as they're in the Northeast, Southeast or the Midwest. We won't go out on the west Coast. A lot of our emphasis is on the Southeast, you know, the Sunbelt states. I mean that's where the migration is heading. Outside of that, you know, our criteria has kind of evolved the years. You know, the smallest park that we ever bought was 34 lots. We actually still own that one today up in Atlanta. But nowadays really 100 spaces larger. We might consider smaller if we own something nearby if we can get some scales of economy there. But really the minimum that we're looking for is about 100 spaces. And we want to know that there's huge demand for affordable housing. And you think that it's. Most folks would say that there's a demand for affordable housing nationwide. There are select markets that housing is pretty affordable. I always give a hard time to Flint, Michigan, but you can go online and look at the debt Demographics from Flint, Michigan. The median home is like $28,000. You know, it's, it's a pretty rough market there. Unemployment rates really high. So we want to make sure that there's a demand for affordable housing. I want to know that our parks in a really good school district and I want to know that jobs are coming to there that aren't leaving the area. You know, and very basic high level criteria. Outside of that 100,000 population, which is a fairly small MSA, your mobile home parks, you know, we're okay with secondary, even tertiary markets. Some of our best performing communities are in tertiary markets. Again, so long as there's a demand, affordable housing and there's still a diverse employment base there and jobs are either staying or coming, not going away.

Yeah. So what's your average rent across your portfolio? Maybe be. I know it's market specific, but what are you typically seeing?

Yeah, so I'll go from like the low end to the high end. So I think on the low end we've got some communities in the, you know, the Gulf coast region up in the Panhandle and then over the Mississippi, they're in the 250 range. And then on the high end of our scale in our portfolio, we've got some parks up in New York where the New York and Maryland both where the rents are over $500 a month. So average from there in like the mid to high 300 range.

Yeah. And what's for your typical mobile home? What are people paying for their monthly payment for something like that.

If they own the home? You mean in total? Yeah. So again, it's obviously market specific, but I think on average if you lump together a house payment with a lot rent, probably on like a used home, something that's maybe 15, 20 years old, somewhere between 695 to $800 a month for a three bedroom, two bath and brand new home, which we do, we bring in brand new homes. Their total monthly payment between lot rent and the house payment could be somewhere in the range of 800 to $1,000 and sometimes potentially more in some of the higher expense markets.

Yeah, so you're overlapping significantly there with some of that C plus or C grade apartment classes that are out there and doing that. Yeah. My uncle lives in Colorado and we drive through and I see these mobile home communities. I'm like, man, these things are fantastic. It's impressive how high end some of these communities we've got now and we've.

Got the kind of broad spectrum. We've got some C class communities, just hard work and blue collar communities. And we've got some really high end where literally we've got some of the communities in New York that we have the mobile homes sell for 120, $130,000. And I'm talking like used mobile homes.

That's more than the first house I bought. Wow.

Yeah. No, and actually the village, I'm speaking to one specifically the village this community is located in. You could actually go buy a stick built home in this village for less than what some of these mobile homes sell for. And so it's more of a lifestyle choice and decision to live there than it is affordable housing.

Can you say where that is in New York?

Yeah, it's in Buffalo area.

Okay, cool. Interesting. No, that's, that's fantastic. Now Kevin, we were talking before the show, you've, you've recently started to look at some other areas, some other cash flow areas of real estate, namely parking lots. Tell us a little bit about this. This is an area that's fairly new to me and I'm just, I'm really Curious about kind of how you decide to target that area and where you were looking for those.

Sure, sure. So I interviewed my. On one of my two podcasts, I interviewed a gentleman about four years ago who, you know, parking lot. You talk about niche. I mean, parking lot's about as niche as it gets. Interviewed a gentleman about years ago who was a, you know, he was an owner, but he was mostly a large broker. I think he's the largest transactional broker in the parking lot niche. And I was just intrigued, I was, by the business model. I didn't know anything about it. I didn't know, you know, what the operator structure looked like. Who normally handled the collections. Was that party a third? Third party? Was it the owner of the property? What have you? How consolidated was the industry? And as we dug a little deeper, I realized that it's a very fragmented, probably the most fragmented real estate niche that's left today. More than 70% of parking lot owners only own one lot. So there's very few large institutional operators that are in the space. Don't get me wrong, there are, but it's incredibly fragmented. In addition to that, you know, parking lots, while there's a lot of technical advances that are happening. Lots of, you know, digital payment systems, collections, what have you. A lot of these mom and pops have been just like in mobile home parks, they've been really slowly to adapt to changes in their industry. And so there's still a lot of parking lots out there that have been owned for, you know, generations, you know, 40, 50 years that are in prime downtown MSAs or, you know, prime tourism areas that still are utilizing old collection methods, whether it be like a lot attendance or those old metal boxes we have to shove your dollar in.

That's what I'm thinking about. Those right here in Asheville.

Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, the amount of loss that comes from those type of lots that don't have a digital payment system, I don't even carry with me very rarely. And so if I can't pay with a credit card, then I'm not paying. Right. And so I stick a couple quarters.

In and hope they don't check while I'm there or something.

And that's what happens. A lot of don't. They just assume that no one's going to check and they probably don't. Right. They don't have good enforcement. And so there's a lot of opportunity to buy lots, again, that are in prime location. I'll give you an example. We just. And well, let me back Up a little bit. The other thing that's really attractive to us about the parking lot space. And now I'm talking to surface parking lots. Not necessarily parking, but we like both. But surface parking lots. It will never be anything of less value than what it is today as a parking lot.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, literally it will never be anything of less value. And so I know that if I can make sense of it, find it financially, economically, as a parking lot today, that there's only upside in the future. And so we just bought a parking lot in downtown Wilmington, North Carolina. The owner we bought it from for over about a dozen years, he was a doctor, local doctor, owned a bunch of other real estate. He bought it from a bank that had taken it back after 2008. A developer had, and ultimately his development never came to fruition and it went back to the bank, he bought it and he basically had his son operate this thing. It's a hard signalized intersection right in downtown historic district. I mean right on Restaurant Row. I mean it's about as prime as it gets. It's 27 or 28 lots. And again, his son kind of managed it. When we looked at the financials, he was only getting about $30,000 a year of NOI and he was asking 695 for it, which those economics just don't work. You know, that just doesn't make any sense. So he had been trying to kind of not haphazardly sell for like a year or so. He hadn't really listed or anything. But we sent a direct mailer out to that market. He was one of the few that responded. And I called on a couple other larger operators in the area that know that market. You know, they utilize digital collection systems, they have parking enforcement, they can very quickly analyze a, and know how much revenue it should produce in any one given year. And, and one of the operators, they, I think they managed about 16 other lots in that downtown area. They basically within, within a few short days came back with a, you know, an LOI for a five year lease at $72,000 on a five year fixed term lease. And so you can do the quick math there. We paid 695 for it, $72,000 double net with a, you know, a prime operator, a good credit operator in that area. And so that's the beautiful thing about this business model is most of the operators in the business aren't owners of the real estate. This is a very. Even the publicly traded companies, there's some big ones out there, they don't own the real estate or most of them do not own parking lots. They're just an operational company. And so a lot of the owners are these, again, these mom and pops, or it could be a developer. But a lot of times we're looking for the mom and pop lot that they haven't fully maximized the value. They haven't let a party operator come in and take over the operations. Or maybe they've got an operator in place, but it's like a local mom and pop pop operator that also doesn't utilize technology. And so this operator that we, that we find a lease with, they came and they put all the digital infrastructure in place, they put the collection systems in place, they put the signage in place. They did everything that was part of the lease agreement. And we have to do nothing at this point in time other than collect $72,000 a year, year after year for five years. So I like it.

I like it.

Obviously their economics, I don't know what that lot will produce, but I'm guessing that it probably will realistically do over six figures a year. I'm guessing. I don't know what their, their margins somewhere between 10 and 20%. And so they're comfortable with their upside potential. And this is even during a pandemic. So the crazy part about this is they just signed that lease and it's not 100% back. It's only about 60% back to what it was same time last year as far as the parking revenue. But they believe in that area enough, and they know that area enough that it will ultimately come back and they were comfortable signing long term lease to that effect.

Awesome. Well, Kevin, as we get near the end of the show, I want to touch on something else that I really love about what you do, which is your philanthropic efforts. Um, I know you had to cancel your, your annual bike ride this year. I'm hoping to make it down next year. But if you could share with the audience what that is, why you started it, and how they could learn more if they want to join you on your ride.

Yeah, no, absolutely. I appreciate that. Chris and I started the bike ride back in 2010. It's called 72 hours the key west. And as I'd mentioned, you know, during those, those kind of dark years following the, you know, the crash of 2008, I really turned to the fitness and, you know, the things I did back in 2010, this is early 2010, I was really trying to find a big, a big life goal, like something just out of the box for Me something that pushed my limits because I still, I just, I was yearning for something, Chris. I just know what it was. And so I came up with a crazy idea. I just got married and I came up with a crazy idea that I was going to ride my bike. And I had been riding bike, but, you know, maybe 30, 40 miles at a time, like not any big rides. And I came up with a crazy idea to ride my bike from here in Florida to Washington D.C. and my wife didn't fully agree with the idea, but she also didn't say no. And ultimately I did it literally within like two months. I had never ridden a long bike ride like my life. I went by myself, packed enough, washed my clothes, every night, put on the same thing next day. In 11 days, I rode like 1154 miles. It was life changing. It was literally a life changing horse.

Gump.

Yeah.

Yeah, I love it.

It was life. It was life changing. But what I realized, it was life changing only for me personally. Personally. And when I got done with it, you know, I was, you know, cataloging on Facebook all the way. And yeah, I didn't. I only did it for my own purpose so I could reflect back. And what I realized, I created this massive following of people like literally watching every day, watching her updates, and I get to the end and I was personally fulfilled. But I realized that I wish I'd have taken advantage of the audience and done it for a greater cause. And so, story short, I've been helping Rod Khleif. He's a great friend of mine. He runs the Tiny Hands foundation out of Sarasota. I've known Rod and his family for, since I moved down to Florida. And so I've been helping him feed families every year during the holidays. And Rod went through the same crash as I did. Rod lost basically everything. And he used to self fund his charity. And so from feeding a couple thousand families a year to feeding literally in like 2009, 2010, literally like a couple hundred families. Like, he just, he had never donors. And so I put this ride together after I got back from my DC ride, I was like, I need to do something locally and I want to do something. I don't have money yet. I'm still kind of broke myself, but I've legs and I'm in the best shape of my life, so I should put a ride together here locally. And let's raise money for Rod's charity, Tiny Hands foundation, and let's, let's help feed more families this year. So that, that, that was the Catalyst of it. And we started that November in 2010 and we've done it every year again except for this year. And we've raised having kept track. But on average we donate between like 40 and 60 thousand dollars a year to feed, you know, tens of thousands of families here in the, in the Florida area. And yeah, it's exciting. Get to meet a lot of people, do great things together and just really make a positive impact on a lot of families.

I love it. Kevin. So we'll put this in the show notes as well. What's the best way for people to find out about your ride, about your different business endeavors or just more about you if they want to learn more about you?

Yeah. So just go to my website, kevinbup.com and it's got links to company Sunrise Capital Investors. It's got links and information about our Key west bike ride. So that's a good base area to land to learn everything about I got going on.

Awesome. Yeah, we'll link that kevinbup.com with two P's and Kevin, question I always ask our guests before we let you go here, if you go back to your 25 year old son, what's one piece of advice you give yourself back then?

That's a great question. That's why I always ask that question to people and I've never been asked that question yet myself. I think just to know that you're going to run to a lot of challenges being an entrepreneur. There's going to be some really tough times, incredibly tough decisions that you have to make and sometimes those decisions that you make might not be the right decision and you're going to have to, to face the heat from it and just know that there's very few things in life that will literally have a, you know, a long term detrimental impact on you or your business. So know that what seems so mountainous like that, that big challenge that you're facing, it seems so mountainous. Or that decision you have to make that no matter, you know, what decision you made or what route you choose to go, if it was the wrong route, more than likely probably a couple months thereafter, maybe in a few weeks or at least a year thereafter, it's going to seem like just your peace. It's going to be small, it was going to be nothing consequential, you're going to move on with it and you're going to move past it. So I think just really try to understand that as bad as you think things are, it's probably really not that bad. And I went through this exercise during 2008. And I learned to. Every time something would come up challenging, like threatened with a loss or what have you, and I'd go through this exercise like, what's the worst case scenario that's going to come out of this one particular event? And whenever I came up with the answer, I asked my. I forced myself the question multiple other times until I really drilled down to a what is the really the worst case scenario? Am I going to lose the roof over my head? Am I, you know, am I sleeping underneath the bridge? Am I going to lose family members? Am I going to lose friends? I mean, the things that are the most important to me, you know, the ones that love me and the ones that are around me, am I going to lose them? No. Then is it really all that bad? Is it really all that bad? Can we push past this? Yes, we can.

So, Kevin, I love your background. I love. I love the advice you just gave there. I appreciate everything you've shared with the audience today, and we'll make sure everybody can learn about you and your ride and your other business adventures as well. Thank you so much for being on the show today, Chris.

Thanks for having me, man. It's been a lot of fun. And thank you for all that you do to help everyone.

Absolutely. Don't.