Debunking the Stigmas Around Mobile Home Parks with Jarrid Cavanaugh

Welcome to Ladies Kicking Assets. Robin and I are so excited to have you here. Just a little bit of house cleaning. We are not financial advisors. This information is for educational purposes only. And we ask you to subscribe to our channel so we can grow and spread this information like wildfire. And as always, we have an amazing guest and we are covering a totally new topic that we haven't hit before. So I'm really, really excited about it.

So we have Jared Kavanaugh here with us today, who is the founder of Affinity Asset Group. And Jared's background covers a multitude of different areas, but his specialty is mobile home communities. We are excited to hear about that in all the other asset classes that Jared is involved in. So, Jared, please share with us about your mobile home communities. And you, I mean, how did you end up here?

Well, hello, ladies. Thanks for bringing me on. I really appreciate it. And it's been fun getting to know both of you over the last year or so. How did I get into mobile homes is actually by accident. It was completely by accident. So I spent 13 years in the military as a special operator in the Air Force, deployed a few times doing that stuff. And kind of throughout my military career, like about 90% of other real estate investors. Early in my career, I read that little purple book, and it really just completely changed my life. And I decided I was going to start to save half of my income, which was 800 bucks a month, to put towards a. To put towards my first rental property. And I had no idea how to do basic math and how long it would take me to save 400amonth. But, you know, my room and board was paid for by the Air Force. I lived in a dorm, and so I was able to save $400 a month and kind of went out and bought my first home. Luckily, I had a VA loan option, so I lived in the house and it needed a lot of work. So I used that money I saved up to kind of rehab it and do all the work myself, which was quite a learning experience.

Yeah.

And then after that, you know, moved out of that house, rented it, went and got another one with another VA loan and kind of did that a few times. And fast forward a few years now I'm, you know, four or five years in the military, and I've got a couple of rentals under my belt and stuff and a couple of duplexes and. And, you know, I was talking to my mom on the phone one night and I said, you know, I've been reading about mobile home parks because my Grandpa owned a mobile home park and it did really well. And so I had been reading about mobile home parks a lot and I just mentioned to her, I was like, I'd really be interested in getting into that. And she calls me up a week later and a friend of hers, mom, who was an elderly lady, was trying to sell a little, little park in Louisiana. And she's like, this is her number, this is what she wants. She wants this price and she wants all cash. I didn't have the cash and I didn't know how to go get a commercial loan. So I ended up borrowing from my brothers and some of my own cash and ended up buying a small mobile home park, which was what I thought would be, oh, this is just like, you know, instead of one single family, now I've got 20. It wasn't anything like that. And so I'm, I'm in Afghanistan trying to manage a mobile home park. I've never managed. And let's just say I learned a lot of mistakes the hard way. So I probably lost.

We jumped in. Was that your first syndication or were you just borrowing money?

No, I was borrowing money. Borrowing money may or may not have been legal. The way that we structured it.

I totally get it.

It was me and my brother. Yeah, it was me and my brother and that was it. And so I borrowed money at a fixed rate from him and paid him back. And anyway, over the course of about two years, I started to figure out how to actually operate a mobile home park. I got lucky enough to come across a boot camp, went to that started to see how it should be ran. And then once I, once I got my feet under me, that's when I saw it. And the value of, you know, there's nothing wrong with single family homes, but the benefits of multifamily over single family, just in terms of how you can scale, you know, how much gross income you have coming in, it just, it really, really struck a nerve with me. And so from there I got, I got stationed in Las Vegas and basically met my wife the week I got here pretty much. And so, you know, we, our plan, her and I when we first met was I'm going to finish my 20 years in the military and we want to have 150 grand in passive income once I retire and just be done. And well, I got medically retired seven years early, so my plan was cut short by seven years. And those seven years were the seven years of the biggest growth. And so that really threw a wrench in everything. I got very fortunate Got a corporate job that paid well. My wife has a good job. And so we said, all right, we're just going to stick to our plan. We'll live off what. What I made in the military. We'll take the extra and we'll put it towards real estate, and we'll keep buying single families. And because the light hadn't turned on yet for me, that, you know, most of the mobile home parks out there I couldn't afford on my own. I'd be saving up for, you know, years and years. I can't afford them on my own. And so the light really didn't click that I needed to partner with other people and start doing syndications until Covet happened. And then Covid happened, and my wife lost her job. And she was, you know, you know, moving up extremely fast. She was kind of one of the rock stars at MGM where she worked, and they, you know, they just fired her like that. At the same time, a couple of my buddies lost their jobs, and I was talking to them on the phone, and they were, you know, they were distraught. They didn't know what they were going to do. They made more money to where they didn't qualify for a lot of the stimulus that came out, and now they made no money. And so, you know, I was thinking to myself, because the company I was working for, the corporation I was working for, they were talking about, hey, there's probably going to be some layoffs coming. And, you know, I'm pretty new to the company, so I figure it's probably a seniority thing. So my wife and I pull out our budget, and we look at, you know, our passive income, and we have just enough passive income to pay all of our bills and have a little bit of spending money. We're not going to, you know, go to Belize every year with you guys, but we have enough, right? And so the light bulb really clicked for me that, you know, one of the buddies that had lost his job was actually a guy who I was on team with in the military. And he always said, man, real estate investing is just too much work. I don't want to do it. He would always say, I get it, I get it. Because, you know, real estate investors, they like to talk about real estate investing. He'd say, I get it, I get it. I just don't want to deal with it. I'd rather put my money in a. In a retirement plan and let somebody else deal with it. And.

And so I literally like single family. Was that looking at single family or. Because I Think when most people think about investing in real estate, they think about you buying a single family home that they can rent out. And so I, I don't think most people. What I have learned over this last few years is that most people don't think about investing in apartments. So. Okay. I just wanted to clarify that because I think that's where a lot of people are coming from when they think about investing in real estate.

Yeah. And it, the light didn't even, it didn't even go on for me yet because here I had this small, you know, we'll call it multifamily little mobile home park and I had some single families. And this thing is cash flowing great. It actually makes a dent in our finances. These are all cash flowing at 2, call it 2 to 500amonth, which isn't bad, but 200 bucks a month, when you want to get to 150 in passive income, you're going to be here.

All I need a lot.

Your whole life. Yeah, exactly.

And you were self managed.

I literally.

Right.

Were you self managing a single. Yeah, it's a pain. Yeah, I know, I know.

And so I literally sat in my office one day and, and drew out how many homes. I did all the math. This is how many homes we need to buy. This is how fast we're saving if we save this much, you know. And it ended up being like 14 years to get to my number through single family home.

Oh God.

And I was probably 32 or 33 at the time. So I said there's got to be a different way. Yeah. So I was going to the gym the very next day and you know, you get, you and I met through the real estate guys podcast and I was listening to them like I always do, and they mentioned the secret to syndication and it was virtual. So I was like, screw it. What do I have to lose? Yeah. So I sat down, went through the two or three day workshop online. You know, virtually zoom like this. And I would. The lights went off. I was like, oh my God. This is exactly like, I love doing this. I'm passionate about it. I have friends that want to do it, but don't want to get their hands dirty. And if I could scale, I could hire people. So I actually do less. Yeah, right. And so that, that was kind of what made the light bulb go off. So from there we, you know, we've bought six parks since then and we're opening a fund early next year to buy about $40 million more of mobile home parks. But we're all in on them. And we really like the asset class for a bunch of reasons which we can get into.

Yeah, I love to talk about all that.

Yes, I do too. And I love, you know, my story is a little bit similar. You know, I found the real estate guys, I just didn't even know what syndication was and it's crazy.

I never heard that word.

Yeah, I didn't either. So that's amazing. Well, okay, so, you know, we talked a little bit about how, you know, single family homes, it's, it's a lot of work. There's, you know, you're responsible for all the things break and everything else. So what are some of the advantages of investing in mobile home parks? Because I know like when you've got apartment. I'm a little bit intimidated by going out and buying apartment complexes just because there's so much more that goes into that over any of the syndications I've done. And I, I think it's a little bit different for, for mobile home parks. And I, and there's always been this kind of crazy stigma around mobile home parks which is, I think, very inaccurate as well. You know, we've all, we've got this, you know, thought in our head that mobile home parks are these awful places that don't look nice and that, that's just not true either. So let's get a little bit of all of that and some of the advantages of it because when you own that you're. Are you, do you just. You own, you're renting out the spaces or what is, what does that look like?

Yeah, so I'll kind of go step by step and, and I try never to say a part of that. Mobile home parks are better than any other asset class. They're different. I personally think that owning single family homes in giant portfolios is probably the best because you can get rid of it so many different ways.

Right.

You know, you could sell one home at a time. You have a ton of flexibility there. But that's very, very difficult to do. Right. Very difficult to, to capture.

I've got a friend that have, they've got hundreds of properties and they have a property management company and you know, they've got repair. They have all their own crew. Yeah, they've got a whole team, but they own hundreds of properties.

They've got the Vol. You know, so they have the volume. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So when, when I finally grasped the concept of syndication and I was like, you guys, I, I thought that was an illegal activity or something. And so I finally Grasped what it was and got my head around it. And I kind of sat back and I said, all right, mobile home parks definitely have a stigma. You know, all my friends jokingly call me a slumlord and this, that and the other. But I looked at, I looked at it and I said, okay. Buying single family home portfolios. Most of the portfolios out there that I see are 40 plus homes, and I'm not big enough to be able to take that down right now. That's millions and millions of dollars. Okay, so what about apartments or self storage? Well, the thing with apartments and self storage is that it's highly, highly competitive right now. Highly competitive. Everybody and their dog is involved in it. And so I'm kind of comparing that to mobile home parks. And, you know, the, the 1000th biggest apartment owner in the United States would be the biggest, most professional mobile home park owner in the country. That's how, that's how fragmented the industry is. And same with self storage now.

And so one question real fast. Most mobile home parks are owned by mom and pops, aren't they? Is that. I think I read something like that here recently. Yeah, yeah. They're mostly just locally owned by families and that sort of thing.

And that's one of the real advantages that we have, right? There's about 44,000 parks in the U.S. about 40,000 of those parks are owned by mom and pop, or what we call original owners. And those are typically, you know, people that are between 55 and 75, and they started the park in the late 60s, early 70s. That's the bulk of when most parks started. And, you know, they have no debt on the property. They're in the twilight of life, and they kind of just let it hum along and, you know, it's sitting there at 50% or 40% occupancy. There's a ton of meat on the bone. The affordable housing crisis is worse than it's ever been today, and so there's a huge demand for it. Right. And I kind of thought if we could come in and professionalize how we're operating these things and really put strong management in place, have a team that can go and do the rehabs and things, then we could really be a competitor, a serious competitor in this space. You know, like, at our current rate, we should be a top 10 by end of next year. So, you know, and that's, that's a real advantage when you can kind of swing that kind of weight in a given space. Because, you know, the apartment world, some of those guys Are, you know, like a Brad Somerock is into the hundreds of millions, Kenny McElroy is billions of. And it's just really hard to compete with those guys. Right? And, and one of the greatest benefits that I learned the very, very hard way on the mobile home park island originally was that you don't want to own the homes. You absolutely don't want to own homes you want. And it's for a few different reasons. The biggest reason is expenses. Okay. I'm not going to say that they're built poorly because that's just not true. They're actually built pretty well, but they get worn down pretty quick. And tenants are tenants and typically tenants don't treat a home. When I rented, I didn't treat it as nice as I treat my own home. And I'm a very clean, neat person, you know. And so when you sell the home back, you basically reduce your expenses by about 60% overnight. Not only that, but you get a better tenant now because now your tenant went from being a renter to being a homeowner. Right. And they now, all of a sudden they care about the community. They care about, you know, lot 16, who's over here dealing drugs, and they're going to call the cops on them and get that out of there. Right. And, and you also, you get a tenant that's going to stay. National average when the tenant owns the home is 14.7 years, as opposed to 11 months when I own the home and rent it to them. So all in all, you just get a much, much better system. Right. And you get, you get something where you're only responsible for the land and ensuring the infrastructure underground is good and responsible for making sure everyone pays on time. Other than that, you know, there's not a whole lot other than enforcing rules and trash and things like that.

Okay. Okay, that's great. So there's really, I mean, you're not having to worry about fixing toilets, you're not having to worry about termite treatments or any of this other stuff. You're just making sure, I guess probably the. It looks nice and their people are paying their rent, so. Okay, that's, that's amazing.

You're just really responsible for those common areas. Arcade.

Exactly right.

You know, those sorts of.

That's exactly right. Just maintaining the roads is probably the biggest expense that we have.

So how, how many states are you and you own six and you're doing a fund. So how, how far out in the US are you?

So my partner and I are in Florida, Georgia, Alabama. We're Moving into Tennessee next year as well as north and South Carolina. We try to stick around decent sized metros. We want to be preferably 200,000 and up in a given MSA so that we have, you know, strong demand. We want to see, we look for certain metrics like, you know, what's the single family home median sales price? We want that to be very high, north of 200. That drives demand. And then what's, what's a three bed apartment? Rent?

Yeah, I mean, as housing prices, people are being priced out of home. So this is a really great alternative where people can still actually own their home and afford to live and without having to rent a property.

Yeah. And you know, if you follow me on LinkedIn, I try to make that argument every single day because there's so much, you know, I'm not really political one way or the other. I kind of don't like both of them. But there's so much noise in our local politicians and our state and our federal politicians that are just, oh, these builders are evil because they're not building affordable homes. Well, it doesn't make any money to build $150,000 house in Las Vegas. You'll lose money. You can't do it. Right. And so everything the government is trying to do to solve the affordable housing crisis is actually making it worse. And so they are pushing demand to us, but at the same time they're fighting us and stigmatizing us as these evil mobile home park owners. You know, one of the, one of the common things I'll hear from, you know, people that don't like what we're doing is, oh, you're going to go in and jack up the rents? Yes, rents are going to go up because when I bought the park, rents were at 100 bucks. They haven't moved since 1975. Just adjusted for inflation, we'd be north, we'd be north of 500 just to adjust for inflation. Right. So yes, rents are going up, you know, but we're not, we're not in the. And there are some, but there's really not that many. We're not in the business of going in, buying a park and wanting to squeeze every dime out of it.

Right.

You know, so that we can just nickel and dime tenants. We want to provide safe, clean and affordable housing that they can have pride of ownership of and that they can own themselves. Right. And we tell our investors that, look, if you want the absolute best noi and every penny squeezed out, we're probably not your people. So, you know, we make a healthy return for our investors. We give safe, clean, affordable housing for our tenants, and it's a win, win all the way around. And the cities that we're in, the, you know, local politicians love us, the health department loves us. Everyone loves us because we come in and we clean these parks and we take out the, the trash and, you know, and we fix things and we do what we say we're going to do. And, you know, we try to provide a really, really clean, presentable place to live.

I love that.

That's.

So are there regulations now for developing mobile home parks or do you simply acquire existing ones? Like, you can't go into where I live, Harris county here in Houston, and like, build a mobile home park, right?

No, you, this is a general statement, but there's pretty much no city in the United States where you can get a permit to build a new one right now. Yeah, I, the last stats I saw were in 2020, they built one new one in the entire country and we lost 19. So it's a dwindling supply. Right. We've sold a park that went to a class A apartment developer and they kicked everyone out and put up a class A apartment at, you know, 2, 800 bucks a month for a studio. Right.

So, so are there, like, with multifamily apartments, you know, you were talking about the class A, class B, class C. Do you have class categories or is there any differentiation with them when you buy them?

Yeah, definitely. There are different classes. It's not like I said earlier, the space and the, the industry is not as professionalized as apartments. So it's, it's kind of like when I say a class A apartment, you guys know exactly what I'm talking about. You know, it's got a couple pools, it's got a gym, it's probably got a restaurant, a little quick shop. It's, it's really nice. Right. And you know, in the apartment space, you can talk like that. For, for mobile home parks, there are classes, definitely, but it's generally only like the professional buyers and the lenders that understand how to group them. So they're, they're not near as good at grouping them. But a lot of your 55 and older parks, which are those are a gym, if you can find those. A lot of those parks are class A. They're usually really nice, you know, because there, there's a lot of people out there today who are realizing, all right, well, my retirement didn't pan out the way I thought. Inflation's crushing it. I don't want to go back to work. So I'll just sell my home that I have a bunch of equity in and I'll downsize to a mobile home. Right. And there's, there's some really nice parks out there like that. So.

Well, let me ask you. So a lot of these different types of real estate investments have tax advantages. Are there tax advantages to the mobile home park investment as well?

There is, there is. And you can do a cost segregation and bonus depreciation and all that on, on that. It's not quite as aggressive as like an apartment can get, but we also depreciate over a 15 year schedule. So, you know, it's. Yeah, so there are quite a few tax advantages. I'm not a cpa obviously, but you know, I'll give an example. On one of our last acquisitions, a $50,000 investor got an 80 grand depreciation the first year. So it's, it's pretty sizable depreciation. So that that person will make up to 80,000 without really paying any tax.

Right. Well, and, and even having that, you know, depreciated out over 15 year time period is great because it gives you, you know, benefits against that passive income you've got coming in as well. So I know, I feel like a lot of people got used to taking 100% depreciation in year one, but being able to spread that out is actually advantageous as well.

It is, yeah.

Very, very advantageous. Yeah. It ended up being better than most people think in terms of tax advantages. For sure.

Yeah. Okay. You said usually depreciated out over like 15 years.

Yeah, we always, we have a company that we hire that comes in and always does a cost segregation. We generally leave the homes off. You could put the homes on it, but then every time you go, we're selling a home every, every month or two. So every time you go to sell a home now you got to go backwards and it's such a nightmare. We just say leave the homes off. It's not worth it.

Right.

And it just, you know, be easier that way.

Okay, so I have another question. So a lot of these guys that are buying apartments, you know, have like a five year exit strategy or something like that. Are you buying these to hold forever? Do you think you'll sell them after a few years or. I mean, what is your kind of your strategy around your holding period?

You know, our whole company, our philosophy is we invest for two reasons, to reduce taxes or increase passive income. So we are much more of the mindset that we want to hold long term, five to ten years at least. We're putting together some funds that'll be a little bit higher end funds that we want to hold 10 plus years, you know, but for, for us and for most of our investors, you know, the new investor, the new passive investor will say, oh yeah, that's great if I'm going to make this return in three years. But then as you start to season yourself and as you start to get older in your investing career, you start to realize every time you give me this lump sum of money back, I now have a huge tax problem that I have to go search around Timbuktu to try and find a fix for it. Right. So most of our investors are of the mindset let's just hold it for as long as it makes economic sense and let's just keep refi. And just keep refinancing it and keep pulling out that equity tax free. And you know, and so we, we really try to hold at least five years. You know, we're always going to do right by our investors. So if a institutional buyer came down and offered us a ridiculous price at four years, you know, we'll talk with our investors. But our, our General goal is five to 10 years closer to 10 side. Okay.

Well I just think that that's really a great strategy given the fact that your asset class is diminishing collectively wide. You know, that's.

Yeah.

Gonna make it more lucrative for your investors at the end of the day when you do decide to do some level of transaction.

Yeah. And we. Funny you bring that up because one of the core things, one of the core things that we look at is everyone's always heard buy in the path of progress. Well, most of those people that are buying in the path of progress, they're buying a year ahead or two years ahead. Right. We can go in and see where a city's progressing like Nashville. It's very clear what direction they're progressing or like Tampa is progressing north and they're, they're rejuvenating these entire portions of Tampa. So we can go and buy a performing asset and essentially hold that, that land, essentially land bank, but get paid to do it and make a return, doing it, a healthy return. And then what we're thinking is a lot of our properties based on where they're positioned, they're probably going to be sold as redevelopment because they're just straight in the path of Progress. And in five to 10 years, we see a lot of the cities we're looking at growing that direction and so that gives our investors a higher valuation.

So I love the mobile home parks and the retirement communities in Florida. I was born there. And they're just, you know, it's like a sea of communities. And I think they're amazing and they are so nice. You know, a lot of them in.

Florida are, you know, you have very nice, they're nice communities and they're pretty.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, some have golf cart courses, you know, they're parking there, they have RV homes or, you know, and, and then, you know, there's the others as well. I just think getting into one that cash flows, no matter where it's at, would be an amazing opportunity if you could, if you could do that. I know you're creating some processes. Jared, you and I had a conversation a couple of weeks ago where you were talking about how you're really professionalizing this whole asset class. You want to talk about that just a little bit and share with our viewers? Because I think it's really amazing how you've been in this asset class just not very long. You know, you were working a W2 job. This is like become really highly lucrative for you. And you have a team of people now, employees that work together and how just in a very short window of time, I mean, you're, you're now creating processes that didn't exist in this asset class. You know, like how you're looking for them, how you're, you don't have anybody to pattern that after, really.

No, not really. And so you're absolutely right. We hired a girl earlier this year who's her sole job is going to be acquisition. So she's, you know, we want to ramp her up to where by the end of January she's seeing 50 deals a week, which is very difficult to do because it's all about cherry picking the best deals. Right. So what we're trying to do and what was the real learning curve for? I think probably any syndicator, especially real estate syndicators is real estate's a really easy business if you just follow the rules. You just do the things that make sense. Buy for cash flow, you know, put the right amount of debt on it, not too much. And real estate's relatively simple. Where it starts to get more complex is when you start syndicating. What a lot of people don't realize, I think is that you are starting a no kidding business and you have all the same business operations and things that you need to run as if you were selling hardware at a hardware store. And so that was the learning curve for us, and that's what we really focused on recently is that this was another light bulb moment. We bought a smaller park, and then we bought a much. A portfolio of five much larger parks immediately following. And it was really apparent to us that, oh, my God, these five parks allow us. We're doing all the same work, but they scale so much better. Right. So really what we're trying to focus on is growing our assets under management because that allows us to scale our team, which allows us to provide a better service to our investors and to our tenants. You know, our goals next year, to bring on investor relations guys so that our investors have a person that they can call at any point in time and get anything they need. You know, we just brought on another person last week that we're hiring and onboarding in January. So, yeah, we're. We're trying to kind of develop all the systems and processes. It's definitely a learning curve, but it's something we're putting a lot of time and effort into. And we think we're ready now to finally step up to a larger fund and acquire 10 to 20 properties in it.

You are ready. You are ready. I think it's incredible to have watched you, you know, explode with success the way you have over the last couple of years. I'm so proud of you. It's really amazing.

Thank you. Thank you. It's been fun.

Yeah. I mean, I. I think it is great when you see people doing well and, and you go, okay, well, that happened in such a short window of time. You know, you'll be able to share that message with other. Other people to encourage them on just what's the next step? How can they start? How can they, you know, and. And how do our viewers reach you? You know, let's talk about that.

Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn. Jared Kavanaugh. I'm the only one that spells my name like that with an I. So it's J, A, R, R, I, D. And you can find me on LinkedIn or Instagram. That's where I'm kind of the most. The most active on, I guess, or my team is, to be honest. They run most of that. But I put a lot of videos on. On link on Instagram about mobile home parks and some of the advantages. So you can definitely find me there. You know, one of the things that I discovered the other day as I was looking through our investor portal, and a lot of people talk about, oh, they've got, you know, 20 million assets under Management, whatever. We're. So in March of next year we will hit a million dollars returned to our investors in about 19 months.

That's amazing.

So we're really proud of that. Yeah, yeah, we're really proud of that. And that's, that's kind of the number that, that you know, gets us excited is how much have we given back to our investors?

And that's exactly right. That's so much more important than, you know, like some of the apartments that I'm invested in. You know, a lot of these guys are syndicating apartments but they're having issues with bridge loans and everything that's happen now as interest rates have continued to go up and our, our apartments didn't pay out in December, the, you know, the rate changed and they weren't able to pay their investors. And so they can sit there and say, yeah, they've got all these millions and millions of dollars under management and that's fine and dandy and all, but what are they doing for their investors? That amount of money that's being returned back to the investors is so much more of an important, an impressive measure and measure over this whole. I've got this much under management. So I'm really glad that you pointed that out.

We're excited. We're excited. Yeah, yeah, we're excited. We started in June of 21 and so from June of 21 we closed our first syndication in August and so from August to now we'll have returned a million, which I'm really happy about.

Huge. Huge.

Wow, that's a super.

Recommendations?

Yes, yes, thank you.

No, we're excited about it.

If we have got people that are interested in investing this. You said you're starting this next fund up, you know how, what's, how do people get in contact with you if they are interested in diving into this or getting involved in this investment opportunity.

You'Re about to have, they can email me directly. It's jared@affinityassetgroup.com that's J A R R I D. And that's the easiest way that people can get in touch with me. I'm a very, I try to be a very down to earth guy and not put a bunch of people in between me and my investors because I've invested in things that, you know, it's 40 steps for me to talk to the boss. So I don't like that.

No.

So we try not to have a lot.

You know, one of the things that I learned about you over the course of this last, you know, year, year and A half that we've gotten to know each other is you really take the time to get to know your investors, really take the time to build your relationship with. With people. And I think that's so important. And we, we lose a lot of that in so many of these bigger investment firms and Wall street and everything else. But, you know, I've taken so many notes on ways that you've built those relationships, and I, I think that's really important. And I love that you do that.

Yeah, it's, it's. It's our number one goal at all times. And I tell my team, I'm like, hey, guys, listen, our investors are more important than to me, than you are. And the reason for that is because without them, you don't have this job, you know, so I've got to take care of them first and foremost. So we actually have a weekly team stand up meeting. And I make, every week, I make one of the team members come with a new fresh idea about how we make our investors raving fans of what we're doing. How do we differentiate ourselves? How do we be different in the marketplace? And so, you know, sometimes the idea is great, sometimes it's not so great. But we're constantly trying to find the way to create raving fans of what we're doing for our investors. So, you know, that's, that's our number one priority gold right there.

Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is. Well, so encouraging, Jared. Really, it is. So we've got just a few more minutes. Wanted to ask you about maybe some passion projects that your company supports. What are you guys doing to. To give back to the community or the world or whatever that might look like for your business.

So I am in the very beginning stages of trying to stand up, and I don't have all the pieces ironed out yet, but one of the things I'm really passionate about and what I learned kind of the hard way in the military was, you know, there was a point while I was in the military, I was in Afghanistan, and it was when the government shut down back in, I think, 2012. And so I'm in Afghanistan and I, I go to my computer first thing in the morning and I pull up my email and there's an email from our boss, and it says, hey, you're not going to get paid this pay period, because the government shut down, but you still have to go and do your job just like any other day. And I was like, okay, that's. That's complete bull crap. Sorry, but the government's so screwed up that they can't even figure out their stuff to pay their troops who are overseas fighting a war that we probably should have left seven years ago. And so, you know, I'm sitting there and that, that was kind of one of those life changing moments where you're like, you have to come up with other streams of income to protect yourself. Yeah. You know, you're really living life on the edge. Even if you are a high paid corporate executive making a half million a year, if that's your only source of income, you are living fast and dangerous. And you know, I think a lot of people don't get that lesson taught to them soon enough in life. They find out later in life when it's almost too late. And so one of my passion projects is to try and find a way to partner with young military professionals, bring them into, you know, the networks that we're in where there's a lot of real estate, very experienced real estate professionals and kind of get them some coaching and some mentoring to develop their own passive stream of income. You know, and one of the ways that I'm talking to a couple of the folks that we know about is we're looking at, you know, experienced syndicators like us partnering with a military professional and giving them the loan for a loan for the down payment. And it's a no cost, no interest loan for the down payment of a property. They manage it, we coach them through the process and then after they get through that process, we work out a repayment structure and then off their cash flow, they repay us the loan. And then the only agreement they have to make with us is that once they've gotten to their passive income number, they've got to come back and pay it forward and do it for one, one more vet. And so that's kind of something at a time.

Yeah, I mean that is how you make. That will be incredibly successful.

I just, I think we, we've already seen the military pension get cut once just a few years ago. And so it's not the same as it used to be. Like my brother came in, after that, that change happened. So he gets 40% retirement and he has a 401k and it's on him to invest in that 401k. Right. So he's completely beholden to Wall street and hoping the government doesn't cut it again in that 40%. I see him cutting it again because they're not, I don't think the government's going to cut social spending. They'll cut from the military first. And so, you know, what does that look like for that 18 year old kid who's picking up a rifle to go serve his country today? Who's thinking he's going to get now 40% of his retirement when he retires and then before he joins, it's 30, you know, and then at what point do we just change it completely like every one of our NATO partners did, and it's just a straight 401k, you.

Know, so the economy goes to crap and everything you had in your retirement fund is, you know, significantly less than what it was, you know, a year ago. And what do you do?

Yep, yep. And we, we just really are passionate about trying to help, help vets in that way, help first responders in that way.

So that's awesome. I love that. Well, we are gonna close. Jared, I'm so grateful that you took time and just shared this information on this asset class. But most importantly, I think what you've shared more than just about the asset class is how quickly someone, anyone can create a very profitable business in a short window of time if you stay focused. You know, you were already doing some incredible things. Like before your business became what it is, you were already working on budgeting with your wife. You know, you were already doing things to take care of your physical body, which helps your mental functioning. You were working out and going to the gym, and then you were partnering with people, which, you know, is, is real important to make those connections for personal development and growth, but then professional growth. So you had a lot of things already in place that, that were foundational for your, your business explosion.

And I think this shows how important it is to be plugged into the right people and involved in some of these networks and groups because it really, you know, opens your eyes up to things that you didn't know you could do and different opportunities and different options and all kinds of things. And it just helps you, you know, grow and explode so much faster. So it really, it really does make a difference.

Yeah, I'd echo that as well. And it's funny you mentioned that because, you know, we all met through a mastermind that we were in. And yeah, when I went to sign up, I wanted to give the real.

Estate guys kudos all the time. All the time.

So. So we all met in a mastermind through the real estate guys. And, and the day that sauce, that virtual sauce I attended, the day it ended, they did the breakout for the, for the syndication mentoring club in the inner circle. And I had, I had my wife Right there. And she's watching it and she's like, just do the. Just do the SMC for a couple years. The other ones, because it was very expensive. She goes, don't do that one yet. It's very expensive. I said, no, I think we have to. We have to take massive action right now. I was like, if you just trust me, I'll make this worth it. And it was funny because we were joking the other day and I was like, was that initial investment worth it? And so I can't say that enough. A lot of what I've been able to accomplish, it has really nothing to do with me. I was just around the right people, getting to know them, trying to be genuine, and. And just learning through osmosis. And so it just naturally goes back to that. That old saying that's totally overused. But you are the sum of the five people that you spend the most time around. So it's been life changing. And. Yeah. And I'll probably be in masterminds for the rest of my life.

I mean, it's powerful.

I can't see a reason not to.

Yeah, it is.

It is.

Well, thank you for being your authentic self, Jared Kavanaugh, the founder of the yes Ma' Am Asset Group. Powerful love what's happening with your business this year. So we're going to thank you and you want it one more time. Tell our guests how to get in touch with you and how to reach out about your fund that you've got coming up.

Yeah, you can. You can go to our website, which is www.affinityassetgroup.com. we have some free guides and. And you can join our newsletter from there. I talk a lot about the mobile home park market and our newsletters. Or you can reach out to me on Instagram. It's at Jared Kavanaugh and then on LinkedIn as well. Just Jared Kavanaugh. And you can find me there or just shoot me an email. So.

Perfect.

Awesome. I'll put it all in the show notes. So thank you so much for taking the time to come and chat with us.

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Can't wait to see you guys soon.