Diversifying Your Real Estate Investment Portfolio: Insights from Shalon and Jordan Howard on Inv...

So this mobile home park, when the units would become vacant, these were single-wides where our first park was double-wides. We would fix the single-wides up very nice and then sell them on owner financing terms so our residents could become homeowners. And we've had quite a bit of success with that. We found there is so many people that are looking for just safe, clean, affordable housing. And we have more applicants that we can handle for these properties. So that's worked out really well. Out of the 20 park-owned homes with that park, I'd say we only have a couple left. All the rest we have owner-financed out, and the park's running beautifully and doing beautifully.

Welcome to the Cedar and Porch Real Estate Investment Podcast. I'm the host, Shona Lepis. Follow along as we unpack and demystify real estate investment strategies through expert interviews and personal experience. From how to find off-market deals to creative financing to long-term and midterm rentals. Our goal is to educate and inspire others to gain financial freedom and generational wealth through real estate investing. All right. I'm super excited to have Siwan and Jordan Howard on. We met at one of Greg Pinho's Epic Hangar events. They're just really amazing entrepreneurs doing cool things in the real estate space. and they're in some asset classes that are really interesting. So I'm really excited to have them on. They are very entrepreneurial, doing really fun stuff. So I'll let them take it from here and let us know what they're up to.

Awesome. Thank you for having us on your podcast. We're excited to be here with you this morning. I'm Shallon Howard, and let's see, we've been investing in real estate for about 20 years now, and we are Finally at the point where we're full-time real estate investors and we've been full-time for what, about 4 years?

Yeah, I'd say about 4 years.

I've also been a licensed real estate agent for the past 18 years and I just opened up my own brokerage called True North Realty and we have 4 kids together. So yeah, so I'm a mom to our kids and a real estate agent and full-time real estate investor.

Yep.

And I'm Jordan Howard. The journey through real estate started with reading a book, Rich Dad Poor Dad. I used to be a government employee in the Department of Defense as a firefighter. I was a firefighter paramedic for roughly 18 years before we decided to go full-time into real estate investing.

So, to run your construction company.

Oh, that's right. I started a— I got into construction as a side hustle when I was a government employee. I opened a small construction company. I did that for about a year and got picked up by a custom home builder in our local market. Through their guidance, I was able to get my residential builder's license and I opened up True North Builders and we focus on custom-built garages with accessory dwelling units above, trying to turn them into one-bedroom apartments and stuff. And I'm starting to coach some of my clients on possibly short-term rentaling those out to make some, some side muscle, side hustle, extra money on the side. Might even help fund, fund the build once they get it finished.

Yeah.

I love that. I feel like you guys have, you can acquire the asset, you can help them develop it, help them run the business. That's kind of the full package there. That is, that's really, that's super cool. Um, okay. Where to start? So what I love that you guys are, I know it takes, sometimes it's a journey. I feel like that book is like where everyone kind of gets the taste of real estate, why it makes so much sense. What, what kind of— what do your investments look like at this point?

Let's see, we started investing, I'd say, when we bought our first house when we were 23. We read Rich Dad Poor Dad in our early 20s, right after we were married, and that book really resonated with us because for the first time it taught us the difference between assets and liabilities, and that you should spend your time acquiring assets instead of liabilities. And really, it was the first time we had heard that, right? It taught us the importance of working to learn instead of working to earn. So the book just really resonated with us and made a lot of sense. So we bought our first house when we were 23, and really within the first year of owning that property, we turned it into our first rental. Jordan was working at the fire department, and I was home with our daughters at the time. We had two little girls, so I worked part-time as a loan officer and learned how to finance real estate. And in learning financing, I was able to figure out how to buy more houses by still keeping what we had. So we bought a second home and kept the first one as a rental property. And that was really our first introduction to being landlords, right, at 23 years old. And it taught us a lot. It really did. We learned one HVAC repair will take all your profit for the entire year. As time evolved, we started going to real estate seminars and learning more, and we had bought and sold a couple houses, and then we learned about mobile home investing.

Right.

So we started investing in—

met a guy by the name of Ray Wren in Charleston market that builds apartment complexes. So we were thinking about apartment complexes, mobile home parks. He took us under his wing, showed us all his construction and apartment developments that he had going on in the area. And he found out that we had a 10-acre piece of property in Walterboro, South Carolina, that we had a mobile home on it. And he said, you need to maximize the density and get as many mobile homes on there as you can. Sounds like that's where you guys are headed. Maybe you should start there before you venture into apartments. So we started to develop that piece of property into a mobile home park and realized real fast that city and county, what are those governmental agencies?

Put a lot of barriers in your way.

Really like to slow you down. Building things. So we started focusing on mobile home parks that are already built. They're a lot easier to get into. A lot of them are grandfathered in the government agency, county, and municipalities. So we started a heavy focus on mobile home parks.

Took a seminar with Frank Rolfe and Dave Reynolds. Yeah. Called Mobile Home Park Bootcamp. We actually flew out to San Diego where it was being held and took a course there and learned how to buy, own, and operate mobile home parks. And this is probably around 2012. So when we got back to South Carolina, we immediately spent most of our time looking for mobile home parks to invest in. And at the time there was a plethora of them on the market. They were just all over the MLS.

And we should have bought every one we looked at.

Yeah. And I should have bought every single one of them. So that's when we started investing in mobile home parks and we bought our first park up in the Greenville area. And that one was a value-add property. It actually was a foreclosed park that we bought and we bought it and started renovating the units that were vacant and took over management of the property. And it probably took about, what would you say, 12 to 18 months to—

yeah. I really learned a lot about construction then because I was the guy swinging the hammer and doing all the remodels to, I don't know, I think there was 3, 3 vacant units that were in pretty rough shape there. They were double-wides, bricked-in foundations on half-acre lots. It was more of a mobile home division, not really a typical park.

Okay.

So we controlled that subdivision. We had 11 of the 15 homes. In the subdivision, but that's really where I learned a lot about construction, how to remodel, keeping construction costs low and stuff like that.

And I would manage the properties. So that was our first multifamily and it was a really good buy. It was right after the 2008 crash, about 2012, and it was priced really well. And we owned and operated and managed that property. And then we were able to do a cash-out refi after about 2 years and pull out the money that we had put into it. And then we started looking for our next investment, which was another mobile home park. And this one had been on the MLS, but it was an expired listing. So we contacted the owner and went and walked through it and found that it was in foreclosure. So we ended up buying that property as well.

Right.

And that was another value-add, right? It was a turnaround park.

It had 1-space park with 20 park-owned homes. Again, the construction that I learned with the previous investment came in super handy because here I am again fixing all these homes that were dilapidated and getting them livable and rent-ready.

By this time we had learned how intensive property management can be. And you can spend thousands of dollars fixing up a property and you put a tenant in there. And if you're not visiting the property every 6 months and walking through it, they can do a lot of damage. So this mobile home park, when the units would become vacant, these were single wides where our first park was double wides. We would fix the single wides up very nice and then sell them on owner financing terms. So our residents could become homeowners. And we've had quite a bit of success with that. We found there is so many people that are looking for just safe, clean, affordable housing. And we have more applicants that we can handle for these properties. So that's worked out really well. Out of the 20 park-owned homes with that park, I'd say we only have a couple left. All the rest we have owner-financed out. And the park's running beautifully and doing beautifully.

So I, and that's so, I have so many questions. I mean, to me, when I think about mobile home parks, the beauty is that you're just running the land and not dealing with the maintenance and the tenants and all of that. So I love, can you just explain the, like how you're doing the owner rehabbing and selling back to people? I think that's super cool. So you inherited these. House or the mobile homes and then you rehabbed?

Yeah. When we, yeah, when we bought the park, it came with 20 park-owned homes that, that the prior owner was just renting out and he was renting them to all walks of life in that asset class. He had no qualification system.

None whatsoever. So it was full of a lot of drug activity. People just weren't paying their rent and he was letting this all slide and wasn't really, I guess, managing with an iron fist. So we had to evict a lot of people out of there. Um, and we brought the clientele up to people that are hard workers and a lot of retirees on fixed income.

Yeah, we just started running it with standards. We had a qualification system to to do a rent-to-own for one of our properties. Much like when I was a loan officer, I would require 2 years work history, 2-year rental history. I would do a credit check and a background check. And when the homes would become vacant, when the tenants would move out or when they would get evicted, we would then go in and fix them up. When we would fix them up pretty nice, we'd put LVP floor in there. Yeah, we paint the inside and the outside. We'd cold seal the roof. So they're getting a nice quality home.

We would replace the toilets and fix the plumbing, new bathrooms, a new kitchen, a lot of new kitchen cabinets and countertops. We'd fix any subfloor issues, paint the inside, reskirt them, right? New stairs if they needed it. So this park has homes from like the 1964s all the way up to the I think the newest one we got in there is early '90s. So a lot of the older homes, they had to get updated electrical panels. So I mean, it, the rehab was extensive, but one thing that's nice about mobile homes versus stick-built houses is the cost to rehab them is way more affordable. Plus the clientele that is going to be either buying them from us or renting them don't don't expect granite countertops, don't expect tile bathrooms. They just really want a place that gets them out of the weather, that's nice and clean and freshly painted and give them a safe place and affordable to live. You don't really have to go crazy with fixtures. And a lot of the appliances and stuff we would put in there came from like a secondhand appliance store where they would get them and repair them in their They come with a year warranty and you don't have to go buy the stainless steel fridge and matching dishwasher for, for this type of renter or homeowner.

So once the properties were finished, people would call us just off of the sign we had in front of the park. We did have a website with the park as well. So the resident would go online and fill out the application. And then from there, I would contact them and verify their employment history. And verify their rental history. And I would do a credit and a background check. And if I had 10 to 20 applicants, I probably would have 5 that would go through that process with me. And then I would just choose the best one and we would owner finance the home. Probably it would depend on the numbers of bedrooms and baths, but we would say owner finance it for $20,000. They would put $3,000 down and then we would just, they would make payments on the home for 5 to 7 years. And after the 5 to 7 years, they would, we would transfer the title into their name and then they would own the home and they just pay lot rent. And we've done that with 8.

We've got 3 left, so 17 of them, right? We've owner financed out.

Yeah, it works out beautifully.

I love that. That is so affordable and just having that, that's, has, have you, did you, I mean, that I've never heard of that model before. Doing that? Is that something you guys came up with or?

We learned actually from Frank and Dave, Frank Rolfe and Dave, kind of their, the way that they manage mobile home parks there. I want to say right now they're like the third largest mobile home park owners in the United States. It's a very good bootcamp that they put together and it just gets you out of the maintenance business. But you're not leaving it to someone that's renting it. You're leaving it to someone that has home ownership and they take way better care of the property. They, for instance, one of the gentlemen that we've just did this with here recently, he's replaced all the steps. He's going inside and doing a whole bunch of stuff that we wouldn't do as landlords, but he's making it his own. He's doing the things in there. He's removing walls and he's making bathrooms bigger. So they, they tend to go above and beyond of what just a renter would do when they have home ownership.

And a lot of them are so grateful. I had one lady, she was in her 60s and she said, this is the first time I've ever owned a home. And she was just so grateful to own her own home. So it, for us, it's really rewarding. And honestly, there is such a need for affordable housing. And I can't even return all the phone calls I get daily just for people looking for safe, clean, affordable housing. So if I had 100 more available properties, I could fill them today. So, yeah, I really feel like we're just filling a need in the community and it works out perfectly because they own their home and then they just pay lot rent.

That just, it kind of ticks all the boxes. You're doing good, you're helping people, they have, they're really invested. Like that compared to the traditional renter, it's, I get calls like there were 3 ants in the bathroom and I have to just, just, I'm just like, really? I don't, there's a little, yeah, it's a different, it's a different game. I love that.

Okay.

So if someone, what are your, how, I mean, it sounds like you're self-managing this. What kind of tools are you using? Like how do you, or are you, I guess I should ask if you're self-managing.

Oh yeah.

So Honestly, we just, I just use an Excel spreadsheet and we use QuickBooks to send out invoices.

And I don't remember the name of the program, but there's, what's the name of the background check and credit check?

That's, I use mysmartmove.com, which is a website and they do a credit and background check and the resident pays for that. So I just send them a link for it. They pay for that and then it sends me the information, but we just keep it really simple. We had tried using management systems software, and for me, I just like it simple, so I use an Excel spreadsheet. We do have a bookkeeper that does our bookkeeping for us. She's a tremendous help. And then QuickBooks sends our invoices out.

And then we have a place on site that they can make payments, either some of them we allow to write checks. Money orders, but really here recently, half of them have gone to Cash App or Venmo or Zelle. So we don't, I would say we have half that do it online and half that's still deposited in the rent deposit box on site.

But it's, we try to make it as hands-off as possible.

Yeah, no, I love that. So I used to collect checks and then I got on, sometimes I forget to check if they came in because it's all so automated. I'm like, shoot, I should. Probably log in and look at the system. So are there— I'm curious if someone— what are like, are there any trends that you guys are seeing in this? I think the model to me makes so much sense because you're helping people and then you're collecting that lot rent. So I just, to me, it takes out all that maintenance and all of that kind of— you don't have turnover, I'm assuming, because they're mostly owner-occupied.

We have hardly any turnover at all. Which, which is beautiful thing. We just don't have it over because they're owning the home. And if a, if someone that's doing a rent-to-own gets behind, I work with them, but I'm also very upfront and I say, listen, you're going to lose your deposit money and you're going to lose your home. And I have 15 other people on the waiting list that would love the opportunity that you have. I don't play games and they realize they can't find any other safe, affordable housing. So they stay current and they make their payments because they just don't want to lose their home. So I'm just very upfront with people, but no, we really don't have any turnover.

No, I think we've had one here probably in the last year. He just was getting behind and was keeping his yard a mess and he got warning after warning and then he just stopped paying for over a month. So we had to end up evicting him and we got the home back. And he's moved on his way and we've since sold that home to another potential homeowner. Yeah, there's very little turnover and seeing we don't own the homes, there's minimal maintenance calls within owning a mobile home park that is all lot rent. Typically what's the responsibility of us as the owners is any of the infrastructure. So we're on septic and city water. So anything underground is the responsibility of us as the property owner. As soon as those pipes come out of the ground and start heading up to the home, that since becomes the responsibility of the, the person leasing the lot from us. Maintenance calls is few and far between.

Yeah. In the wintertime, when the ground freezes, we might get calls for having a septic issue, but it's very low maintenance. And we, we really appreciate that. Now it did take us probably about 12 to 18 months to get there. After we bought the property, we had to evict some of the tenants and then we had to get the homes renovated, but we've owned this property 8 years now and it pretty much runs on autopilot.

That is truly the dream.

Yeah.

With single family or multi, like your turnover, it's, if it's not every year, it's going to be every couple of years. And there's, you have to go refresh it and paint it and carpets and cleaning. And yeah.

What's kind of nice about the mobile home park world is you have so many residents on a piece of property. We've got 28 in there. So even if Something crazy happened and 10 of them stopped paying, we had a victim, you still have 18 that are making payments every month and it's covering bills and keeping the property self-sustainable. So you have 1 or 2 turnovers. It doesn't really put a big blip in your income coming in and it makes it really manageable.

That scale. That's— no, I love that. I feel like, I don't want to say they're trendy, but I—

Well, they're trendy.

Yeah.

No, we remember in 2011, 2012, 2013, not a lot of people were looking at mobile homes. There was so many on the MLS. We had so many to choose from. And now I feel like everyone is looking for mobile home parks. As a matter of fact, I get either a letter or a phone call nearly every week from investors that want to buy our property. Asking if I want to sell it. So I feel like they're very trendy.

So if that's— but if someone wants to get into this space, are there still mom-and-pop operations or what would you tell someone like, hey, like, I love this class, like, for all the reasons you guys talked about, what would you tell them? Is it too late?

I think there's still opportunity, but you have to look for them now. You're not going to find them on the MLS like you used to, or if you do, they'll probably be overpriced. So I would try to find off-market properties, mom-and-pop owners, or even out-of-state owners. We have just in, in our state of South Carolina, some out-of-state owners have bought properties and they don't have boots on the ground to run them. So they're running them into the ground. So even just finding distressed properties, it's like driving for dollars, right?

You go drive around looking for a single-family house. If you get into the mobile home park world. Keep your eyes out as you're driving down all these roads. You might find a shabby looking mobile home park, and then it's just finding the owner and either writing them a letter or trying to figure out their phone number and getting them on the line to see if you can talk to them. But yeah, I mean, there's— I know in South Carolina there's still a lot that are mom-and-pop owned that have opportunities like that, but you really just gotta Go hunt them down.

Right. Be consistent and aggressive. Intonation.

That sounds like any kind of acquisition. So I guess I'm curious, I feel like you guys got your teeth, cut your teeth on single family. If someone's, hey, I love this class, do you recommend diving into this or do you think, can you, there's so much resources out there, right? You can probably learn anything, but what do you think for someone starting out? Would you say, yeah, go for it or start with something smaller?

That's a really good question, and people ask us that a lot because so many people, once they find out we're full-time investors, are like, oh my gosh, I really want to invest in real estate, but I don't know where to start. And we actually started with single-family, but then we very quickly started investing in mobile homes, in mobile homes on land, before we started with mobile home parks. And we feel we're advocates for investing in mobile homes and mobile homes on land because it's such a low barrier to entry. You can find them much more affordably than single-family homes. In South Carolina, You can find them well under $100,000. And what?

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

There was, uh, we just saw a listing. I don't know, probably 2 months ago. It was 2 single wides on an acre lot for $60,000. Now the 2 homes probably needed maybe $10,000 to $15,000 worth of work, but you're still in, what's that? $75,000, $80,000. You're into. Now to producing rental incomes coming in. So one thing that's nice about South Carolina is I believe it's the number one state in the United States for mobile home sales. So they're like a dime a dozen around here. You can see them on every corner, right?

No, but we— but mobile home investing is a great place to start just because it's a low barrier of entry. You can find them affordably. Sometimes the sellers will owner finance them to you. So in our area, that's, it's a great place to start. Adrian Smoot, he's actually coming to our meetup next month and he teaches about investing in mobile homes on land and he is an advocate for it. He's created financial freedom just solely investing in mobile homes, not even parks, just mobile homes on land. And he has written a book. And so he's a great resource on that.

Okay. And for someone like when I was starting, I've been full-time for a couple of years, but the whole like on the land thing for someone that doesn't understand, can you just unpack? I know it's probably really obvious, but.

So yeah, like mobile homes on the land, similar to stick the house on a piece of property. It's just, you'll either have a single wide or a double wide on a residential lot.

But come with its own piece of property versus being in a mobile home park where the park owner owns the land.

Owns the land.

Okay. And that's the— because I've gotten calls and I'm like, they don't own the land. And I'm like, I can't— you get leads sometimes. And I'm like, do you own the land?

It's better if you own the land because depending on the county it's in, you could split the land up into 2 or 3 pieces and place another mobile home on each piece of property. So you always want to own the land because if you own the land, you can always sell the mobile home and keep the land and they can pay you lot rent even once they pay the mobile home off.

Right. You can do like they do in mobile home parks, right? You sell the unit, but you keep the dirt and then you charge them lot rent. You can do the same thing on a mobile home on a half-acre lot. You can fix up the home and you can put that on financing terms. And once they pay it off over the next 7 or 10 or whatever your terms are, then you just charge them lot rent for every month. And if they want to move the home, go ahead and pull it off. Here in South Carolina, you can get a brand new 2-bedroom, 2-bath completely set up on land for $52,000. And it, they could have it delivered within a week and set up within a week. So within 2 weeks of you purchasing a piece of property, you could honestly have a rental going full-fledged.

Right.

That's coming from Portland. I think too, maybe this is me just being naive, I think I had a little bit of a stigma, but I'm sure the quality, I feel like they, when you're inside of them, they look and feel just like a stick build. I'm assuming, like, I think there's all the misconceptions about what the quality or the style.

There definitely is a stigma and a misconception, but that's great because there's so much opportunity there because people have that stigma and that misconception. And some mobile homes can be run down and they can look really bad. Water does a lot of damage to them, but they can also be fixed up really nice. You can put a metal roof on a couple of ours and you could sheetrock the walls and paint them really nice and put LVP flooring and they look great. And the rents are equivalent to single-family rentals. You can buy a mobile home for $40,000 and rent it out for $1,400.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

I've got a buddy that, uh, just bought a 1979 on a, like a third of an acre lot on the lake. And he was going to tear it down. And I said, well, man, are the bones still good in that? He said, yeah. I said, why don't you just rehab it? So he put up some— I think he's got HardieBoard siding on the outside. They put a metal roof over it and it almost looks like a long skinny single family now. And he put it on the Airbnb market and he's getting I don't know, $150 a night out of renting it on the Airbnb market. And they went in and sheetrocked the inside and refaced the cabinets and painted it up. And it looks amazing.

It looks really great.

And he probably saved himself three-quarters of the cost versus tearing it down and trying to build a single-family stick-built on this lot. It's really, it's a really affordable way to get into real estate investing. I feel, right?

Yeah. No, that's really interesting that those numbers are crazy. Cause even just the flips that I've done, you're, it's $100K, right? Just for lipstick-y, not even, it's not even that fancy, right? It's just refreshing bathrooms, kitchens, fixtures. You could have to get a whole brand new place. And then the thing about the flipping is right. All the infrastructure, you have no idea what's going on with the pipes, the electrical.

So you get into it. That's right.

Yeah. And it's—

in mobile homes, all this, all your pipes and everything. Yes, there's some stuff in the walls, but everything runs underneath the mobile home. All your water lines drop down. So it's all very accessible if you have any issues versus having to really tear out a wall or rip out the floor to get to water pipes that might be under there or whatever. Everything is fairly— I'd probably say it's 90% accessible from the underneath of the home.

I never thought about that because in a home you've got just, you're digging and you've got sewer lines or it's no small. That's so interesting. All right. I love, this is a super cool topic. I guess I kind of want to touch just to switch gears on, you're also in storage units, which is, I think it's another class that's very popular.

Yes.

Very popular.

So I'd love to hear, I don't know, like just how you got into that and what you like about it.

Yeah. So we were attending local real estate investment meetups in our area and we attended one and learned about a mastermind and we ended up joining it. And after going to a couple meetings, there was some people in our mastermind group that were investing in storage facilities and they had a lot of good things to say about the asset class. And I know we mentioned, um, Frank Reynolds and Frank Rolf, Frank Rolf and Dave Reynolds. And that is one thing that they invest in as well was storage facilities. So we had already been familiar with it. We were just focused on mobile home parks. So after going to our mastermind meetings, we came home and we said, hey, let's look and see if there's any storage in our area. So I went on the MLS and I found one and it was within 45 minutes from our house and it was priced very well. It was a value-add property, about 40% occupied. So we went and looked at it and we put an offer on it and ended up buying it.

And yeah, it was owned by an elderly gentleman. I think he, it actually was the local elementary school for many years and they moved down the street to a brand new elementary school. So this gentleman converted the main school building into storage and then he added two other buildings beside it. He passed away, went to family members. They had a manually opened gate that had to be opened in the morning, locked back up at night. And they were working full-time jobs. And they just didn't do anything with it. There was a lot of people that were late on payments. There was the mechanically— manually opened gate, a A lot of the doors were broken, so it was a diamond in the rough.

Yeah. And really we bought that facility never owning a storage facility before. I mean, just learned as we went. And after we bought that property, we put a fence.

Yeah. So within the 3 months of owning it, we put in an automated gate. We use ESS for our software system. They've got a call center. So we took it from manually opening gates to now people pull up towards the facility. They either call the phone number on the sign or go onto the website and they can rent a storage facility, get a code through the gate within a matter of minutes. So there's no, we don't have any office managers out there. Actually, we're in the process from our mentor to, to turn the office into a one-bedroom studio. So we're going to try to get some rental and we'll always have somebody that's keeping an eye on it. But storage is really nice because I can operate the facility from anywhere that I either have cell service or an internet connection. I do have a person that I guess you would call them a boots on the ground. Now she's able to go out there and empty out units if need be, or let me know which doors are working or not working. So that's probably the minimal aspect of storage.

Yeah. This one was pretty much a mom-and-pop-run facility. They didn't have a website. They didn't even have an operating camera system that worked, or like the gate wasn't operable. They had to open and shut it every day.

And people could crawl under the fences.

They were having break-ins. So within 3 to 6 months of owning it, we put a new camera system in, we put a new sign up, we put a website on it, we automated the entire facility, which made it just so much more efficient to run. And I would say within 9 months, the occupancy went from 40% to about 80%.

Wow, I love that. I feel like the technology and everything in this world has come so far, but especially the fact that You're not running background credit checks on, I'm assuming it's just kind of pay a deposit because there's not even a deposit they pay.

Nope. So it's depending on what time of the month they rent the unit, it's prorated for that month. And then every month after it's the street rate or whatever we have the unit priced at. Um, and then If there's any late payments or anything, I just lock them out on my phone and then I go through the auction process. A lot of times, as soon as you lock them out of the facility and change their status from late auction status, I'd probably say 8 out of 10 of them will pay their balance off so they can get their belongings. They don't want to lose their stuff. Um, But then you just run through the auction process. Every state's different. And then you sell the unit and it gets cleaned out and you go back to renting it to the next person.

Yeah, it's very simple. It's very easy.

And there's no more, my stove's broken, my refrigerator stopped working. We have a light bulb and we have a garage door. That's the only maintenance really, other than some building maintenance. That's all that is tenant-related issues. Oh, my light bulb's not working. One thing that's nice about this facility is 80% of it has external doorways, so they don't have hallways that they've got to go down. So even if their light's not working, just open your garage door and you're getting the ambient light from the environment. Honestly, that light bulb doesn't get changed until they move out anyway, so.

That is so low maintenance.

It is.

It is very low maintenance.

Having been in resident single family and then mobile homes and mobile home parks, storage facilities are really a breath of fresh air.

It's just the scale of like difficult to live with. That is the ultimate.

Two different ends of the spectrum.

Right.

Yeah. So I have to, my kids or my son loves Storage Wars. I'm assuming it's not that exciting when it goes to auction or what?

Typically what I do is, so there's a process with the state and you've got to do a couple things in the state of South Carolina in order to auction it. But once those couple things are finished, I go drill the lock off. I take pictures of the inside unit. I put my lock back on there and then I send it to an online auction company. I don't have to hold auctions on onsite at all. And then if someone buys it, then I'll meet the individual out there, swap the locks out, and he's got about a month to empty it out. If no one buys it, that's when I call my lady that I have out there on the ground, and she'll haul everything off for minimal prices, and she sweeps it out and makes sure the light works and door's working, and we'll make it available on the website.

Okay. So I have to ask, do you ever— I like to treasure hunt. So do you ever poke around?

If, if I'm not auctioning, if it did not go to, or if it went to auction and nobody bought it, yeah, I'll poke around.

A lot of times though, really, there's not much valuable in there. People store things that are valuable to them, but not really valuable to everybody. Exactly.

Old couches, clothes, box of clothes. I found a, like, a tabletop vending machine. It's one person's stuff. Do I really want it to clutter my house? Not really. I'd have to find something cool, like a, I don't know, some cool jewelry, or maybe a vinyl, old, what are those called, records or something. Maybe something that I could try to sell on eBay or something like that, but I just, I've got enough stuff in my own house.

I don't need other people's stuff too.

I had to ask. No, that's so, it sounds like, it sounds just so streamlined. You're just, you, it just set up the way you, that's, yeah, that is so different than residential for, and all the laws that you have to abide by and all the just fair housing, which is in place for a good reason. But yeah, that's Very refreshing. So again, it seems like a very popular asset class. Are there still mom-and-pops out there? Do you think it's kind of like kind of an off-market hunt if you're looking to get into storage, or what do you guys—

Yeah, it's just like mobile home parks. I think storage that is on the market now is people are trying to get prime top dollar for them because they can, because it's I guess it's become such a jewel in the asset classes. But again, driving around, you're going to find storage facilities that just look like they need work, just like if you were looking for a single family. And then it's just the same approach to getting in contact with the owner. So if you go out hunting for them, you can find them. I've found a good bit of them around our state.

Yeah, we look all the time now and we find them everywhere, rundown storage facilities. So it's just sending out the mailers and being consistent with it and contacting the owners. But I still think there's absolutely opportunity. You just gotta look and hunt and just keep going until you find one. I think that we got lucky with finding this on the MLS.

We did.

I remember when I first found it, I thought, why isn't this under contract? Why is this still active? What's wrong with it? And just no, no one had seen it yet. So I think we got lucky.

Aspect. So between, I think the level of effort, like what would, if you had to pick your favorite asset, like would you go mobile home or storage?

Like definitely storage. Yeah.

Definitely. Right. For more storage.

We're in the process now of, of adding to our storage facility and even adding some storage to the mobile home park because we just really enjoy that asset class. Okay.

That's great. Having that, it's an amenity almost then, I'm assuming, at a park to have storage as onsite.

I think there needs to be some storage onsite and there's just in the, the town that we're in, there's a need for storage and part of our mobile home park is, is a great piece of property to put storage on. So we're in the process of having it rezoned commercial and then developing it into storage.

Wow. You guys are ambitious.

Thank you. We're trying.

So when you're— I don't say I don't know anything— is that when you're evaluating, like, if you find something that's off market, is it just the typical, like, what's your income, what's your expenses? Is there— is— are there any tips on evaluating?

Big thing with storage is— what is that?

Saturation.

Yeah. Saturation in your market. Typically, when I find a storage facility that I'm interested in, I try to find the population in a 1, in a 3, in a 5-mile radius. And then within that 1, 3, 5-mile radius, and you can do it through Google Earth or whatever, you just need to scour and see if there's any other storage facilities that don't pop up on Google as well on a Google search, because you want the You try to get the— it's not income per capita, it's storage or square foot per capita. That's one of the big things you want to look at because you don't want to buy in an oversaturated market.

Okay.

And then we're getting prices at $55 a square foot to build them brand new. So that's another gauge. What are they got this priced at per square foot? If they're at $75 or $80, I find that's overpriced if I can build it for $55 to $60. So those are the two key factors we look at in evaluating possible purchases in the future.

We had a facility under contract about two years ago, and during due diligence, we went to the town to see if there was any new facilities coming in. And they told us, yes, actually a Kmart that had closed down was within a mile of the facility we were buying was going to be turned by CubeSmart and turned into storage.

And so once we had that knowledge, we got out of the contract because it was adding, I think that facility was adding around 70,000 square foot of heated and cooled inside storage. And then it had another like 100,000 square foot in the parking lot that they were Converting into outdoor storage along with boat and RV parking. And this was just a typical metal building with external garages to get in and out of. There was no hallways. So that new facility getting built really oversaturated the market and it just wasn't worth—

wasn't lucrative anymore.

Plus there was no expansion. Our storage facility that we bought. 2 years ago, 2 and a half years ago, we've got 5 acres that we can expand on.

Oh, wow.

Above and beyond what's already there. We're in the process of doing that now with the county and going through general contractors and getting pricing to pretty much triple what's already out there.

So that's exciting. And then you just, the demand, you have the unit, you're probably— you're turning away people, or you just— you can see it, that it's— it would be worth developing that?

Oh yeah, as soon as, as soon as a vacant unit becomes vacant and turned around and it's listed back on the website as available, within, I'd say, 3 to 5 days, it's already rented back out. And then in our— where we're at, there's no heated and cooled, so we're going to add They call it a hybrid unit. It's big metal buildings, but the whole interior of the metal building is hallways, and that's heated and cooled square footage. But then the exterior walls are also non-heated and cooled square footage. So we're going to have a mix of both out there. Each building is going to have heated and cooled and non-heated and cooled as well.

And we're also adding boat and RV storage.

Yeah, covered boat and RV storage to the property as well.

Right.

Yeah. Yeah. God, that's so interesting. I was gonna ask you something. So are there any trends-wise? It feels like it's pretty basic, but are there trends like heating and cooling, or like you're saying boat and RV storage, or other trends that people are asking for, like value adds, or I'm just curious.

The heated and cooled aspect is big because A lot of like doctor's office, lawyer's offices, stuff like that have to hold their records for 7 years before they can dispose of them. So if they're in a heated and cooled space versus non-heated and cooled, the records tend to last longer and stay better quality. It just cuts down on the grime that gets through the little cracks and stuff like that.

And in this area, there is no boat or RV storage. So there's a demand for that.

Right. It's close to the lake. It's on the other side of the lake from us, but yeah. And everybody's boughten campers and stuff due to the COVID boom. So where are they keeping these? A lot of subdivisions don't allow you to keep your RV parked in your driveway. So it just gives them an opportunity to— they're covered. They're not completely— like the walls are open, but it's got a roof over them. So it keeps them out of the element of the sun and stuff. And it just keeps them a place to be able to store their campers or boats or whatnot.

That's the ultimate just renting land, right? I mean, once you have that infrastructure, you're— there's no— yeah, there's no plumbing to worry about.

Exactly. Yes.

Just grade the roads every once in a while if it's—

oh man, I'm jealous. You guys haven't figured out and you got in early.

He did get in early, but we were focused on multifamily a lot. It seemed like before, before people were getting into that space, but in working with development now, we are learning as we're going. We've never developed property before to this magnitude. So it is definitely, we're learning every day and there's so many hoops to jump through and we're just trying to hold it all together and just keep pushing the ball forward.

Yeah, no, I— did you listen to Greg's thing last night about the two? You either drive 500,000 miles or 1,000 miles, and it's, you know, yeah, I don't know if you listen to it.

No, I haven't heard it. Yeah, but I need to listen to it. Tell me about it.

You guys are definitely in the getting a lot of stuff done class, so he's like, we're flying. You're basically gonna run roadblocks, but you're doing the, you're doing it versus just staying on this course and the easy life.

You know, as I look back through our investing life, that's how we operate. We go out and learn a little bit and then we just jump in and do it. And then we learn as we go. And we have done that with everything on every asset class. We bought a short-term rental about a year and a half ago and same thing. We went and took a class and learned how to do it. And then we just bought one and we've just done it.

I can tell you, we put it under, we put it so This house for the short-term rental was never a short-term rental. It needed a complete exterior renovation. There was holes in the roof from old skylights, rotten siding, busted up concrete. We put it under contract knowing we were going to short-term rental in it. We knew we had to put a pool in. There was a huge tree in the backyard that was half dead. We didn't know if we could take it down. So we put it under contract and the next day, Shalon goes, We probably need to figure out a class on this so we know what we're doing. So by the end of the week, we were on a plane to Utah and we learned about short-term rentals while we were in the due diligence phase of the house down there as a short-term rental.

Yeah.

That's been our whole investment career. We've looked into, hey, what do you think about this asset class? So we'd start looking and then we'd find a weekend course somewhere and go learn from people that are already doing it. Why reinvent the wheel? And we get that information and then we just hit the ground running. We don't sit there and ponder over the information. We go get something under contract and then just start checking the boxes we're supposed to check. And then it becomes second nature over time. When we were really heavy into mobile home parks, we could drive by a mobile home park, count the number of spaces in there and realize what we would offer on it. And then we would go to negotiations with the seller, and if we couldn't find the right number, we'd be off to the next one down the road.

Yeah, I love that. I think it speaks to the power of taking action but also investing in education, because I think as entrepreneurs we can figure out, right? Clearly you guys, but I think it, it's really powerful and smart to spend that money on a mentor or education paired with the action like you guys have done. And I think sometimes you wonder, is it worth it? Because it can be, it's an investment, right?

Not only that, it's, I just want to shorten my learning curve. I'm impatient. So it's like, I want to buy this property, but I want to learn how to do it. So I do it the right way. By having the education, even a weekend course, it teaches me the basics of what I need to be aware of. So I don't make a big mistake. And I, if I haven't already learned it, I'm going to learn it in due diligence. I have that window to get out of the property if I need to. But yeah, once we learn how to do it, we just make it work. And of course there's always things that come up, hoops we have to jump through or unexpected things that we don't anticipate. And it really teaches you tenacity to just keep jumping over the hoops and getting through it and making it happen. I mean, sometimes I look back at the things that we've done and I'm like, my God, I can't believe we pulled that off. Yeah.

Yeah. No, that, I just think that a lot of times people overanalyze or, but again, like you can get something under contract and then have a tenant in there. Like by the time, if you take that action and do stuff right, you can, versus just analyzing or you have to, I think there's a balance of educating and learning and then just doing it. Cuz you can analysis paralysis, right? I'm sure you have clients that you have to coach through.

Oh yeah. And I think a lot of it is just feeling the fear and doing it anyways. Before we closed on every property we own, I remember just being so nervous and anxious and, oh my God, are we making the right decision? Is this the right thing to do? But once you get over that and you get through it, you're just so grateful that you did it and you grow so much as a person.

That is so true. Like every house I bought it the next day, I'm like, why?

This was—

and then you look back and the appreciation and all the things. but then you're like, I wish I would've bought more.

Exactly. And that's how I feel. I'm like, I wish I would've bought, I should've bought more mobile home parks. Hindsight's 20/20. And almost like once you go through it a couple of times, you're not afraid anymore. Right now it's like, ah, I just wanna buy as much as I can. It's where do I find more?

Yeah, totally. Yeah. No, it's funny. I've always, just speaking of courses, I did my, I started a course and I just, I really downloaded my whole brain to it and I'm like, if I would've done this, I probably would've been farther in this journey, right? If I'd, But it was definitely interesting to be on the other side trying to like download my brain in a way that, hey, if someone was starting this, what would I tell them to do? You know, I'd be like, just, you can furnish in 2 weeks. It took me like months to get my first like midterm thing going and now I'm like, oh yeah, a week.

I got this. No problem. Yeah.

Like I'm good with the deadline, I guess just to put a bow on this. You guys have clearly really diversified. I think that's really smart. Do you have any advice on someone? Do you go all in on one kind of asset, or what would you tell someone like when they're looking at their trajectory?

You know what, I would think the first thing that people need to do is know what they want and have a vision for their life. That's one thing that has helped us and just with buying the short-term rental, that was something that was on our vision. We wanted a beach vacation rental. So when we came across a good opportunity, I knew it was what I wanted. I had been looking for it. It had been on my vision for a couple of years. So I think just having a plan and knowing what you want. We are involved in a lot of asset classes.

I think going off on that is once you realize what asset class you want to get into is to really get some education on it and then go buy a couple or do some evaluations of properties to where it becomes almost second nature, right? And then if you get into that asset class or get a couple different properties in an asset class and you want to venture on to something else, you know that one really well, so that gives you time to go look into other different asset classes. I wouldn't buy a mobile home park and be like, all right, I'm going to go look at storage. All right. I'm really learning that asset class to where you— that's right. It becomes second nature to you. And then once you get— that becomes second nature, if you want to venture off into these other different asset classes, I would suggest doing that.

But right.

I think that's—

no, that's good advice because Jordan's right. You really need to master what you're doing and know it very well. And stick with something until it's producing good income and before you go on to the next thing, you know?

Right.

Yeah. And it, it takes a while to really get comfortable and know it on the back of your hand. Then you're in your head, you just know, you just have this kind of, you have to go with data, right? But yeah.

Right.

But it does, it takes time. It takes time to master it. And that's one thing about Greg Pinho that he's taught us is to really know your stuff and really master it. He has had such a positive influence on our life.

He really has.

I know he has on yours as well.

Yeah, no, we— he's, uh, he's the sage, right? He's—

yes.

Yeah, he's real, and he attracts— I think it just— it's a tribe, right? You would— very like-minded, very kind of entrepreneurial people that are doing good things, good people, and I think you need that around you because you often feel a little isolated as an investor. Not everyone's doing it. It's a little mysterious to people sometimes. I think, and that speaks to the power of meetups and networking. I know you guys have started a meetup if you want to touch on that real fast. I think that's really, that's exciting.

Yeah. Yeah. So we just wanted to create a community in our area of investors that can meet every month and just like-minded people. So many people would ask us when they find out we're full-time real estate investors, how we got started or how they can get started. And so we said, let's just create a meetup every month and we can have guest speakers come and we can teach what we know and just create a community of people that can collaborate and network. And we've really enjoyed it. It's been eye-opening and it's gotten us out of our comfort zone. But we really do want to create an environment of like-minded people.

It's been on her— she goes back to that vision. She's talked about this meetup probably, oh, I'd say about a year and a half, 2 years now. And finally, we pushed the ball. It was the time to do something in our community because we were traveling 30 minutes to the local RIA down in Columbia. And we're like, why don't we just— Why don't we just start this in our own backyard? And February was our first meetup.

Yeah.

It seems to be growing really well. I think this month there's going to be a lot of new faces because people have been reaching out to us on social media and stuff to find out more about it and stuff. It's really, it's really a neat concept, I guess. Who would have known we'd have been doing this?

We're just wanting to attract more real estate junkies.

No, I— there's definitely a huge community here, and I feel like it's a really— I think people just love to share and connect, and it's a very supportive community, and it's just— it feels good to connect with other people, and you can ask questions. Because I was a long time— I was not— I was— we were very slow investors, and I would— I was like embarrassed to say I wasn't— I wouldn't even call myself an investor because I was like, I'll be judged, or I'm an evil landlord and now I'm like, I own it. But it, you have to be around other people doing it.

Yes. Not only that, but there's a lot of fear around investing in real estate. And I just want to help people overcome that fear. Real estate has changed our life and I really just want to show other people, even just one or two properties can change your life. And I think just getting over the fear and doing that first property really just gets you over that, kind of opens the door.

Yeah, yeah, it's just— and then you realize it's not all those stereotypes or all those things that you hear generally don't happen if you do things the right way. And I just have to say kudos, I— you guys, that you guys are working together and doing this, it's not easy. My husband and I had an agency together and it's not easy, and you guys are clearly killing it.

So thank Yeah, I appreciate that.

You clearly get along well still, so I would have to say it's just a lot of hats.

It is a lot.

It is a lot. On top of it, we're raising 4 kids and keeping a marriage together. And it's like anything, you grow, you learn a lot about each other and you just learn a lot about each other and you grow. And if this is. This is a path that you decide to go down with your spouse. There's gonna be some mountains and hurdles that you've gotta get over relationship-wise along with business-wise, but I wouldn't change it for the world. I'm happy to be where I'm at.

Yeah. And we just have different strengths and weaknesses, so we really can just feed off of each other and yeah, we, we complement each other very well.

That's so important in any partnership, but especially if you're married and in business together. Yeah, not a lot of people can do it.

I agree. It's not easy.

I can just super relate. We're now, we do different things, but we still like support each other. And so, yeah, I've just, I've been there. I have to ask you, are your kids involved in business?

I, since you guys are clear, your family, I've, uh, we've got, uh, so we've got 3 daughters and a son. Our oldest daughter's, uh, 23 and she's in college at Citadel, which is like a military-style college in South Carolina. Uh, we've got a 19-year-old that's just finishing up her freshman year at USC. She's got the real estate bug and the business bug. So that's what she's going to school for is to learn entrepreneurship and project managing actually in construction. Then Ava's a freshman in high school and JJ's What, 12, and he's in 6th grade.

Mm-hmm.

I think our second daughter, Alana, is gonna be starting to slowly learn the ropes of all this, but the oldest one's off on a marketing degree, and I think she's gonna be going to Boston after she graduates. And then Ava's really into softball, so I'm not sure. What her thoughts are when she graduates high school.

They've been raised in the real estate world. They've been coming with us to property since they were young. When Ashlyn and Alana were younger, they would help Jordan renovate properties. And JJ comes to the storage facility with us in the mobile home park. So they are well aware of our businesses and the freedom it provides us to be with them a lot. And they know the difference between assets and liabilities. Because we teach them all that and they're like, oh my God, Mom. But I tell them, most adults don't even know this stuff, you guys. So it's important. But they're well-versed whether they want to be or not. So it'll be interesting to see what they do in the future. But we definitely teach them the importance of owning assets and real estate or owning business.

Financial education is not— you have to— it's You have to be self-taught unless you get a degree.

But yeah, I agree.

Yeah.

I'm such an advocate for financial literacy because they don't teach it in school. Like we had, we have all of our kids read Rich Dad Poor Dad. I'll pay them money to read those books because they need to learn that. Where else are they learning it?

There's a teen one out, I think, for—

yeah.

Okay. Yeah. We actually, we had, we got on a kick for a while with The Cashflow Game and that was like brilliant because it was just the gamification of all the concepts.

So we have that game as well and we play it and actually the kids have gotten pretty good. Alana is very good at it.

Yeah, she's very good at it.

But it teaches them so much. So we play the cash flow game.

Yeah, no, I just, it's so brilliant. That's just so important. Understanding that. Oh my gosh, I thought we could like talk forever, but probably just to wrap it up, I have a couple closing questions. I'll let you guys, you can each take a question or however you want. This is a loaded one, but go wherever you want with it. I always like to ask people, because clearly you're, you've got the time freedom, you've made this path in your life, the top business or life advice you'd give someone to live life on their own terms.

I would say to feel the fear and do it anyways. I think so often in life we have grand ideas of what we wanna do, but we're afraid. Of so many different things. So it's just feeling the fear and doing it anyways, and then just taking massive and perfect action.

Love it.

And I, I would say if you're, uh, in anything in life, you're going to hit a roadblock, especially in the real estate investment world. There's roadblocks all over. And I think a lot of the population hit their first roadblock and they throw their hands up and they don't go any further. And they realized that they might have to get a stepping stool to get over the roadblock or whatever, but what's on the other side of that roadblock is way better than giving up or going back to the normal for them. You just need to be tenacious and you just, if you push the ball only an inch down the field, that's a lot farther than if you just stopped. You just need to, you just need to keep pushing forward over, over the types of roadblocks that come across in your life.

Don't let obstacles stop you.

Yeah, I love it. That is so true. Yeah, I've had people say, oh, I had a rental and there was a mouse. Okay, you know what that house is worth now?

Exactly. Yeah.

Okay. And then what are each of your superpowers?

So I think my superpower is positive thinking. I try to think positive and just have a bright outlook or think about how I want things to go. And then my, I think my second one would be, is just kind of attention to detail or holding all things together. As being a licensed agent for so long, you learn there's so many details in a transaction that you have to hold together. Consecutively at the same time. So I think I'm just very good at attention to detail and holding projects together and seeing them through to the end.

Love it.

My superpower, I'd probably say patience. I'm, I've become very patient. I think I learned that when I was a firefighter paramedic. You're in a place of chaos a lot of times when people call you. And if you're scatterbrained and out of control, you're gonna lose control of the scene. So having patience and being able to work through other people's emergencies has really taken me a long way in the real estate world. Cuz there's hiccups all along and you just need to sit back and sometimes let 'em work them. Themselves out for the prize at the end.

Yeah, definitely patience.

Patience.

Very good advice. Yeah. Awesome. I can see why you guys work well together.

I know, right?

Okay. I always like to ask, I know we touched like a book or a podcast or resource that, and you guys have mentioned a couple, but maybe just your favorites or something.

Yeah. So we read a lot and My favorite book is Grow Rich with Peace of Mind by Napoleon Hill. And a lot of people don't know about this book by Napoleon Hill, but it's one of the last books he wrote before he died. And it's just such an amazing book. He talks not only about growing rich, but how important peace of mind is. Because if you don't have peace of mind, then I don't feel like you're really rich in anything. So it's just a, It's a very good book. I highly recommend it.

Yeah. I think The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey is a good book. Again, it's why reinvent the wheel? You might as well learn from people that have succeeded. And one of the best ways to emulate somebody that is successful is to take on their habits. He's got a lot of good information in that book that helps you get good habits to be successful in whatever you're going, if it's a business, life, family, whatever.

Because you really become whatever your habits are.

You really do.

That is a classic. Yeah. Thank you. And that Napoleon Hill one, I've never heard of that one. That, thank you.

Yeah.

There's a lot of people that haven't heard of that book. Even some of the people in our circle of influence, they're like, what book is that? And you found that in a discount box at Books-A-Million or something like that.

Oh, no way.

Okay.

Yeah. Awesome.

I was just looking, I really like Napoleon Hill, so I was looking for any books by him and that's where I found it.

Okay. Because there's the other one, Think and Grow Rich is the classic that everyone—

Yeah, that's the classic. I like this better than Think and Grow Rich. I just think it. I just like it better than Think and Grow Rich.

Okay. No, I'm definitely, my reading list gets every time I—

I bet.

It gets huge. Okay. So just to wrap up, how can people like find you, work with you, follow you guys online, all that good stuff?

Yeah. So I'm on Facebook under Shallon Howard and then Real Estate Entrepreneur, and people can learn more about our meetup under True North Real Estate Investment Group.

I'm just Jordan Howard on Facebook. I believe that's—

yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's one of the best ways to get a hold of me or see what I got going on.

Okay, awesome. Thank you guys for taking the time. This was really fun. Yes, it was. Appreciate it. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you found it valuable. Please take a minute to hit the subscribe or follow button. It really helps other people find us and share it with a wider audience. We also appreciate 5-star reviews. Also, please take a screenshot and tag us on your favorite social platform. We're at Cedar and Porch. The show was brought to you by the Midterm Rental Playbook course, your blueprint to setting up a successful midterm Mental. Learn more at themidtermmentalplaybook.com, link in the show notes.