What You Need To Know About Mobile Home Park Investment

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the land geek with your favorite niche real estate website, www.thelandgeek.com. and today's guest is. This will be his third time. I think he's been on twice on the best passive income model podcast. This will be his first time on the Art of Passive Income out podcast. He is a hero of Scott and mine. But before we talk to our guest, I'd be remiss if I didn't properly introduce my co host. You know him, you love him. The brain, the professor. Scott Todd from Scott todd.net landmodo.com if you're not automating your Craigslist and your Facebook postings, posting domination.com thelandgeek. You want to learn about automation? You want to learn about anything? Check out investor ninjas.com Scott Todd, how are you?

Mark?

I'm excited for our guest and ready to get going.

So let's go.

All right. Our guest today is what we lovingly refer to as Uncle Frank, Frank Rolf. Whom is today? What number are you, Frank, as far as in mobile home park ownership?

Still fifth largest as far as we know.

The fifth largest in the country. And how long you been doing this, Frank?

I've been doing this 20, 23 years now.

23 years. And you generously teach other people how to start building wealth actually owning mobile home parks. So let's just get into it. So, Frank, let's rewind the tape. For those of you that don't know you and your story, how on earth did you decide to get into mobile home park investing?

Sure. Well, it started off out of college. I started a billboard company. So with billboards, you lease ground space, you build a big old steel monopole most of the time. Then you rent the ad space out. And I had built two of those big old monopoles on a little mobile home park called Glen Haven in Dallas, Texas. So years later, when I sold that company off, wanted to find something new to get involved in. I started calling my old landowners since they were very generous over the years and telling me how their business models worked. So I called up the owner of that property named Ron. Asked him how Glenhaven works, and he said, why don't you find out yourself? I'll sell it to you right now over the phone. The price is 400,000. Give me 10,000 in cash down and I'll carry 390 for 30 years. I think back then it was, I think, 7%. So I then said, gosh, Ron, I have to kind of guess there's something wrong with Glenhaven, right? And he said yes, losing two grand a month. So I figured, what the heck? If I buy it, I'm out 10 to buy it plus closing costs. And then let's say I run it for three months and give up. So I can't fix the 2,000amonth. I'll be at 20,000. What a great. What a great education. So that's literally how I got in it. It was just an impulse buy.

The phone.

What had intrigued me about Glen Haven all the way back in the billboard days was that as a mobile, as a billboard guy, you're constantly looking at zoning maps, looking for the right zoning to build billboards. And there's not a lot of it they allow you to build on. And I noticed in all those years, I never saw MH zoning, which was mobile home park. So I knew it was rare. Being an economics major from college, I knew that when you have a lot of scarcity, you typically have value through supply and demand. So that one item made me interested. The other item that made me interested in over the probably 10 years that I had those Glen Havens, his billboards on Glenhaven. I would get a call at least once or twice a year from Ron saying, hey, can you do me a favor? When you're out driving billboards, can you stop by the office of Glen Haven and ask him why he won't call me back? It was always the exact same thing. I would drive over to this guy's old trailer, bang on the door, there'd be a huge delay, the door would swing open. He was always there hungover in his underwear and would say, what do you want? And I'd say, ron wants you to call him back. He'd say, okay. So I knew that the management of Glen Haven was, shall we say, a little lacking. And so I thought there may be opportunities. So when he threw the deal out and told me he was losing two grand a month, I thought, well, I bet I can fix that. And I know this property must be worth something because it's so rare. So that's how I got in.

Scott Todd, what are your thoughts?

You know, first of all, the whole thing about supply and demand, it's one of the things I think a lot of people miss when they're looking at really type of any type of real estate or any other type of business that they're looking at, right? Like if you have. And I'm going to take these words from Frank, but Frank loves, I know he loves businesses where the government actually begins to regulate it or to diminish the supply of it, and then the demand is still there. So like the billboards, for example, that he talks about, the billboard industry is well regulated by the Beautification Act. I think Frank, Lady Bird, did you got that regulation? Then you got the mobile home parks. Nobody wants to build a new mobile home park in their town because of the reputation or whatever. And so all of a sudden now you have the government restricting the supply of it and supply and demand economics in its pure sense comes forward. So I like the journey that Frank took. I think that he likes to work in these businesses that have that constrained supply. I think that's a piece that's missed.

A lot of times.

No, I love that. I think my big takeaway was that his risk reward ratio made a lot of sense and that he kind of just instinctively knew that the best way to learn is to do right. Like he couldn't just get a textbook on mobile home park investing, read it, and then say, okay, now I think I know enough to buy a mobile home park. He just did it. And the economics made sense. Like, okay, $20,000 for this education and, and I'm going to know the ins and outs of it. I think that was my big takeaway as well. So Frank, now that you own this mobile home park, why keep acquiring more? Why not go into self storage? Why not apartment buildings? Why stay in what is, you know, let's just be honest, an unloved real estate segment sector.

You guys already hit it because those other sectors are not federally regulated, right? So, you know, being a big reader of biographies, I knew the Warren Buffett concept of the moat backwards and forwards. And I also know that I wanted to be in a business where my moat was never going to be unmoted. And trucking and the airline industry had both been federally regulated, then later were deregulated and killed. Everyone who had invested in them thinking that they were secure. I liked billboards because I knew they would not ever deregulate it, because people hate billboards, but they hate mobile home parks even more. Storage, office, retail, any idiot can do that. You can buy it, you can build it, you can do whatever you want. City governments love it. It's all tax income, there's no cost. But I'm willing to bank that mobile home parks, after now a half century of being banned, are unlikely to be unbanned. And that's the big turn on to me.

I love it, Scott.

I mean, it's funny because I had seen some of Frank's educational Material on billboards. And then I called up my local county and I'm like, hey, because, Mark, as you know, we have land, right? Like, I have lots of land. And I found some land that was, like, perfect for what I thought was a billboard. Busy road, whatever. I called the county, and I'm like, hey, I want to put a billboard on my land that I own, you know? And they're like, absolutely not. You know, And I'm like, no, no, you don't understand. It's my property. They're like, no, you can't do it. And I'm like, well, why? And they're like, well, the county has a billboard band. You know, if you're grandfathered in, your grandfathered in. If not, you're toast. And I'm like, what? So, you know, there's the piece. Now pick up the phone and call them and tell them you want to put in a mobile home park. You're probably going to get screamed at even louder. No, you can't do that.

Right?

Yeah. I mean, Frank, that leads me to the next question, which is, what is some of the worst advice you see or hear given in mobile home park investing today?

You know, probably one of the worst things people do, which most people can't do, because the financing is not there, is to try and build a park. Because sometimes people will have a piece of land out in the middle of nowhere, and they'll say, gee, what can I do with it? I'll put a mobile home park on it. The problem with that idea is when you're in the middle of nowhere, where they do allow parks, you have no city water and sewer, so you're gonna have to build your own private water and sewer. Very expensive, very risky. And you also have no customers because nobody wants to live in the middle of nowhere. So the key to the industry is you always buy existing based on existing cash flow, and then you build on that. So building new parks, that's always a terrible idea. Another thing I see a lot is that people will go down into the Southeast. I'm talking Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and they'll get involved in mobile home parks with the lot rents are as low as 75 bucks a month. Not understanding that that's where all the money is. So then they'll bring in mobile homes and try and rent those out for, let's say, 500amonth. But you can't cap that income. You can't do anything with that income. So they end up with. They construct these animals that you can't really finance or sell, and then they're saddled with those things for a lifetime. So, you know, if you're going to be in the business, you got to be in areas where the lot rents are at least about $200 or more, because that's where you start getting into the area where you will have at least a shot of institutional debt at some point. Those are probably the two biggest things I see.

That makes sense. That makes sense, Scott. Todd?

Well, I'll say. Like, you know, Frank, I was looking at a park about two years ago, and the funny thing was that, and I didn't go deep into it enough, but, like, I looked at a few parks, and it's amazing because the moms and pops that you talk about, you know, that are running these things, sometimes they have created such a mess financially that you can't even unwind it, you know, like this one that I looked at, you know, like, they had, they had, like, four different entities running within the same park because each one of them had their retirements, who would buy the homes, and then you had, the main organization had the lot rent, and they wanted to sell the whole thing. And it's like, man, you can't get a forensic accountant to piece all this stuff together to build a financial statement for a bank, let alone, like, you know, just anybody else. And so it's amazing. And, you know, know, we wasted time going down that, that avenue trying to, trying to make it work a little bit, but at the end of the day, that park still has never sold the same people own it, because it's just a complete accounting mess.

That has to go straight into seller financing.

Right?

Third park I bought, I met with the guy, and he proceeded to tell me he had no records of any type. What he did is he took all rents in cash, he paid all bills out of money orders, he pocketed the balance, and he reported to the IRS that he had a net income of like $100 a month. The problem is, I said to him, immediately said, so you have no records. You have a tax return that's not accurate. You have no rent roll, you have nothing. Because he kept, he kept no records. If he had records, he thought the IRS could prove that he was wrong. So I said, you, you realize this has to be seller carry, right? There's no way you can tell me go out and get a bank loan when I have no information to give a bank at all. And had he not agreed to sell or finance, it would have never happened. That was really true. All my early deals and even later deals, whenever the guy had no financials or invalid financials or nothing more than a sheet of paper with a crayon on it, I would say, okay, you're going to have to carry this, right? And if the guy said, no, no, you got to use bank debt, I would just quit. Because you cannot expect a traditional banker to risk on some stupid trailer park loan with no supportive financials when you're asking the impossible. And the only banker who would do that is probably not a very good banker. So, yeah, that's where you segue. You go straight into seller carry.

It's funny because I think, Mark, what Frank just said, too, is a key thing, is that in any real estate is one knowing when to let go. Right? Like, because a lot of times, especially with people that do our businesses too, you see people that they try to hang on, they try to hang on to people that are trying to sell their property or even people that try to. Are trying to buy the property, and they just keep going after that same thing. And it's like, dude, you gotta. You gotta cut bait faster to get to where the fish really are biting because you're not gonna be able to catch every single fish that's out there. So like Frank said, like, you gotta know, man, this one has to go this route. And if it's not, if you're not there yet as the seller, like, you're not to the point where you realize that you have to sell or finance it, well, then we're gonna go this way. When you kind of get. Get the idea, come back to us and we'll talk. But you got to be able to walk away from it and do it quickly, too.

Yeah, I think it's key to be a deal maker. In other words, anyone can be a deal killer. That's the easiest thing in the world. So when you're trying to be a deal maker in our industry, there's a few things you can't make a deal out of. One is if the park's illegal. Can't fix that. Another is if you have failing private water, private sewer, can't fix that. Another item is if they got no financials. So, you know, you want to be a deal maker, but there's something you do. As you just said, you have to know when to pick your battles. And if it looks like the guy's being unreasonable based on what you're giving, you got to let it go.

Yeah. And my question be, you know, given your size and scale, how many deals a month do you see? And let's say you see 100amonth, then what percentage of them do you actually pass on and why?

We see probably at least 100amonth. Our most prolific period in history, we were buying two a week. We were seeing at those moments far more than 100. The deals we see are already somewhat vetted because most brokers know what we like to buy. Right. So the stuff that is stuff that we wouldn't buy, we don't normally. People don't bring that to us. So we have a little higher odds than most people because we're cheating a little after 20 something years of doing this and people know what we like. But if you're buying more than probably 1% or 2%, I'd be a little worried, to be honest with you. Because if you want to build a good portfolio, you got to be somewhat selective. And there was of course the company that was not selective at all out of business now called arc, which in fact was public at one time. Their goal, they were funded by a private equity group and they were just simply out to buy every mobile home park on the planet. And they did that and it blew up. So, you know, it's like a good art collection in an art museum. It takes years to actually produce the really good stuff. And so you want to be. If someone's not being selected, that's very scary.

Yeah. So I was talking to a mentor of mine about going into. Because I've been buying and selling raw land since 2001 and I'm like, I want to go into some of these, maybe these other sectors and dip my toe in the water. He said, well, Mark, think about it. Why would you see that deal? He's like, the smart players have already passed on it. That's the only reason you're seeing it. Is that true?

No, that's not true. That is probably true in most every other sector. In our sector, the supply demand is so screwed up as far as the number of parts to the number of actual buyers. Not tire kickers, but actual buyers. And then the fact almost everything we buy is damaged goods. Right. So every deal we look at is broken. And then we got to fix it. And not everyone has the appetite to fix it or the knowledge to fix it or the desire to fix it. And some of our best properties began life as things that were half empty or just a complete total mess. We bought parks that have 5,000amonth, generational water leaks. We bought things where the collections rate is only 50%. We bought parks that were 100% park owned homes. We bought all kinds of junk. But the key is looking through all the clutter and deciding is this really a great asset or not? And a lot of people don't have that vision or don't share the same vision on the same park. Right. I mean, when we buy a park, it may often have been passed over by other people also looking at it. They said, I don't want to mess with it. It's too much work. I don't know how to fix it. I don't want to fix it. I don't like that market. So now it's not. It's not. I mean, I would agree that probably if you're looking at, I don't know what a great, great shopping center in downtown Las Vegas. Yes. The very fact that you could find one available means probably 900 people have already said, nah, it's no good. But our industry is a little more broken playing field. I mean, in the world of economics where you have this idea of everything being perfect, we're about as far from perfect as you can get.

Yeah, I almost feel the same way in our raw land investing niche where it might be two to three hours from the nearest city and the market is just so big and it's so unloved. I mean, you go to a RIA meeting. 100 people at that meeting, 99 of them are house flippers, landlords or wholesalers. Probably not a lot of or any mobile home park investors in that REA meeting either. So can you break down for us what would be the ideal Frank Rolf mobile home park acquisition? Like, what would that look like?

Sure, let's break it down infrastructure wise. Paved roads, city water, city sewer density of probably 10, 15 units an acre. So I can bring in most modern large single wides. I want to be in a location that's in a very desirable school district or even in a downtown area. But in an area where the single family home and apartment prices are very high and in a town where you can't build anymore, and then I want to buy the thing at probably about 70 to 80% occupancy with a lot of room to push the rats. That's about it. If you look at the typical deal we do, the four drivers to making money with the thing are pushing the rents, filling the lots, cutting the cost and making the resident pay. Water, sewer. That's kind of our standard formula. We've been using the same formula now for over two decades. It's not fancy. We're not pioneers. That's just what we do. Other People have tried other strategies. I don't see them ever working. That's pretty much the strategy that works over and over. And then all these other new concepts you can come up with, you know, let's build a tiny home, property and all this stuff. It sounds really great. You don't need to be a pioneer in our industry. I mean, in other industries. Yes. I mean, I noticed in the apartment industry a lot of people went into this new 300 square foot micro apartment because you needed to find some new niche to make money. But in our industry you don't need a new niche, you just need to follow the game plan.

Scott Todd, this is what I love, okay? Like he just laid out the recipe, a four step recipe, you know, basically like, you know, this is what we do to improve the park. And they execute on that same recipe over and over and over again. I think that that's what makes, you know, kind of Frank and Frank's system really good or their system really good. And I think that that's one of the things I think a lot of people miss sometimes is that it's so easy to overcomplicate things. Just keep it simple. Like when you find what works, just keep doing it. It might get boring after a while, but man, imagine all the stories that you can gain along the way just by having a boring little recipe that you follow and the money you're collecting along the way too.

So let's talk about raising the rents because recently on HBO you got a little bit of press on John Oliver and he kind of did a soundbite and went on this rant about how, you know, you keep raising the rents and now people can't afford to leave the park and whatever. Right. I think. Was that pretty much the argument, Frank?

That was, that was, I think there's two arguments that was one and the other was that mobile homes do not appreciate, they depreciate. I think those are the two key ones. Let's attack both of those quickly on the home appreciation angle. Most mobile homes lot rent in home is 500 to $1,000 a month less than the alternatives in that market. So it's not in any way about home appreciation, it's about savings. So each year, let's say the customer saves 12,000 a year. Five years later they save $60,000 a year or they save $60,000 total, which is twice what the home even cost. So I mean, I know Americans are all into single family home appreciation like that. They're big driver on their investment portfolio, which it remains to be seen whether that's even true or not, right? We've had periods. If you buy your house in 2006, you maybe not believe that theory anymore, but it's certainly not the only rule of finances. And the guy with a mobile home where he's getting a steady, safe thousand a month savings at the end of the movie is probably ahead of the guy. He was all about the appreciation. So he totally missed the boat on that on the lot rent angle. What he doesn't seem to understand is that people like what I would call value and they don't mind paying up for it. So if you buy an old, broken mobile home park and you turn it around and you save it and make it nice and make it pretty and make the roads good, and you bring in professional management and they're proud to live there, they're willing to pay substantially more for that. Let me give you the same paradigm that you see every day, every exit, going down the freeway. As I'm driving down the highway, I'll see a Holiday Inn Express, and I'll see a By the Hour Motel, and I'll see, you know, a fancier hotel. The by the hour hotel is $19 a night. Holiday Inn Express is 100, the fancy one's 300. If the world was nothing but price, we would all be staying at the $19 one eating a bowl of ramen, right? But it's not about the price. I stay at Holiday Inn Express because even though it's more expensive, I get good value for that because I'm safe. I don't get bedbugs and all this other stuff. So he gets that wrong. In other words, our whole nation is not built on least expensive. I mean, there are some things out there that, yes, you can buy cheaply. Like, I'm a big user of the Dollar Store as much as anybody, but I don't buy everything at the Dollar Store. I don't buy my car at the Dollar Store. When I buy a car, I don't say, what's the cheapest car I can buy? Oh, I'll go over here to this used car lot and buy that one there for $100. So he's making assumptions on consumer behavior which are completely unfounded. But let's also, I'll admit, there's this narrative in America now. It's this cage fight of capitalism and socialism. And that's what his show is all about. I mean, he has an audience of 2 million people which are all very young millennials. And on their side of the Cage Fight. They're kind of in the socialism camp. So two weeks after his mobile home park expose was won on the Green New Deal, that it was utter genius. If you don't support it, then you're a moron. So again, he takes some very extreme positions because that's what his audience likes. Now, in the truth, he's a British comic. He gets paid 2 million a year to do a satire news show. And the very fact that people label that as news is somewhat scary. That would be like having a soap opera guy in the doctor coat doing brain surgery on you. Probably not what you want to be doing. As long as you can get away with this giant farce that he's a newspaper program and get paid 2 million a year, which I will also add, I wonder how much of that goes to charity. Right. It's like Bernie Sanders who was claiming that he was, you know, he's the man of the people. He's buying 600,000 vacation homes. And I don't think he. I don't know if he showed any. Anything as far as donations last year at all. But once again, it appears to me Oliver is that thing which bothers me the most often, which is perhaps a tinge of hypocrisy. Right. So if you're going to make a comedy show, label it comedy, make sure everyone knows that and then don't put out a holier than thou image unless you actually stand behind it. And I don't know what he does in his personal life or where his money actually goes, but I Wonder if his 2 million salary is going more towards luxury living a little less towards helping the poor, which is what he shows based on.

Yeah, I love that answer, Scott. Todd.

I mean, I think that what a lot of. And I think, Frank, you had a lot of good points there. I think one of the things that's really, really amazing for me is in the last couple weeks there was an article that basically said More like Fortune 500 companies now say that their role is not to maximize shareholder value, but to have a larger social impact. Which as a shareholder, I would be appalled by that statement.

Right.

Like as a shareholder, I think that the companies have a financial, fiduciary, responsibility, social. Yeah, make the world a better place. But man, you better put the money back in my pocket because that's how the system works.

Right?

Like, you know, we're not running charities around here. And I think that it's amazing because what just gets glossed over here is the other component and that is that there is an Affordable housing crisis in the country that companies like yours or investors like yours are solving. Because if it wasn't for your capital, if it wasn't for you guys running these businesses, we all know like the government is not helping the homeless population. The government, government is not helping affordable housing. You and I have talked before, Frank, about like even simple as simple things like section 8 housing. Someone is getting section 8 housing. They can't go and buy a mobile home somewhere. Like they have created an entire class of renters and it's like, man, at least someone in your community is an owner of something that they can sell that asset, they can sell that home that they're living in for cash and they do it all the time or other ways and they can move on. It could be a stepping stone or it could be where they want to.

Live for the rest of their lives.

But it's affordable and it's a heck, I mean you get your own land like your kids can play outside. Not like an apartment where you got the neighbors next door knocking on your walls. I mean you're providing a service. And it's amazing how many people just gloss over that one piece and they look at this argument.

You brought up an interesting point. Let's go back to the section 8. The government was supposed to set it up so people could buy a mobile home using the Section 8 voucher. And then HUD deliberately scuttled it, pretended they were going to do it. After they announced and got all the PR from it. They quietly behind the scenes made it an optional program at all HUD offices and none of them elected to tax take it. Right. So they actually accomplished nothing. But they talked a big game that they were going to allow you to do that. It makes complete sense why you would do that, which is why Congress voted they should allow you to do that. But you know, there's kind of, I won't call it a conspiracy because the news is filled with way too many conspiracies today. But it is odd of the relationship of the federal government and the mobile home park sector. Bear in mind we are the only real estate sector which gets no subsidies of any type of. Even though Congress tells them they're supposed to give us subsidies. Right. So the only subsidy that we have seen or any help from the government has been the growth of agency debt, which of course that's a money making scheme of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which now is 50% of all mobile home park loans in the US done per year is agency debt. And we are hugely Appreciative of that. But the big thing they were supposed to work on was going to be doing mobile home loans. And let me give you an example. If you were to go out and buy a regular stick built home, they're going to give you a loan through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on one of their new home buyer programs. I think it's like 3% down, some insanely low interest rate. So that $100,000 home would cost you maybe $3,000 down and your payments are insanely low, let's say $500 a month. But on a mobile home side, no such deal. To buy a mobile home from a dealer, you're going to put up 10 or 20%. So on a $30,000 mobile home, you're going to put up somewhere between 3 and 6,000 with payments that are higher than that stick bill. It's like the government is trying to push everyone into stick build of certain price points and you know, what does it all mean? I don't know what it all means, but it's been a perpetual problem in our sector. Affordable housing is we get no help like Rodney Dangerfield, we get no respect. The apartment guys get it all. They get tax credits, they get Section 8, they get anything they want. You know, is it a conspiracy of the apartment guys trying to keep mobile home people out of the business? I don't think they probably even know us or care about us, but there's clearly something odd going on because we get no support. You know, this past week I drove around for a week with an Irish filmmaker as part of the Irish pbs and he's doing a thing on global affordable housing. And we drove parks all week. And his comment or thought was why the heck the government has no interest in helping this sector? Because in the other countries he goes to, the government's all over it, right? They're trying every way to promote, whether it's 3D printed housing or you name it, they see that as one of their big obligations is, okay, let's help any way we can. And in our country, when you say the words mobile home park, everyone clams up, shuts their wallet and there's no help whatsoever. It's really odd.

Yeah, I mean, it's pretty sad. I mean, you're a manager at Taco Bell. Where do you live? Frank, in this country, you know, you.

Live in a mobile home park or you live in a very inexpensive horrible apartment, or you live with your relatives. That's about it. So there's not a lot of options. And it Is in fact sad that you can live in our mobile home parks. You can live like a king, right on minimum wage to 15 bucks an hour. You can have your own house, your own yard, privacy, respect, sense of community, people looking out for you. It's like a high density subdivision, but in the other sectors there isn't. And the thing everyone has to also remember is at some point, all parks will be full. Right now we've got in Our portfolio about 4,000 remaining vacant lots and homes. And we fill those. We get over 100 calls a week at many of our properties. So what happens then when all these things get full? That's what people are also forgetting is that with mom and pops and not doing a very good job, there's a lot of vacancy in the parks in America. Well, the vacancy is rapidly decreasing. And when those are all full, then if you work at Taco Bell in your new household formation, then that option's off the table. Then it's going to be basically terrible. Apartment or your parents. So that eventuality is rapidly approaching us. We're filling right now roughly 1000 lots a year of our property. So within half a decade, we'll be full. Many other people will be full. I go in some cities and areas are completely full. Denver, Colorado, everything is full. Los Angeles, everything is full. And then that option is off the table. And the government will have done nothing at any point in the movie to help that at all.

Unbelievable. Well, Frank, I want to be respectful of your time, so I've got one more question before we go to your tip of the week. And it's a deep. It's a deep one. It's a deep one. If you were on your deathbed, what words of advice would you leave for your family and friends sitting by your bedside?

About real estate or just about life in general?

Life? Real estate. Anything that you think you'd want to impart?

Okay, well, to me, the big thing about life is the quality of life. So you need to always be seeking the best quality of life, which is not necessarily all about money. Maybe something has nothing to do with money. It's whatever is important to you. You know, Harvard did a study. It's their longest running study ever. In fact, the guys that started it all died of old age. And they were trying to find what makes people happy. And they found it was relationships. So they found in many ways quality of life ties back to relationships more than any other factor. They found that the relationships are more critical to people's happiness than money. Any kind of social status So I would urge people to focus on quality of life. Now, quality of life does typically require some money. Got to pay your bills, right? You want some financial security. But you can also, you can go overboard. And we see that every day, right? We see examples in the media and places. People went too, too far overboard. They didn't focus on the quality. They focused more on amassing things. But that would be my key tip to anyone, family member or not, is you want to focus on to you what is your quality of life. And someone else can't decide that for you. That's 100% your choice.

I love it. I love it. All right, well, we're at that point in the podcast now. We're going to ask you for your tip of the week. A website, a resource, a book, something actionable for the art of passive income listeners to go improve their businesses and improve their lives. Frank Rolf, your mentorship has been invaluable, but we're going to ask you for one more piece of wisdom. What do you got?

Well, I'll tell you, the recent book that I read that I thought was the best I've read and I read a lot of books. I read probably at least one book every one to two weeks is a book by Sam Zell called Am I Being Too Subtle? What I love about the book is it's an expose of the whole concept of risk and reaction reward broken down into the very basic, easy to understand, granular theory that if you have high reward and low risk, such as Glen Haven, you always do it. If you have high risk and low reward, you never do it. And everything in life, whether it's business, real estate, or something, in your personal life, you should always look at that ratio and say to yourself, is this really worth it? Worth my time, worth my money for this end result? And if the answer is no, then you don't do it. And if the answer is yes, then absolutely you do it. But everything you do every day in the world has risk in it. When you start the car and drive down the road, maybe it's your tires. Maybe you say, gosh, my tire is bald. It would cost me 50 bucks to get a new tire. But if I drive on the ball tire, I may lose control of my car and go head on into an 18 wheeler. So therefore, you should change the tire. You should always look at risk and reward. And sometimes in investing, when people get kind of into, I don't know, stagnant position on it, to me, the best way forward is to lay out on paper the Best case scenario, the worst case scenario and help yourself that way. Help yourself figure out the risk reward ratio. If it's healthy, move forward. If it's unhealthy, drop out.

I love it. I love it. Scott Todd, what's your tip of the week?

Mark?

I got this one from Frank, so I thought it would be good to circle it back around again. I like the Sam Zell book. I really like this book that I want to share too. And the funny thing is it's the only book I've ever bought twice that I know of. Only book I ever bought twice. And it's literally, it's hard to get. Like I'm looking at Amazon right now, you can't even get it. So if you can find it on Amazon or some other place, great, get it. And it's the man who bought the Waldorf, the life of Conrad Hilton. And the great thing about this, and the funny thing is that Hilton went through and he started building these hotels from scratch. He sank the thing, right? He was like the Depression operations, learning everything. He sank the place, he went back, he started running the hotels for the banks who got it. The Depression says he goes back and he buys it from them. Pennies on the dollar. And it's a fantastic story that you've never even heard about Conrad Hinton Hilton, but there are some great lessons in there. Like don't ever pay retail price for anything, like everything. Find the things that are on discount, let someone else run them into the ground and then buy them. And if you do that, you're going to be a. Okay.

Yeah. That is, in fact, that is my all time favorite book. I am so into that book that I search out the best copies of the book because they are very rare. And I actually own now the hardbound copy that was presented by Hilton to his bank when he wrote the book signed by Hilton. I am a junkie on that book. And you're correct. I'm actually getting calls from people now that can't find it because it is not on Amazon nor is it on any books. The final copies are now gone. So it's a rare item. If you can find it, you should always buy it.

Well, I'm really lucky Scott Todd gifted that one to me.

That's the reason I bought two of them because literally I think I paid like $35 for this book. And the last I looked they were selling in excess of $100. Like you want to talk about a book that's actually, I've never had a book make me Money. This book is making me money. I literally have a note in the book that says, this book is worth a lot of money, like, to my kids. I've told my daughter, like, listen, if something happens to me, do not sell this book or donate it. This is big dollars here.

Yeah, totally agree. One of the best books ever written.

I love it. I love it. Well, my tip of the week is learn more about Frank Rolf and how you can create wealth in mobile home park Investing. Check out mobilehomeuniversity.com mobilehomeuniversity.com Frank Rolf, always a pleasure. Are we good?

Yeah. Thanks a lot, guys. I always enjoy being here and so bring you back anytime you like.

Would love it. I love it. Scott Todd, are we good?

We're good, Frank. I appreciate being here.

I want to thank the listeners and just remind you that the only way, the only way we're gonna get the quality of guests like a Frank Rolf is if you do us three little favors. You gotta subscribe, you gotta rate. You've got to review the podcast. Send us a screenshot of that review to supporthelandgeek.com we're gonna send you for free the $97 passive income launch kit. So please do that. It really, really means so much to us. And Scott Todd, are you ready to do this?

Yeah, Mark, I'm ready to go. Ready? One, two.

Let freedom ring. We can't do it in unison with Frank Rolf on the. On the line. It's just too awkward. It's just. Yeah, I mean, yeah, exactly. I can't have Frank hanging up and then going to his wife and be like, can you believe these two geeks could not even say let freedom ring in unison. I don't know. I can't handle the shame. Scott Todd.

I hear you.

I hear you. Thanks, everybody.