June 24, 2022

Leveraging Time & Talent With Andrew Keel

Welcome back to the Mario Dattilo Show Podcast, Hosted by Mario Dattilo. On this episode of the Mario Dattilo Show Podcast, Mario talks with Andrew Keel from the Keel Team. Mario and Andrew discuss several topics related to real estate investing such as investing in new asset classes, utilizing virtual assistants, sourcing and structuring deals, work-life balance, and other exciting topics.

Find out more about Mario at mariodattilo.net

Talking Points:
01:44 - Andrew Keel's Story
07:10 - Challenges with investing in new asset classes
11:25 - Utilizing virtual assistants
19:49 - Deal structuring
22:33 - Work-family balance
24:07 - Leveraging time and recruiting talent
27:26 - Current state of the market
30:03 - How should you be investing in today's economy?
35:47 - How to contact Andrew Keel

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Transcript

Mario Dattilo
 Yeah. All right. So started here. Hey everyone. I am super pumped because I've got the man Andrew keel online today. We are going to be talking about mobile home park investing. We're going to be talking about commercial real estate and how to run out efficient. Let me start over. Hey guys. Welcome back to the one you can tell I'm new at this. I haven't done it 200 times yet. All right. Hey guys. Welcome back to the show. I am super pumped because I've got Andrew keel here with me today who runs the keel team and several other businesses. We're going to be talking about mobile home park, investing, property management, and how to build a successful business in general today. So, Andrew, thank you so much for being on today. I've got, I've had a lot of excitement around doing this meeting with you doing this call with you because I had a little secret to tell later on in the show that I want to make sure I bring up. 


 Mario Dattilo
 Don't let me forget to tell the secret. Okay. Thanks for being on today, man. Appreciate it. 


 Andrew
 Yeah. Happy to be here. 


 Mario Dattilo
 So Andrew is in Orlando. I'm in Naples, Florida. We're kind of in the same region. I've known Andrew for at least a couple of years now, two, three years now. Andrew has a very successful mobile home park investing portfolio, investment portfolio and property management company. He also runs very well-known podcasts, the passive mobile home park investing podcast. I got that right. The name of it. 


 Andrew
 It did. 


 Mario Dattilo
 Perfect. Everybody in the industry knows it and he's really built up a great brand. I think what I've found to be really cool about you Andrew, is that you give a lot, I mean, you give just tons of content. You give tons of value to your listeners and I think that's important. That's why a lot of your success has just exploded over the last several years. So pretty cool. Let's talk about what you do. Can you kind of give me, give the listeners and myself the storyline behind how you got into mobile home park investing or real estate in general? 


 Andrew
 Yeah. Well, first off, thank you for that nice intro. Really appreciate our relationship and getting to know you Mario. Yeah. So my story is pretty unconventional, right? I thought I was going to be working on wall street in New York city when I went to college was going to go into finance. That was what I thought my path was going to be after college. I, I worked in sales at a marketing firm in Orlando and we branded real estate agents. So I was meeting real estate agents. I actually traveled to over a hundred Keller Williams market centers, which are like their offices across the country, selling brand name, materials, everything from business cards to websites, to, logo, design, everything. I was doing that and I met some commercial real estate agents, brokers, and they were young. Right. And it was an enticing. Like I was listening to the deals they were doing and it was attractive, but I never acted on it. 


 Andrew
 I was, I was in my lane focusing on selling branding materials, but at a certain point I met another friend local here. We started, he was a wholesaler and flipper around Orlando, Florida. He kind of took me under his wing and showed me how to wholesale residential properties. That's where I started was wholesaling and flipping single family homes around Orlando, Florida through my marketing efforts, I was sending out letters. I was, doing the full gamut, bandit signs, everything. Through one of the letters I sent out, I got to leave on two mobile homes up in Ocala, Florida, and they were in a park and I had no idea what I was doing, but it was a motivated seller, was a probate situation. I went up there and I was able to buy these two mobile homes from this gentleman for $2,200, total 1100 a piece cash. 


 Andrew
 And right. And I got the titles. I came home, got on YouTube and typed in how to make money with mobile homes. I've found this guy, Lonnie Scruggs, who wrote this book deals on wheels and never looked back. I mean, I was just enamored with the whole business model of buying homes, fixing them up and then selling them on contract. Those two homes, I was actually able to sell them both for $2,500 down and 250 bucks a month for five years. That was like, okay, this is great. This is how I can offset the inconsistent income from my flips. Right. It was like, all right, I have money this month. We closed the deal. Okay. The next couple of months it was down. And then I had money again. And then I didn't. So I wanted something more stable. I wanted some cashflow and this, answered that call. 


 Andrew
 I ended up doing 19 more of those Loni deals and, selling those individual mobile homes. Through that, I met a park owner who was kind enough to introduce me to mobile home parks, like basically sending, Hey, I think you're doing it wrong. You should get him into owning the real estate there's financing. It's more scalable. There's depreciation tax benefits. That's when I just went all in. I went to Frank and Dave bootcamp. I went to some other seminars. I read the book trailer cash by Jamie Smith and became, really obsessed with mobile home parks. Didn't really know how I was going to buy one, but I was just committed and I was just going to figure it out. I, at one of the bootcamps, I, I was very fortunate in that. I'm a believer and I believe God put this person in my life on purpose. 


 Andrew
 He basically invested 5 million bucks with me to buy my first five parks. And I was the sweat equity. I executed, w we did well on those five parks. I had a track record, right? Friends and family wanted to invest with me and other people started reaching out to invest with us. At this point we have 33 mobile home parks that we own and manage. We also are in self storage now as of last year and we have five self storage facilities. So it's just been a blast. I love what I do. I love helping people and solving problems in commercial real estate to add value and to increase the value of this. 


 Mario Dattilo
 Dude. I love that. Couple of times within that story, you talked about people who came along and gave you some advice pointed in the right direction, helped you out. I agree, God puts God, puts people in places to guide you and help you and be there to, to help you. I think that was very cool that you give credit to the people who are well, not only to God, but also to the people that are in your path that have helped you get there. You kind of had a guy that was saying, Hey, you're going the wrong direction. You had another guy that came along and said, here, let me, let me trust you here. Let me back, you go out and finance the, or handle the equity side of, of the deals that you're going to buy, which allowed you to launch and build that track record. 


 Mario Dattilo
 And that's huge. It's really, I mean, it's really a testimony of networking and building relationships and having good people around you that are willing to, to, to instill good wisdom. And yes. So that's very cool. Now you mentioned something that I wanted to bring this up anyways. You said you've gotten into self storage resign as we've been investing in storage for a while. And so I think that's super cool. You've now went into a second property type. My question to you is what's the hardest part about adding new property types when you've kind of got a machine running, you've already got systems going, mobile home parks, like the back of your hand, and now you're picking up a new property type kind of starting all over at, building a second portfolio. What's been the hardest part about that so far. 


 Andrew
 Yeah. That's a great question. That was a huge challenge that we took on last year is jumping into a new asset class. And, there's a lot to know, and you don't know what you don't know. Right? We partnered with some experience operators that had a portfolio already of 15 storage facilities. We found the deals and brought our first two deals to them. These are great deals in Denver that were like, Hey, let's bring these to people that know what they're doing. Let's learn from them, let's see how they manage these properties and see what type of cap packs and underwriting they're putting into place. And that was monumental for us. I mean, just partnering with them on those first two deals, getting that step-by-step process down. Then, since I built the business in mobile home parks, I knew what to look for. It was easily to take it and say, okay, now I'm going to replicate this over here on my side. 


 Andrew
 Now we're going to do this X, Y, and Z, within our own portfolio. So that was monumental. And, and, that's how we kind of took that learning curve and just ramped it up a lot faster than, where were kind of learning by trial, by fire on the mobile home park side of things. 


 Mario Dattilo
 So true. We talk about that on the show quite a bit, even on my YouTube channel, we talk about partnering with people strategically, where they have experience and maybe you about capital and you had the deal and you had somebody else who kind of knew how to not kind of knew very well, how to operate the buildings and you can then team up with them, allow them to run the properties correctly, and that gives you the opportunity to learn. Over time you're able to go out and take on the management yourself. So that's super cool. What's the biggest challenge though? Like what is, what's kind of been the, what's the biggest challenge that you've had in doing that? I know you've bought five communities in a year, which I'm sorry, storage facilities in a year, which is, that's great. You're obviously got it down, pat, by now. 


 Mario Dattilo
 What's kind of what was kind of the hardest thing or the biggest challenge for you in all that? 


 Andrew
 Yeah, I would say fine tuning the underwriting, right? There's some similarities to parts, but it's a totally different asset class. So, and that's something that I pride myself on is being very detailed in our underwriting, but there's a lot of variables, right? Like supply index, which is a very huge metric that you need to understand, in mobile home parks, you don't really have to worry about that as much. Right. Because there's just such a high demand. Fully implementing the underwriting was the toughest hurdle for us. 


 Mario Dattilo
 Yeah. It's self storage is an interesting business. It's it's a lot like mobile home parks and apartments just because your tenant base is that residential tenant. Right. It's that consumer tenant at the same time, it's more like a business. It's a little bit more fluid. You got more turnover and people coming in and out, you've got retail sales, potentially. You've got, you hall and other things that might be involved that definitely make it more of, a, a, a different beast, I guess. I think that's cool that you learned it. You definitely are a conservative guy. I know that when it comes to underwriting and, and performance. I think that's cool that you're able to maneuver that and pick up on that. Now, the other thing is too, you mentioned something in mobile home park world. We're not really too worried about supply, right? I mean, because we have very controlled supply, very high demand. 


 Mario Dattilo
 You're not worried about putting somebody else putting one in, across the street from you storage. You do. It's a, it's a, it's a very good point. You have to know what's coming online. You got to understand who's pulling permits where to build a facility in your area because that supply can change relatively quickly. I think it's a great property type. You've got, a lot of benefits, especially when it comes to hedging against inflation and the 30 day leases and all that stuff. I'm excited that you're in that space now. I think you're going to do, I know you're going to do very well with it. Now, your management company, you manage in-house okay. I think people who are in any property type, whether it's mobile, home parks or self storage or anything else can definitely get a lot of value out of this. I mean, you self-manage, you on a management company with a team of people that are highly skilled, a lot of experience, you've got systems and all that stuff in place. 


 Mario Dattilo
 One thing that I've picked up from you, and I remember even in our discussion on my interview, on your show was, you use VA's and you've utilized VA's in your company. Not only just for small projects, which is kind of what I've used them for mostly, you've actually brought them in as part of your tiny team and they're handling different parts of the operation. Can you talk maybe about that, how you were able to go from, hiring somebody locally to getting your head around, hiring somebody in another country and then getting them to be part of the team and actually, part of your business. 


 Andrew
 Yeah. I'm, I'm a super bullish on VAs. I think every entrepreneur should have a VA personal assistant hands down. I mean, like that's one of the things I regret not doing sooner is getting a personal assistant VA to, for example, monitor your emails and help you prioritize them. Right. Like something so little like that, but how much time do we spend in our emails? Right? I'm a huge fan of email of VAs and creating systems and training for them to follow. We found a couple of pockets in South Africa and in Armenia where we're able to get really solid talent, right? Like people that have been foreign exchange students in the U S and now they're back in their native countries and they are fully capable, right. Or they have college degrees, but you're able to hire three of them typically for every one U S employee. 


 Andrew
 The U S employee may not be as loyal as they are. Right. Because they are really, excited about this opportunity to work remote. If you have good systems in place and good KPIs, it's very easy to manage them and tell if they're doing a good job or not. One thing I would say for anybody out there interested in hiring a VA, in your description of how to do a task, don't leave gray area, right? Like they've never this before the more black and white you are with your description of how you're training them and how to do something, the better your results will be in the happier you will be with the time-savings. 


 Mario Dattilo
 Yeah, it's super good. Basically what you're saying is don't just tell them to go do something and expect them to know how to do it. You really need to give them step-by-step very clearly how it needs to be handled with a lot of detail so they can follow it and assume that they have never done it before, or assume that they don't know how to do it. And, and that way, then they have a very clear roadmap. 


 Andrew
 Mario, like one example, in the mobile home park business is we have a VA that's in charge of our water store recapture. Every single day via slack, she communicates with every single onsite manager and gets the water reading from our master meter to tell how much gallons were used in the last 24 hours. We can instantly tell if we have a leak, right. Where when I first started, were waiting until the bill came in from the sewer company and the water company to see if we had a leak. Now we know within 24 hours, if our usage is high and that VA costs us $800 a month. 


 Mario Dattilo
 That's so good. Yeah. And, and I think too, you had mentioned even hiring a VA as a personal assistant for, entrepreneurs, executives. What's kind of some of the tasks. I know you said you gave an example of them checking your email and kind of prioritizing any motor or some other examples of things that you can get them to do and not get them to do, but have them do what, when I think of that executive assistant role, I wonder, okay, how private do, how much do I want them into my private emails? Not that I'm worried about somebody seeing my emails, but, I've got a lot of financial information coming through and also, I think of, okay, well, if they're not in the United States, do they know how to handle some of the things that, a local, somebody in the United States that understands American culture would know? 


 Mario Dattilo
 Can you maybe go over a few other things that you have you've had your VA do? 


 Andrew
 Yeah, yeah, no, definitely. The email management, I think is huge just to help kind of prioritize the emails that are coming in. There's a way to, add a delegate to your Gmail so that you can see that, Hey, Bianca is in my email and if she responds to something, you can see us from Bianca, but also hiring, right? Like hiring has been something that we take a lot of pride in because we have a multiple interview process and, personality assessments and cognitive assessments before we hire someone. What she'll do is she'll do a quick 15 minute interview and then she'll tell the candidate, Hey, this is going to be a quick interview. I have three questions for you and she'll record it. She'll send that to me after they've taken the personality assessment after they've taken the cognitive assessment. She'll send an email to me with a 15 minute recording of that interview with the three questions that I have harassed and the personality assessment and the cognitive assessment attached to that email. 


 Andrew
 Within a snapshot, I can see if this candidate, is it a good fit or not? That has been monumental because if you can hire, I truly believe this. We use the predictive index for our personality and cognitive assessments. If you can hire 20% better, how much time is it an entrepreneur? Is that going to save you? How much money is that going to save you from making the wrong hire? Right. We all know how much that costs us. I've done it multiple times. I think if you could just hire better, it's just going to save you so much time and money, 


 Mario Dattilo
 Man. That's so good because hiring is such a slow process. There's a lot of like stop and go. Even those short interviews take a lot of time because you have to prep for them. You've got to, sometimes they can be awkward because you gotta have, some small talk in there. The fact that you got somebody that can kind of go in, knock all that stuff out. You can just look high level at things and then choose which ones you actually want to spend your time with. It's really good, man. This is super good nuggets. I'm, I'm sitting here taking notes myself because this is something that I know in our company we can improve on. I mean, we have, all of our, all of our employees are in the United States. We've dabbled with liaison project level. I think having some, having people on your team that have very specialized areas in the company that are just very good at what they do and that's all they do, or maybe they handle a few things, a few tasks that's super valuable, especially at the price point, from a payroll standpoint that you're talk. 


 Mario Dattilo
 And now, you know, I know. 


 Andrew
 The other items that I could share, keep them coming, 


 Mario Dattilo
 Keep them. 


 Andrew
 Like, I mean, a couple other things just that I wrote down here quick, scrubbing our data, right? We have lists that we cold call of property owners. They'll go through the data. They'll skip, trace, they'll find phone numbers for them. They'll look up LLCs marketing for homes, for sale in our communities, helping prepare and do a text overlay on top of the front photo so that when we post something or our onsite managers post something on Facebook marketplace, all they have to do is copy and paste the text because it's already been prepared in the template. Then, the photos, the front photo has a text overlay with a phone number on it. It looks more professional than the way, the onsite manager was out there taking pictures on their phone and uploading it. Also, we have a call center for self storage. That's a VA based call center. 


 Andrew
 People call, they rent a storage unit, they get one of our south African VAs and then the south African VA's will follow up, right. To try to close that sale and get them to come back and rent a unit if they don't close it on the first call. Those are a couple of other tasks that we use VA's for. 


 Mario Dattilo
 Use VA's for collection calls as well, 


 Andrew
 Collection calls as well. Yep. That's right. 


 Mario Dattilo
 I'm taking a lot of notes here. See this transcends any property type. You can use this with any actually really any business. And so I love that. Now you've on your strategy. You've used a lot of joint ventures, haven't you? I mean, and correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is a lot of the deals that you've done have actually come from joint ventures, partnering with people have brought deals because you've got such a strong operations background and your systems are so tight that people come to you a lot of times and they'll say, Hey, I've got this deal. Can you talk maybe about how you've done that and maybe how you've gotten comfortable with that being that, somebody else's kind of staying in the deal with you long-term and how you've made that work just from. 


 Andrew
 Yeah. We've done it. Yeah, totally. Yeah. We've done it a couple of different ways, but that's really been the bottleneck for us in our business is finding good deals. Right. We have a system in place to consistently, cold call and try to reach out to people, but it's all a timing thing. Other people get there at the right time. We've partnered with people, bringing them in as an equity partner, giving them a piece of the GP. We've also given them assignment fees. We have six figure plus assignment fees for finding a deal and bringing it into us. It just kind of depends on what's the best fit for them and what they're looking for. And, we kind of just take it from there, but yeah, I've done that multiple times. 


 Mario Dattilo
 Yeah. I, I, when we looked at how we've bought communities and even self storage, we kind of went through each deal and we said, okay, how did we source the, this deal? The number one was direct to owner. Second one was actually assignments and wholesalers bringing us deals. The third was brokers that who had no experience in mobile home park world, but were residential and commercial brokers. I agree if you can get people who have deals that maybe need that operational background to come in, bring you the deal, assign you the contractor, JV with them. I think that's a great strategy. And, I would say that the operation side is the hardest, most time, intense people, intense capital intense part of the business. I mean, if you've got to manage people, it's really, I mean, it's, it's a separate business all on its own. If people can find deals who are people who are good at finding deals can bring those deals and then they can walk away either with an assignment fee or with some equity and then not have to worry about the operations side. 


 Mario Dattilo
 I mean, like I've even talked to you about it, a dealer too, or I've come across something like, Hey, this is in an area you already owned some parks. Let's maybe look at doing a JV and because you've got a park nearby, why don't we hand have you do the ops on it? So I think it's a great strategy. I, I think that's a super cool, so let's talk about family, cause I know you're a big family guy and I see going to all these vacations and everything, how do you manage, how do you keep family in the center? How do you keep them from, how do you keep business from pulling away from family? Because I, I know that you spend a lot of time with your family. Well, having multiple successful businesses. 


 Andrew
 Oh man, this is something I wrestle with every day. Right. I, I definitely don't think I'm, the master of this balance because I love what I do. Right. I, I love the business side of things, but I also love my family. I love spending time. I just, I try to every day making sure that I get some good quality time. Then, on the weekends I do try to just unplug right. Be able to be present, which is easier said than done. Like I said, but that's something that, I think is important and valuable is to, spend time and raise my kids. I have three of them, and they're all under six years old, my daughter Aria's five. My son, Kai is two. Our newest, my daughter even is three months old. It's the, it's a little hectic, but we have fun, they have this big splash pad thing were hanging out on this weekend. 


 Andrew
 I think just trying to be purposeful and, be present when you are with them is what matters most, 


 Mario Dattilo
 Love it. I, I think you've got your hands full, but one thing that I've, I've kind of learned is that if you put the responsibility on the people who are responsible for their roles, meaning like you don't try and step in and do things for people that, and you let them do their job. A lot of times you'll be surprised at how much they can handle. If you give them, if you empower them, give them the control and the ability to do their job well. You actually, I don't want to say disappear, but you get out of their way. They will free up a lot of time. I know in the beginning, as soon as we started hiring employees, I wanted to be hands on with everything. I was like, well, look, you've got this job, but I want to tell you how to do it. 


 Mario Dattilo
 And I kind of micromanage them. Right. What I found is that then why are the, what's the purpose of having them there if I gotta be involved in everything. I started removing myself, giving them the authority to handle what they needed to handle. A lot of times they pick that they should pick it up and run with it and free your time up. That's the whole point of having good people on your team, right? 


 Andrew
 Oh, totally agree. Totally agree. 


 Mario Dattilo
 Recruiting people that are already skilled have, are actually better at something than you are, will free up your time as well. If you're constantly hiring people that you said, don't know how to do it, and you have to teach them exactly how to do something, they're only going to be as good as you are. If you can hire people that have come from other companies that have done it on a larger level, they're going to actually grow, you grow your business better than you ever could. So. 


 Andrew
 Let me give the, let me give the listener one tangible thing of how to do that, right? Yeah. We use a software project management software called Trello, and it's basically like a digital whiteboard and you can create lists, but inside of Trello, every single one of our employees has their own Trello board. When there's a new task that they're assigned, we'll create a new card and be very detailed with what, what that task is. If something changes or they find a faster way to do it, they can update their Trello board on that task of how to do it. That has been monumental for us because now that's a system that's a, a training employee manual that they're responsible for updating. If there's ever any turnover, the new person can come in and see all of that information and pick right up, right? Like screen capture videos and everything inside of this training manual. 


 Andrew
 That has been monumental for us because there will be turnover, right. When that happens, it can either crush you or people can pick up where you left off, 


 Mario Dattilo
 Love it. We we've documented all of our processes and procedures and we've got them in word docs or PDFs, I guess you could say, and they're easily accessible on Google drive, but now we've started to transition to put all of those process maps into a Monday, which is very similar to Trello. I totally agree if you can have your systems built into your project management software, not only can, is it, does it create transparency to see what your team is doing, but it's a great tool to make sure everybody's doing the work consistently. And it's a great training tool. Somebody can just step in and follow the steps. Right? Love that. Super good tip. I appreciate that. Let's talk about the economy and the market. Now, you and I had coffee, I don't know, a month ago or something when I was in Orlando and were talking about the economy, the market, what's kind of your thoughts on it. 


 Mario Dattilo
 I mean, you've been in this game for a long time, too. This isn't like your first or second year investing in commercial real estate. What are you seeing? What what's, what are your overall thoughts on it right now? I know you're not an economist, so I'm not trying to get you to predict the next downfall, 


 Andrew
 No, I do wish I had a crystal ball to kind of tell us what the future holds, but those of you that know my story, my parents lost everything back in oh nine, like, lost foreclosed on the house that I grew up in, the very bad situation. W whenever I think of a new recession coming, right, which I knew it was only a matter of time. That's something that I've been very cautious of for many years. That's, particularly why I've chosen the asset classes I'm in, right. Mobile, home parks, affordable housing, the most affordable form outside of subsidized housing that you can find and then self storage as well. Right. It's, it's a unique asset class where it's, you're diversified across a lot of tenants, right? You're not just focused one. Also when people are moving or downsizing, they need a place to put their stuff. 


 Andrew
 That's something with Amazon more and more people are acquiring more and more stuff. It's, both of those asset have performed well, when the previous recession, and I think they will in the next one, which I do think that we are heading into, but I, I wouldn't say that I am totally oblivious to the fact that, we will be affected in some aspects, right. Everybody will be, but I just don't know what that looks like. 


 Mario Dattilo
 Yeah. With interest rates taking up at a half a point at a time, and, even the fact that the fed said, we're not going to do three quarter point increases. Just the fact that they're talking about it is crazy. You know? And, and, and I think what you're saying is a hundred percent true. You need to invest in things that are going to perform well in poor economies. I mean, if you're positioned properly, you can actually benefit from and be very profitable when many other businesses are struggling. And so I think you're right. That's exactly why we've been investing in mobile home parks and self-storage as well, because they're relatively recession proof. They do well when the economy gets poor and people are looking for affordable housing. So I think you're right about that. How, how should people be investing right now? I mean, what's the mindset that they should have going into an economy that's questionable. 


 Mario Dattilo
 You mentioned something, let me point something out. You said for years, you've been mindful of, potential recession. Me too. I mean, like I thought we were going, it would be seeing a recession somewhere around 20 14, 20 15, when I started buying mobile home parks back then and were, how many years past that now? 6, 7, 8 years past that. I think we're definitely due for what's the mindset investors should have, or whether it's in mobile home parks, self storage, or any kind of business or real estate kind of mindset. Should we have gone into this? 


 Andrew
 Yeah. Great, great question. I think you need to have a long-term mindset, right? Like the next couple of years are likely gonna be choppy, who knows? Right. I don't have a crystal ball, but I think, three or four years down the line, things will recover. They, they always do. It's it's America. I have a lot of faith in the U S in our ability to recover. One thing for commercial real estate investors specifically is, I have a lot of mentors that were around in 2008, 2009. Right. The one thing that they've always mentioned is that the lack of liquidity in the marketplace, right, banks just stopped lending. One tip that I've used in our portfolio and that we'll continue to do is, instead of just getting a five-year loan, where at balloons in five years, if that balloon is 2008, 2009, your property could be cashed, flowing fine, but there's no bank. 


 Andrew
 That's going to give you a new loan on that property, right. Especially if you overpaid for it the first time, and now your leverage and your debts income, your debt service coverage ratio is off. If you ask, especially like more, a regional banks, if you ask them and say, Hey, we'll do a five-year fixed rate, but can you give me a variable rate after that for another five years, they will do it without even batting an eye. If you just ask them, right. Because that's what the bank is trying to do with, they're just trying to hedge their bets so that they're not locked into a lower interest rate in a rising rate environment for that full period. I would try to encourage people to do that and avoid short-term loans right now, like bridge debt just sounds terrible. Like I just saw a deal from an apartment syndicator the other day with like an 18 month bridge loan in this environment. 


 Andrew
 I, my gut wrenched, I just feel bad for, for that situation, right. With, with the way rates are going. That's, my mindset is invested in the long-term I'm young like you, right. I'm 34. I want to be doing this when I'm 80. My whole mindset is, Hey, let's buy good assets for the longterm, in good markets where we can, raise rents, consistently over the long-term. 


 Mario Dattilo
 Love it. You brought up what I think will be the cause for opportunity, but also the default, the cause of default for many investors that never expected it because they're good operators, excuse me, because they're good operators. They think they're going to be okay. And their debt structure is the problem. It's not their operational skills. They come in, they have good ops, but they just structured their debt wrong and they paid too much. So, I always say that if you can, if you, I always say that your deal is going to be as good as the price you pay. All right. So, people always say mobile home parks, self storage, oh, those are cash cows. Those are great investments. I'm like, yeah, it depends on what you paid for them. Right. So, I mean, if you overpay for anything, it's going to be a horrible investment for you. 


 Mario Dattilo
 Obviously your timing on your debt, we don't do any loans less than seven to 10 years. 10 years is very hard to get with a local bank. Seven years is very doable. We've only had a couple loans that were five years. Typically what they'll do is they'll quote three or five and we push them to seven and we've had some success with that. Cause I, I agree the longer the wick, the better, especially a lot of these bridge loans, they're floating rates interest only two years, 18 months, like what you're talking about. And then they beluga. A lot of those investors are overpaying for the asset with very lofty, turnaround plans that could be thrown off with supply chain issues and all that. So I think you're right. It's, it's really around the debt and the price that people pay. So super good nuggets there, man. 


 Mario Dattilo
 You're a foodie. I know that. Cause I see your foodie posts all the time on social media. What got you into that, man? I, I like good food too. You eat some really pretty food, 


 Andrew
 Man. I love food. My, my brother actually has an Instagram account. It's like, Austine the foodie at? Obviously the foodie and I, I just love good food. Right. I think just like the next person and specifically seafood is kinda my, kind of my thing. I love, I love fish. So yeah, I think that's it. 


 Mario Dattilo
 Yeah. If you guys haven't make sure to follow Andrew on Facebook or Instagram and make sure you check out those plates, man, eat some really good luck. I have noticed yet there's a lot of seafood. So let's wrap up this call here. You've given a ton of good advice to listeners. So I really appreciate that. How can they get ahold of you if they want to do a deal with you or work with you in one way or another? 


 Andrew
 Yeah, the best way to do that would be via our website keel team.com. That's K E L T E a m.com. You can fill out the contact form and we'll be in touch, 


 Mario Dattilo
 Man. Thank you so much, Andrew, for being on. I love Andrew because he is such a positive encouraging guy. I mean, on my, on video and off video, he's a really good guy. Make sure you follow him on all the socials and check out his show, the passive mobile home park investing podcast so that you guys can keep picking up good nuggets like this. Thanks again, Andrew. We'll see you guys on the next one. 


 Andrew
 Thanks Mario. 


 Mario Dattilo
 So, Hey, thanks for doing this man. I appreciate it. This was really good. You gave some good nuggets and I, so from a self storage standpoint, you're now managing your own stuff. 


 Andrew
 We are. Yeah. So, it's been a learning curve, but it's obviously a lot easier to manage. 

Andrew KeelProfile Photo

Andrew Keel

Founder / Investor

Andrew Keel is the CEO of Keel Team, LLC, a ‘MHU Top 100’ owner of manufactured housing communities with over 2,000 lots under management. His team currently manages over 30 manufactured housing communities and a handful of self storage facilities across more than ten states. His expertise is in turning around under-managed manufactured housing communities and self storage facilities, by utilizing proven systems to maximize the occupancy while reducing operating costs. He specializes in bringing in homes to fill vacant lots, implementing utility bill back programs, and improving overall management and operating efficiencies, all of which significantly boost the asset value and net operating income of the properties. Andrew also hosts The Passive Mobile Home Park Investing Podcast, with over 150 total 5 star (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) reviews! Click here to listen to his most recent podcast episodes: https://www.keelteam.com/passive-mobile-home-park-investing-. In order to successfully implement his management strategy Andrew’s team is known for being VERY hands on, they usually move on location during the first several months of ownership. Find out more about Andrew's story at AndrewKeel.com.