Alternative Investment Strategies

John Harcar (00:01.024)
Right on. Hey guys, welcome back to the show. I’m your host, John Harcar, and I’m here today with Alden Guajardo. And what we’re going to be talking about today is some alternative investment strategies. Why you need them, why they’re important. Remember guys, at Investor Fuel, we help investors, we help real estate entrepreneurs, real estate service providers, 2 to 5X their business. And by giving them the tools and the resources to build the businesses they want to build, allows them to build the lives that they want to build. Alden, welcome to our show.

Alden Guajardo (00:31.326)
Hey, thanks for having me. I’ve been a fan for a while. Love the value that you provide out in the market. Just happy to be here today and thanks for the opportunity.

John Harcar (00:42.346)
Sweet. Yeah, and I’m super excited to talk about alternative investment strategies. I mean, I really think that people nowadays need to diversity to find other other things to put their money in to make it grow. But before we get into all that right, where there’s a lot of stuff we’re going to be jumping in the weeds on, tell our audience a little bit about who you are, how you got into real estate, you know, just how you got here.

Alden Guajardo (01:03.982)
Absolutely. Well, I’m Alden Guajardo again. I’m with WinMobile Homes, Silvercrest Opportunity Fund, and Mobile Mailbox Money. We’re here today in the local market of Scottsdale, Arizona. I’m actually in Tempe, but we started seven years ago as a licensed dealer of manufactured housing, buying and selling for cash, me and my father, and saw an opportunity in the market to do a fix and flip strategy as an investor.

John Harcar (01:12.352)
Mmm.

Alden Guajardo (01:33.758)
which is definitely alternative out in the market and a lot of people put their nose up at manufactured housing because of the negative connotation when we saw an opportunity. So not only did we start implementing a fix and flip strategy, we saw a need in the market of Arizona for a seller carry finance program because not that many people were providing financing on mobile homes. It’s a niche market, you you go try and ask your bank if they finance manufactured housing.

John Harcar (01:57.161)
Right.

Alden Guajardo (02:02.538)
and they’re gonna kick you to the door at the end of the day. So with our lack of velocity at that time, we saw a need for a financing program, but also us to gain further transaction base. So as we started doing more transactions through seller carry finance, we stumbled upon the program and the vast door open of opportunity for individuals to gain financing, purchase a home, get.

John Harcar (02:06.067)
Mm-hmm.

Alden Guajardo (02:32.046)
Qualified homeownership in the market. So as we started doing more transactions, we were burying our money in great assets Performing first lean positions, but you know, we only have so much money to continue to execute out in the market So had to additionally start selling our notes to other private investors that want a solid stable contractually agreed upon return in the local Arizona market and that has

John Harcar (02:45.919)
Mm-hmm.

Alden Guajardo (02:59.926)
jettisoned our business over the last, five years to doing about 50 transactions a year, which is a good amount of doors considering the scarcity of other available opportunities out in the market. So over the past, say, five years, we’ve done 150 seller carry finance transactions with a licensed mortgage officer, a third party underwriter. We get them set up with

John Harcar (03:20.915)
Wow.

Alden Guajardo (03:26.766)
automatic funds transfer services, so third party contract servicing, and really started to button up the program all from fix and flip and mobile homes of all things.

John Harcar (03:36.852)
Hmm, yeah, right. Did your father have, because you mentioned working with your father, was he already working in that asset class or what made you even choose that asset class? I most people would jump into single family, maybe stuff like that. Was it because they maybe a little less ease or a little more ease of entry to that type of asset class or what was that driver?

Alden Guajardo (03:58.35)
Great question. Yeah, my father, my business partner and my mentor out in the market, he’s done all areas of fix and flip. He flipped 100 homes in El Mirage. He’s done development deals. He’s sold the hedge funds and things of that nature. That’s James Guajardo. But us, me attending and him.

teaching at Arizona Real Estate Investors Association brought on a lot of different alternative ideas out in the market. And there was an individual, I forget his name, he’s passed away now, God bless the dead. But he saw, he was executing as buying homes and selling them to California based investors who owned mobile home parks. So he’d buy here in Arizona, sell it to a mobile home park institution and they’d transport the unit.

John Harcar (04:29.363)
Yeah.

John Harcar (04:46.163)
Mm-hmm.

Alden Guajardo (04:51.682)
you know, from Arizona to California, where when we were approached with this strategy, we saw a lot of hardship in transportation and permitting and things of that nature. You know, the local mafioso moving all the trailers is going to have his big fee at the end of the day. So, you know, that saw some complications where we saw an adjacence of not only the desirability of our market,

John Harcar (05:00.702)
Yeah.

John Harcar (05:06.623)
Sure.

Alden Guajardo (05:19.882)
of the in Arizona, but also it had a mitigated factor and upfront cost to just leave it there in an established community with city water, city sewer, city trash. The home was already in a great location in a quality park. And no one was so much doing that, know, buying it there, rehabbing it there, selling it there.

John Harcar (05:21.951)
Mm.

John Harcar (05:39.805)
Mm-hmm.

Alden Guajardo (05:47.072)
And I couldn’t tell you why. I think it was a lot of negative connotation. People were really scared of the quote unquote lot rent. It’s definitely an alternative way of thinking. But if you can acquire it adequately at a lower acquisition cost, ultimately to factor in your carry with the elevated lot rent and if you’ve borrowed money to acquire that home.

John Harcar (05:55.475)
Yeah.

Alden Guajardo (06:16.557)
You know, it really starts to make sense to buy it there, rehab it there, sell it there for someone that’s either looking for affordable housing or, you know, a second home. Arizona is a big snowbird state. So a lot of Canadians are coming in at any given time. And that may fluctuate now with the hardships with Canada.

John Harcar (06:30.044)
Yeah.

John Harcar (06:36.169)
with the tariffs and the little… Yeah.

Alden Guajardo (06:39.586)
But know, Arizona is a great market. know, we’ve rode the new desirability over the past seven years with all of the new manufacturers coming into the city. You know, a lot of build to rent, but not a lot of build to own. So it creates this whole economic environment for this kind of strategy and asset class to almost gain.

John Harcar (06:51.913)
Mm-hmm.

Alden Guajardo (07:06.294)
Now further traction in this local market Arizona, but also in other markets as well as we see the quote unquote state of emergency in affordable housing. you got now you got politicians ticket, you know, sticking their head in trying to figure out where’s the rub for the average blue collar working American, you know, who’s being priced out of 2000 bucks a month in rent.

John Harcar (07:15.359)
Housing, yeah.

John Harcar (07:27.824)
Mm-hmm.

Alden Guajardo (07:31.662)
and priced out of average purchase prices of $460,000 here in the valley of a single family home. think nationally it’s half a million bucks. Just to qualify for a $450,000 home, you have to make like 80,000 bucks a year with little to no debt. mean, where’s the rub? And by the time a builder…

John Harcar (07:41.203)
hummus, yeah.

John Harcar (07:49.939)
Little tonight exactly DTS gotta be there

Alden Guajardo (07:58.59)
or investor goes in and tries to build a multifamily complex and do a rental strategy, that prices it out because of labor and material costs. Now, you know, we’re really, seeing a true problem here. And I think now that institutions are peeking their head and buying mobile home parks, not just the homes, but the parks themselves, elevating the quality, you know, they’re

John Harcar (08:09.747)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Alden Guajardo (08:26.296)
paving the streets, putting in gates, they got school pickup and drop off. It really starts to make a more palatable home ownership program for an end user where historically it was like Trailer Park Boys, the Netflix series, what a tragedy that’s painted the asset class. But that’s, I think, really where the market is going, not only because of…

John Harcar (08:27.593)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (08:43.517)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Alden Guajardo (08:53.934)
inflation, labor, material, but also, you know, people want to own a house. They really do. And they’re spending five years renting just to try and save up for a down payment for an actual residential property when they could have bought a manufactured home and built some qualified equity over a five to 10 year period and had even more money to put towards a down payment. So that’s kind of

John Harcar (09:01.012)
Yep.

John Harcar (09:21.106)
Yep.

Alden Guajardo (09:23.072)
what we’re seeing out in the market and why this makes so much sense right now. I think it works in other investor friendly markets as well, like Texas and possibly a Florida market or a New Mexico. But it’s hard to kind of talk about other markets when I’m blessed to be sitting here in Arizona, one of the top 10 performing states in the nation. And Florida just saw huge hurricanes.

John Harcar (09:43.347)
Yeah, true.

Alden Guajardo (09:51.534)
California just saw huge wildfires. There’s little to no natural disaster risk here in the Arizona market. We have our monsoons here and there that’ll take someone’s awning. Yeah, it got the hoo-boos, big dust storms. But that’s pretty minor in consideration of regular hurricanes and regular wildfires.

John Harcar (10:02.212)
Right, You got your hubboobs? Aren’t they called hubboobs?

Alden Guajardo (10:16.044)
You know, that’s something to take into account sitting as a capital investor like, hey, you know, where do I want to put my dollars to make sense and actually earn a mitigated risk and return on investment? You know, do I want to go buy a $100,000 house in the Midwest where people are moving from? Do I want to go buy, you know, Airbnb in Florida where hurricanes are a regular thing and my insurance just went crazy?

John Harcar (10:16.83)
Yeah.

Alden Guajardo (10:44.48)
or do I want to buy in California where the average price is a million dollars and I can’t even get an insurance policy on the house? Where’s the program? And I think that that’s why this fits so much given the economic environment, given the new presidency that’s come into election. There’s a lot of big things that are happening ulteriorly.

John Harcar (10:44.542)
Right?

John Harcar (10:50.524)
Mm-mm. Mm-mm.

Alden Guajardo (11:09.496)
to Arizona being such a newly desirable market, it’s kind of stacking the deck here.

John Harcar (11:16.031)
Well, your asset class is in the right market too. it’s a mobile manufactured home in a secondary home market, right? In a snowbird type of market, right? They don’t need a big property to try to maintain when they’re not there for six months out of the year. They need a nice, maintainable manufacturer. And I get it.

Alden Guajardo (11:32.993)
Absolutely.

Alden Guajardo (11:37.185)
There-

There’s a lot of transients, know, there’s a lot of transients. Arizona has been a new vacation venture state. I heard people call in Scottsdale, Old Town Scottsdale, the New Vegas. It’s not so much that, but you know, we did get full gaming laws. So Arizona’s casinos, you can actually play real craps, real roulette. That brings people to the state at the end of the day. Old Town Scottsdale’s going vertical. Tempe, they did.

John Harcar (12:01.811)
Yeah, I’ve read that.

Alden Guajardo (12:08.014)
stupid construction for State Farm and a few others that went vertical on Tempe Town Lake and a couple other huge construction, know, bringing transients, bringing workers, bringing construction jobs, you know, the list goes on. And while other states and other markets are really suffering, you know, because of all kinds of different factors, Arizona is pretty insulated.

John Harcar (12:23.709)
Yeah. Yeah.

Alden Guajardo (12:35.99)
I don’t want to call it a bubble because that’s a really bad word. You know, but we’re we’re trucking away here in the Arizona market. And, you know, a lot of people think that real estate is going to crash big time and things like that. I don’t really so much see that. Why? Because there’s millions of Americans that are on two to five percent mortgages right now. And what are they going to do? They’re going to become accidental landlords and they’re going to rent out at a cash flow positive.

John Harcar (12:39.039)
out of here.

John Harcar (12:56.989)
Yeah.

Alden Guajardo (13:04.174)
for an average rental rate of 2,000 bucks a month and their competition is new build multifamily units at 2250 to 2500, you know, that really insulates the environment on top of all of the other influx of jobs and transients and new desirability in the local market.

John Harcar (13:13.672)
huh. huh.

John Harcar (13:26.867)
How are you going out and finding these properties? What does your lead gen look like? Are you having people bring you properties? What is that structure?

Alden Guajardo (13:36.524)
Yeah, great question. So seven years ago, me and my father used to just drive parks. You know, was 23 at the time, driving, looking for for sale by owners. Now we’ve come to build a name and a brand in the local market of Arizona. And a lot of word of mouth, a lot of social media advertising, repeat business, as well as our biggest referral partners, the institutions that own these mobile home parks.

John Harcar (13:44.211)
Ha ha ha ha.

John Harcar (13:49.576)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (14:04.616)
Mm-hmm.

Alden Guajardo (14:05.43)
We come to find out, you know, a lot of these mobile home parks are institutionally owned and they own say a hundred parks across the nation and they have 15 here in the local market of Arizona and they’re not fixing flippers. Why do I bring that up? Cause they take properties back. People go to foreclosure, people get evicted in their parks and them not being a fix and flipper and not having possibly a lack of sales staff.

John Harcar (14:18.791)
Right.

Alden Guajardo (14:32.238)
on operating in the resale of personal property manufactured housing, we had come to cultivate relationships with these institutions. So long story short, when they repossess properties, we kind of get first look at any given time to purchase from their portfolios that they’ve taken back and recast flow those properties, not only lifting the value of that house, but also bringing a better higher quality tenant for the park.

John Harcar (14:32.348)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (14:59.698)
Mm-hmm.

Alden Guajardo (15:00.59)
as well as raising the value of the park itself, inadvertently, just from the coexistence of our relationship. We’re making a smashing profit on the rehab as well as the note that we originate, Seller Carry, but also that 1975 home that sat there for 40 years and no one ever rehabbed or anything now looks like a brand new manufactured home.

John Harcar (15:17.673)
Mm-hmm.

Alden Guajardo (15:28.864)
And opposed to that park who took back the home in their portfolio, having to demo that house, buy a brand new home, transport it, set up a new AC unit and be out of pocket $150,000 and then mark it up for their sales staff to make a commission. Now we’ve bought that home. We get some free lot rent here and there from the negotiation of re-performing that asset.

John Harcar (15:35.785)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (15:45.694)
Yeah.

Alden Guajardo (15:54.67)
But we’re almost like a knight in shining armor to them at the end of the day, you know, we come in with our bells and whistles, you know, and reperform an asset and got a higher quality tenant than they would have even procured getting a new home at the end of the day. You know, that seems like a win-win situation.

John Harcar (16:07.397)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

John Harcar (16:12.799)
It seems like a win mobile homes. Now it does seem like a win-win and that’s awesome. How are you buying these? Are you guys using private money? Are you using hard money? mean, are you doing seller, you know, seller carries on our finance? What are you doing? Like how you buying them?

Alden Guajardo (16:26.722)
Yeah, so we purchased for cash and raised private money in a note investment strategy. So we’ll raise on like a construction loan from private money for a one year term at a negotiated rate. And ultimately, once we procure that asset, turn key out on the market, we find a Jenny Mae. Jenny Mae qualifies to seller finance. So we seller finance that house to a Jenny Mae.

At that time, construction loan investor has an opportunity to either get a first right of refusal of the face rate and seller finance note that comes available, or they can pivot and we go back into another flip. So we do use private money on say an annualized program backed by a lien. It’s a collateralized loan. We’re not pooling funds. So those

John Harcar (17:08.649)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (17:21.439)
Mm-hmm.

Alden Guajardo (17:24.524)
dollars go direct to that specific asset and when we procure it, get it turned key, find a qualified borrower, have them signed off by an LMO and originate the note, we either sell the note to the original lender and they come out of pocket for the difference of the construction loan and the loan balance or we sell that note to Silvercrest Opportunity Fund where we raise accredited dollars to pool money and hold the note within our portfolio.

John Harcar (17:41.404)
Mm-hmm.

Alden Guajardo (17:52.03)
or sell it to another hedge fund and things of that nature. And those notes go up for sale at mobile mailbox money.

John Harcar (17:55.219)
Got it.

Okay, got it, got it, got it. Now let’s talk about our topic, our alternative investment strategies. Obviously, we don’t know what are some other alternative strategies and why are they important now?

Alden Guajardo (18:10.38)
Yeah, it’s extremely important given the financial market and what we’ve just discussed with average purchase prices exceeding the $450,000 and rental rates at a cash flow negative with your DSCR loan fluctuating interest rates and cash calls on multifamily plays create challenge at high volatility in the stock market. There’s true struggle.

If you’re sitting here today looking for an investment out in the market, that’s why an alternative strategy is one of the highest things being Googled right now. If you even look up how many times that’s being Googled, alternative investment strategy, it’s actually quite interesting. Well, me sitting here on 30, turned 30 last year.

John Harcar (18:44.905)
huh.

John Harcar (18:59.902)
Bye.

Alden Guajardo (19:04.59)
You know, I’m a new individual on the block. I’ve been in the business seven years. We’ve done 300 transactions. What do I look at, you know, out in the market to facilitate an alternative investment strategy and why does that hold weight? Well, you know, I think a lot of people follow Warren Buffett, right? I think we could all agree we know who Warren Buffett is. Warren Buffett owns Clayton and Cavco. They’re the two largest manufacturers of mobile homes in the nation.

John Harcar (19:22.726)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Alden Guajardo (19:34.03)
They actually have factories here in Arizona and we beat that replacement cost with our programs. Also, 21st Mortgage, a lot of people don’t know he holds major stake and owns 21st Mortgage. 21st Mortgage is the largest national lender on personal property manufactured housing. So not only is he hedging his bets in building manufactured housing.

John Harcar (19:53.907)
Huh.

Alden Guajardo (19:59.406)
in Arizona, he’s also hedging his bets in the long term paper of the alternative investment strategy, taking his share of the market. That’s a huge market considering there’s not all that much competition. know, everyone and their mother does residential real estate, multifamily syndications and things of that nature. Well, you’re talking about housing. I forget the percentage nationally, but in Arizona,

John Harcar (20:08.04)
Yeah.

Alden Guajardo (20:28.654)
Manufactured housing is actually 10 % of housing here in the local market. That’s over a quarter million transactions going on at any given time with financing, insurance, ownership, title work, and things of that nature that a lot of people aren’t really paying attention to or don’t even want to give it the time of day because of the Netflix series trailer park boys.

John Harcar (20:34.246)
huh.

John Harcar (20:54.249)
Charlotte Park, yeah.

Alden Guajardo (20:56.81)
At the end of the day, is that not where the pot of gold is? When it’s highly overlooked, highly misunderstood, but now the paper that’s being originated is a higher return on investment because it’s an alternative and there’s hardships in financing, know, providing bank quality financing for these transactions. Well, that creates a private money situation where we can sell our finance

John Harcar (21:19.711)
Mm-hmm.

Alden Guajardo (21:26.154)
at a higher paper interest rate in comparison to a residential transaction. So not only is it still a house, it’s a housing unit that someone lives in, right, which creates stability, but also, you know, it’s a fully underwritten program with a double digit interest rate. Those yields are like 14%. I’ve heard them even higher before, but we’re ultimately trying to provide a

John Harcar (21:29.582)
Right.

John Harcar (21:50.419)
good.

Alden Guajardo (21:55.544)
stable housing solution for somebody but also a Satisfactory return for someone looking for an alternative investment strategy that’s finding scarcity out in the market You know, it’s really a true perfect storm You know with a quarter million houses here in the local market a lot of built-to-rent but a not a not a lot of built to sell You know this I think I saw Joe Biden

John Harcar (22:07.104)
huh.

John Harcar (22:24.095)
It’s

Alden Guajardo (22:25.07)
sometime last year talking about FHA financing and things of that nature, but we’re eons away from having that actually come to fruition. And that’s why this makes so much sense for individuals currently looking to place private dollars. Not only can you buy a note, say for $80,000 and make upwards of $800 or more a month.

John Harcar (22:34.185)
Mm-hmm.

Alden Guajardo (22:53.838)
in payments with that same $80,000 if you went to a residential property, you’d probably cash flow negative, right? Your net operating income nationally is on average about 5 % and with management fees, maintenance, insurance and taxes, you know, by that time that all boils down to you’re really banking on appreciation and national appreciation on average is like 5%. There’s like five and five on NOI and

John Harcar (23:02.385)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (23:08.287)
Hmm.

John Harcar (23:12.873)
Yeah.

John Harcar (23:21.663)
Uh-huh.

Alden Guajardo (23:23.798)
National appreciation, you know, you’re aiming to make 10. Well, we just saw a huge appreciation over the past five years You know, is that really gonna hit again? It may hit another average benchmark, but you know at some point there’s got to be some form of either plateau or correction Yeah, you know listen the the stocks don’t just go up people at the end of the day, you know You got to be

John Harcar (23:25.492)
Yeah.

John Harcar (23:42.195)
Yeah, ceiling somewhere.

John Harcar (23:49.183)
You

Alden Guajardo (23:51.828)
knowledgeable about what’s going on nationally and where you you want to place your bet. Am I telling someone to take all of their money and invest all of their dollars into notes? I’m not saying that by any means, you know, but the diversification play and availability to say take half a million bucks and diversify that across multiple doors opposed to paying cash for one house.

John Harcar (24:01.72)
no. Right.

Alden Guajardo (24:17.036)
you know, or leveraging that and buying two or three, you know, with some potential, you know, reserves, you can buy, you know, those say that same dollar amount can diversify across double the amount of doors and make a stated and contractually agreed upon return. That’s higher than what you would have received to begin with in the other strategy, you know, so I think that this really fits within someone’s portfolio.

John Harcar (24:17.297)
Yeah, yeah, makes sense.

John Harcar (24:39.561)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Alden Guajardo (24:46.092)
you know, say 25 % or whatever you want to roll around with, you know, ultimately to diversify, because there’s really people looking to diversify their capital right now. They’re looking at crazy volatility in the stock market. They’re trying to, you know, conventional residential real estate, buy and hold individuals are finding challenge. You know, they may be becoming a tired landlord, you know, out in these programs.

John Harcar (24:58.142)
Yeah.

John Harcar (25:09.437)
Yeah.

John Harcar (25:12.883)
Hehehehehe

Alden Guajardo (25:15.074)
You know, this really fits. And you know, that’s my soapbox.

John Harcar (25:21.021)
Well, I mean, it’s some great information and it’s true. It’s like you got, I think that a lot of people overlook that the mobile home manufacturing because that stigma we’ve always had about it. But I know plenty of folks that are crushing it in it. If folks want to get ahold of you, talk a little bit more about mobile homes, maybe notes or whatnot. How do they reach out to you?

Alden Guajardo (25:43.35)
Yeah, so winmobilehomes.com is the dealer of manufactured housing. So if someone were looking to buy, say, a second home or anything like that here in the local market of Arizona, mobilemailboxmoney.com, you can buy a note. Say you raise private money and you leverage first lien positions and you’re a note investor. You can buy a note at mobilemailboxmoney.com if you find yourself blessed to be an accredited investor.

at silvercrestopportunityfund.com. currently offering a 10 % net return for a one-year term paid monthly or 12 % net for a three-year term paid quarterly. And that’s a 506C registered offering currently not exclusive, but happy to have.

John Harcar (26:27.049)
Huh.

Alden Guajardo (26:35.266)
this opportunity available for the investor fuel people watching today and if someone wants to call and talk to us direct that’s at 602-888-CASH those phones are online and open at any given time and believe it or not we actually answer our phones.

John Harcar (26:38.462)
Yeah.

John Harcar (26:50.981)
Nice, alright, some people, a lot of people don’t. Alden, man, thank you. You shared a lot of great information. mean, guys, I hope you guys took a lot of good notes, man, because the dude just dropped a lot of good nuggets. Alden, thank you again. And guys, I hope you enjoyed this episode. We’ll see you on the next one. Cheers.

Alden Guajardo (27:09.336)
I know.