Unlocking Wealth: How Derek Scaled to 2000 Mobile Home Units

Christian (01:32)
Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. Today we’re actually talking with someone who went from chasing commissions to building serious cashflow and long-term wealth through one of the most misunderstood and overlooked asset classes in real estate, my opinion, mobile home parks. Derek Vickers. He’s the founder of Vickery Real Estate Group and his story is one of grit, reinvention and laser focus persistence. After building an insurance business from the ground up, Derek realized he was pouring energy into something he didn’t truly own.

So when COVID hit, was the wake up call he needed. That’s when he went all in our real estate, specifically mobile home parks. Derek, my friend, welcome to the show. Super excited to have you on, Me you got to spend some time together talking offline and just about your background and all the cool stuff you got going on. So for those that don’t know you, why don’t you just introduce yourself,

Derek Vickers (02:21)
Yeah, so I appreciate the introduction. appreciate you having me on here, Christian. the short of it is I grew up in a small town in Virginia, in the Blue Ridge Mountains, a couple thousand people. My family is very blue collar. No one was wealthy. So growing up, I didn’t know how to create wealth or anything about real estate investing.

You know, my grandmother and my family’s definition of hard work was digging a ditch. I mean, if, she was still here today, you know, God rest her soul, my grandmother, she’d be like, you need to get a real job, Derek. You don’t have a real job. Look, you’re on a podcast, dude. You’re on a podcast. But, um, you know, like, so, so I grew up like that very blue collar, you know, I hung, um, insulation under houses during the summer with my grandpa sometimes, like, you know, it’s hard shit and,

Anyway, so I went to college and didn’t finish college. I partied too much. Like it’s three reality. Like I wasted a bunch of years partying. And then when I moved back to Virginia, ⁓ after college and I didn’t finish, still was doing the same thing. Then I got, I decided to move to Florida with 300 bucks in my pocket. We could unpack this story for an hour because it’s, there’s a lot of action in there, but I moved to Florida with a tax return. was 300 bucks, maybe even a little bit less, but I know it wasn’t more. And,

I started selling insurance door to door to business owners. You know, had problems like no confidence, no nothing. And, ⁓ ended up building that up pretty successfully and then got into real estate in 2020, decided to get into mobile home parks. And then we, we grew from there, but that’s the short of it, man. I don’t know how deep you want to go on any of that. You can let me know, but that’s, that’s the short of, ⁓ of who I am. Like I didn’t grow up like my family. I think the whole point in that is my family wasn’t wealthy. Like I never had anything given to me. had to like,

grind it out.

Christian (04:13)
Yeah, but honestly, that’s a good thing, right? You know, the fact that you kind of did grow up in that environment and it showed you like, yup, man, there’s a different way to life here, you know, that I can build for myself, right? It’s like, I can own my time. You want to get freedom, right? And also being able to give back to others, right? I mean, there’s a lot of, you know, things to unpack there, right? So let’s go back to maybe the moment when you realize, you know, your W-2 mindset had to change, your end insurance. I mean, what triggered…

the mental shift from there to then being like, okay, I want to get into mobile home parks. Like this is my thing. I’m going to go all in.

Derek Vickers (04:50)
Yeah. So there was, there was a couple of things. like I started actually in before 2015, like, and so the, wasn’t exactly a W two I was in, it was a commission sales job, but it was corporate. Like it was, it was corporate as much as they wanted you to think that you were an entrepreneur, which you kind of were to a degree. was, it was corporate, especially the higher you went up in the bigger, the team that you built. Um, so in 2000, through a degree, but I could still kind of do what I wanted during the day. Like.

Christian (05:14)
So it felt W2. Yeah, yeah. Gotcha.

Derek Vickers (05:20)
To an extent. But in 2015, when I started listening to Grant Cardone, he had this show called Real Estate Investing Made Simple. And he taught you how to underwrite deals. And I’m like, dang, because I always thought that someone that basically had $100 million net worth got a paycheck for $100 million. I didn’t know anything about equity or building wealth or anything. And I found that out through him.

And so actually looked at deals from 2015 to 2020, just apartments, not multi, not a mobile home parks. And then, ⁓ 2020, ⁓ COVID happened and I was getting, our team was crushing it. had a hundred salespeople on my team. were doing really well. And, ⁓ I had people from corporate that were, that were actual W two’s and salary that had never fricking made a cold call in their damn life. We’re telling me that like, Hey, we should change the business. Like, Hey, you should do stuff this way. And I’m like,

Look at the scoreboard. Like look at the scoreboard dude. And, ⁓ that started to piss me off and I was building a business. Like I actually still get paid from that business. I have renewals, but I wasn’t building equity. built a $7 million book of business and I couldn’t sell it. That pissed me off.

Christian (06:18)
Right.

Derek Vickers (06:37)
That was the thing. Yeah.

Christian (06:38)
Right,

there’s no exit strategy, right? And that’s the thing, a lot of people almost handicap themselves, even today what you see, put themselves in that position. You know, gotta look out man for the next 20, 30 years plus out. You what are you gonna leave behind? And also, you’re gonna send the ladder back down to everybody else,

Derek Vickers (06:41)
No, no.

Yes. Right.

Christian (07:47)
All right, man. So talk us through, you know, your, your first mobile home park deal, right? I mean, how, how did you find it? What were some of your biggest surprises or challenge managing yourself? And then what gave you that drive to be like, you know what, for those that don’t know, I mean, you have 2000 units now, what took it from there to being like, you know, I’m going to scale this thing and I’m just going to go all in like you did.

Derek Vickers (08:07)
Yeah. So the scaling actually happened like sort of accidentally and I’ll get into that, but it was probably April, May of 2020 that I made decision. I’m like, I love the asset class. I love the fundamentals of it. I’m going all in on it. So I found the list in Florida, started cold calling between my meetings, ⁓ the insurance meetings and my recruiting meetings to get people on my team. And, ⁓ I was finding deals because in insurance you inevitably learn how to hunt.

Right. And how to find deals. And I was really good at that. And so I actually met a guy who was, ⁓ he had some capital, but he was a friend of a friend. And, ⁓ I just started sending him deals. like, Hey, look at these deals. What do you think of these deals? Cause he liked the asset class and, he would tell me, yeah, it’s a good deal. You’re underwriting this right, or you’re underwriting this wrong. So he became sort of a mentor and,

I was at his house one day and I’m he, I told him I wanted to build a massive real estate portfolio and he was like, really? I’m like, no, I want to do it in mobile home parks. And, so it comes like we had looked at deals. tried to put stuff under contract and whatnot. I could talk about the mistakes, but it was in September of 2020 that he called me one day and he’s like, Hey, Derek, I actually had this deal under contract and cocoa.

The guy, my operating partner backed out last minute. We’re closing in a week. Do you want in? And I’m like, absolutely. I don’t care what I have to do. And luckily, luckily the deal was actually 15 minutes down the street from my insurance office. So it was just like, it was kind of nothing like I was fine. So we got into that deal. I was, I didn’t get to do any due diligence on the deal. We got into the park. There was, you know, criminals and sex offenders in the park. You talk about surprises. That was a surprise.

Um, we thought it was on city water and city sewer. Half the park was on septic. So, um, there was a bunch of vacant homes. was crack heads, their drugs, like it was, it was your quintessential trailer park. Like the, it was a disaster, but, I learned a lot in that deal because I had to manage it and turn it around. Um, so we bought that deal for 425 K. We put in about 75 K of capex into that deal.

And, ⁓ it was next August, we refinanced it and it appraised, cause we pay cash for it. It appraised at 1.75 million within that time. So we crushed it. We crushed it on that deal. ⁓ but within that time, within that time, like I had still been building up this pipeline of deals. After we closed this one, we also found like a little wrinkle in the market where it was like, Hey, this types, these types of deals really work.

And that gave us more confidence. I’m like, okay, this deal work, this deal work, this deal work, this deal work will work. And so, ⁓ Christian, we basically found, so you know how, when you talk to a seller and even if they’re not a seller right now, like they don’t have anything going on where they have to sell, they do have a price that they would sell at. You know, they’re kind of F you price. So we figured out and I figured out that

Christian (11:20)
That’s right.

Derek Vickers (11:27)
The seller’s F you price was to me. I was stealing it. So I was just like, offer, offer, offer, offer, offer. And they’re getting excited. They’re like, fuck you. Hell yeah. I’ll sell at that. And, um, so like the net we closed on our next deals in February of 2021, but it was four deals at one time. It was like a hundred and maybe 150 or 160 units. Um,

And then we just started like buying more and more and more. And before you know it, like, Holy shit, have this, we have this business now. So it really didn’t.

Like, yes, it was planned to a degree, but not, we just kind of looked up one day cause we bought 17 or 18 parks in, 2021 and the same amount in 2022.

So that’s how the scaling happened. mean, was like, like it was intentional, but it was sort of accidental in a way that like we didn’t think it would happen that fast.

Christian (12:53)
Man, yeah, let’s dance.

So let’s talk about maybe for people that are unfamiliar with the space, obviously this asset class, what makes mobile home parks specifically more scalable and sustainable other than types of real estate? Because you and I know, and there’s everything, man, there’s storage, there’s all types of stuff that people can get involved in, but what makes this specifically more scalable and sustainable in your opinion?

Derek Vickers (13:07)
So.

Well, don’t know. Look, other asset classes are scalable. I don’t know if this is necessarily more scalable. I mean, to some degree, I mean, it is scalable, but I think the underlying fundamentals of the asset class is really what I like. You know, low supply, you can’t build them. Christian can’t go and I forget the count. What county is Charlotte in? I forget Mecklenburg. That’s right. You can’t go to Mecklenburg County.

And say, Hey, I want to develop a mobile home park in Mecklenburg County. They’d be like, sorry, you’re not going to do that. no, no, thank you. ⁓ so there’s high barriers to entry. There’s low supply and there’s high demand for affordable housing because mobile home parks are the cheapest place in town. So those underlying factors, I absolutely love about the asset class because it, if, if I fuck up, I have that to back me up. Like, Hey, there’s a low supply.

Christian (14:08)
Literally.

Derek Vickers (14:32)
of these, there’s a high demand for these. People wanna buy them, people wanna live in them. And the other end of this is if I buy them in a great location too, it adds another safety net there for you to make mistakes or things to not go correctly. Because if you’ve done enough deals, know shit doesn’t go right a lot of the times, or how you anticipate it to go. So I think those underlying fundamentals are really what

What I love about this asset class, cause in storage I could have a great deal I buy from mom and pop here, but then Christian comes and says, Nope, I’m to build this nice shiny air conditioned brand new place with AI automation. like, I don’t have to talk to anybody right next to me. I’m like, okay, I don’t like that. You know, like multifamily, ⁓ there’s some affordable multifamily, but like multifamily as we’re seeing right now can get oversupplied.

Mobile home parks, unless something drastic changes, I can’t ever have a, have a supply issue that kind of drags the market down, which I love.

Christian (15:41)
So would you consider mobile homes, would you consider recession proof? Because obviously different market cycles, things like that, but like you said, I mean, it’s affordable housing, right? So would you consider recession proof at all?

Derek Vickers (15:54)
Yeah, absolutely. It’s absolutely recession proof. mean, we never like, you know, during COVID we had great collections and now like we’re 100 % collected. mean, 100 % occupied and 100 % collected. Like, so you think about it, if you’re at the affordable level, if the economy tanks, it’s like, shit, I’m not losing my house. Where else am I going to go?

You know, there’s no other places available. Like I need to keep this. It’s the cheapest place in town. It’s the best value in town, you know, because if you’re, let’s take Tampa, for example, if you go live at a place that’s equal to the lot rent in Tampa, mean, you know, you better be carrying like you better be carrying like, and you better have your, your short barrel shotgun by your bed or like

Christian (16:36)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. 100%.

Yeah,

man, or a rocket launcher, one of the two, you know? Yeah. That’s it, man. Yeah, some C4? Yeah, for sure.

Derek Vickers (16:48)
There you go. You got an RPG there, like, to keep people out.

Yeah,

dude. Yeah, dude. You got, got, you gotta be rigged up around those places.

Christian (17:41)
I love that man. you know, talking about all this, you you got over 2000 units like we’re talking about, right? I mean, what systems or hires has made the big difference to being able to manage, you know, these units or is it more hands off for you now or like, could you walk us through maybe the process on like, how do you set this up successfully to run without you always having to be, you know, in the business on the day to day?

Derek Vickers (18:05)
Yeah, yeah,

no, yeah, totally. You gotta hire great people and you gotta have great partners. Like, I wouldn’t have been able to like scale and create what I created without really good and really smart partners. Like, I could never take credit. And smart people that worked around me, like I could never take credit for the whole thing. Like, I’m the loud mouth that’s on social media for sure. But, the, I think…

You know, having great partners that compliment what you do is key. Like, ⁓ you know, my COO now he’s my business partner. He’s freaking awesome. He, he, doesn’t like to do any of the marketing stuff. ⁓ he likes to do backend systems and processes and like, you know, nerd out on how we can, ⁓ implement AI more effectively in our business and stuff like that. Like, I don’t like to do that. I like to see the product of it, you know? ⁓ you know, so.

Uh, I think you got to have that. You got to have people that compliment your skills. You got to have people, I think to answer your question, I was kind of skipping around, but one of the biggest hires is like one, a personal assistant. And then two, like we started to put somebody that handled all communication that came in from the parks. So like any of the parks all get the same person. And then that person.

has the skills and capabilities to handle those problems or they can send them to a property manager if it needs to be escalated to that. But that sort of calmed a lot of stuff down. Because I’ll tell you how not to do this. Don’t do this and then wait until you get a thousand lots or units and then try to build the systems. Because it’s hard. You have a bigger ship to steer. You have a bigger ship that has bad habits to steer.

So you need to do this on the first deal. The first couple of deals, start working out these systems, start doing SOPs. We do policy, we have tons of policy letters in our company. We have divisions, like it’s very organized now because of our business partner. You know, I told you he likes this stuff. But yeah, I think those hires are important to like kind of calm the things down.

Christian (20:25)
No, a hundred percent. mean, building a team around it and giving them a process and a guide to follow is so crucial and important, right? But I mean, you’re nothing without your team, right? I mean, there’s no way you could actually just do this on your own unless you got a clone that I don’t know about. But yeah, man, I mean, I couldn’t agree anymore. You know, I love what you have set up for yourself. So let’s talk about, you know, raising capital, right? That’s the big thing that I feel like there’s a lot of people that maybe want to get involved with mobile home parks or really just any asset class for that matter.

But they feel like they say the typical thing, well, I don’t have any money, right? And they don’t ever get started. So what would you say the key steps to raising capital is? And also, how crucial is it to build relationships to be able to achieve that?

Derek Vickers (21:11)
Man, that’s an awesome question. And I can’t stress it enough how important raising capital is and where people screw up in this is they don’t start now. Like if you’re looking at deals now, you need to start building the capital relationships now. Hey, hey Christian, I’m going to be the self storage master of the world. Like, you know, don’t have a deal now, but when I do, could I, could I put you on my list to send it to? Yeah, sure. Everybody’s going to say yes. Right. So you have to have, you have to build up the pipeline of these.

But you have to start building those relationships now. I mean, to me, in my opinion, it’s bullshit. Like if, hey, if you find a deal, the money will follow. Not necessarily, dude, not necessarily. Like you need to start building this stuff up now and building the relationships immediately. You know, in our mentorship program, that’s one of the things I get the people to do. I find out their capital, like what that’s like, but then I get them to start like.

networking and getting out there and telling people what they’re doing, telling their friends and family what they’re doing. like, Hey, so it’s not like, Hey, I have a deal closing in 60 days. I need your money now.

Christian (22:16)
Yeah, seriously, right. No, 100 % man. I couldn’t agree anymore. You know, it’s not… Go ahead.

Derek Vickers (22:21)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s, yeah,

well, now I was just going to say, um, like it’s really important to do that. And, um, I’m sorry, I lost my train of thought. Cause I think there was another end to that question you wanted me to answer, but I think the short answer is, is like, you need to get the capital raising started, um, now and you can do it. Um, yes, it, yes, it, um, if you have a track record, it does help for sure.

But like if you’re if you’re a good dude and you’ve ⁓ you know built something successful before ⁓ you know, you can get people to to trust you like I know guys That did a 20 million dollar fund their first thing. They didn’t even they never did a syndication They just put together a 20 million dollar fund So like you know, you can do it you you you can do it, you know and ⁓ Yeah, it’s important

Christian (23:21)
I think it’s the lifeline man because you know if it once you can have those people in your back pocket and you can build that trust that foundation with that person it is going to literally catapult you for the rest of your life because you that is a skill that you can never lose Right and it’s it’s something that like you said, right? It’s like well, I’m not gonna get it You know 30 60 days goes by and they get discouraged but it’s like no it’s it’s a continual like continuous process of being able to build these and keep them, right?

but it’s also like you were saying, I mean, you have to be transparent also, right? What type of value are you bringing to the table? Right? Because you can’t just go up to Joe or Susie and be like, Hey, like you said, mean, can you lend me a hundred thousand thousand dollars here, man? Like, you know, I promise to give it back to you in, you know, 80 days or whatever. Right? And it’s, it’s like, no, you gotta know your numbers for sure. Right? The deal has to make sense. And three, just be transparent about where you’re at. Right? And it’s, it’s really going to relieve.

you know, the pressure off you, you know? So, for sure.

Derek Vickers (24:18)
Yeah.

Christian (24:23)
what is your approach when you’re evaluating a deal, right? mean, could you list out maybe some of the top red flags you look out for where you’re like, man, this is just not a deal, right? And then also listing out some of the green lights, right? Like specifically, what are you looking for in your buy box criteria that makes a deal make sense? Because there’s also, you know,

You gotta know your numbers, but you also gotta know where you’re at with what you’re looking for. So why don’t you walk us through that?

Derek Vickers (24:52)
Yeah. So the, like, you know, I look for, you know, green flags. Obviously the numbers have to work. If the numbers don’t work, then like, I’m not going to find any red flags, like, cause I’m not even going to look at the deal. ⁓ so I, the numbers have to work for me at first, right? ⁓ you know, I have to have a deal that I can somehow turn into a 10 or 12 cap in the first year. Right.

Christian (25:02)
Yeah

Mmm.

Derek Vickers (25:18)
I like deals I can crush it on. I don’t like deals I just do okay on. I like to crush it on deals. I like to do really well because I like deals that I can crush it on because I can promise my investors that like, in three to five years, we’re going to do okay. But I think we’re going to crush it. And if something doesn’t go quite as planned, then we, we’re still good. Right. ⁓ so one, I like deals I can crush it on, is really what I look for as far as a green light.

⁓ another green light is like a great location. Like I don’t buy in the middle of nowhere. I don’t buy in shitty locations. I buy in like the big city, you know, like around Charlotte love that area. Phoenix. ⁓ you know, Tucson, we have a deal under contract in Tucson, Arizona right now. I love that market. ⁓ we’re in central Florida, dude, like we’re not in the middle of nowhere. Now there’s people that buy in the middle of the nowhere and they do, they do fine, but I like buying in big cities and,

Yeah, I would say those are probably the green flags to like, Hey, let’s go. If I can turn the deal into a 10 or 12 cap and double the value really in the first year or two is what I look for. Red flags, ⁓ flood zones. don’t do anything in flood zones, especially in Florida. Like you’re just asking for it. ⁓ so I don’t do that. ⁓ zoning issues. If the zoning is all fucked up and

You know that you can’t have mobile homes there and it’s weird and like so I don’t do that. and you know, another thing is like if an investor owns a majority of the homes, they’re all tenant owned and the tenants all in their homes, but one, like half the homes are owned by an investor that’s making money off renting them. I don’t do that. ⁓ and you tell it big utility issues.

big utility issues, like big infrastructure issues, like wastewater plant issues, big septic issues or things like that. Those I may not walk on, but I’m gonna ask for a heavy discount and what it would cost to bring it up to like where it should be.

Christian (27:28)
I that’s right. Gotta ask for that discount. Everything’s negotiable, right? Yep, that’s it, man. Very cool, very cool. I appreciate you explaining that process, man. There’s definitely a lot of value there for people. Because again, there’s so many people that just don’t know these things. mean, someone could pick this up for those that are listening. That one little light bulb makes all the difference. I know you, we talked briefly before we started recording, and I know you.

Derek Vickers (27:30)
Absolutely. Absolutely. That’s right. That’s right. Yeah.

Christian (27:55)
you mentor people, have a program for this. I want you to kind of walk through, you know, what someone can expect by being able to join you, you know, in that journey and how you set someone up for success and, know, also mirror what you’ve been able to accomplish. And also, I know you talked about you’re in the process of raising a fund. Yeah, that going on for you. So why don’t you walk us through what you got going on there, man.

Derek Vickers (28:21)
Yeah, for sure. So the, our, our mentorship, it’s really a partnership program. It’s not like your, your standard mentorship. Like it’s really an action based program. Like I know we were talking about this a little bit before, but it’s like, we get people into action, you know, like we have people that come in that never sent an LOI before and they’ve been looking at for deals for years. We get them into the point like, Hey, here we think we can pay this for this deal. We’re going to start sending out LOIs on stuff.

Right. And get the flow going and get them over the fear of like, my God, what if they accept it? What if they do? mean, you don’t even have a contract. So you really don’t have anything. Right. What if they do. Right. And then we start sending contracts. If they accept LOIs, we get them like basically reaching out, ⁓ to owners. ⁓ our actual acquisitions team will actually start calling on their behalf in their area and generate their own leads. And then, ⁓ my team and I will meet with them once a week to kind of.

figure out where they’re at with the leads. And I have the course and all the data and stuff that like they can study that on their own time, but I’m here to get like get you results. So like, let’s start taking action, right? We don’t need to worry about who’s going to fix the damn sewer pipes right now. Like we don’t, we don’t even have a deal. Like even if the deal goes under contract, we still don’t have a deal. Cause we have to go through due diligence and see if we won’t, we even want to buy the damn thing. Right.

So as long as we’re not, you know, if we put a hundred grand up for earnest money, I mean, we’re going to get it back if the, you know what I mean? So it’s like, you know, it’s really an action based program.

Christian (29:58)
Yeah,

I love your approach because you focus on the execution aspect, right? And that’s a big thing that, know, there’s no shade to anybody, but you know, there’s, you know, things out there to where, you know, it’s more like just a guide and go out and do it, you know, with whatever time you have, right? But I believe in hands-on approach is the best teacher, right? Going in there, like we were talking about before, is just going in there and get your feet wet, right? Focus on the execution, which is getting the contracts, getting the deal.

Right, making sure it goes to finish line. You can focus on all the other aspects when things arise, right? Like you said, you got all these issues going on. You gotta cross that bridge later. Definitely, definitely, definitely, man. Well, man, I wish we had a lot more time to spend together, but honestly, I feel like with your story and all the value we’ve unpacked here, feel like we got a lot of stuff done here, and I know the audience is definitely gonna enjoy it, but.

Derek Vickers (30:28)
That’s right.

Yes, yes.

Christian (30:54)
For those that want to work with you or those that, you know, where do they need to go to find you and work with you?

Derek Vickers (31:00)
Yeah, so you can check me out at Derek Vickers 885. I’m on all the social media platforms, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, all of them. YouTube, go to the YouTube channel. That’s where we have our podcasts and stuff, the MHP Show Podcast. We do that every week. If you want to work with me, you can just send me a message. But also if you’re a passive investor and you’re interested in looking at this asset class to expand your investment portfolio.

You can reach out to me on social media or go to victorycapital.com. That’s v-i-c-k-t-o-r-y-capital.com and you can download our free ebook that we have on mobile home park investing.

Christian (31:42)
Amazing, amazing. We will definitely drop those links and descriptions inside of our YouTube. So guys, be sure to reach out to Derek. Derek, my friend, thanks so much for taking the time out of your day to jump on, man. I was definitely had a good time with you and just wish you nothing but the best in your future endeavors, my friend.

Derek Vickers (31:57)
Yeah, likewise, Christian. Thanks for having me on.

Christian (32:00)
No, of course, of course, it’s my pleasure. Well, hope everyone enjoyed the show. I know I did. And as always, my friends, take care. We’ll see you on the next one.