The Ultimate Guide to Finding Affordable Manufactured Home Dealerships

Brett McCollum (00:00.893)
All right, guys, welcome back to the show. I am your host, Brett McCollum, and I’m here today with Thomas Lehmann. And today we’re gonna be talking about manufactured home dealerships. Pretty cool stuff, guys, before we get after it. At Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers, and real estate entrepreneurs to 2 to 5x their businesses to allow them to build the businesses they’ve always wanted and live the lives they’ve always dreamed of without further ado. Thomas, how are you, man?

Thomas Lehmann (00:08.012)
Good.

Thomas Lehmann (00:26.389)
I’m doing excellent today. Thanks for having me.

Brett McCollum (00:28.637)
I’m excited. got to catch up quite a bit before the show here. Still not quite sure how we haven’t met. We live, what, like an hour apart? And we have all the same friends, all the same. It’s like, this is kind of weird that we don’t know each other, but I’m excited. Exactly. Like, it’s time, man, it’s time. But before we get after it, get into everything, can you, let’s rewind a little bit, catch people up to speed. Who’s Thomas Lehmann?

Thomas Lehmann (00:36.629)
our, yep.

Thomas Lehmann (00:43.886)
But now we do. Now we do, right?

Thomas Lehmann (00:54.27)
I am, I always say I’m Aiden and Elle’s dad. They’re my children. That keeps me grounded each and every day. You know, I’ve seen people get lost in what they do. And I grew up very, my father had a lot of demons and problems. I never wanted children. Once I had them, I was like, I would love to have more, like a basketball, at least a sports team. But my wife doesn’t like that idea. but staying their dad and being present for them, that’s who I am. You know.

Married for the second time. This is the last time though. She put up with me for a lot of years so far. Another 10 I will take. Live in Claremont, moved around a little bit. Grew up in the Northeast, New York, New Jersey. Hate the cold. It’s not happening anymore for me. Only vacation and look at snow. Come home quick.

Brett McCollum (01:39.357)
Yeah, dude, I get that man. So natively I’m from Ohio. And now that we’re down here in Florida, I’ve here what? don’t know. 25 years, I guess now at this point, somewhere close to that. I get it. I’ve done the shoveling out the cars, digging out the windows to get out the house. Not, I tell my family and a lot, most of my family still lives in Ohio. Okay, just my immediate family will work here. And they complain.

Thomas Lehmann (01:57.078)
Not doing it. Nope.

Brett McCollum (02:07.741)
every single year, right about November 1st. And I tell you, you know that Florida exists, right? Like you’re allowed to move here too. But.

Thomas Lehmann (02:10.679)
It’s dark.

Thomas Lehmann (02:15.874)
Yeah, I don’t get how they do it. You know, that whole darkness and cold, I’m just not a fan. So it’s over, you know?

Brett McCollum (02:22.939)
Yeah, yeah. But man, that’s by the way, I want to go back and plus up what you said there, you know, your dad first. That is to that speaks to my heart, too. I love that. I think it’s our greatest calling as we’re husbands and we’re fathers, you know, and being able to do those two things. And that’s incredible. So I’m proud of you for saying that. I think that’s a I think.

Thomas Lehmann (02:38.776)
Absolutely.

Yes.

Brett McCollum (02:49.981)
we get lost a lot of times. We’re kinda talking about it little bit pre-show, right? Like, I think we get lost in our titles and our, what we do as if that’s who we, like, no, man, we are, we have a larger calling than that, you know? So, super cool. So, catch me up to speed a little bit here on this, like, when did you start, I mean, obviously we wanna talk about what you’re doing today in real estate. When did you kinda go in the water? Like, what did that look like?

Thomas Lehmann (03:01.454)
I know percent agree with you, yeah.

Thomas Lehmann (03:13.614)
So 2019, not even six years ago, my best friend’s dad was doing flips and I had another business. And he said, hey, why don’t you come get this a try with me? This will be great. And I thought how easy it would be. Sure, I’ll come do this. What a disaster it was. But it was fun. I got to hang out with my best friend’s dad, who has been a surrogate father to me. We had a blast of a year. We did everything wrong.

We did three deals only that year. That’s not bad, year. But I only made 4,000 total, not profit, 4,000 total, right? Yeah, that’s not good. And I had to make a change after that. So I went out on my own, but I had to become a sponge in the business.

Brett McCollum (03:48.091)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (04:02.395)
Yeah, so that was, what were you doing before that?

Thomas Lehmann (04:05.706)
I had a trucking service. I was doing consultant for about a decade before that. it happened. I lived in Miami to crash. We had a chain, a large chain of health food stores, but people couldn’t afford mortgage rent, anything that couldn’t afford my products anymore. So then I just walked away from it all because it was on fire anyway. Took a little bit of time off, went to California. Then I took a role as a consultant, but I wasn’t the consultant. was a business development guy.

Brett McCollum (04:20.454)
Right.

Thomas Lehmann (04:34.464)
I was the translator between the consultants and the business owner because they speak different languages. I loved it because it was a different company all the time and I got to learn about a lot of different companies and businesses. It was just fascinating to me. And then I moved to Florida back again in 14. My mom had cancer. Okay. And came here to take care of her. was the only one who was, I wasn’t married at the time, but

Brett McCollum (04:38.833)
Yeah. Sure.

Thomas Lehmann (05:01.376)
Amazing decision I go from La Jolla, California to Polk County, Florida No difference, right? But 60 days after I moved here I had a friend she introduced me to a woman We talked about getting married like 60 days after that. It was just like this and I at that point I would never get married again. I swore Fast forward we built the life we have we wanted, you know, she works in the business. She retired at 41

Brett McCollum (05:25.745)
Yeah.

Thomas Lehmann (05:29.516)
No offices on different levels for a reason because we’ll kill each other during the day, right? But it’s, we built our life how we wanted, which was be present for our children as our parents couldn’t. Okay? Like we don’t, we miss nothing at school. There’s always one, if not both of us there, we take them to school, we pick them up. It’s just the role we wanted to have because we couldn’t have that as children. We thought that was the best way to raise them, to be present, to be involved.

Brett McCollum (05:41.917)
Mmm.

Thomas Lehmann (05:59.808)
not helicopter hovering, like we let them fall and make their bumps, don’t get me wrong, but just to be present for everything.

Brett McCollum (06:07.687)
That’s incredible. think that’s so many people don’t get the opportunity to be able to have that experience, right? And I think that’s something that a lot of us in the real estate space might take a little bit for granted sometimes because it is common practice for us to be able to be present, to be able to do the things like that. And I think from time to time, it’s really good to reflect on how good we, because I tell my kids when they complain about something every once in while, they’re like, daddy, couldn’t, you didn’t go out. It’s almost like.

Thomas Lehmann (06:14.936)
Yes.

Brett McCollum (06:36.993)
I am with you every day. And how many parents would kill for that? Like you don’t understand, because it’s so normal for them. They don’t know any better that this is normal, right? This isn’t normal society. Yeah, good on you man.

Thomas Lehmann (06:39.523)
Yeah.

Thomas Lehmann (06:47.875)
Right.

Yeah, no, not anymore for sure. You know, my son was six, so I first became a stepdad and he wanted, it was cool because he’s four and a half. He’s like, I want to do sports. I’m like, this is easy, right? I’m thinking as parenting, right? I haven’t had diaper steps yet. So that kind of came later for me. And so he wanted to do all the sports I never played. Soccer, which I just thought was like running in this ball. Okay, we can do that. Basketball, never played it. But I had friends who, they were children.

did AAU and played overseas, so they helped a lot. And to show you my parenting skills at the time, my wife almost killed me over it. He’s a little kid, they have these travels. We’re traveling an hour for games on Saturday, but the parents couldn’t get rides because they were working. So we wouldn’t know till we get an hour away that we’re forfeiting because we don’t have enough players. So Super Dad, thought the right move. I went out and I bought a Nissan passenger van.

Brett McCollum (07:32.145)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (07:40.534)
Ugh.

Thomas Lehmann (07:47.042)
to pick up the kids. So bring the van home. My wife’s like, what’s that? I’m like, it’s a van for basketball. And she was like, you bought a van for basketball? Explain this. And I was like, I don’t think I did the right thing, but we’ll figure it out. And she said, no, no, we don’t buy a van. We just take them out of basketball. said, no, no, we don’t quit basketball. We buy a van. And that was just my parenting skills. That’s what I thought. Let me make sure he’s there. Picked up all the kids. It was great. I love that. Then COVID happened. Everything ended.

Brett McCollum (07:58.002)
Yeah

Thomas Lehmann (08:16.568)
So, you know, but that’s the way I thought he needed to be raised where you’re going to go into a sport, you’re going to finish it the season. That was always the goal, right?

Brett McCollum (08:27.121)
Right. Yeah, that’s it. I’m guilty of that a lot, right? We think we’re making good decisions in the moment, and it makes sense in my head, and I don’t communicate with my wife about the decisions I’m making, and then it comes back to bite. Yeah, I think every man listening to this right now can go, yep, me too. We’ve all been there. Like, over communication is, we should probably practice that a little better.

Thomas Lehmann (08:49.679)
yeah.

Brett McCollum (08:55.805)
But, all right, let’s transition a little bit. So let’s talk about the real estate. So you jumped in 2019, you had what, three flips you said didn’t go beautifully for you, but you started and you did it and you, you you learn. Yeah.

Thomas Lehmann (09:05.634)
Yep. Made every mistake, every mistake. Okay. And what I realized was I needed training. So then I looked for a mentor in my market who was doing it well at that time, who I aligned with as well. Okay. That was important. have to, we have to be able to connect on that level. And again, local doing it well in my market and alignment. found them and it’s a husband and wife team.

and she was a Christian school teacher who crushed it in real estate. And on our first Zoom meeting, she crushed me. Okay? Because I’ve been fairly successful in life up until that point, even that year, I was like, I’ll figure it out. I had to have at least five questions ready for her for a Friday night Zoom. And think of a little boy with like five red balloons, she popped them all. Ever so Christian school nicely, but if it was a guy, I probably would have been angry. My plan was to

Brett McCollum (09:42.226)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (10:01.671)
Sure.

Thomas Lehmann (10:02.668)
quit her class because of it that night. But I was gonna do it the next day. But it was daddy daughter night, my wife still worked at the bank. So I had a baby shark in a cocoa melon. I remember the songs. I woke up the next morning and said best thing that ever happened to me and I became a sponge in the business.

Brett McCollum (10:05.083)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (10:20.465)
Yeah, I think sometimes those metaphorical balloons are, it’s got pop of humility, right? Like I’m saying, when we think,

Thomas Lehmann (10:24.342)
Mm-hmm. yeah. Her and I still laugh about it. We still talk about it because, you know, I was able to give back to her and thanks. One, I did really well in that class. So she brought me back for free the next three or four of them. So I was able to layer on top what I learned because, you know, when you first take it, you can’t look up here because you’re not there. So then every time I brought back, I was able to learn more and more because it was just layering what I learned.

I got really, I mean, we were really good at flipping. She wasn’t, so I taught her students flip classes. She liked the old fashioned snail mail. I hated that. That doesn’t work with my ABD. I became really proficient at texting. So then I would teach her students that as well. Okay. You know, you have to give back to your community. And I was so glad to be able to.

Brett McCollum (11:16.093)
That’s incredible. So you start, flipping a lot of houses at this point. And that led up to when did you start making some pivots?

Thomas Lehmann (11:24.27)
So 22 interest rates. it wasn’t that I wanted to, I had to because when you saw where they were gonna go, and no one would really thought he was gonna go there and he did, okay? When that one point hit that summer, I was like, he’s serious. My business model became a dinosaur because, know, at 3 % interest, anybody could get moved around out of a house and you’re now at seven is harder. Okay? So.

Brett McCollum (11:40.177)
Yeah.

Thomas Lehmann (11:53.078)
We had a home that we bought. It was a manufacturer. We planned on flipping it. Okay. There was squatters. So we had to get rid of them. Took a little time. This was the house where everybody brought stolen items for drugs. And the day we had them removed, when the sheriff opens the door, they took a chainsaw and tried to unhook the double wire.

Never walked inside the home. Me and the sheriff looked in. He’s like, you want to go in? You could see fleas. I’m like, absolutely not. Done. And that home, we tore it down with one of my assistants in the office, all the phone calls. Hey, call up the demo company. Get me three estimates for demo. Get me three for this, three for that. Made a ton of mistakes. And a year later when we sold it, we still made like nine, 10 grand. But we held it for 18 months instead of six.

Brett McCollum (12:42.844)
Right.

Thomas Lehmann (12:43.318)
And we put down a new unit, but what I learned was a process that was cleaner and more efficient than flipping. And I thought way more scalable when I figured it out.

Brett McCollum (12:53.147)
Yeah, yeah. So let’s kind of deep dive that a little bit. So explain a little bit of that process, what it looks like, maybe start from the acquisition of the land and then like to completion.

Thomas Lehmann (13:06.936)
yeah. So once the land comes into our pipeline, it starts a seven day due diligence period on our side where the project manager assigned to it has all the, has to get all his estimates in for us. And then, you know, we have our time. We look at our numbers and is a project viable at this amount? Anything issues with the land? Florida has a lot of craziness, know, turtles, right? Go for it. You know, there’s, you know, you

You have to go look. We boots on the ground. We go and look. We get all our estimates in. Septic’s a big hassle today as well. So knowing the numbers, is it a viable project? Do we go back and renegotiate? Do we cancel? If we go on, then we go on. if you’ve done flips as you have, you know that those spreadsheet gets really long. Okay. My spreadsheet every time, never more than 20 items, 20 lines. That’s it. It’s the same 20 every time.

Brett McCollum (14:04.989)
predictable.

Thomas Lehmann (14:05.24)
doesn’t change, right? So that’s a beauty in and of itself because it’s simple to follow. It’s always this. Maybe you have city water, maybe you have a well, okay, but it’s still one line, which is it? And it just took a lot of the variables out of it, okay? When you do a flip, every time you open that wall, it changes everything. I don’t care what your inspections say, your inspector didn’t go behind the wall, okay?

And we were able to just scale that with the right coaching quickly.

Brett McCollum (14:35.869)
Sure. how on the, I guess the question is with flips, Florida specifically, I’m intimately familiar with it as well, same give or take area that you’re in. We’ve seen how, like you mentioned, like you had a house that was supposed to be six months, it took 18 months. We have a lot of that going on around here where maybe the flip takes four, let’s call it four or five months, and then it’ll set on the market for that eight, nine, 10 months.

before it sells because of those interest rates. How are you able to sell these properties? Because I know manufactured homes and land in Florida are, guys, if you don’t know it, I don’t think Thomas will mind me saying this, it’s a gold mine. And a lot of people might look at it a little bit, know, manufactured, like, no, it’s great in Florida. How are you able to sell those? rates are still rates.

Thomas Lehmann (15:05.602)
Mm-hmm.

Thomas Lehmann (15:29.806)
Right? So knowing who your buyers are, you have to know your customers. And what we figured out was if we can stay in this really good price range is hard, 270 and under, two to 270, you’ll have a big buying pool for there. Right? That’s a growing market in Florida right now where a lot of people, a lot of other demographics higher, slow and slow and still, but that market, those are people who need to buy a home, not want to, they need one.

Brett McCollum (15:40.209)
Yeah. Okay.

Thomas Lehmann (15:59.79)
Okay, because maybe they just got a pre-approval, maybe their credit’s good enough, but stop paying rent. Whereas if you were selling a million dollar home in Winter Park, that’s a want more than a need, okay? And so by really dialing it in and knowing who they are, knowing their market and what they like and what we can do better for them, we’ve showed that your rates now at 6.6 still is cheaper to buy what we’re building than to rent. Let me show you, okay? That’s one.

Brett McCollum (15:59.984)
Okay.

Thomas Lehmann (16:29.262)
Two, we are really efficient lately as we’ve grown and been able to bring in the right people to cut out the fat, so to speak, right? Or the problem because inefficiencies cost money. And in this market, we give a lot of extras that we don’t pass on the cost or profit on top of it. We just charge base for it for now because we want our buyers to buy. It’s not the right time at all to try to profit on that because you can’t. Once you put that price point higher, the buyers disappear.

And by staying focused and keeping it 269.9 and below. Polk County, one acre, four bedroom, two bath, 1,850 square feet, 269. Okay? Crushing the market with that. Crushing the market because that’s selling as dirt now. It’s selling before the units get there.

Brett McCollum (17:13.341)
Wow. Yeah.

and good finishes on practice.

Yeah, really. And that’s I think is about these mobile homes is today, the 20, like 25 stuff like you can get, it’s the finishes are beautiful, A lot of the, you you got to have them, you know, hurricane strapped and you got to do all these, the safety measures have, you know, improved.

Thomas Lehmann (17:22.849)
and

Thomas Lehmann (17:28.178)
yeah.

Thomas Lehmann (17:39.064)
Well, I want to touch on two points. One, here’s different than flipping. Flipping, have to wait till you’re done to list it. Not with land and manufactured homes. If you’re considered new construction, you can list the dirt ASAP and put the model you’re going to put down. So you’re holding time. Yes, there you go. So let’s use a good term for people,

Brett McCollum (18:01.681)
You beat me to the punch. was gonna ask you that question. Keep going, yeah.

Thomas Lehmann (18:05.132)
You know, your cash conversion cycle, we’re able to really be 180 days and less to get it back, okay? And going to the hurricane, Milton ran right up I-4. I had three units within the eye. Nothing, nothing. We build to hurricane, wind zone three. We only have to beat two, but that’s a good use of resources, money.

One, for us during construction, because we live in Florida, but two, that helps the buyer. It helps with their insurance. It’s peace of mind. Yeah.

Brett McCollum (18:41.789)
that. Yeah. Yeah, because I and that’s a big objection that a lot of people have with hurricane, know, with, you know, manufacturer homes with hurricanes and everything here in Florida’s. But but but I’m like, you don’t realize the standard that they’re built at now. And, you know, those are just and then you taking the extra safety measure. Yeah, but I want to back up so that your your lifecycle it’s inside of that 180 days. Is that what you’re saying?

Thomas Lehmann (18:47.566)
Mm-hmm.

Thomas Lehmann (19:05.688)
We try to, yeah, that’s the goal every time.

Brett McCollum (19:08.123)
Wow. Yeah, because I mean, let’s back up a little bit further. Flips, what did that look like?

Thomas Lehmann (19:15.022)
Well, okay, so if you took them when the market was at its peak, right, say 21, when it was crazy, as soon as you put it on the market, it was sold. And I was really big on smaller homes, know, 1,500, 1,200, 1,700 square foot in that range. Every project was 30 to 45 days max, the way we had it mapped out. Because we would have a crew of five guys, plus your roof or your AC, all those subs differently.

Brett McCollum (19:37.521)
Okay.

Thomas Lehmann (19:43.906)
because time is money. we had got the process pretty efficient. But you’re.

Brett McCollum (19:48.645)
Yep. And that overhead was probably your overhead to to manage that probably too,

Thomas Lehmann (19:55.481)
Yeah, mean five crews all the other stuff 40 50k a week in payroll not fun. I Felt like I was working for them. That’s what I felt like

Brett McCollum (19:59.845)
Yeah. Yeah, that managing that stretch.

And then not to mention just having to make sure you had inventory. Keep coming in to be able to sustain that,

Thomas Lehmann (20:12.472)
That’s why we had the acquisition company. was, I had an acquisition manager, but it was, it was just getting too cumbersome for me. I could never take time off because of problems. didn’t have that old saying, the right people in the right seats. I didn’t know better yet. Okay.

Brett McCollum (20:26.129)
Yeah, yeah, I’m sure that was the stress. So what about now? What does the day to day look like as far as like team, that sort of thing?

Thomas Lehmann (20:34.542)
So I have really good managers. I’ve hired really well because I don’t do it anymore. Okay, like I sit down with someone, this guy’s great. Let me hire him. No, okay. We outsource it to a company whose specialty. So look, we just hired an incredible operations manager. It took six weeks. We had 600 plus applicants. So there was applications, there was interviews, there was behavioral testing and all of that before it even came over to my team to review.

Brett McCollum (20:55.09)
Wow.

Thomas Lehmann (21:04.078)
600 got knocked down to 10 people. I talked to a few, I sat down with I think five, five for interviews and three I took for a drive with me. The deal was, hey, let’s see how if we can work together all day, because in the beginning, I’m going to have to be hands on still in operations. And can we get along for the day? Because I’ll always say I’m challenging because I love what I do. I’m driven, I’m passionate about it. I need people to buy into that and be the same.

Brett McCollum (21:11.856)
Okay.

Brett McCollum (21:16.967)
Okay.

Thomas Lehmann (21:33.874)
And so we told them it’s gonna be one full day. So the first person lasted two hours. All they wanted to do on the drive all around was talk politics. I don’t care who you voted for, you have the right, but that’s not wherever I wanna talk about. The other guy shows up with loafers and we’re walking a project. Yeah, and the woman I hired was the best candidate I thought in the beginning, okay? Because I don’t have a problem hiring women. In fact, most of my executive team is.

Brett McCollum (21:52.413)
Can’t do that.

Thomas Lehmann (22:03.186)
She had all the qualifications except no real estate. Okay, but an exceptional manager. That’s what I’m looking for. Okay. I used to teach my assistants who were acquiring houses, all the real estate. I only hired them for one ability, speaking English. They spoke it better than me, probably still do. So I’m the worst manager. So I’m hiring the right person for that role. We can teach real estate.

Brett McCollum (22:07.856)
Okay.

Brett McCollum (22:30.023)
Sure.

Thomas Lehmann (22:30.782)
And so she used to be a regional manager for enterprise and their model is you come in and you do cleaning the car first, like get your hands dirty. And she was the winner. I mean, she hit 10 out of 10 boxes and has crushed it so far.

Brett McCollum (22:44.837)
Incredible. stress wise, how does that differ from the day to day flips? What does that look like now?

Thomas Lehmann (22:54.43)
it’s getting better. It’s first of all, it is a lot better because it’s a different business model. One, two, with the right team in place now, I don’t see all of what I used to see every day. Okay. even now, have you read the book, by back your time? So we implemented that email system in my company. I have four email boxes that I don’t look at at all anymore. Okay.

Brett McCollum (23:10.447)
huh, yeah.

Thomas Lehmann (23:21.268)
And six weeks ago, I gave the book and the workbook to my executive assistant. I said, I want you to read this, do the workbook, and then this is what we’re going to do. So we gave her two weeks. Boom, we talked about it. OK, now we’re going to go find this person because I’m going to hire a personal admin for this who’s going to work with me each and every day on emails and other things. And she crushed it, right? She got an amazing person, great hours, great skill set.

And last week was her first week doing the email. So I gave her three of the four and she took on the fourth one, which is the heavy duty one this week. Not an issue. Okay. Why? One of it is I didn’t do any of the hiring. I left it to the professionals and two, they know the right person to put next to me. Cause we want everybody to succeed in three. Jeannie knew that’s my EA that if this person didn’t work out, she’d have to do it. Right. So.

Brett McCollum (23:59.356)
Yeah.

Thomas Lehmann (24:17.803)
self-preservation was there as well.

Brett McCollum (24:20.027)
Incredible. moving forward, what is the future, you know, idea what you look like? What are you guys looking forward to?

Thomas Lehmann (24:27.705)
So last year we placed 76 new homes. We want to almost double that this year. Now that I have the, we already have 30 projects on the books for this year. Okay. So we’re, on pace to go past that, but we’re going into bigger developments, mobile home park development. We’ve, we’re going to stay in Florida because we’re going to put on a few more of the verticals into the business that we can use here as the year goes on.

Brett McCollum (24:32.615)
Okay.

Thomas Lehmann (24:52.866)
But we’re going to take it on the road. have some options to go do mobile home park investing in other states with some JV partners that I’m interested in doing. But keep my house in order with the right people because this is our business. And then I can go do the other stuff.

Brett McCollum (25:07.165)
Yeah, that’s smart. Yeah, I mean, I’ve definitely learned that the hard way, right? Like, oh, I can go do this over here. You know, like, don’t forget your house at home first. You know, take care.

Thomas Lehmann (25:17.933)
Well, I did it once last year and I had to let a lot of people go because the system wasn’t followed. Then I had to step back into operations. But by stepping back in, I saw where the problems were. And then I was able to look and say, okay, this is how we fix it or bring in the right team. My consultants have a great group. Hey, I need someone who specializes in this part. And then they come in and work with us for a quarter to make us really more efficient.

Brett McCollum (25:29.735)
Sure. Yeah.

Brett McCollum (25:43.905)
Yeah. Yeah. Man, super cool. I’m glad you could break a lot of that down. So you’re able to get these properties though, these, these mobile homes, because you’re technically now a dealer, right? Is that correct?

Thomas Lehmann (25:52.686)
Well yeah, no, we’ve been a dealer for two full years plus now.

Brett McCollum (25:55.633)
Yeah, so, and forgive me for the ignorance in this. How does that work? So you’re able to source these homes from direct from this, like how do you do that?

Thomas Lehmann (26:05.122)
Yeah, well, just think of buying a car. What kind of car do you have?

Brett McCollum (26:09.245)
I have a GMC.

Thomas Lehmann (26:10.818)
Okay, so you went to GMC and you bought the car and they had it and they’re the dealer. They didn’t make it in there. So that’s what we are. Okay. We’re the dealer and we are able to source units from five or six different companies. we primarily work with two because of the price point. The other ones are really, really super nice, but that’s a different buyer. Okay. We’ll order them for people, but we don’t normally put them down because of the price points. it’s just not the right time for it.

Brett McCollum (26:14.034)
Yes.

Brett McCollum (26:20.081)
Okay.

Brett McCollum (26:32.274)
Right.

Brett McCollum (26:40.401)
Yeah, very cool. Yeah, that’s super awesome. And I love the model. I think what you’re doing is incredible. It’s serving a need in the market today as a whole. And quite frankly, I don’t think it’s going anywhere anytime soon.

Thomas Lehmann (26:55.074)
No, I think it’s going to get only more because you see what the even in Orange County, the Vision 50 they have, they they had set land that you can switch over from agricultural to manufactured in mass, but they haven’t figured out all the mechanics to make it work yet. So it’s a work in progress because they realize the only way to meet their goals is that kind of housing too, because the price point, right? Like I don’t I want to build a mobile home park again, but I want to sell it.

Brett McCollum (27:03.837)
That’s right.

Brett McCollum (27:19.761)
Yep.

Thomas Lehmann (27:24.83)
as people own the land too or own the lots, whatever it is, because I don’t want to just build renter nation. That’s what I’m trying to stay away from. You know, we’ve got to that too much where we’ve lost the American dream of home ownership.

Brett McCollum (27:29.788)
Right.

Brett McCollum (27:37.029)
Yeah, connecting people ownership. love that and doing it responsibly. Like that’s, that’s really, yeah. Well, man, this has been super cool. If people want to reach out to you, connect with you, get to know you a little bit further, like, you know, connect that vision a little bit. What’s the best way for that to happen?

Thomas Lehmann (27:41.827)
Yeah.

Thomas Lehmann (27:51.698)
we can put up my stuff later on if you have it, but we have all the social media, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, I love. So we’re all on every one of those.

Brett McCollum (28:02.107)
Yeah, what’s handle there? We’ll make sure we put them in the show notes.

Thomas Lehmann (28:05.518)
Thomas Lehmann real estate, I think it is. I think I put it all I put it all over to you on that sheet

Brett McCollum (28:08.466)
Okay.

We do have it. We’ll make sure we add that into the show notes. Yeah, perfect. Yeah, so guys, I mean, I’m so serious. Like this is really cool. That’s a model that we don’t see a lot of. And it’s something to follow along with because there’s a need. And I’m glad to see you’re feeling that.

Thomas Lehmann (28:12.866)
Yeah.

Thomas Lehmann (28:27.65)
you said it right there, know, in this time, so I just went to I got invited to a core mastermind and they have guys in this, they do a lot of syndication, which I want to learn. And this guy was he’s building a $50 million apartment. He does all these kind of and he was telling us about the market and what he sees, especially in Florida. But the only one that I had to stop him because he only started at 350 and above price range and everything was decreasing, decreasing. I said, Hey, what about two to 270?

Brett McCollum (28:37.756)
Right.

Thomas Lehmann (28:54.476)
He says, that’s the only one that’s actually growing. said, hi, my name is Tom and that’s all we work in for a reason because it’s a need. when you look with the last out turn downturn, if you served a need, you still had business. If you were a want, you were gone. And, but this market needs to be served. These people need to be served. Okay. They need housing.

Brett McCollum (29:00.327)
That’s it. Yeah.

Brett McCollum (29:16.029)
Sure. And you can serve with a great product too. It’s not even like, that’s the mental shift. It’s a great product.

Thomas Lehmann (29:21.159)
yeah.

And I still walk every one of them. will tell you, I will walk every unit before we turn it over that day. I I walk it at least during the timeline, but towards the end, I’m there to look at it. Because it matters. So someone had told me, we’re just selling it to somebody. No, no, no, Somebody is buying a home from us that they love. We’re going to give it to them that way. I want to touch on one thing. My best deal last year, I lost almost $50,000 on, my wife and I.

But the realtor on the deal, the husband died during the mortgage process. The woman sells birds and she has four children, three are autistic. So we took a bath to give them that home. We still want to maintain it for them because that’s what we’re supposed to do. The realtor who I met, we did a million dollars in sales after that closing and we’ve already done two this year. Both of us lost. She gave so much time, right?

Brett McCollum (29:57.384)
okay.

Brett McCollum (30:17.245)
Wow.

Thomas Lehmann (30:20.898)
But think of that relationship we just created with each other because she knows what we’re going to do for her buyer. The two she bought this year already, she went on her contract when there was no unit on the ground yet. It was just dirt because she knows what she’s going to get.

Brett McCollum (30:31.836)
Incredible.

Yeah, and think that’s the givenness should be given unto you, right? Like that’s mantra. You know, we give first. That’s incredible. Good for you, man.

Thomas Lehmann (30:42.478)
You can’t lose that way. When we go into it thinking, look, I had another business years ago. I lived in Miami Beach. I was a jerk because everything was just a dollar. I was never happy. Look, I had a nice house on the water. My neighbor had a house twice as big. I didn’t like seeing his house. We still have the same home we bought in 2016. We didn’t move.

Brett McCollum (30:58.13)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (31:03.909)
I think that’s, our happiness and peace aren’t tied to our business, right? I think a lot of us do that.

Thomas Lehmann (31:11.022)
you know, we get tied to a dollar, it’s not a dollar, it’s the mission, the passion, it’s your goals that way. And like I said, I made a ton of money. I was never happy.

Brett McCollum (31:19.985)
Hmm. Yeah, that’s good to man. Well, man, we could keep doing this. I know I’m sure we could go on back All good things right as they say but yeah Thomas thanks for hanging out with us, man I really appreciate you doing that and guys I encourage you to reach out and connect with him. So thanks for being Yeah You got it. Well guys, it’s been a great episode Thanks for coming to hanging out with us and we’ll see you on the next one. Take care everybody

Thomas Lehmann (31:25.25)
Coming to Gainesville to talk. Yes, sir.

Always.

Thomas Lehmann (31:34.68)
Definitely. Thanks for having me.