How He Built 250 Mobile Home Park Units From a College Dorm

Caleb Landon (00:00)
and then around October of twenty twenty five, AI started being able to code. and so we’re like, hey, like let’s take a look at this. And so we started using it and we’re like, this is way better than our human programmers. And I think we did the math one time and me in one day just talking to AI doing the programming, was able to do two months of what our six person team could do. and so we ended up laying off those people. we ended up being fully AI like programmed now. So and what’s funny is it there was sort of like a disconnect between the human written coding and then also the AI written coding.

Issa Hanna (02:05)
Welcome back to another episode of the Real Estate Pros Show. I’m your host, Issa Hanna and today I have Caleb Landon with the Landon Capital Group. Caleb, welcome to the show.

Caleb Landon (02:13)
Yeah, thanks for having me. Look forward to talking.

Issa Hanna (02:14)
Man, I’m super looking forward to pick your brain about this this aspect of real estate that you’re in. seems like underwriting wise the numbers make sense. And you know, when when when the numbers make sense, it makes dollars. So yeah. kind run down kinda your day to day operations and and what business you’re in.

Caleb Landon (02:32)
Yeah, so my primary business is mobile home park value add investing. and we syndicate, so we get investors from actually it’s been mostly word of mouth at this point. and we pull together, we buy a mobile home park, we tell basically in the next five to six years they’re gonna refinance this property through value add strategies like fixing up the roads by doing bringing in new homes to the property, utility bill backs, all the things on that list, and then you can get enough value in the property to pull cash out and then use that cash you can either reinvest it into the next deal or you could take it, walk away. kinda up to you at that point. But yeah, that’s the that’s the main focus right now. So

Issa Hanna (03:07)
I love that. And just talking to you, man. You you know this business inside and now you run the numbers. You’re very conservative also. you know, so definitely somebody that that you know an investor can trust to take care of his money and return give you a good return on the money. and with that, we we were talking earlier and you said you started from your college dorm and you grew this business from like nothing into into what is now you know. three years, two hundred and fifty units. you know, so give us some history.

Caleb Landon (03:39)
Yeah, so I right out of high school I got hired, I guess it was more of an internship at the Bolding Group, which is one of the top five owners of mobile home parks in the US. they’re similar to what I do. They also do some value add but also some more stabilized deals. and so I interned there for about two years and I I learned the business and there were several things I did along the way and I’m like, I could do this better, I could be more investor friendly, like why don’t I do this on my own? And so I ended up leaving that firm in early 2023 in that same year. I was either junior or senior year of college. I was still in my dorm. I’m like, hey, well, I’m living in the dorms, I don’t really have that many expenses, I’m I’m I’m gonna do this now. And so I committed to it and for my first deal, I called up friends and family and word of mouth, and I’m like, hey, I’m w I wanna buy mobile home parks. I mean, here’s my history, I’ve been working for this company. I was on the acquisitions team. and so I was just underwriting deals all day. So I like I knew how to s find a good deal. but I never actually went beyond the operation or like the actual purchase day. I offer going to operations, I went to a different team. But yeah, so I I told the investors, I’m like, I will work for free, I will get you every dollar of your money back before I take anything. I’m going to like you’re first. I’m not I’m second. You guys are first. and so it it was a struggle raising that much money. I think I mean it was I a little under $400,000, but I was was I 19 at the time, 18 at the time. and so I was trying to convince people to give me four hundred thousand dollars at nineteen. So I ended up doing that. I raised the capital. That was the first deal we bought. we ended up refinancing that property in twenty-nine months. and so getting a hundred percent of the investor capital back in twenty-nine months, and now they’re receiving distributions. they’re also they got the massive bonus depreciation on that property. and so they basically if they got the huge bonus write off day one and then they got the tax free refinance when twenty nine months later and they’re still getting distributions and then I think all of those investors reinvested with me. So that was a that was a win. But yeah, that’s kind of the the history there.

Issa Hanna (06:25)
Wow, wow. And that’s how all the great entrepreneurs in the world start. You know, that that’s sounds like a movie, you know, the light bulb went off, you’re sitting in your college door, and like, let me start this company and the the fact that, you know, almost all your investors came back and reinvested with you is a testament to what you said earlier that you put them first. You know, they felt that and they came back to you. So Unbelievable, man. Unbelievable. Truly inspirational, remarkable. Most guys at nineteen are not running around with this great idea. They’re, you know, they got other things on the brain. So the fact that you’re able to keep your eyes on the prize, you’re building something that I can see becoming a powerhouse in the future. You also know a lot about what not to you know, what to look for, what not to look for, to hold when you have to hold. And one thing that stuck out in our conversation, you said. really gotta keep an eye on the local laws, right? You gotta make sure that, you know, things don’t change and and that you’re able to operate the way that you want to operate. So can you give us a little bit more about that?

Caleb Landon (07:30)
Yeah, I’ll give you my exact criteria I use to buy properties. So, this has kind of evolved over the years, but yeah, currently if you’re if you’re a broker sending me a deal, what I’m looking for is a two hundred thousand dollar average home price in the town. anything over that, there’s a need for affordable housing. I’m looking for a twenty five thousand population MSA or higher. I’m looking for growing job growth, growing population growth. I’m looking for Just some basic metrics like that. But yeah, the big one which we actually had to back out of a deal earlier this year was cities hate mobile home parks. and mostly it’s because they do not recoup their tax revenue. And I was mentioning to you earlier that we have a park in Dubuque, Iowa, and the property tax bill is about eight thousand dollars for the entire year, and there’s thirty-five homes in there, probably about a hundred residents. and so for them, they’re not making that money back, and so it’s almost impossible to build a new mobile home park nowadays, which is actually good if you own an existing mobile home park because now no one’s gonna be competing with you. but yeah, there is a park in Des Moines and the city had recently come out with a ruling that if you own a mobile home park in the city and let’s say it’s a fifty unit mobile home park, and one of the tenants they start a fire, the house burns down, they have to demo the house and now there’s no home there. That tenant and you cannot bring in a home on that lot anymore. It’s like it’s decommissioned. which is an insane overreach. I don’t know how that’s allowed. but basically over time it’s just by definition you’re gonna get forty eight lots and then forty five lots and then you’re eventually gonna have no lots of the property and it’s gonna be useless. And so it crushed Des Moines like mobile home park property values and that’s why actually I was looking at the property. I’m like, this is a great deal, what’s going on here? And I was looking into it. I’m K well there’s some some government overreach that we gotta kinda figure out here. And so we ended up having to back out of that deal. it is getting pushed up to like the Supreme Court of Iowa or something, but d it’s not really my battle of fire at this point, so

Issa Hanna (09:14)
Definitely just gotta roll with the punches and and and you know keep an eye out for stuff like that. You know, kudos to you because a lot of investors wouldn’t, you know, they they wouldn’t keep up so much. So and yeah, I mean eventually over time that whole thing will just be a dead lot, you know. So that that’s that’s crazy. I wanna kind of shift gears because we talked about the importance of AI. The AI revolution and you’ve got some stuff cooking up on the AI side. So I wanna give you the floor and kind of give everybody what you got going on on that side.

Caleb Landon (10:23)
For sure. Yeah. So about two years ago, I have an uncle who he owns a property management company. and he his background is actually like software engineering and he got a software engineering degree from UC Davis and so he came to me and he’s like, Hey, I I know property management, you know property management obviously, ’cause I work in it, and he’s like, I wanna build a property management software tool, but I wanna build it for mobile home parks. And since you mo know mobile home parks, why don’t we partner up? you’ll be like the like what actually needs to be in the software guy and then I’ll help you program it and then we’ll build a team. We’ll go from there. So that was February of twenty twenty five, a little actually a year and a half ago. and so we did that. We had six full time programmers that were working for us. We were all in on this idea. and then around October of twenty twenty five, AI started being able to code. and so we’re like, hey, like let’s take a look at this. And so we started using it and we’re like, this is way better than our human programmers. And I think we did the math one time and me in one day just talking to AI doing the programming, was able to do two months of what our six person team could do. and so we ended up laying off those people. we ended up being fully AI like programmed now. So and what’s funny is it there was sort of like a disconnect between the human written coding and then also the AI written coding. And so we ended up mostly scrapping whatever the human programmers did because when trying to like build off of it, it was not able to. so instead of trying to like patch it up, we just ended up saying, like, hey, just rebuild this entire module. And so since almost about a year now, we’ve been programming fully with AI. We have I think four different ventures that were in now because it’s continued to grow. So there was the initial property management software, which and I’m biased and it’s not technically released yet. But I mean there’s no other software in the market. I think there’s like four or five softwares out there that offer property management for mobile home parks and they’re it’s nothing compared to what we’re building. and the big thing that they’re g these companies are gonna have to solve, which we did solve, is the memory and context problem. So, everyone likes to throw AI into their business and say, Hey, we’re big on AI, but it doesn’t really do much. It’s just like a a label. our goal is to get it where you’re not having to You you just you can just talk with the A AI. So if you want to say, Hey, like what’s what do I have to take care of today? It says, Hey, if take care of these three things, you say, Send a text to this tenant, you say post a charge for this tenant, write an email for the property, like announcing the water’s gonna be shut off. so instead of you having to click around and then select all the tenants and find everyone, you’re just talking with an AI agent. and so you can just be on your phone and eventually you’ll just be able to call in and like it’s in a personal assistant of yours and just say, Hey, I need you to handle this task. and Since we have all of like the lease agreements already uploaded in the system, we have the park rules. if a tenant calls in and they’re like, Hey, my my fridge is not working, if it’s a mobile home park, you could have a park owned home or it could be a tenant owned home. If it’s a tenant owned home, it will know based on the lease agreements and it’ll say, Hey, that’s actually not our responsibility. You own your own home, you gotta maintain your fridge. but if it’s a park owned home, it’ll say, Yes, we’ll send someone out there, we’ll call the vendor, it will schedule a time for the vendor. So that’s the problem that these companies have not solved yet. We we are Pretty much we’re 95% there right now. so we’re hoping to launch in the next month or two. but yeah, that was the main one, and we’ve also built a AI voice agent which can facilitate the phone calls. and so it could do inbound and outbound calls. we’ve also built a MHP sales agent, which is for selling the home. So like when a lead comes in from Zillow, it will call them, it will text them, it’ll email them. schedule a showing, send them an application, follow up with them, it will do that entire process. was that’s where a lot of money’s gonna be made. and then also a rental application like site. the the domain rentalapplication.ai was available so I just bought it for eighty bucks and I’m like, I’m taking that one. So we bought that and it’s basically a full service rental application site. So for any any not just mobile home parts but any avenue. and Because AI is so quick now, we built the entire site in under two weeks, fully functional. and so we our prices are so cheap. Like we’re the cheapest rental application in the industry. And you get all the same reports. You get the same FICO score, you get the same criminal history, the background history, like everything. but since we we have no money on RD and no money on paying programmers, we’re so cheap. And so yeah, those are our those are the different AI ventures and yeah, the what I like about those now, I mean if it was pre AI it’d be a whole different story, but I mean you could throw up a site and you can make something functional in under a month. And so it’s like it’s comparing that to mobile home parks, there’s pros and cons of each, but I like the scalability, like that rental application site, once it’s live, I don’t really do much. I just kinda let it I mean the SEO kinda does itself. Maybe every once in a while I’ll change some ads on Facebook. I mean it it kinda just runs itself and As you know with real estate it’s the exact opposite and it’s very hands on. You’re getting calls at two in the morning and you’re doing all that stuff. So there’s there’s pros and cons of each, but I do like both avenues. So

Issa Hanna (15:53)
Definitely. Well, everything sounds appealing. That property management software, man. having everything not just under one umbrella that you can look at, but actually telling it, hey, take care of this, take care of that. and and not letting anything slip through the cracks. That that is genius. That is genius for sure, Caleb. So as a as a landlord, I’m super excited for that to come out. So I can’t wait for that, man. how about Future Caleb, how about five years down the line? Where are we going to see you at?

Caleb Landon (16:21)
Yeah, I mean, I think I’m gonna get involved in more AI stuff and also buy more mobile home parks. I’m at a comfortable spot, which is good and bad, but like I don’t have to buy more parks. I don’t really have to do much more. and so if I see a good deal, I’m jumping on it with mobile home parks. but really the better part of the last year has been primarily focusing on these AI companies. and I’m I’ve come to the conclusion that AI is developing so quickly that I’m never gonna be able just to like do something and chill out. it’s always gonna be advancing and someone’s gonna come out with a new technology and it’s gonna get better and better and better. and so I figured I’m young, I’ll spend the next couple of years. I’m just gonna try to be as close to the front of that line as I can. just so I know because at some point it is gonna kinda plateau and something’s gonna happen and I wanna be able to be at the front of that. and so I think you’ll see me involved with much more AI endeavors, buying more mobile home parks as As I see come up, if rates drop will be a lot more purchased in mobile home parks, but for now I’m kinda chillin’ both.

Issa Hanna (17:16)
Yeah. Well that man, that’s sounds like a great plan. And I love that you’re you you’re always looking ahead. You’re always looking for the next opportunity. It started in college in in a dorm room. And that that’s you know, that’s the makings of of a great entrepreneur, you know. And you’ve been able to build a great business already at such a young age. It’s it’s truly remarkable. and and I want you now to give young people that are just starting to get into the game. and maybe struggling to establish relationships, grow their networks. watching this at home, like man, at nineteen he was able to raise almost half a million dollars. can you give them some advice on on where to start?

Caleb Landon (17:55)
For sure. Yeah. I mean, the big thing with my investors was I had to convey to them like ’cause I I’ve been sent and I’ve talked to people my age and I’ve been sent deals and by new operators and they’re trying to make the first deal like their big win. and I think that’s hurting them quite a bit. Like I’ll g I’ll get sent a deal and they’re wanting to take half the profits up front for managing it and they charge a management fee and an acquisition fee and they charge a guarantor fee and they charge all these fees and they have no track record and it’s like, why would I give my money to you and I could go over to me or someone else and have much more of a safety net? but I literally for the first two years I did not make a single dollar. and it it was intentional and I made sure my investors knew that. Like if if I lose your money, I’m gonna have lost all my money in the process as well. Like I’m gonna go down with you. I’m not gonna just take your money and I’m not gonna run with it. and investors they can they can tell when you’re being authentic or not. Some people they don’t have drive, they don’t have the motivation to stick with something for a long time. And a a investor of mine, he’s also very successful and he’s kind of his entire life been involved in business. and he he sat down with me, he talked to me, and he just went through like a hundred questions like what are you gonna do if this happens? what happens if you run out of money here? What like and went through all these different questions that pr I had never actually thought about, but since he had been in the industry for so long, it was good to like know what could happen. and I actually sat down with some of my age a couple of weeks ago and I said, if you are gonna do something like I’m doing, like raising capital or starting a business, sit down, take two or three days and just write out exactly how you’re gonna do it. ’cause when I first got into the business, I’m like, I’m gonna buy a property, I’m gonna run it, and then I’m gonna refinance in five years. And that’s not really a plan. I mean it’s a it’s a vision, but it’s not really a plan. and so what I would tell them earlier me was like, sit down, say, Okay, there’s these five empty lots and lot one, five, and eight and seven and ten. I’m going to buy a prop or buy a home from this factory. It’s going to cost this much. I already called them. I know what the price is going cost. I’m going to hire this vendor to install it. I’m going to hire this HVAC company. I’m going to sell it on Zillow, on Facebook. I’m going to market it for six months. Like just go through the entire plan from start to finish. just to know you’re not going to be in a situation where you you missed something or you messed up. and Honestly, I mean, I feel like any I’ve talked to multiple people and everyone’s always been happy to talk about what they do. And if you know anyone in the industry or just in real estate, I mean everyone’s always glad to talk about themselves. so ask them to hang out, ask them to meet up for lunch and just talk about the business and then learn as much as you can before you start. That’d be my I’d be my advice.

Issa Hanna (20:19)
Amazing advice. you’re truly wise beyond your years in this business because I’ve talked to guys that have been in the business 30, 40 years and and said exactly the same stuff you just gave them. So like I keep saying, man, remarkable. I want to give you the floor now. if people are invested in or I’m sorry, interested in Landon Capital Group and and want to get involved with you, how could they reach you?

Caleb Landon (20:42)
Yeah, my site’s just landoncapitalgroup.com. My cell and my email’s on there. I’m available at any time. yeah, it’s mostly the channel we go through. we are for now we’re doing credit investors only going forward. it has been a mix of both in the past, but just for easy easiness is gonna be credit investors only. But yeah, the website’s a great place to reach me.

Issa Hanna (21:00)
Definitely. So all you accredited investors out there that watch our show, maybe some of our own investor fuel guys, if if your ears are perking up, give Caleb a call because he can definitely help you and he he cares about your money. he’ll lose his money before he loses yours. So definitely the right guy to invest with, like I said. Caleb, thank you so much for coming on the show today. I appreciate you coming on. Sharing your knowledge. like I said, you’re remarkable, wise beyond your years. I can’t wait to see what the future holds for you and Landon Capital. So thank you so much.

Caleb Landon (21:34)
Thanks a lot for having huh?

Issa Hanna (21:35)
Appreciate Enjoyed our conversation. And to our viewers at home, if you guys enjoyed my conversation with Caleb and want to see more just like it, make sure to hit like and subscribe. I talk to people every day that can bring us different knowledge on every aspect of the real estate industry. Until next time,