How to Start Investing in Mobile Homes With $20K | Tony Acosta Jr.

Tony Acosta Jr (00:00)

You could buy a few mobile homes with twenty thousand dollars and you could resell them. you could do that really easily by going into different mobile home communities and talking with people, right? what I would recommend. or reach out to me, maybe we can work together on some of those JV and get the ball rolling and moving in the right direction if that’s something you’re interested in. But

Certainly that was one of the first things that I did because of some really, really great people that were coaching me at the beginning and still are friends today. I would say that go into mobile home communities see if you can talk with them and purchase some homes that they’re looking to get rid of or that they don’t want on their books, or maybe someone in the park is selling.

Scott Bursey (01:10)

Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros Podcast powered by Investor Fuel. I’m your host, Scott Bursey Glad you’re with us. And today we’re delighted to be joined by Tony Acosta Jr., founder of Acosta Homes of Texas, out of San Antonio. Tony’s company helps families buy and sell manufactured homes, moving them on to the next chapter of their lives. And he’s building it with a people first philosophy.

His vision reaches well past Texas. Listeners, get ready for a corner of real estate most investors walk right past. From a man who is building a legacy in it. Tony, welcome to the show.

Tony Acosta Jr (01:49)

Thank you so much, Scott. Pleasure to be here, man. Really is.

Scott Bursey (01:52)

It’s awesome having you here, my friend. And to help our listeners get up to speed. Please give us the ninety second highlight reel of how your career ignited and really where you’re pouring your fuel now.

Tony Acosta Jr (02:04)

Yeah. I’ll try to keep it to 90 seconds. I will do my best. But I think that the journey started twenty seventeen. I had a pretty major accident that I was in. a hex nut actually flew through my windshield while I was driving home. I was driving home from church actually with my six-year-old son, hit me on the mouth. doctor said

If it would have hit me any higher or lower, it would have killed me. But it broke my jaw, knocked out eleven teeth. I lost a lot of bone and tissue. So it was a really painful experience. Took me about a year for them to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. And after that, I had a really different perspective on life, and the brevity of it, and how all we have is this moment. We don’t have the past, and we certainly don’t have the future. Tomorrow isn’t promised. And so I realized really quickly.

how brief and fragile life is there’s phrase that I love Dr. Miles Monroe used to say live full, die empty. And so I purposed it myself, I’m gonna die empty. I am gonna express everything that’s in me. and so because of that, I went for it and started Acosta Homes of Texas. Back it was Acosta Home Investments and then we stumbled our way into the mobile home industry and

Here we are today, all these years later, and we’re growing and building and just excited about what’s happening in our company and in our family and with the people that are a part of it.

Scott Bursey (03:22)

Thank you for walking us through that step by step, Tony. what really caught my attention about you, Tony, was two thousand seventeen. Because of a highway accident, that nearly took your life. And instead of ending your story, it redirected your path.

Tony Acosta Jr (03:38)

Yeah, that’s for sure.

Scott Bursey (03:39)

A lot of people would have come out of that just grateful to be standing and you came out of it and built a company. We want to dig into that a little deeper. that accident changed the way you see people and business. What’s the biggest, I guess, misconception people have about manufactured homes in your view?

Tony Acosta Jr (04:37)

yeah, the biggest misconception I would say is and I don’t know where necessarily it comes from, but there’s a stigma associated with them, right? That people are like, I don’t want that. And the thing that I’ve seen after being in the industry for a little bit is and the way that I like to look at it’s a home. You know what I mean? It’s a home.

that somebody is for most of our clients rearing their families in. And so they’re able to keep their families warm or cool, mostly cool if you live in Texas, because it’s brutally hot. But it’s somewhere where people can raise their families and do that in with dignity. with a lot of the people that we work with, it’s something that they’re proud of and they take care of

it’s not viewed that way by a lot of people. not sure if I’m articulating the misconception there, but I think there’s certainly a stigma around it, right? That exists.

Scott Bursey (05:21)

Let’s shift gears a little bit. Sure. Where do mobile home deals most often fall apart before closing?

Tony Acosta Jr (05:28)

Good question. It depends. There’s two types of deals that do a lot of cash deals. For whatever reason we attract a lot of cash buyers, which huge fan of. deal moves very quickly. In other words, we don’t have to wait for financing even though we do finance home, we work with lenders, right? we don’t do the financing, we work with lenders, but I think probably a lack of communication and transparency.

would be where some of the cash deals fall apart. you didn’t tell me was wrong with the home. Hey, you left that out. So that may be one thing. But as far as that’s on the cash side, on the financing side, I would say people’s credit situations can just like they would in a traditional mortgage, those same types of situations happen on our end, unfortunately. Yeah.

Scott Bursey (06:10)

You highlighted communication, Tony. What did you put in place so you have more effective communication so those hurdles don’t happen time after time?

Tony Acosta Jr (06:20)

I actually got this idea from Carvana and it’s something that we’re working to implement in every deal that we have because we’ve got our website where we have inventory. we call it the Acosta Condition Report. And all it is we have a detailed video and pictures and explanation and kind of a walkthrough of what’s wrong with the home. you can see every flaw if there are any flaws on the home.

so that helps people to know up front what’s going on with the home. That way we don’t have the types of situations that, we’ve run into in the past lack of communication. Yeah.

Scott Bursey (06:53)

Thank you, Tony. Appreciate you covering that more in depth. I want to go a little deeper on this one. Where’s the opportunity in manufactured housing that most investors walk right past?

Tony Acosta Jr (07:04)

Yeah, I think from what I’ve seen, just this is just an opinion, there’s definitely an opportunity for investors to make money with manufactured homes. I think a lot of them they’re more difficult to price. because the comps are different. Everything is there. You could still run comps and there’s an NADA it’s kind of like a Kelley Blue Book

Right. For cars, you go and you could see what the value of the home is. But with manufactured homes, really what the market will pay is what the home worth, right? what the home will sell for, right, if I can put it that way. I think what I’ve seen is difficulty pricing because a lot of realtors that I’ve seen post manufactured homes for sale price them really high. And that’s where

the opportunity is to learn how to price these things at a more competitive rate so that they can move quicker, right? And so that’s one of the things that we’ve gotten pretty good at. we make our money when we buy the home. So we’re really, good at buying, especially conservatively right now with the way that the market is, we have to be conservative in our offers. it’s the only reason we’re still in business. But there’s a huge opportunity I would say with

being able to price them effectively, right? So they’ll move.

Scott Bursey (08:08)

You spoke of pricing and purchasing, buying. What makes San Antonio the right ground for those two components?

Tony Acosta Jr (08:51)

Scott, would probably push back on San Antonio Bamadas. here’s what I mean by that. We purchased a lot of inventory in San Antonio, but lately for whatever reason, a lot of the inventory that we’re selling, we’re moving into other areas. right now, Houston, for example, has been pretty hot market for us, as well as the Midland Odessa the Permian Basin, right? Midland Odessa and Austin, even Dallas.

so a lot of the homes that we buy are here in San Antonio, but they sell a lot more out of town for us. And that’s the beauty of the mobile home industry is that we’re not married to the place where they are necessarily if it’s not real property, right? ‘Cause it could be real property. But a lot of the homes that we sell that are just personal property can be just moved to wherever the person who wants to buy it, which makes the model that we have

Workable, right? And effective.

Scott Bursey (09:40)

Thanks for answering that one directly, Tony. And now I want to ask you this.

What sort of obstacle do you face when in the manufactured housing community when the economy tightens up?

Tony Acosta Jr (09:52)

I guess the obstacle would be finding buyers, right? Finding rent buyers who are qualified and ready to purchase a home. And I think maybe that has been the challenge, right? At times. And what really opened it up for me is or at least mentally. I was like, man, nobody’s buying here. What are we gonna do? Inventory’s not moving. And I was at a Tony Robbins conference.

it was business mastery and he talks about some guys that were in the real estate industry and had the same problem, right? The inventory wasn’t moving, they didn’t know what to do, they were freaking out. And then they go to trade show in China, like some off the wall thing that just you wouldn’t put together, right? In the same sentence. And they go out there and they meet some investors

Who end up purchasing a lot of their inventory. So they were able to move a lot of the inventory that they had somewhere where they never thought they would move it. So the principle that stuck with me to put it on a bumper sticker is go find the buyer. They’re out there. And so that’s what we did say, Okay, well let’s place these homes let’s list them in different geographic locations, say we’ll move it, we’ll deliver to you and

We went out and we found the buyers. That was the challenge. It was finding buyers.

Scott Bursey (11:03)

How is Acosta Homes positioning themselves, you in particular, if that happens this year?

Tony Acosta Jr (11:09)

If that happens this year, and I think it has happened. we’ve strengthened marketing a whole lot to where we are getting a lot of leads we do a lot of social media marketing. So our Facebook page has really gotten a lot of traction. We get a lot of leads there. what do they call it?

I think Grant Cardone calls it conversation domination, where you just go make yourself really findable. In other words, be all over social media and post everywhere. And so that’s one of the things we’ve had to do that we started doing, I think, early and when the economy tightened. cool thing is I think the buyers still there, but now we’re more findable. it helps us to be able

push through that. the economy’s tightened in this few years.

Scott Bursey (11:49)

Appreciate you sharing the mechanics of that. Tony wondering, you talk about taking this national. What

Tony Acosta Jr (11:55)

Yeah.

Scott Bursey (11:56)

does the first step outside Texas look like?

Tony Acosta Jr (11:59)

That’s great question. Certainly we’re looking at states where manufactured housing is something that is easy to navigate, right? I think Florida is another state that we’re looking at. how friendly the laws are in the state with manufactured housing. So that’s definitely one of those things. And then the South is

coastal region along the bottom of the US, moving towards Florida, a lot of those places are very friendly towards mobile homes. And another thing that we’re tracking too is because of the fact that we’re not able to geographically target the Facebook page that we have, it kinda is all over. So we’re tracking data because people are like, Hey, are you guys in this state? Are you in this state?

And we’re like, no, we’re currently just in Texas, but we’ll let you know as we expand. And so we’re tracking that data to see where we’re getting a lot of hot spots, if you will,

Scott Bursey (12:48)

Appreciate you taking your time on that one, Tony. And for our listeners that are tuned in and they’re thinking to themselves, Hey, this is somebody that I really like that perhaps I would maybe even consider partnering with. What would you like them to know first about Acosta Homes of Texas?

Tony Acosta Jr (13:07)

Yeah, we’re positioning ourselves as Texas number one mobile home dealership. I’m a straight shooter and that’s the way we run our operations. And the beautiful thing about that the strength there is the fact that our reputation is so strong. So we don’t believe in customers. We call our customers clients because customers come one time.

And clients keep coming back. And so we have a lot of repeat clients. And the reason that is, one obviously me, it’s the grace of God, man. That’s one of the things. Another thing is the way that we treat people. We treat people well. we’re fair with the way that we do business, it’s very straightforward honest business, man. And that’s sadly in the mobile home business, that’s not always the case.

you hear some crazy stories. You stick around long enough and you start to hear crazy stories. I’m sure no matter what industry, wanted to make sure that we’re not doing that. some things I think that I’d like people to know about it.

Scott Bursey (13:57)

I appreciate you highlighting that. Tony, what does your professional network look like right now? And over the years, how has the networking and relationships, what has made the biggest difference for you personally with everything that you’ve been through?

Tony Acosta Jr (14:11)

Relationships. Yeah, I think you said it. And I think relationships has been the biggest thing. and I tell people too, it’s funny, I just thought about that, but that we’re a relationship company. we want to continue to do business with you. We want to build a relationship so that you refer us to your family that only just that doesn’t just apply to our clientele, it applies to what the vendors that we use. Got really great relationships.

With the vendors that we use, we’ve got really great relationships with contractors, great relationships with the vendors, right? Lenders, factories, transport companies, relationships is what got me through the very difficult time that during the accident.

the networks that we’re in today just amazing. when I think about it, but relationships I think if I had to sum it up

Scott Bursey (14:52)

That is powerful. That’s the kind of network that opens doors.

Tony Acosta Jr (14:57)

Yeah, for sure. I agree.

Scott Bursey (14:58)

Tony, let’s dive deep. If a listener, let’s say, has twenty thousand dollars and wants into real estate but believes they can’t afford to play, what is the first move that you would recommend that they make?

Tony Acosta Jr (15:11)

That’s good question. So if they had twenty thousand dollars

I would say

You could buy a few mobile homes with twenty thousand dollars resell them. and you could do that really easily by going into different mobile home communities and talking with people, right? what I would recommend. or reach out to me, maybe we can work together on some of those JV and get the ball rolling and moving in the right direction if that’s something you’re interested in. But

Certainly that was one of the first things that I did because of some really, really great people that were coaching me at the beginning and still are friends today. I would say that go into mobile home communities see if you can talk with them and purchase some homes that they’re looking to get rid of or that they don’t want on their books, or maybe someone in the park is selling. that’s what I would say.

Scott Bursey (15:52)

That is some rock solid advice right there, Tony. you have really given us a lot of perspective on this niche. Is there any additional words of wisdom or additional words of perspective that you would like to leave with our listeners here today?

Tony Acosta Jr (16:09)

Yeah, there is. I tell this to my kids, believe this wholeheartedly that God put you on the earth to do something great. it’s up to you to step into that and to do the great thing that God puts you on the earth to do. So I believe in you, I’m rooting for you. And just live full, die empty.

Scott Bursey (16:25)

That is really powerful. Thank you for that, Tony. And for those of our listeners that want to keep this conversation moving, stay in your lane, or perhaps collaborate with you on future deals, what’s the best way for them plug into your pipeline and reach you directly?

Tony Acosta Jr (16:39)

Yeah, you can catch me on social media, so at Tony Acosta Jr. official on Instagram. TikTok, Facebook, so all those platforms where you can find me.

Scott Bursey (16:50)

Tony, thank you for joining us today on the Real Estate Pros Podcast

Tony Acosta Jr (16:54)

Absolutely. My pleasure, Scott. Thank you for having me.

Scott Bursey (16:56)

This has been an absolute master class. And to our listeners, we appreciate each and every one of you. If you receive value from today’s episode, please subscribe. We’ll be fueling your tanks with a lineup of elite guest, just like Tony Acosta, Jr. who are accelerating and setting the pace for the rest of the industry. Until next time, keep your standards high and your vision clear. We’ll see you in the next episode, everyone.