Mastering Property Management: Secrets from Successful Investors Revealed

John Harcar (00:01.033)
All right, guys. Hey, welcome back to the show. I’m your host, John Harcar. And I’m here today with Matthias Gruenwald. And what we’re going to talk about is his incredible journey from his first duplex to over 600 doors. Guys, remember, at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers, I mean all real estate entrepreneurs, 2 to 5x their business by providing tools and resources to help build the business you want to build and really help them live the life they’ve always dreamed of. Matthias, welcome to our show.

Matthias Gruenwald (00:30.648)
Thanks John, thanks for having me.

John Harcar (00:32.253)
Man, I’m super excited to talk about it because that’s a huge jump. in our conversation prior, it seems like there’s a pretty short timeline to go from a duplex to 600 units. But before we get into all that, before we jump into leads, tell our audience a little bit about you, your background, how you got into real estate, and what got you here.

Matthias Gruenwald (00:51.502)
Sure, absolutely. So I was born and raised originally in Germany. Back in 2012, I moved to the United States related to my W2. At that time, I was a plan manager for a facility there. And they opened the new facility in Greenville, South Carolina, where I’m still located today. And I was kind of like the spearhead for that for that growth at that time. And then, you know, through the following years, I got promoted to COO. And, you know, that comes with promotions and, you know, more income and stuff like that. And then I started realizing

man, I got those, you know, salary increases, but you know, Uncle Sam takes more and more of that paycheck, what’s going on here. So I started reading books and realized, okay, real estate is probably something I want to look into, you know, lot of tax benefits, and there’s a lot of wealth can be created there. So back in 2021, my wife and I made a decision, you know, we want to go into real estate and build something, you know, build our own balance sheet, if you will. And then start looking what we want to get into what kind of niche and I always liked the multifamily side because I will always

John Harcar (01:25.245)
Mm-hmm.

Matthias Gruenwald (01:48.782)
you know, multiple units involved. If you have some vacancy, know, your total income doesn’t really drop to zero. So I always liked the, you know, multifamily side of it, the multi unit. But of course, when you get started, you cannot buy a 20 unit. So you start as small as possible, a small multifamily, which is a duplex. It’s what we did. And at that time, I mean, the rates were as low as they were in decades, and it was difficult to get something. So we did a really lowball offer from an idea that’s here local.

John Harcar (01:54.205)
but.

John Harcar (02:00.393)
You

John Harcar (02:07.977)
Sure.

Matthias Gruenwald (02:14.286)
that jumped out a contract right before Christmas Eve. I was like, this is the one I got did a lowball offer. I need to sell the thing. They fell the contract. And then we jumped in and they countered a little bit, but we were still like 40,000 on the asking, which is unheard of in 2021 because everyone was offering over asking. And that’s how the journey started. First duplex. And from there, I just said, okay, I want to do a fourplex next and then do an eight unit at least or more. And yeah, three years later, now we have 409 and adding another 180.

John Harcar (02:26.014)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (02:31.773)
Yeah, right. Okay.

Matthias Gruenwald (02:42.83)
almost 190 in the next three or three months, so close to 600.

John Harcar (02:45.645)
Incredible. Let’s go back. What kind of business was it where you’re a COO? What type of industry was it in?

Matthias Gruenwald (02:55.982)
That was automotive manufacturing. So we did heat shields for turbochargers, exhaust components like manifolds for all kinds of manufacturers. I started with BMW here, again, German company, right? And I came from Germany, but we did a lot of stuff later down the road for like Mack trucks, Freightliner, Corvettes, know, for Chevrolet Corvettes, did a lot of parts. So that’s the stuff we did.

John Harcar (03:12.989)
Got it. So you’re in this well-paying position, would assume. And you mentioned the Uncle Sam and the Tax thing. So what, I know you said you started reading some books, but why real estate books? How did you fall into that, to those?

Matthias Gruenwald (03:29.048)
Well, I Right, yeah, I was literally when I got my race at some point, like in 2019 right before covid, I was like, OK, I need to figure out a way. How do the rich pay less taxes or no taxes legally, of course? And it always fell back to real estate. was like, OK, let me let me just read some books. And I was cheap at that time. Still some sometimes cheap. And I just bought the cheapest real estate book that’s out there. And I don’t even know what it’s called anymore.

John Harcar (03:45.373)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (03:52.009)
Okay.

Matthias Gruenwald (03:55.958)
It’s part of the Rich Dad Paul, that advisor group and I can’t remember the author’s name anymore, but that book changed my real life. It’s kind of ironic. can’t remember the author. No, wasn’t that one. I read that one right after. But yeah, it was just going through like the tax benefits and how you increase value and how you can, you know, the birth method basically, refine and recycle that capital. So that’s how I got started. And then I read, I think then my fuel, that was just fuel for me and I just dumping rocket fuel on my

John Harcar (04:02.673)
Was it the cash flow quadrant? Was that one?

John Harcar (04:14.345)
Mm-hmm.

Matthias Gruenwald (04:23.982)
fire. And then I got sparked by passion. And then I think I read like 70 something books the first year just on real estate and everything else wealth building. I was like, okay, I need to I need to learn as much as possible. And then at some point, my wife said, you know, can you stop reading and make some offers because, you know, that’s let’s go let’s do this. And she’s right. And she gave me the kick in the butt. And so let’s do this together. And then we did stop making offers in 2021 on multifamily units.

John Harcar (04:30.405)
Incredible.

John Harcar (04:40.925)
Yeah.

John Harcar (04:48.969)
Well, that’s awesome because a lot of people do get analysis paralysis, right? They study and study and study. mean, and really the only way to fail is by doing. So you got your first duplex, right? You read books for a year. How long did it take you once you finally started making offers to get that first duplex on the contract?

Matthias Gruenwald (05:08.398)
probably more than half a year, really. I started at some point early in 2021, probably like April, May timeframe. And we got that first one like contract in December. And to remind you, think everybody knows and the audience does too, that was a really tough time to make anything happen because the rates were like super low. Everybody was going crazy. And I was like, I’m not gonna give up, but I’m also not gonna overpay. I’m very analytical. And then in my position that I was in as a COO,

John Harcar (05:22.34)
yes.

John Harcar (05:29.874)
Mm.

Matthias Gruenwald (05:33.582)
I lived in spreadsheets. So I’m not writing a deal for me comes natural. I love to look at spreadsheets all day. So I could tell like, okay, this is a good deal. This is not a good deal. And I could tell like what people are offering. There’s different types of buyers out there, right? 1031 buyers, etc. They can pay more than you. So you have to accept that. But you have to just stick to your numbers, be true to your numbers, and then make your offers whatever number works for you without overextending. And that’s that’s how we got it done. And now six, six or seven months later, we got the first one a contract.

John Harcar (05:46.141)
Yep.

Matthias Gruenwald (06:02.67)
And we pulled through and still own it today. I still own it today. Yeah, I do. Yeah.

John Harcar (06:03.049)
Yeah. Oh, do you? Awesome. Well, I think one thing you said, too, is like, kind of resonated with me is that you got to make offers because you don’t know who’s out there that is going to buy. A 1031 buyer might pay more. So you don’t want to hinder yourself by saying, I can only get this offers because I only have this type of buyer. Right. What lead gen were you doing to find this property or find properties at that point?

Matthias Gruenwald (06:29.1)
In the beginning, very unsophisticated, just Zillow telling everybody what I want to buy and that one actually found on Zillow. And again, it showed like, you know, under contract. And then I talked to my agent and she said, hey, they just, you know, killed the contract with the other buyer because he had several under contract and he couldn’t get financing for all of them. So that dropped that one. And that was one day before Christmas Eve. I was like, let’s do a lower offer because I don’t think they want to deal with this over Christmas. And they literally jumped on it and they countered, but it was still 40 under asking.

John Harcar (06:47.678)
Mm-hmm.

Matthias Gruenwald (06:56.878)
which was really nice and we got that one on the contract and I think we found some small issues with the duplex and then we re-traded a little bit and got it like another 5 or 7000 lower later but it’s a nice cash flow and deal, it’s nice base hit that wasn’t life changing from a cash flow perspective I think it was cash flow like 300 something a door which is still pretty good but what it does it was life changing in the fact that the law of the first deal is a true thing, is a real thing

John Harcar (07:17.715)
Hmm.

John Harcar (07:23.433)
Proof of concept.

Matthias Gruenwald (07:24.686)
proof of concept, you know, you can do it and then you do the next one. We were literally terrified of that first rental property. We didn’t know what we don’t know what we don’t know. We’re like, okay, let’s just do this. And I read a bunch of books, you know, listen to bigger pockets podcasts and other podcasts out there. Learned a lot of things from people that already been doing it for a long time and did networking and all that stuff. And then, you know,

John Harcar (07:30.983)
Hahaha

John Harcar (07:45.033)
Mm-hmm.

Matthias Gruenwald (07:45.836)
moved to the fourplex and then the duplex got boring, you that works and it’s great, let’s grow, you know, and then you grow as you get more more units and the next deal terrifies you and then you look looking back the mountain that you climbed and look down and was like, Whoa, I climbed all the way up here, you know, at some point, don’t realize how far you’re coming until you actually looking over your shoulder and see where you are.

John Harcar (07:50.141)
Let’s grow, get more.

John Harcar (08:00.188)
Right, right.

John Harcar (08:06.439)
You mentioned you got an agent and you’re looking on market deals. Why was it important for you to have an agent? And did you ever try to do off market, try to find some stuff that maybe was not on the MLS?

Matthias Gruenwald (08:19.438)
Certainly. So the first one I thought and from my research it makes sense on the first day to have an agent just because I hold your hand a little bit. Again, you don’t know what you don’t know. The second deal my fourplex was fully off market already. So I went right into off market because I talked to a lot of people and told them what I want to buy next and somebody heard from somebody selling their fourplex and I want to get rid of it because they need a new roof and all that stuff and heavy renovation.

John Harcar (08:43.282)
Mm-hmm.

Matthias Gruenwald (08:43.298)
But on the first year, I would always advise people just to get an agent, just to make sure you get through the full process. You have never bought a property before to understand how everything works. And somebody holds your hand and it just protects you a little bit. At that point, you have a bank giving you a loan as well. They’re your biggest partner. They’re going to vet the deal too. They want to make sure they get that money back. So if you have an agent, you have a bank loan involved, think you have some safety net, if you will. Of course, you have to buy the right deal. But that’s the way I approach it in the beginning.

John Harcar (08:56.584)
Sure.

John Harcar (09:03.795)
Of

John Harcar (09:13.415)
Got it. Now, obviously, you’ve grown and stuff. But looking back at that first deal, what do you think are some of the mistakes that you might have made or maybe challenges you came across in that first deal versus kind of, you you got the flow going now?

Matthias Gruenwald (09:29.966)
Yes, I think the biggest one was that when I underwrote it at that time, I didn’t realize that South Carolina does reassess the taxes so aggressively after purchase, especially in the previous owner-owned it for a long time. Then it actually can almost triple in property taxes and that chewed up a lot of cash flow and it’s still cash flows today after the reassessment, but I’m paying $2,000 more property tax than I expected. So it was, yeah, so that’s pretty harsh in South Carolina sometimes.

John Harcar (09:43.485)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (09:53.83)
Mmm.

Matthias Gruenwald (09:57.134)
how they do property taxes. That was one of my mistakes. So that can really bite you in some states if you’re not careful. It’s easy to go around it and actually, I mean, once you learn it, it’s fine. Like in South Carolina, many counties use like QPublic, for example, and you can go and put the address in and there’s a tax estimator and you put in your probably your purchase price and then it calculates what the new tax will be. It takes you five minutes. I didn’t know at the time. I thought like, oh yeah, I got to round it up a little bit. They’re paid for…

John Harcar (10:02.312)
Mm-hmm.

Matthias Gruenwald (10:24.75)
I do like $42.50 or whatever, but in the end it was $6, so almost $2,000 more. I was like, whoa! And it’s a little bit near cash flow, you know, for sure. So it went from like cash flow like $700 a month, pure cash flow to like $500, so $250 a dollar later. And when I say pure cash flow, that’s after like 5 % vacancy, 5 % capex, 5 % repair maintenance. That’s what I mean with pure cash flow, so.

John Harcar (10:26.825)
Mm.

John Harcar (10:31.847)
Yeah.

John Harcar (10:43.581)
Yeah.

Right, right. So now when you’re underwriting deals, you, you know, especially if they’ve been on for a while, are you kind of anticipating all that tax increase or how are you kind of putting that into your numbers?

Matthias Gruenwald (10:58.22)
Yeah, for certain certainly definitely go into the calculators many counties I’m doing offers on they have like their own tax calculator at least you find like the tax rate you can calculate that way. If you just do back of a napkin you can just do you know, I mean if I know that owner for 20 years not paying $1,000 for for property probably goes to two or three you know just put that in there’s like a gap filler just to know you’re protected and then you can do some fine underwriting later. But I definitely since I did that first deal that mistake never happened again.

John Harcar (11:17.318)
Yeah.

John Harcar (11:22.961)
Mm-hmm.

Matthias Gruenwald (11:27.17)
And I think there’s something to be said here. That’s why you shouldn’t start with 20 unit because if you’re wrong on the rent projects on 20 units, you’re wrong 20 times, not just two times on a duplex. So start small, baby steps, and then you start running at some point.

John Harcar (11:27.399)
Hahaha

John Harcar (11:34.779)
Yes. Yes.

John Harcar (11:40.821)
Before we talk about kind of how your growth and where you’re at now just a couple other things What was your mindset on going into a? Duplex why didn’t you start with you like most people a single family?

Matthias Gruenwald (11:54.626)
Simple reason, it was always about I don’t like if somebody moves out and my income drops to zero. I was like I need as many units as possible. It was just my mindset at the time. I thought okay at least you’re 50 % occupied if one moves out. And I was like man the fourplex must be cool. If one moves out I’m still mainly occupied and I can still cash flow with three units if I buy well. So that’s the mindset behind it. I just like to have multiple income streams because on a single family at home again if somebody moves out, entire income is gone.

John Harcar (12:03.07)
Yeah.

John Harcar (12:10.173)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (12:22.045)
Yeah. Were you at the beginning self-managing some of these things, like the duplex, or did you get a property manager from the jump?

Matthias Gruenwald (12:30.446)
We actually managed it ourselves. My wife is doing the property management, again, total team effort on our end. And it’s really simple. I mean, we’re very systematized and very organized and structured. And we have a property management software we’re using, the Tennis Communique through that, to pay online and everything. I think I haven’t been to my duplex in the last year and a half, and I only owned it for three years. So we don’t have to go there. it’s, yeah, we self-manage. And also the reason why we self-manage, some people…

John Harcar (12:35.209)
Awesome.

John Harcar (12:54.067)
Sure. Yeah, that’s awesome.

Matthias Gruenwald (12:59.864)
think it might be foolish to do so because the waste of your time, which I partially agree. But the other end where I disagree with is I like to actually know how property management works so I can manage a property manager down the road better. So that’s the way I look at this.

John Harcar (13:12.123)
Right, right. Yeah, and that’s true. I mean, because a lot of people, know, I’ll just hire a property manager, but if you don’t know what he does, you don’t know that process. How do you know if he’s doing the right stuff? How do know if he’s executing properly? So yeah, that’s big. Yeah, so now let’s talk about kind of, you mentioned you were at a duplex. You mentioned you went to a fourplex. I know what we talked before. There was RV parks. Now you’re into mobile homes.

Matthias Gruenwald (13:27.425)
Exactly.

John Harcar (13:41.191)
What were some of these challenges that you faced jumping asset classes? What new roadblocks, what new obstacles did you have to overcome?

Matthias Gruenwald (13:50.466)
Man, that was a total mindset shift at that point, because at that point, you definitely need a team. You do not that stuff alone anymore. It’s really important to find a partner and actively searching for one can work or cannot work. So I was actually joining Masterminds at that time and actually started working with people, just having calls every day with people in the Mastermind, see how I can bring value to them and, you know, just helping people out, just giving back basically.

I think it’s always the wrong approach to see somebody that you want to work with and just tell them like, how can I help you? Let me know how I can help you. I think the easiest would be just to figure out, okay, where they need help with and perhaps that actually is your strength. And that happens with my partner. My partner now is like, you know, one of my best friends to your Tim Woodbridge. He’s a phenomenal partner to work with great human being and he does a really good job of acquisitions. He’s a master in acquisitions, but he doesn’t like underwriting and I love underwriting. So perfect match.

John Harcar (14:31.454)
Yeah.

John Harcar (14:45.861)
Yeah.

Matthias Gruenwald (14:47.128)
The perfect partnership right there. We work really well together and we’ve been growing a lot in the last two years. I think going from like the, you know, single family or just residential, basically small multifamily to commercial, there’s more acronyms, you know, it sounds fancy, but it’s the same stuff, you know, it’s just, there’s a lot more zeros. I think that’s another thing where people get stuck too. There’s a lot more zeros. But what I realized is the bigger the deal, the easier the deal gets. Usually you have economy of scale, you can at some point.

John Harcar (15:04.784)
Sure.

John Harcar (15:14.205)
Really?

Matthias Gruenwald (15:15.982)
If you buy like a hundred unit, 50 unit mobile home park, you can hire a property manager full time because you can pay them like 30, $40,000 a year, know, or somebody does it as a side gig at that point. that’s a ton of psychic income for managing a property. So if you have a community manager that you pay for that. yeah, I think a lot of people are scared by the zeros and they see just in the spreadsheet, oh, I need like a million dollar down payment. I have half a million capex. I don’t have that money.

John Harcar (15:24.179)
Mm.

Matthias Gruenwald (15:44.216)
But the thing is, at that point, you have to raise the money, obviously. Or you have to find partners that have the money all chipping in together. You have to be creative at that point. then you’re basically restarting the law of the first deal. You have to then do one commercial deal and you realize, this wasn’t that bad. This is doable with a team. So that’s what I was. then, again, rocket fuel on that concept. So at that point, we just kept growing.

John Harcar (15:44.358)
Mm.

John Harcar (15:58.387)
Yeah.

John Harcar (16:07.653)
Awesome. The process of underwriting, you know, a smaller commercial versus, you know, a big RV park or mobile home. How did you learn that?

Matthias Gruenwald (16:21.646)
In that mastermind, they actually had some kind of shark tank kind of thing. You can actually submit a deal that you want to review with them and they basically took it apart with you together. They asked you all kinds of critical questions because the main guy in that mastermind has well worth a thousand units or two thousand units even and he just takes it apart for you. They don’t want any equity or nothing. They just want to help you. They want to make sure you don’t buy a bad deal. And that was really good. And they just had critical questions. think the first year I brought them was somewhere in Louisiana. I was like, who’s going to manage this? I’m like,

John Harcar (16:31.102)
Hmm.

John Harcar (16:42.717)
Yeah. Yep.

Matthias Gruenwald (16:51.542)
I don’t know. And they’re like, OK, good. That’s a good point. Maybe you should figure out who can run this for you. then, you know, like, OK, you have to underwrite that risk in there. Maybe have to pay someone really well that lives on site. And again, in that mastermind, there were people there from that area and they actually lived in that town. They were like, I’m going to partner with you. And then you just have to have that network and actually start pulling up puzzle piece together. Ironically, that deal didn’t go through, but it just came back to us through another broker. So we’re actually offering on that deal again.

John Harcar (16:51.667)
He he he he.

John Harcar (17:01.737)
Bye.

Matthias Gruenwald (17:17.454)
We still haven’t gotten a contract, but that was that deal that took apart for me that one time. So yeah, that’s how you learn to underwrite it just get better and better at it. Repeating, know, that sometimes you do mistakes, but you learn from them and you just get stronger and stronger. Like I did with the duplex with the property tax being miscalculated, you know, you do some small mistakes here and there, but people, know, a teamwork, right? People look for the underwriting with you. And at some point you capital raise and some of the investors want to see the underwriting and then

John Harcar (17:21.735)
Great.

John Harcar (17:34.941)
Mm-hmm.

Matthias Gruenwald (17:46.688)
make you aware of things that you might not have looked at from that perspective. And then you’re like, okay, yeah, actually, that’s a good point, Mr. Investor. Thank you so much for letting me know that. And I can update on my underwriting. So construct a criticism. It makes you a lot better at underwriting.

John Harcar (17:50.515)
Yeah.

John Harcar (17:58.856)
Yeah.

Yeah, and you know, they say network is your net worth, right? You know, the masterminds are just kind of like how our mastermind is. It’s about, you know, the growth and the opportunity and people that will come in and lift your business up. What mastermind was it, if you don’t mind me asking?

Matthias Gruenwald (18:14.664)
It’s the My First Million Motor Family, MFMIM. That’s the first one I’m in. I’m still in there right now. I’m actually running the underwriting call for mobile home parks. So again, giving back to the community. It’s every second Thursday. I’m in another mastermind, the Battle Life Tribe with Brandon Turner as well. So that’s a big group. There’s over thousand members as well. Yeah, those are the two masterminds I’m mainly in and looking into more future masterminds like capital raising focused in the future.

John Harcar (18:17.062)
Okay.

John Harcar (18:23.662)
awesome. Yeah.

John Harcar (18:37.597)
Very cool.

John Harcar (18:42.089)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. What do you think that, so I mean, I know you kind of touched on it, but what is the most valuable thing you’re finding in these masterminds? Is it kind of like that board of advisors type of group?

Matthias Gruenwald (18:53.582)
Yes, that helps, especially having access to people like that and have like those, I mean, it’s like the Battle of the Left Tribe, for example, you can actually have a call of Brandon Turner with other people once a month and ask him questions. he, as you know, that he’s very heavy mobile home parks and I have very specific questions. I want to go from, he went from, you know, zero to 14,000 units with apartments and self storage, of course, but

They have a lot of mobile home park units, so I can ask a lot of questions. Hey, what do I have to do? Who do I have to become to go from 600 units to 6000 or even 10,000 units? So having those people in those groups to tell you where the road can lead you and how to get there is very powerful. And there’s this famous quote, right? If you want to know the road ahead, ask the people that coming back and this kind of thing. I always like to be in rooms where I’m kind of the dumbest and just ask more and questions. And that’s what I like about the masterminds. And then the group around it,

John Harcar (19:36.637)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Matthias Gruenwald (19:45.602)
the network, know, as other people striving to do the same thing as you. And then you can ask questions and you can learn together or even partner. I mean, in that mastermind.

John Harcar (19:46.588)
Yeah.

John Harcar (19:52.723)
Well, yeah, I’m going say, yeah, he said partner creates opportunity, right? That you might not otherwise get. So what does your team look like today?

Matthias Gruenwald (19:56.312)
Correct. Absolutely.

That’s right, absolutely.

Matthias Gruenwald (20:04.782)
So we have Tim and I are the visionary integrator, typical, you know, constellation. So I’m the integrator, basically, and I’m working, I’m more like 70 % integrator and 30 % visionary. And my partner Tim is more like 80 % visionary, 20 % integrator. And from there, we have acquisitions and then acquisition investor relations, which is another partner. We have an ideal and then underneath basically all operations, the underwriting, the financials, the financial team, have a veteran.

John Harcar (20:18.665)
Okay.

Matthias Gruenwald (20:35.118)
Accountant veteran on the team. He’s 18 years in accounting has his own accounting firm. He basically does like fractional CFO work for us for equity in the deals. It gets paid that way. And then we have, you know, virtual assistant that virtual property managers that takes the phone calls and stuff like that. Managers the maintenance requests that coming through each property has his own vendor list. They know exactly who to call. If that probably has an issue, this is the community manager that give them a call if they need boots in the ground.

John Harcar (20:42.884)
Mm-hmm.

Matthias Gruenwald (21:04.43)
You know, do your reactor for leasing for showings and stuff like that. And then again, the community manager, individual managers in each of those communities that we have, or maybe one for multiple if they’re in the same area. So yeah, that’s the main structure right now. And we actually just hired somebody that’s more like our data analyst. There’s really strong Power BI to put all the properties together on the dashboard so we can look at the

KPI for the entire portfolio because now when you’re talking 600 plus units and you want to crack a thousand by early next year, we have to look at the entire health of the company. So that’s the current structure at the moment.

John Harcar (21:39.71)
Yes.

John Harcar (21:43.801)
Awesome. It’s not like you built a great team. What trends do you see or are you seeing in the multifamily or maybe even mobile home space as things are moving along? know we have interest rate issues and all that type of stuff, the way the economy. What are you seeing the path as right now?

Matthias Gruenwald (22:00.77)
With mobile home parks, there’s many reasons why I like them, but affordability is a major issue in the country, obviously, and not only in the US, but also in other countries. can tell you the same thing happens in Germany where I’m from, but affordability is big issue. So if you’re in the mobile home park industry, those homes can be bought relatively cheap. mean, they definitely got more expensive after COVID with the run-up in inflation, but you can get a really nice two-one mobile home for mid-50s, maybe even the 40s.

John Harcar (22:22.055)
Bye.

Matthias Gruenwald (22:29.294)
Like a 3-2 we bought for like around $70,000 with setup and transportation everything. It’s more like a $60,000 home. know, put that on the lot somewhere and sell that off. I it’s as affordable as it can get, know, tiny homes, you know, they become more popular. We actually talk to people that can build those things and we can use them for infilling your empty pads and mobile homes. So, affordability.

John Harcar (22:34.74)
wow.

Matthias Gruenwald (22:52.642)
That’s fulfilling a need here with mobile home parks to provide affordable housing, which I think that’s really a trend in the future. You see a lot of big companies, big PE firms coming in, getting very active in mobile home park field right now because of that reason, because we’re not going to fix that anytime soon. And not at least in next couple of years. It’s going to take a while to get that inventory up, obviously. And I like in the mobile home parks, you have a low expense ratio. So I think it makes it very attractive.

John Harcar (23:00.04)
Great.

John Harcar (23:20.839)
Yeah.

Matthias Gruenwald (23:20.93)
for investors and institutional investors as well, especially if they’re all tenant on homes, if you have parks like that, very predictable income. You don’t have any crazy expenses usually, which makes it really predictable and it’s fulfilling a need for affordable housing at the same time, which makes it really powerful.

John Harcar (23:40.551)
Unless you have a bridge in the back that floods and traps people. If someone was thinking about making a transition from whether they’re doing just single family or maybe even small multifamily to the bigger units, to the mobile home parks, RV parks, I mean, what advice do you think you would give them just to kind of get pushed in the right direction?

Matthias Gruenwald (23:43.758)
Ha ha ha. It’s true.

Matthias Gruenwald (24:03.394)
Get the right rooms. Tell everybody what you’re wanting to do and what your next goals are. Change your words as well. Don’t say, I would like to do this. Say, I’m doing this next. And then if that makes a big shift how people perceive how serious you are, you’re training your mind to, I’m going to do this next. Yeah, be really…

John Harcar (24:17.406)
Mmm.

Matthias Gruenwald (24:28.83)
Ferocious about it as well and get in the right rooms and be be a likable person I think it goes a long way if you’re likable if you’re just a jerk and nobody wants to work with you I think you will have a hard time in the industry. That’s for sure But just be around to be the most Interested person not the most interesting person if that makes sense like ask questions see where the big players are I was going to my local Rio meetings I always try to sniff out who has a 2,000 units and just ask as many questions as possible

John Harcar (24:40.167)
Yeah. Yeah.

John Harcar (24:46.727)
I love that.

Matthias Gruenwald (24:56.204)
you know, as I can like, how did you get there? And how did you do this? And how do you do capital raising? How’s your process looking like? What’s your team looking like? Asking all those questions about being annoying, of course. But you know, usually when you look back on if I look back at that, in those right rooms and asking the people those questions, they’re always very happy to help. Because usually people that have this portfolio they have built over the years, they love to give back and they see maybe themselves at that point, like, hey, I was at that

John Harcar (25:06.32)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (25:15.411)
Sure.

John Harcar (25:24.723)
Yeah.

Matthias Gruenwald (25:25.55)
time at zero units or just a duplex and I would love someone would have held my hand a little bit and helped them a little bit as long as it’s nice person that everybody’s happy to help each other in the industry I feel like, which I love in the real estate industry. Many people have an abundance mindset and a lot of people helping each other reach their goals. So that would be my main advice, all of my mindset.

John Harcar (25:41.306)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, no, that’s huge. know, set aside the ego. You know, be, I love how you said that, be interested, not interesting. You’re going to go a lot further. If folks that are listening to this, and I know you mentioned you got a website, you’re doing some arrays, tell folks how they can get a hold of you. What about you that you could share that you might be able to help?

Matthias Gruenwald (26:09.9)
Yes, absolutely. we have a website is WCG Investments.com. You can reach out there and my main parts on the website as well. You see my email address on it also, but there’s also like a form you can fill out and get in contact with us. So if you would like to invest with us, or if you just want to reach out and learn how we do things, you can go there. I’m very active on LinkedIn and Facebook. So if you just really put in my name, Matthias Grunwald, as well, you can get a con getting in contact with me. And yeah, I’m happy to give back and

tell people how I did it. I have a lot of people reaching out almost every day how I did it, going from a W2 to full-time real estate. I’m always happy to jump on the 30-minute call for free, of course. I’m not going to do a charge like a fee or anything for consulting fee. Yeah, exactly. Only $10,000. The second call. But I’m happy to help reach out, and I would love to jump on the call and help people to achieve their dream.

John Harcar (26:49.181)
Nice.

John Harcar (26:52.989)
Fed me a thousand bucks. Yeah. Yeah, that’s it. Right.

John Harcar (27:05.253)
Awesome. Mattias, sorry.

Thank you, man. Congratulations on your journey. That’s huge. In such a short time from going from where you started to all these doors, I hope you guys picked up some really good nuggets here. I I took some really good notes. There’s a lot of things that I think are very pertinent, especially with the mindset piece of a lot of this, because that’s really what it is. Thank you guys again. I hope you enjoyed the show. Matias, thank you again. And we’ll see you guys on the next one. Cheers.

Matthias Gruenwald (27:34.808)
Thanks, John. Cheers.