Mobile Home Investing: Why Jason Postill Is All In

Jason Postill (00:00)
So this is in a detached dwelling, okay, like a single family, it’s a manufactured home or they have modular homes, they have different, but it’s, our average lot is $400, $395. So it’s…

That’s still even crazy to think that in America. I we’ll buy some of these parks and they are paying still $150 a month. I mean, if you can believe in America, somebody says they’re paying $100 a month to live. So.

You know that that is just there’s a never-ending need right we’re behind there’s food water and then shelter So, you know, why is it a great asset? Well living right and then more more specifically affordable housing.

Kristen Knapp (01:15)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m Kristen Knapp, and I’m here with Jason Postill, the co-founder of MHCI Group, which is the largest owner of mobile home communities in the state of Arkansas. So we’re going to get into some really exciting stuff today. Thank you for being here, Jason.

Jason Postill (01:28)
Thanks, Kristen. Appreciate you having me.

Kristen Knapp (01:30)
Yeah, well, let’s start at the beginning. What got you interested in real estate in the beginning?

Jason Postill (01:35)
Yeah. So, you know, I didn’t have family in the, in the industry or really friends at the time. And, my background out of college, I, always wanted to play baseball. That was my dream. Be a professional baseball player. And I was fortunate to be able to go play for about five years, excuse me, after college. And I heard a guy, it was my last season. I was an injured, I knew it was probably the end of the road. And I heard him.

Telling the guys it was one of those talks like hey guys, this is gonna end at some point, right? But don’t don’t feel bad and he said he didn’t even make his millions playing baseball and he made it to the big leagues, too So he was telling us hey guys, don’t worry. I didn’t even make my millions in baseball. I made it owning a thousand apartment units in Detroit and I was like this guy didn’t go to barely got through high school just played baseball wasn’t didn’t seem like the brightest guy I was like, okay if he can do that that seemed

Kristen Knapp (02:33)
Mm.

Jason Postill (02:36)
something you know I should look into so I did that or I said did that I got the wheels turn in and I got a real estate license which for your listeners you don’t need to get a real estate license if you want to be a real estate professional or syndicator so that was really how it started it was just kind of that little meeting and just got me thinking asking asking questions really

Kristen Knapp (03:01)
That’s really lucky. I see a lot of people who play sports professionally, you you’re so passionate about something for most of your life and then when that career ends it’s kind of like what what happens next. So that’s really lucky that you found something immediately you’re passionate about.

Jason Postill (03:16)
Yeah. you know, that’s because I love baseball. That was my life. And a lot of guys go after their careers over. They coach and I do. I want to do that. I want to give back. for me, I knew I wanted to build something. I loved the real estate just always just when I was a kid, just seeing the skyline, the commercial. I had a passion for it. So that was I did. I would call it luck for sure. ⁓ And had some help along the way to figure it out. But

Kristen Knapp (03:40)
Yeah.

Jason Postill (03:46)
It was just, again, asking myself the right questions and going and figuring it out.

Kristen Knapp (03:51)
Yeah. And then,

so you got your real estate license. When did you transfer into the investing sector?

Jason Postill (03:57)
Yeah, so what I did was I didn’t know if I was going to go back to real estate or I’m sorry, back to baseball or not. So I had some people telling me, well, if you get a real estate license, you’re not going to make money for six months or even a year, right? When you get into sales. And I heard that a couple of times I’m thinking, well, that doesn’t sound great. And I don’t know if I’m going to go play baseball. And someone told me, well, if you get a license, you can go sell timeshare. And I was like, I didn’t even know what timeshare was. So, and I’m not going to spend

Kristen Knapp (04:10)
Right.

Jason Postill (04:27)
much time talking about that. was very short-lived, ⁓ but I realized quickly that wasn’t what I wanted to pursue. So I got into residential…

Real estate and then figured I did well in that but it was also it wasn’t the buildings It wasn’t what I remember that guy saying the the apartment building. So I sold for about a year until I I said I got to go learn how to find apartment buildings And so I did I did move to a larger commercial brokerage called Marcus and Millichap

Kristen Knapp (04:56)
Yeah.

Jason Postill (05:48)
It was a great experience great team. They they solely focus on investment sales and they have different teams. So if you’re an office

broker, you work with office if you’re a department broker, so they’re very specialized, which was a great learning experience. a few years I said, well, I got to get on the other side of this thing. I’m finding deals for everybody else, but from playing baseball, I didn’t have a 401k. I didn’t have some big savings or any investments, so said, got to find everybody deals. I’m understanding it more.

Kristen Knapp (06:09)
Yeah.

Jason Postill (06:21)
I’m thinking, okay, I’m doing all this work and I’m getting a check, which is great, but then I got to go do it again. You know, these guys, I’m these deals and they’re just getting passive income for the rest of their lives if they wanted. So I, that was another moment where I said, okay, I got to go find people that are doing this and figure out how to do it. So that was, that was the pivot. That was in 20.

17 so 2017 was where I started pursuing trying the other side of this was hey let’s go independent I’ll still broker to make some money but then I’ll figure out the other side of this to just try to start owning and you syndication is what what I ended up getting into syndication

Kristen Knapp (07:00)
That’s

amazing. Yeah, and I want to talk about kind of where you are today and how you built MHCI.

Jason Postill (07:07)
Yeah. And you know, it’s, my, my father was in sales and he told me he wasn’t in real estate. actually had one rental growing up and I heard more horror stories than anything else, right? Like, they’re not paying. they stole the fridge or, know, so I, but he, he was in sales and he, remember him saying to me once, mean, one call can change your life, right? Just, he did cold calls. He, back then he was even door knocking, you know, to, he did commercial printing.

So it was, but it was still sales, right? You had, was a volume game making the call. So I bring that up because my first…

week I think it was when I went independent for myself. I didn’t have any employees. didn’t even have any other agents working for me. So I was just calling, cold calling, hitting the phone. And that first week I called my now business partner, Tyler, and he owned a 55 unit in Florida. And he told me, he said it was Thanksgiving. I don’t call people on Thanksgiving. I think it was like the day before, but he goes to his JP cap and he hung up on my face. The first call and I called him right back because I didn’t get out what I wanted to

Kristen Knapp (07:55)
Yeah.

Jason Postill (08:18)
I’m not going to harass you on the phone, but I want to at least get out what I want to say because I could really be helping you.

Kristen Knapp (08:23)
Yeah.

Jason Postill (08:25)
He answered again and he appreciated it. used to work on Wall Street and he used to do that too. Sorry we got disconnected and just went right to what he was trying to say. So he appreciated that and so we, story long, we ended up going for the meeting and yeah, we for about 18 months though, we’re running around Florida trying to find deals and we could not get a deal done. It was just prices, cap rates were compressed. It was wild. And then in 2020, we landed our

Kristen Knapp (08:38)
Yeah.

Jason Postill (08:55)
first deal in Little Rock, Arkansas. And yeah, we just caught fire there and we just crossed the thousand unit mark ⁓ earlier this year and we’re growing. that’s.

Kristen Knapp (08:57)
me thing.

Awesome. And what makes

that Arkansas market so special?

Jason Postill (09:10)
Yeah, was, well, first it was just competitive. Florida just, guys get four and a half caps on these trailer parks, right? We call them manufactured housing communities now, but ⁓ we just, I was like, we couldn’t understand it. They were putting $100,000 down, sight unseen, non-refundable, day one. It’s just, we…

It was tough to compete really was the first so we just started looking other places and I can’t take credit for it but again Tyler’s my business partner I keep talking about here but ⁓ he had a contact that mentioned they hated the southeast but mentioned well you know I went through Little Rock one time seemed like an underserved market but had some good great economic drivers right some employment it was home of Walmart and a lot of fortune 500 companies so

We just started looking and nobody was looking in that market. So once we landed that first deal, I started just cold calling the whole block that we owned around and these sellers were like, are you sure? Like they thought our prices, they were asking if.

We’ve been there, if we’ve seen it, they just couldn’t believe we were offering these prices. And for us, we were thinking, this is great.

Like these price, you know, compared to Florida or other markets. it was more of a competition, lower barrier than anything. But now we have scale there and we’re looking into other markets and how we can compete a little bit more. that was more or less it was the competition. That was it.

Kristen Knapp (11:14)
That’s

amazing and it seems like you’re still, ⁓ you you told me 85 % of your deals are off market and a lot of it from still cold calling. So that’s still a big part of your business.

Jason Postill (11:25)
It’s huge and I’m building an acquisition team because it’s, you know, at some point I, you know, we’re managing employees. We’re putting, we’re putting all the pieces together. But yeah, there’s still a lot of opportunity and I was just data basing actually this weekend and there was.

398 parks in the state of Arkansas and actually which is interesting to see because five years ago when I had this list there was 420 some so they’re actually tearing down more of these parks than they’re building them every single year which is another reason why we were attracted it’s a diminishing supply which supply you know supply demand 101 that’s that is a good thing for us to own them obviously so yeah

Kristen Knapp (12:08)
Talk about

manufactured homes and what makes it such a great opportunity.

Jason Postill (12:14)
So it is the last form of a detached dwelling that’s truly affordable. people think, oh, affordable housing, section eight, right, free housing. Well, section eight is, you’re sharing a wall.

So this is in a detached dwelling, okay, like a single family, it’s a manufactured home or they have modular homes, they have different, but it’s, our average lot is $400, $395. So it’s…

That’s still even crazy to think that in America. I we’ll buy some of these parks and they are paying still $150 a month. I mean, if you can believe in America, somebody says they’re paying $100 a month to live. So.

You know that that is just there’s a never-ending need right we’re behind there’s food water and then shelter So, you know, why is it a great asset? Well living right and then more more specifically affordable housing.

We’re not building luxury ⁓

A class, which is great, nothing wrong with it, but it’s not affordable. There’s all this talk about solving the affordable housing crisis and what are they doing? Well, they’re bulldozing the trailer park and then they’re putting up these A class $3,000 a month apartments nobody can afford. So it’s odd, but that’s what makes it a great asset. ⁓

Kristen Knapp (13:24)
All right.

Jason Postill (13:41)
residents own their home, so they’re there forever, you know, once they own that home. that ⁓ it’s not as risky, right? It’s a very safe asset class.

Kristen Knapp (13:53)
Yeah. And why do you think, you know, like what would be maybe a misconception about investing in these kind of properties?

Jason Postill (14:01)
Yeah, that’s a good question. Like, just the stigma, you you think of trailer parks and you see eight mile and cops, see these shows where there’s meth, and there is, I mean, for sure. We’ve torn down meth labs, but there’s also drug dealers in the eight class apartment building, right? So it’s…

Kristen Knapp (14:11)
Yeah.

Jason Postill (14:22)
It’s really Yeah, it gets a bad stigma ⁓ Excuse me, and that’s what we’re when we turn these around we have great case studies You’ll see pictures where it looks like an absolute war zone, you know We come in and we put a new paving we tear down those old dilapidated homes and put in new homes If you see these homes now, they they are moderate, you know, they’re it’s it’s they’re making them Like smart, you know, like the smart home like they’re they’re really nice. They’re

them now. yeah, there’s just been a bad stigma and just trying to show that it is a safe asset class. The collections, I had a CEO come into a meeting one time and she was like, ew, and she said that. goes, ew, you’re talking about trailer parks?

And she goes, you must have the worst time collecting rent. And I looked at the report yesterday, right at end of the month, but ⁓

collection 98 % every month collection. mean we so it just has a bad stigma and all it is is just affordable housing. It’s the backbone of America is just working people you know so ⁓ that’s that’s it.

Kristen Knapp (16:01)
Mmm, yum.

Yeah.

Yeah, it sounds like, I mean, not only is it great, a great asset class to invest in, you’re also, must be gratifying to kind of provide that affordable housing. That’s really a hole in the market for people.

Jason Postill (16:26)
Yeah, and when their car payment oftentimes is more than their lot rent that they’re paying, when we pay those potholes that they’re driving through and destroy it, they really appreciate it. they, ⁓ yeah, it’s really nice to see. It’s nice to see.

Kristen Knapp (16:43)
And then how resilient are these communities like during the economic shifts?

Jason Postill (16:48)
There so that is actually the main one of the main reasons I moved into the asset class because I was an apartment broker and wanted to own apartments and multi-facet which we still do. I mean we have a deal right now 60 units under contract. It’s an apartment building ⁓ still affordable housing and it’s in our footprint. ⁓ but ⁓ and I’m sorry, Kristen, you were saying ⁓ what was the question again?

Kristen Knapp (17:15)
just how resilient they are and I get to like, yeah.

Jason Postill (17:17)
resilient, yeah. Yeah,

the resilience, yeah, that was what I said. The reason out of different asset classes like office and retail, and there’s great, but ⁓ during downturns, that was why I chose this asset class, because it showed historically the debt, just like right now we’re seeing a huge…

of office, there’s debt maturing that people are in trouble, right? In apartments, office, mobile home parks had the less default rates of all. And so in downturns, again, people need affordable housing. If they foreclose on their home or they have a mortgage that’s two or three or 4,000, and they just kind of trickle down into affordable, our mobile home park. So yeah, resilient.

Kristen Knapp (18:05)
Yeah.

Yeah, that’s amazing. And then talk about your business, MHCI, and how people can kind of like get involved and what that means and, you know, if it’s a passive, active, all of that.

Jason Postill (18:18)
Yeah, yeah. we specialize in mobile home parks. buy mobile home communities southeast. mean, right now our entire portfolio is in Arkansas. But for investors, we have two different offerings. ⁓ One that we do put out to the market. So if you’re a credit investor,

I’m sure this is real estate podcast. They may not know what a credit investors are, but we can talk about that. If you are, have opportunities always for credit investors. And then we do have sometimes opportunities that arise that we do five or six B offerings that we can’t mass elicit. But once we establish a relationship that gives opportunity to others to get involved. But ⁓ yeah, it’s our website, mwcigroup.com. We always put our latest deals on there.

and we have a nice investor portal you can register it’ll take them A to Z you know and if they need help we don’t have a massive team yet you know we are growing but I was telling you earlier Kristen ⁓ you know the growing pains of building that out it’s ⁓ I’m the IR guy I’m the acquisitions guy you know Tyler we’re still I’m calling off off-market deals Tyler’s meeting them in person but ⁓ yeah they can always talk to me but yeah

Kristen Knapp (19:19)
Yeah.

Yeah, and

you you guys are the largest owners of these communities in the state of Arkansas. That’s huge. Like, how many units are you managing?

Jason Postill (19:44)
It’s funny because Tyler apart. He always jokes that it’s like saying we’re the tallest midget, right? Like Arkansas who cares, you know, but you 1000 units were at 1089 so just under 1100 on the state in.

We have, I was counting those parks I said, so we own 20 communities, which is about a 5 % market share of the state, which doesn’t sound massive, but it’s definitely not nothing, but 1100 units across 20 communities. And we’re actually about to get under contract on a portfolio that’s.

almost it would double our portfolio. It’s almost a thousand units. So we’re going to try to grow quickly, but we haven’t tried to go too quick and spread too thin, but it’s fun. Yeah, we’re having a good time.

Kristen Knapp (20:34)
Yeah, so you’ve built this great business. What’s something that you wish you knew at the beginning?

Jason Postill (20:41)
how to grow a business.

Kristen Knapp (20:42)
Yeah, that would be

nice, yeah.

Jason Postill (20:44)
That is the one thing, you

our policy and procedures, we’re still even building those out embarrassingly enough, you know, to admit that. But five years in where you hit these levels, I was telling you earlier, Chris, like you don’t know what you don’t know. I had a mentor tell me that it was exactly right. You get to a point because you can read every book, right? You can sit back and try, which I don’t recommend doing, right? Get enough knowledge and then take the action. That’s why I see a lot of people get stuck. ⁓ But you’ll definitely figure it out. Sometimes it’s just a little more growing pains than.

but we’re figuring out, you know?

Kristen Knapp (21:17)
Yeah, it definitely seemed like you had great people around you to learn from.

Jason Postill (21:22)
We did and I paid mentors too, like even before. It’s like sometimes you just gotta pay to play. And there are some people out there that really just wanna help and I’m not looking for handouts ever, so I’m always respectful of the, pay to play or I have some gray haired mentors that have given some really good advice. But yeah, it’s exactly it, just getting around the right people. And if you gotta pay to get in those right rooms and connections, and it’s worth it for sure to get the right.

Kristen Knapp (21:46)
Yeah, I think

that’s good advice. I think people probably have like, maybe not option fatigue, but maybe just like hesitating to enter the market because they’re scared. So as you said, you know, go behind your book and learn, but you really do have to get out there.

Jason Postill (22:01)
and get somebody that’s doing it. I because I paid, remember my, like get in something. I remember I paid, it was like 197 bucks a month, you know, and it was like a group mastermind of multifamily syndication, you know, so ⁓ that was very good because I was in it, hearing it, and yeah, I encourage everybody because it’s all there. Google, YouTube, it’s just how long do you want to take to try to figure it out on your own? That’s, that’s, I just got tired of that. So I’m like, all right, what does this guy want? I’m going to pay him whatever he said and just.

get it the information and go but that’s it.

Kristen Knapp (22:31)
Yeah. I think

that’s great advice. So tell people again how they can find you in your business.

Jason Postill (22:40)
Yeah, pretty easy to find. I’m Jason Postill, mean, the Jason Postill on Instagram, we’re linked in MHCIgroup.com, that’s us. And I’m always on, my email is just jason at MHCIgroup.com. I’m always on.

Kristen Knapp (22:56)
Amazing. Okay, well everyone please check that out and thank you so much Jason for coming today. I think people learned a lot about these communities.

Jason Postill (23:03)
Thank you, Chris, and I appreciate you me on.

Kristen Knapp (23:05)
Awesome, well thank you everyone for listening and we’ll see you next time. Bye.