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Show Summary
In this episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast, host Q Edmonds interviews Kevin Bupp, a seasoned real estate investor with over 25 years of experience. Kevin shares his journey from losing everything in the 2008 financial crisis to rebuilding his business with a focus on mobile home parks and parking investments. He emphasizes the importance of team building, overcoming challenges, and the value of networking in the real estate industry. Kevin also discusses his current goals and the strategies he employs to navigate the complexities of the market.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Kevin Bupp (00:00)
Yeah, I mean, a big one. I 08 ⁓ absolutely kicked my butt. I lost everything in 08 and had to start all over again. So, I mean, that was probably the biggest adjustment I’ve ever had to make. went from owning about a $40 million portfolio to down here in Florida and losing the majority of it during that first year of the down cycle and lost my personal credit, bank accounts got garnished, lost my personal residence, basically about as bad as could potentially get. had my health.You know, so had my wits, so had my brain. ⁓ But everything else was really in the toilet at that point.
Quentin (02:08)
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host Q Edmonds. Super excited to be here today. Listen, I have someone who’s been in the industry for 25 years. So that means this guy, knows exactly what he’s talking about. And so I need you to get your pens and pads ready. You know, maybe you got your notepad on your iPhones, but I really want you to listen in because I know he’s going to use some really, really good information. And like I like to say, I always like…to get particular people lenses. And I’m so glad to have him here to be able to get his perspective. ⁓ His business has grown within the last five years. Like this is just going to be just an incredible, credible conversation. And so I am so excited to bring on the stage, Mr. Kevin Bupp. How you doing today,
Kevin Bupp (02:57)
Hey Quentin, I’m doing great man. Thanks for having me here.Quentin (02:59)
Man, absolutely. I’m so glad you’re here. Just like I said, I’m glad just to get things from your lens, from your perspective. And so Mr. Kevin, I don’t want my voice to be the predominant voice. I want you to be able to talk from your experience to enlighten our audience. And so if you don’t mind, take us into your world. Let us know what your main focus is these days.Kevin Bupp (03:09)
Mm-hmm.Quentin (03:24)
Let us know what markets you’re operating in and any other information you feel we can share just to lay this foundation in conversation.Kevin Bupp (03:31)
Yeah, sure thing. So again, Kevin Bupp, as you’d referenced, I’ve been at this now 26 years, bought my first rental property, know, at the age of 20, I’m now 46. And I’m the CIO of Sunrise Capital Investors, we’re a private equity firm that specializes in two different asset classes, one being mobile home parks, and the other being parking. So I parking garages, parking lots, mostly major cities. soBut at this quite some time, have a lot of fun with what we do. We’ve got a great team behind us. You know, been able to grow the business from literally one house way back at the age of 20 to today. We own and operate about 400 million of actual assets inside of our portfolio. And again, yeah, having a lot of fun doing it, man. So again, I’ve always joked I’ve never had a real job. About the closest I got was a attended bar for a couple of years back.
in my 18, 19 going into 20 and then I found real estate or real estate found me I should say. And ultimately, it was the thing that I saw as the opportunity is the, you know, the big idea, the big plan and I just went all in and use of that money I saved up bartending to buy that first rental property and that’s where it all kicked off and that was up. know I talked I talked to you about I live down in Florida now but that was up in Pennsylvania not too far from where you live Quinton Harrisburg PA and
So yeah, no, it’s been a fun ride.
Quentin (04:56)
I love it, man. I love it. Like you said, I that first piece of property and I ain’t never looked back.absolutely love it. Well, Mr. I had had several real jobs. So I envy you there a little bit. But it’s, I mean, you have some amazing things going on. It’s not always easy in this climate. So I guess my question would be, what keeps that machine running smoothly, Mr. Kevin?
Kevin Bupp (06:09)
Yeah, no, it’s, it’s never, I don’t think being, being an entrepreneur or being a business owner, there’s never a, ⁓ a super smooth time, right? Like there’s always, always challenges, always barriers, ⁓ always problems that need solved, right. And, sometimes more than others, some of them are more expensive than others, but, know, I think, ⁓ for me, you know, you know, our business has been an evolution over, over many, many years. And, ⁓ you know, there was a period of time where it just me, right. And then there was a period of time where it me and maybe aan assistant, and then maybe a few more people on the team today, our team looks very different than what it did back, you know, 15 years ago when I was when I was kind of running, running the show. ⁓ Today, we’ve got an incredibly talented ⁓ team behind us, our leadership team is absolutely brilliant. So really, what I’ve what we have done to try to keep things running smoothly is try to hire and surround ourselves with people that are smarter than us. And I say we, that means myself, my business partner, Brian Spear, he’s the CEO of the organization of the CIO. We both
basically steer the steer the ship. ⁓ But we don’t do it alone. You know, we we brought on people ⁓ that help direct the, you know, the entirety of the organization, people that have done it before people that have grown, you know, multi billion dollar companies or organizations inside our respective fields, and, have seen way more than we have have been at it longer than we have and can help us navigate. You know, the uncertainty that comes about help us navigate it much more efficiently. Because again, and challenging times are always going to happen. It’s just ⁓
do you have the wherewithal? you have someone that maybe, someone that can guide you that’s been there and done that, right? Because everything happens to you first time, right? After that, hopefully you learned and you can navigate it better the second time around. there’s a lot of challenges we face on regular basis at the company that I’ve not dealt with yet before. And it’s great to have that guidance from not just mentors, but even folks that are on our team that are helping us steer the ship in right direction, keep it away from the icebergs.
Quentin (07:44)
Yeah.Yeah, I love it. I’ve been working on a saying that, and you let me know if this makes sense, but I always say, can nobody teach you experience, but experience teaches you, you know, like can, you know, and so when I hear you, say, listen, be happy to you once, hopefully you can learn from it, but you know, that’s the experience that you need to be able to overcome it and be able to get through the next thing that comes through, right? You put the pieces together and say, okay.
Kevin Bupp (08:17)
Absolutely.Yeah, absolutely.
Quentin (08:34)
This happened there? Okay. How can I pivot? And so that kind of brings me to my next question. You said it best, know, things get real when you’re an entrepreneur, like, you know, deals go sideways. There’s times when you have to pivot fast. And so Mr. Kevin, is there a story maybe you can share with our audience about a specific time when you had to pivot fast or you had to kind of make an adjustment on theKevin Bupp (08:57)
Yeah, I mean, a big one. I 08 ⁓ absolutely kicked my butt. I lost everything in 08 and had to start all over again. So, I mean, that was probably the biggest adjustment I’ve ever had to make. went from owning about a $40 million portfolio to down here in Florida and losing the majority of it during that first year of the down cycle and lost my personal credit, bank accounts got garnished, lost my personal residence, basically about as bad as could potentially get. had my health.You know, so had my wits, so had my brain. ⁓ But everything else was really in the toilet at that
So, you know, had to make a, it pushed me into a really challenging number of years to where I had to find a way to claw my way back out now with really bad credit, ⁓ you know, liens and judgments against me and trying to find a pathway back out. so, and the pivot really came, you know, I tried to reflect back on again,
what I had done historically, what worked, what didn’t work. And I came to the realization that in order to
rebuild this thing, the second time around, even build it more stout, needed the team is everything, right? And it’s really difficult when you’re small and you’re just getting started, actually be able to have enough revenue, even like hire a team, hire the right people. And so I knew the second time around, I wanted to go bigger, meaning like bigger scale properties so that we could get
higher revenue out of the gate and so that we
afford to actually hire people to help us grow the, you know, the infrastructure in the organization. It’s hard to do that one house at a time. And so, you know, that was a big pivot for us is basically starting over again with nothing, but then saying, Hey, we’re going to do bigger projects than what we had historically done. ⁓ you know, we’re not going to look at maybe $200,000 properties. We’re going to look at 2 million or $20 million properties and go bigger. Don’t know how yet. Don’t know. It’s going be challenging. My credit sucks. I don’t have a good, you know,
Again, trying to rebuild lost it all. but this is way back now, you know, my second time around, I didn’t buy that first property until 2012. So from 2008, 2012, I didn’t buy anything. It was damage control. It was chaotic. It was dark times. It was, it was rough. Um, but I bought the first, you know, basically what came, you’ll turn into what sunrises a day. I bought the first mobile home park back in 2012, figured out a way to cobble it together. You know, um, you know, convinced a private lender to lend me some money.
Quentin (11:29)
question.Kevin Bupp (11:49)
Um, that, know, that it was a great idea. I had, I didn’t, couldn’t sign on the loan because my credit was so bad. I was not of a value to him. And actually, so I coerced a family member to actually sign on the loan on my behalf so that I could get that first deal done and took a little, the little bit of money I had left, um, and took a risk and took a chance and, uh, it started all over again. And so that was, mean, that was the biggest pivotal moment and that, that became the foundation of what, what we’ve been on with the bill today. Um, and I put mymy heart and soul into that property. That property had to work. was my last ditch or effort. I had a little bit of money. Again, nothing else to really back me. ⁓ was literally, home literally had gotten taken away and I had to figure out a pathway forward. So that was the biggest pivotal moment in my life. It wasn’t a period of like a month. It was a period of a couple of years. ⁓ But it turned me into, it helped us grow and build a
Quentin (12:26)
Yeah.Hmm
Kevin Bupp (12:39)
the business that we have, which I’m so proud of. I’m so proud of the team. I’m proud of our core values. I’m proud of what we stand for. And I don’t know what it would look like today if that hadn’t happened to me, right? Like it forced me to change my direction. ⁓ Don’t get me it was dark and it sucked, ⁓ but I wouldn’t change it now for anything. just taught me to, you know, what it forced me to do is that those first couple of deals, it forced me to be really creative. No one would lend to me. I mean, a bank wouldn’t lend to me. ⁓Quentin (12:50)
Mmm.Kevin Bupp (13:06)
I wasn’t lendable at that point. So it really forced me to be creative and ⁓ structure creative deals that worked for me that we could get our foot back in the door and actually do a couple of deals, make some money, prove our concept and over time rebuild my credit so that at some point I can maybe go get a bank loan. Now today I’m proud to say I can go get bank loans and things are a lot better but those first couple of years were really challenging.Quentin (13:33)
Mr. Kevin, wow, sir. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for your honesty. Thank you for so much for your transparency. ⁓ That was an amazing story. And I know that’s going to resonate with so many people. That was resonating with me as she was talking. I was just like, this is incredible. And so again, thank you for your honesty. That really, to me, stories like that, that separates the folks from the people that just dabble to the people that’s in it for the long term.You know, when you get knocked down, you’ll be able to get back up. And to me, that just shows the perseverance. And my favorite word is stick to it. I love saying that word that, you know, it just shows that within you and within what you do. And so I appreciate you, Pashan. I really do. Let me ask you this. What are you most focused on solving or scaling next? Like, what’s the next real goal for you?
Kevin Bupp (14:28)
Yeah, that’s a great question. I don’t know if it’s one specific thing. You know, our focus, like I said, is mobile home parks and parking. We’re focused on both those asset classes, but there’s a unique opportunity that’s happening in the parking space right now that’s allowing us to really grow that side of our organization. Mobile home parks makes up about 80 % of what we have in our portfolio. We havegreat parking assets. It’s just, it was an area of business where we’ve been buying like one a year for the last five
so, and, ⁓ you know, as it relates, everyone, everyone probably at least has read a headline in the past year about office, you know, workers may be returning to office, but not at, to a pace of what it looked like prior to COVID. there’s lots of vacancies in office buildings. There’s office buildings trading in prime markets like San Francisco, LA, ⁓ Philadelphia, you name it, right? There’s
All the major cities across the country and these things are trading at pennies on the dollar now because they have a lot of vacancies. Well, a lot of those office buildings are in the best locations in any respective city you go to. And so what we’ve found an opportunity in is a lot of those office buildings have a parking garage associated with them. And sometimes it’s not even connected. It’s right next door, right? We don’t want the office, but we found an opportunity basically finding the motivation, the stress sellers of these office buildings and separating out the parking, buying the piece that still makes sense, still makes money.
has a demand ⁓ and leaving them with the office, which I don’t know what they’re going to do with or you know, there’s a plan for a lot of these office buildings. It’s just not our business model. We want the parking because it works. And we’ve known to buy some great parking assets ⁓ recently. And we’ve got some great ones under contract now. So we’re really putting some jet fuel jet fuel behind that part of our business right now. And, you know, outside of that outside just growing, you know, kind of the our assets under management, ⁓ as we’ve built our team out, you know, you start
You go from being a team of like, you know, myself and a partner to, then maybe a team of 10 or 15 people, you know, when you’re 10 or 15 people, you know what everyone’s still doing with inside the organization. I mean, there’s intimate contact on regular basis. Now we’ve got multiple layers of, of kind of hierarchy throughout the organization. And number one, it’s very difficult to stay, you know, in direct contact with everybody. It’s impossible actually, but what you really have to be good at is putting systems and processes in place.
⁓ standard operating procedures. And so we have grown probably by about two, two or three X in size of the organization the past three or four years. And so we’ve been putting a heavy emphasis on building that, the more sound infrastructure so everyone can operate kind of like an operating, you know, the operating system for the business itself. And, and it’s a, it’s kind of a, build it as you fly the plane. I mean, there’s no way to build it and have it ready. You know, we hire and we continue building and evolving as time goes on, but the big focus there.
Quentin (17:50)
Yeah. Yeah.Absolutely. No, that’s brilliant. Thank you for sharing. I wasn’t going to ask you this, but I was going to ask this a different way. But I’m going ask it like this. Because you talked about systems, do you find yourself kind of staying out of the chaos or actually the chaos finding you and you just build your systems while the chaos is going? Like, what’s your view and your perspective when the chaos hits?
Kevin Bupp (18:19)
Yeah, that’s a great question. And I’d say a lot of the a lot of the chaos, the biggest the biggest part of chaos actually occurs on our so we have a vertically integrated property management company. And then we have an investment arm. And our property management company manages all of our own properties, no one else is just our own, but we still have that’s where the heaviest we are with staffing. And that’s wherethe day by day fires, like there’s every day there’s a multitude of when you just think when you’re managing thousands of units and you got tenant issues, you got lawsuits and all kinds like there’s a lot of chaos going on over there. And I’m proud to say that we’ve got a chief operating officer that, you know, runs that side of the house. And he has done such a phenomenal job that what whereas I would be knee deep into chaos on a regular basis, both my partner I to where
Now it’s only the massive fires and there’s not normally, you know, most of the small flames can get put out. It’s the ones that grow into the big ones that only make it through that filter system and come to us. And so I’ve been, I’ve been, proud to say that over the last probably two years, I’ve been able to remove myself from the majority of the day-to-day fires. ⁓ and the only things that make it their way all the way through are just bigger con real conversations. Like we’re, know, you’ll find if you don’t run a business for long enough, you’ll get involved in different lawsuits. Unfortunately, just it’s the nature of the beast and
you know, we’re involved in a fairly significant size lawsuit right now. We’re the actual one suing the other party on a big property that we own. It’s literally like a $15 million lawsuit. So, it took a lot to get to that point, ⁓ but I was not involved until it actually got to, okay, now this is real. This is a big deal. This takes our brain power, our energy. And it’s very difficult to actually be able to focus on those big ticket items when you’re literally stuck in the trenches dealing with, you know,
tenant didn’t pay the rental time or, you know, it’s just little stuff like the refrigerator stopped working. Right. And so luckily I’ve been able to remove myself from a lot of that stuff.
Quentin (20:04)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.Yeah. No, that’s, that’s, that’s bro. You’ve been able to get some of your time back that way you can, you can delegate. They say either automated delegate. That’s the way you’re going to, you’re going to have to grow in this. That, that, that, okay. Excuse me. I write that down. Yes, sir. Delegate and
Kevin Bupp (20:12)
Absolutely.Delegate and elevate, that’s what we say, yeah.
Yeah,
Quentin (20:23)
But one of the things I wanted to ask and you hit on it cause you’ve talked about your team. You said they’re brilliant. And so I think, you know, we have a lot of people that are listening, they’re early in their journey or they’re looking to level up.And I think they will benefit hearing from you when it came to growing your network and growing like your relationships, what’s made the biggest difference for you?
Kevin Bupp (20:48)
Yeah, you mean ⁓ from like hiring folks or you just mean generally speaking?Quentin (20:52)
SoI’m just talking about your business relationship, spirit. Now you can talk from any angle. You can talk about, yeah.
Kevin Bupp (20:56)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well,mean, mean, you know, on a multitude of levels. mean, I think just ⁓ expanding our expertise and talking about it and we do a lot of sharing of what we do with the world through podcasts and videos and different content. And we’ve been doing it for over a decade now. You know, that’s allowed us to create a reputation and attract the right partners to our business. So raising capital, right. And so just, you know, just giving, you
giving for free, giving back and trying to help others. just that by default has allowed us to raise hundreds of millions of dollars of capital over the years. ⁓ From like a industry standpoint, like I’m very involved in like ⁓ industry associations that pertain to both parking and to mobile home parks. And I’ll give an example of both. ⁓ Me being involved in that peer group, industry specific for manufactured housing,
and getting known, our company being known, having a good reputation. When it was time for us to hire a COO, we wanted someone that had chops, like that literally had grown a huge business inside our space that, you know, align with our core values, our belief, our mission, everything that we’re about was the right personality fit, but also had the, you know, the means and the experience to make it happen. It’s very difficult to, to ⁓ just because you might be able to pay somebody. ⁓
you know, especially at that level to come in your organization, it’s very difficult to get them to jump ship and get excited about it. Right. And so I think just our reputation and our involvement in the industry, ⁓ allowed us to attract the right, the right person for that role, which has allowed us to compound our growth, ⁓ you know, for the last, just the last two years that he’s been with us. So that was huge. And then on the parking side, ⁓ our involvement inside of industry and just being known in the industry and, and, and, and staying in tune and being connected has allowed us to create a
joint venture partnership that we’ve now had established for about two years and has allowed us to get access to some of the best parking investments that we, prior to that relationship, hadn’t been otherwise able to get access to, be able to even buy them. Even if we wanted to buy them, they weren’t brought to us. It’s kind of…
secretive deals institutionally owned by big groups. They a lot of times they don’t want to deal with the public. We’re viewed as kind of like, no, we’re not public trade cut, but we’re in the public eye with a lot of the content we put out. And a lot of times they don’t want anything to do with that. They don’t want to sell to a group like ours because they’re afraid that literally it’s the word’s going to be spread about what it is, what we bought, who sold it to us. And they don’t want that. They want it under wraps. And so we’ve been able to create a pretty amazing relationship. Our last two years that had given us access to the most premier deals. And it’s only, I can only tie it back to
our time in the industry, surrounding ourselves with others within industry, helping the industry out, giving back, participating in association meetings and events and things like that. So it’s been huge. I mean, it’s like your, your, your, your net worth is your network. mean, it just, who you surround yourself with. Right. And so we just, anything we do, we try to find who’s been there. So parking example, like who, someone’s been there and done what we want to do.
Quentin (23:53)
Absolutely not.Kevin Bupp (24:09)
⁓ We can either go fumble through it on our own and try to, you know, hack it together and we’ll probably figure it out and make good money. But, or we can just go find a couple of people where there one individual that has been at it for 30 years, proven concept. ⁓ Literally, he’s forgotten more than what we’ve learned, you know, in the space. And so that’s what we did in park. We went and found that individual. He’s got all the relationship, all the connections. So now his connections are our connections. ⁓ His relationships are relationships. And we basically fast tracked it by 10 years byQuentin (24:34)
There you go.Kevin Bupp (24:39)
building that bond and that partnership.Quentin (24:43)
Absolutely. relationships is everything in this space. So thank you for answering that question. mean, that lens and that perspective, I think was super, super helpful for those that’s listening. So thank you so much for sharing. Listen, Mr. Kevin, listen, beforeKevin Bupp (24:56)
Mm-hmm.Quentin (24:58)
wrap, if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, maybe learn about what you’re doing, what’s the best way for them to reach out to you?Kevin Bupp (25:06)
Yeah, you can you can go find me at our company website, which is invest with sunrise.com. You know, I host my podcast there as well. So you can listen to episodes that it’s about commercial real estate investments. ⁓ We also have quite a bit of case studies on on the on our website there, we can see the types of deals we’ve done, you know, what we’re working on. ⁓ We’ve got some white papers about parking lot investments or mobile home park investments. If you want to learn more about, know, kind of the investment thesis and what you know, why we do what we do and how we do it.⁓ Outside of that, Quentin, I’m very active on social media. I’d say I’m probably most active on LinkedIn. ⁓ I’ve got a fairly rare last name, Bupp, B-U-P-P. Just typing my name, Kevin Bupp. I believe I’m the only one that comes up that’s a real estate investor on LinkedIn and probably all the other social channels as well.
Quentin (25:52)
Well, listen, Mr. let me put some respect on your name. Mr. Bupp, thank you, sir. I really thank you for your time. I thank you for your story. I thank you for your perspective. We definitely need more people like you in this space that’s doing it the way you’re doing it, the right way. So again, thank you so much for joining us and giving these pearls of wisdom.Kevin Bupp (26:10)
No, thanks for having me, Quentin. It’s been a lot of fun being here.Quentin (26:13)
Absolutely. And so everyone else is tuning in. Listen, I know you found value out of this. You can’t tell, but you didn’t. You got value out of this, so make sure you are subscribed. You do not want to miss out on these amazing conversations. So Mr. Bupp, thank you again. And to everyone else, will see you on the next time.
