Today’s manufacture home is a higher quality. It’s held to a lot higher standards through the states. There’s a lot of misconception of financing the way we do our homes, FHA VA conventional. We’ve gotten homes approved for pretty much any loan that there is out there. The biggest mistakes investors make, one is I think investors just go out and buy certain land that they don’t do their due diligence with their agent. So when it comes to success, that’s what I cherish the most. I think that’s why I’ve become so successful is because of my support that I have. And of course my employees, they’re fantastic. I think the biggest challenge with real estate agents is they don’t understand the manufactured homes. A lot of ’em don’t understand that housing.

Welcome back to the podcast. Today we have Eric out of Arizona who’s doing a ton of manufactured homes. Eric, I’d love to figure out how you got into this niche in the first place.

Yeah, thanks Noah. So the manufactured home business has been in my blood since I was a kid. My dad started doing it about 42, 43 years ago. He got into manufactured home business by it, just kind of got thrown in there and back in those days it was trailers and not really the high quality manufactured homes we have today. So as a kid growing up, I’ve been all over these homes and out of them under them, I know them in and out, all the manufacturers and at an early age. I left for a couple years and I got back in it. And when I got back in it with my dad and I went heavily in it and we went heavily into investing and we also opened up a manufacturing home dealership as well in the process. My dad has always been in the setup side of it, doing the construction work. We still run that full-time and we also sell our own homes. We’re a dealer for Clayton Kaf co and Champion Homes.

Awesome, awesome. And then as far as all the parts of the business, what does every piece of the business look like today?

So we start from getting land. So we deal with investors and find land and opportunities, whether it’s a mobile home park, large parcels, small parcels. We try to purchase whatever land we can get and we do everything from start to finish. So we’ll do the project as far as getting all the permits ready and gathered up to ordering the home, whether it’s a customer ordered home, an investor ordered home, or we order the pick out the home ourselves to flip it where there’s different processes. And then we set up the home and we have one of our in-house agents listed. And in the meantime we do all the work from the septic to the utility hookups, power and drywall, ac, get the home all together, do a little bit of landscaping and put it up for sale. And of course these are affordable homes, so it’s something that’s big right now in our market. Most people can’t afford a custom built home, so affordable housing is the way to go right now all across the country. But we do everything from start to finish. We don’t have any middleman in the middle. We take care of the whole project in house.

Awesome. Why do you think so many investors overlook the manufactured or home space?

Well, I think over the last couple decades, manufactured homes, trailers, they got a bad wrap. A lot of it has to do with back in the past how they were built with two by two, two by four construction. They were really weak 20, 30 years ago. But now today’s manufactured home is a higher quality, is held to a lot higher standards through the states because it’s most states govern manufactured homes and the quality is there now two by six construction, you got the upgraded windows, you got 30 to 60 pound snow loads for the roofs. You can get metal roofs on ’em. You can customize manufactured homes as much as you want. And between that and the quality of the setup, that has a lot to do with it. That has pretty much everything to do with it. How it’s set up from the foundation to the stem wall, to the tie downs, that has everything to do with the house as far as the house is built. So when you put all that together, you get a really good custom quality home that’ll last you a long time.

Awesome. And your dealership covers mostly just the Arizona front. What are you working on now to expand that?

Right now we run Best Buy manufactured homes out of northern Arizona. We have a sales office in Phoenix that we’re looking to expand different parts of the state. Right now we do work in quite a bit of the whole state of Arizona, but right now what we’re looking for is investors to partner up and open up different dealerships in different parts of the country. Our next project right now that we have lined up is Best Buy Homes of Midwest that’s going to be covering the Illinois market central to Southern Illinois. And we’re looking to open up different areas as well, more like a franchise concept with our construction and our manufacturing home dealership combined.

So what would someone like for an investor that you were looking for, what would that ideal investor look like?

The ideal investor would be somebody that’s motivated that really wants to take charge. We’re not looking for just your basic real estate agent. Real being a real estate agent would help. All our sales reps in our office are real estate agents as well, and they’re manufactured home sales agents, so they hold dual license, but we would be looking for the same thing. But we would be looking for a partner that’s willing to open up and take control of a full manufacture home dealership and is not afraid to get down in the weeds and dirty and get these houses from start to finish like we do here. It’s a whole turnkey solution and it’s really hands-on and somebody that it’s kind of like building a house. You can’t just leave your contractors to do whatever they want. You got to oversee the whole project and a lot of times you get these projects and you want to make sure that they’re done a hundred percent good and complete.

So when we’re looking for these investors, we’re looking for somebody that really wants to learn the market, learn the systems, and learn how we do it and not be afraid to open up a manufacturer home dealership and work hard. You got to put your 50, 60, 70 hours in a week. Obviously you have a sales team and sell the homes. But like I said, we got everything from just selling the home to the full setup and the construction. So there’s different aspects of the business, but we would show this if an investor is really truly qualified, we would show ’em how to work this whole system.

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Just to be clear, so you already have the whole system already is what you’re doing in Arizona. It’s just finding people to partner with and franchisee it basically across the nation,

Correct? Yes. We have the whole system in place from start to finish. We know what we’re looking at, we know what homes sell and we know our market depending on what market we go to Best Buy homes of Midwest over in, it’s based in Rockford, Illinois. We study the market, well, we’re still studying it and manufactured homes and modular homes out there are a pretty new concept. There’s quite a bit of ’em out there, but they’re more manufactured home parks, mobile home parks. But we’re going to change the market over there. We’re going to going to bring in modular homes out there and be 50, 60, $70,000 cheaper than your regular stick belt home out there. But it’s going to give an opportunity for a lot of people to be able to afford a home out there. They can’t afford irregular house out there. But yes, we have a whole system in place.

We’re bringing that system to Best Buy homes in Midwest or wherever. We’re going to open up a new system. We have the whole system in place. Obviously we have to study the market and make sure it’s a good market. We just don’t want to open up somewhere that’s already saturated or somewhere that they’re already doing A lot of manufactured homes at. Manufactured homes in general is a new concept across the country. Like I said earlier, it’s got a bad stigma for a lot of investors because of the past. But now a lot of people come and see our models and our projects that we do and they’re blown away. I mean, they’re completely blown away of the work that we do of the quality of the homes and how quickly they sell. So basically we want to take our whole model, our whole system and bring it to new markets across the country.

What do you think the most common misconception is about what you’re trying to offer?

The most common misconception, as soon as they tell a manufacturer modular home, they say, you know what? We’re good with what we have. We’re good with a stigma home. And when I ask ’em why, they say, well, the quality’s not there. It won’t appraise, it won’t sell. You can’t get financing for them. That’s the biggest thing is there’s a lot of misconception of financing. They don’t think they can get financed. But the way we do our homes, FHA VA conventional, we’ve gotten homes approved for pretty much any loan that there is out there. We affixed the homes to the property so they become real property and we don’t have no problem getting lenders for them, but it’s getting that investor, it’s getting the people to see the quality now and seeing the project is the main thing. And in Arizona, we fly him down. And when I showed my partner in Best Buy homes of Midwest in Rockford, when he flew down, he was blown away. He said, wow, this is a new concept. And we went to go visit the factories out in Indiana, and once he saw the construction of the homes at the factories, then he said, yeah, this is the key. This is the ticket. Let’s move forward. So we’re moving forward out there.

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When investors invested in a stick built home, let’s say for example, if he’s the general contractor and overseeing the whole project, there’s a lot of moving parts for a stick built house, right? He’s got lock up the whole yard, he’s got trusses coming in, he’s got drywall, he’s got all kinds of moving parts, different contractors in there from plumbers to HVAC to electricians. So we see a lot of theft, a lot of wasted material, and just a lot of moving parts in these thick built homes. When the investors see our project and we bring everything into them, they don’t have to worry about anything. We bring in the whole house, we bring in everything and we do the foundation, the pad, and there’s so little material, there’s so little wasted material that it’s a lot of money that’s being thrown out. When you got to stick behind and you’re throwing away extra trusses or extra two by fours and bent two by fours and drywall that got wet concrete, that got wet, HVAC material, copper that got stolen from the job site, they start seeing all these things and add up. And then the biggest thing is the time. The time it takes us to do a house. We can have a house done between 45 and 60 days from start to finish, stick to a house. They’re sitting on there for eight months to a year, sometimes more depending on getting the contractors in, if the contractors aren’t too busy. And like I said, we do everything from start to finish. So the investor only has to deal with us directly and they don’t have to deal with anybody else. We get the whole job done for them.

What do you see investors do and mistakes that they make that you think could be really easily avoided?

Mistakes that investors make are the biggest mistakes investors make. One is where they buy the land. I think investors just go out and buy certain land that they don’t do their due diligence with their agent, and two is putting an overpriced home on that land. Sometimes they put too big of a house in a bad area or too small of a house in a good area. So at the end of the day, the comps don’t work out. With the manufactured home, we can get the right size for the right lot pretty much all the time. And there’s different adjustments we can make to the home. If it’s a nicer area, we can add on a garage or we can add on a carport depending on where it’s at or any additions that we need to add on, we can add on depending on the area.

And if it has an HOA and if it needs anything attached to it, we can always do it easily with the house. If we don’t, then if we want to lower our cost, then we could do that. But that’s the thing, once you have plans for a house, your architect builds you your plans, and you could spend a lot of thousands and thousands of dollars craving the wrong house for the wrong lot. And with manufactured homes, that’s easily changeable. So if we decide, Hey, we don’t think that’s a right fit, we can easily change it.

Awesome. In the manufactured home space, what separates the top operators from everyone else in your experience?

It goes down from we partner up with three factories. They’re the three biggest factories. Obviously. Clayton Homes is one of the biggest ones. Champions probably the third largest in Kaf. Kaf is right there with Clayton. They’re a large player in the manufactured home industry. There’s smaller factories as well that are more custom, but all three factories are in Arizona. And when we partnered up with them, we partnered with all three of ’em because they all offer different sizes and different price points, but depending on what part of the country you’re in, we would go visit the factories and the quality of the factories are great. We make sure we walk the whole factory, make sure they’re putting the houses together and they’re using good quality products. And you can see when the houses are being built, you can tour the factories. They have no problem with you touring their factories and all three factories here in Arizona, we’re proud to sell ’em.

They do a fantastic job. We warranty the houses for them. We’re also an in-house warranty operator, so if there’s any issues, we fix the house for them, which is great. They give us the okay to, they trust us to fix it. But overall, these houses, all three factories are made great. But like I said earlier, when those houses are shipped and delivered, then you got to make sure your construction side is good and they put all the houses go together, the setup goes in quality, the foundation is in tight, and then the whole house is just done structurally sound. And of course it’s all in Arizona. We go through a state final. So you have a state inspector that nitpicks the house and goes through the whole house. So we make sure the home is done 100%.

Is there a lot more regulations you would say on manufactured homes or less regulations where to a stick built?

I believe there’s more regulations on a stick belt because it’s in Arizona, it’s governed by the state. Different states have different codes. In the Midwest, it’s governed. It’s governed by the state as well. So you have the scrutiny of the state. They do factory inspections, so they’ll show up at a factory and inspect the factory. Then they can, as a house is shipping out, they can go and inspect the home just without notice at the factory. They’ll just show up and inspect the home. When the home is sitting on our dealership, they can just do a surprise inspection and inspect the home as well to see if it’s properly set up at our dealership and make sure the home doesn’t have any issues because obviously the home’s going to be sold to a customer, so they want to make sure the house is in tip top shape.

If there’s anything missing, they’ll write us up a report and we have to fix it. And then also, when the house is being set up, there’s multiple inspections, just like a stick belt home that we have to go through. I would say there’s probably a little more scrutiny as far as inspections go, because there’s just pop-up inspections that can happen at any time with the state. But at the end of the day, when the house, before the house is turned over to the client, we need a full state final, which checks everything on the house from smoke detectors down to the bottom foundation to doors, cabinets, everything.

Cool. When it comes to the word success, everyone’s got their own definition for it. Everyone strives for it differently. How do you measure success in your life and how do you define it, and then how do you chase for it every single day?

Success. Yeah, that’s a good one. I’ve been doing this for a long time and I think my number one success is a family run business. My dad taught me from a young age to work hard, and he’s been in the business for a long time. We’ve made a lot of changes in the business, in the setup side and the manufactured home dealership. And I think the biggest success is my wife helping me run this business. We run it together. My kids are working our business as well. So it’s a true family enterprise that we run, and that’s my biggest success, is running my business with my family, both my mom, my dad, and my wife and three kids. So when it comes to success, that’s what I cherish the most, and I think that’s why I’ve become so successful is because of my support that I have. And of course, my employees, they’re fantastic. I have the best employees, the best sales agents, the best setup crews. So without them we couldn’t get it done. But at the end of the day, we are a family enterprise. We run a family. Our family’s really close together, and my wife’s bookkeeper, she runs the whole business inside and out, and my daughter’s a real estate agent and my other two boys work in the business. So that’s success to me.

Awesome, awesome. What do you think the biggest challenge you’re seeing in real estate right now

Besides there are a couple hundred thousand agents in the state of Arizona. I’m not sure. The biggest challenge with real estate agents right now is we’re oversaturated with real estate agents. There’s a ton of real estate agents in our area, but I think that the biggest challenge with real estate agents is they don’t understand the manufactured homes. A lot of ’em don’t understand that housing, they just get in the market, they see a paycheck. I don’t hold a real estate agent. I don’t hold a real estate license. I refuse to get my real estate license because I have want to run the business. I don’t want to work in the business. So I have trusted agents. Like I said earlier, all our sales reps are real estate agents as well. So they’re dual agents. And again, my daughter’s a realist. She just got her license a few months ago, but I’m not letting her sell any homes because I want her to know the business inside and out before she really deals with clients.

When you got a client out there and they’re asking you tough questions about these manufactured homes, I want it answered honestly to the client. I want to make sure that you know what you’re talking about when you’re selling our homes. Our agents have been with us for 15, 16 years working in the manufacturing business. They’ve been out in the trenches with us. They know how these manufacturing home works. They’ve been to the factory many times. We go to meetings together. We have meetings all the time in our office, our weekly meetings, we talk about the integrity of the homes, the structure of the homes, the setup. So our agents are fully qualified. We get some agents that try to sell our homes, they can’t answer the questions for the client. And that’s the biggest challenge I see is these real estate agents just don’t have the knowledge it takes to really sell a manufactured home or a regular home as a matter of fact. But I think more training needs to be done in this industry, in the real estate space before they just issue a license. I know the license to get your license not that hard and is not that easy for some people. But at the end of the day, you got to know every aspect of a home when you’re selling a home,

For sure. If you were to start from scratch today, you get to keep all the knowledge that you have over the years, but the business completely goes away. What would you focus on first to rebuild?

To rebuild? I would focus on knowing the business. I mean, starting from the ground up, the construction side of it, because we get people knocking on our door to do their work. Other dealers, pat myself in the back, but like I said, we got the best crew and that knowledge from starting from the ground up to know how to install these houses properly, that’s the biggest thing. That’s where I would start up. I would start from scratch knowing how to set these houses up, and then from there I would move all the way up to sales and then get the whole turnkey package that we’re trying to offer. And that’s what I would do to be in the boat I am right now. So get to know the whole business inside out. It’s kind of like when a CEO doesn’t start from CEO, right? There’s been cases where people have started in the mail room, right? Then they worked their way up the ladder and they knew the whole business inside and out, and then they became CEO. So you got to know the whole business before you just get thrown in there.

Yeah, for sure. Who has been the biggest mentor for you in this space?

Oh geez. There’s so many in this industry. This is a tight knit industry, especially in Arizona. Any state you go to, just because it was such a small industry 20, 30 years ago, there’s a lot of old timers that were in this business from mobile home movers to sales reps to set up companies, and they all knew each other. So I know a lot of old timers in Arizona that are just fantastic, but one of the pioneers I think is my dad, my father. And he’s, like I said, he is been doing this for 40 some years and he’s been the biggest instrument in my life. He set up most houses here in our little community that we live in. Everybody knows him, always had a good reputation. Now he works under me now, and I keep him busy, but if ever I need help, I call my dad and we all call our dad for something. Hey dad, we need help with this. But it’s not just fixing my home, it’s fixing somebody else’s home that we might have an issue running the power or running water or dad, Hey, I’m stuck doing, we’re stuck with this project. And yeah, dad’s the one I always call to. So I think that’s my biggest mentor and everybody who’s well known in the industry, well respected, and my thing is keeping this legacy going for our family.

Awesome. I love that. Where can people learn more about you? Where can people find you? If someone is an investor that is curious to get into this space, where can they reach out to you?

Yeah, Instagram is our at Best Buy. Mh. So at Best Buy manufactured homes, Instagram at Best Buy, mh. And my personal Instagram is e gran E-G-R-A-N-I-L-L-O 1 0 0. So they could find me through my Best Buy Homes, Instagram and www.bestbuymh.com is our manufactured home website.

Awesome. Any final advice or any words you would say to someone that is an investor that might not think that manufactured homes is for them?

Yeah, if they have any doubt, I’d be glad to meet up with them, have a Zoom call with them, have them come in and see our factory in our office and our homes that we do. We constantly doing homes from scratch, so if it’s something that they might be interested in and are on the fence about how they’re done, I’d be glad to sit down with them. We can go tour a factory, they can see our dealership, our setup company, how everything runs, and we wouldn’t just throw somebody in the space. So obviously we have to vet them and make sure they’re accredited investor and they’re serious. We will be serious too, like Best Buy Homes of Midwest. We talked for a couple years and finally made the decision to pull the trigger out there based on the landscape there and the housing need there. And we talked to the city of Rockford and they were jumping for joy what we brought to them, and we made a whole presentation for them and they were super excited about it, and they’re helping us find land to open up a dealership there. So yes, at the end of the day, I would be glad to sit down with somebody that’s really interested and show ’em our whole system and show ’em what we have to offer.

Awesome. Awesome. Eric, thank you so much for coming on today. Everyone, thank you for listening when we will see you next time.

Thank you.