Listen on Apple Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/interview-with-mobile-home-park-owner-operator-mario/id1520681893?i=1000517869379

SHOW NOTES

Welcome back to the Passive Mobile Home Park Investing Podcast, hosted by Andrew Keel. On this episode of the Passive Mobile Home Park Investing Podcast, Andrew talks with Mario Dattilo of The REA Group. Mario owns and operates mobile home parks throughout the southeastern United States. Andrew taps into Mario’s expertise and asks him about his take on important questions Limited Partner (LP’s) investors should ask an operator prior to investing with them. They also discuss what LP’s should look out for when investing into mobile home parks and the future of the economy and how mobile home parks could be affected. Mario has unique experience operating and managing manufactured housing communities in the state of Florida, which is known for it’s hurricanes as much as it is known for it’s sunshine. Mario explains how he hedges the risks of investing in such a natural disaster heavy state.

Mario Dattilo, originally born in Minnesota, currently resides in the Sunshine State of Florida. With over 13 years of real estate investment experience under his belt, he is an expert in the industry. That experience ranges from being a managing partner of a real estate brokerage to co-managing REA USA’s residential, multifamily, and commercial portfolios since it was first established. At REA USA, he oversees acquisitions, management of general operations, and investor relations.

***Andrew Keel and Keel Team Real Estate Investments (Keel Team, LLC) do not endorse any interviewee. This interview is for informational purposes only and should not be depended upon for investment purposes. ***

Andrew Keel is the owner of Keel Team, LLC, a Top 100 Owner of Manufactured Housing Communities with over 1,500 lots under management. His team currently manages over 20 manufactured housing communities across ten states – AR, GA, IA, IL, IN, MN, NE, OH, PA and TN. His expertise is in turning around under-managed manufactured housing communities by utilizing proven systems to maximize the occupancy while reducing operating costs. He specializes in bringing in homes to fill vacant lots, implementing utility bill back programs, and improving overall management and operating efficiencies, all of which significantly boost the asset value and net operating income of the communities.

Andrew has been featured on some of the Top Podcasts in the manufactured housing space, click here to listen to his most recent interviews: https://www.keelteam.com/podcast-links. In order to successfully implement his management strategy Andrew’s team usually moves on location during the first several months of ownership. Find out more about Andrew’s story at AndrewKeel.com.

Book a 1 on 1 consultation with Andrew Keel to discuss:

• A deal review
• Due diligence questions
• How to raise capital from investors
• Mistakes to avoid, and more!

Click Here: https://intro.co/AndrewKeel

Would you like to see mobile home park projects in progress? If so, follow us on Instagram: @passivemhpinvesting for photos and awesome videos from our recent mobile home park acquisitions.

SUBSCRIBE TO PASSIVE MOBILE HOME PARK INVESTING PODCAST YOUTUBE CHANNEL https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy9uI3KGQmFgABsr9lUtRTQ

Links & Mentions from This Episode:

Real Estate Acquisitions USA: https://www.realestateacq.com/

Mario’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariodattilo/

Mario’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mariodattilox/

Keel Team’s Official Website: https://www.keelteam.com/

Andrew Keel’s Official Website: https://www.andrewkeel.com/

Andrew Keel LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewkeel

Andrew Keel Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/PassiveMHPin…

Andrew Keel Instagram Page: https://www.instagram.com/passivemhpi…

Twitter: @MHPinvestors

---

TRANSCRIPT

Andrew: Welcome to The Passive Mobile Home Park Investing podcast. This is your host, Andrew Keel. Today, we have an amazing guest in Mr. Mario Dattilo from REA Group. Mario was born in Minnesota and currently resides in Florida. He has over 13 years of real estate investment experience, he was previously a managing partner of a real estate brokerage, and currently holds a real estate broker license in the State of Florida.

Mario has co-managed REA USA’s residential, multifamily, and commercial real estate portfolios since inception. His current role includes oversight of acquisitions, investor relations, and the management of general operations. Mario relocated to Naples in 2011 and enjoys boating, traveling, and volunteering his time with various charitable organizations. Mario, welcome to the show.

Mario: Thanks, Andrew. I really appreciate you having me on. I’m excited to be on and say I’m a big fan of the podcast, so I appreciate the invite. I was excited to get that.

Andrew: We’re happy to have you. I’m a big fan of your Facebook Lives. I took some tips from your last one. I appreciate you coming on. Mario, maybe you could start out by telling us about your story and how you got into investing in manufactured housing communities.

Mario: Sure. Jump back to early 2000, call it 2006 through 2008. I had a good friend that I was in business with. We owned a real estate brokerage and a mortgage company. We were focused on residential real estate. We’re doing a lot of distressed sales, foreclosures, short sales, things like that, and I was representing clients who are buying these properties.

I went to my dad and said, you’ve got all this construction background. That was his background. He was a custom home builder contractor, sold commercial construction material. His old track record was construction, and I had the acquisition disposition side pretty well dialed-in. I went up to him and said why aren’t we buying these? We’re helping clients buy and sell these things. So we did.

Fast-forward, we were buying and rehabbing homes in Minnesota, selling them off, and then in 2009 had the opportunity to invest with a friend, where we bought a bunch of new homes out of bankruptcy from a builder in Florida. That opened up the door to Florida to us and expanded from there.

In 2014 and 2015 we decided that we want to get out of the single family business. Although it has been very profitable, we recognize that the market was changing. There wasn’t quite as much distressed property out there, so we wanted to shift into more of a buy-and-hold investment strategy.

We start looking at multifamily and apartment buildings. We love apartment buildings but believe it or not, back in 2014 and 2015 we thought we missed the window on pricing for apartment buildings. We stumbled across a mobile home park. It kind of resembles an apartment building; let’s see what this thing is, and we bought it. That was the start of our mobile home park investing career.

We’ve also bought a little bit of self storage as well, and that was it. We really are focused on long-term investments and buying these assets for the long haul, 10+ years investment strategy.

Andrew: That is very cool. I think a lot of listeners really wished that they started buying real estate in 2009–2010. What can you tell us about the market at that time from experience in being able to buy, and I know it was a single family but that had to be an exciting time?

Mario: It was a bloodbath, Andrew. Minnesota, being a Midwest market was bad. It was rough but when we saw what Florida looked like, it was ground zero for just everything distressed. The markets we’re buying in were primarily Cape Coral, Lehigh Acres, a little bit in Fort Myers, and it was vacant homes everywhere. The crazy thing about this is these homes were mostly brand new homes; new construction. There was so much new construction homes to buy. It was a great opportunity, and we’re just kids in a candy store.

Andrew: I bet. Why Florida? Was that just because the opportunity was in Florida? Just because, like you said, that was ground zero of a lot of vacant housing and a lot of foreclosures?

Mario: Frankly, we weren’t looking there. Like I said, We’re buying in Minnesota, that was our backyard, we knew it well, and a friend had called me and said, look, I get this opportunity. Looking for some partners on it. Let’s buy these homes. There are 21 homes, brand new construction homes out of bankruptcy from a builder. Got down here, looked around, and said wow, this is crazy. We stumbled on it and it’s just a good opportunity that opened the door.

Andrew: That is very cool. What can you tell us about that first park that you guys bought in maybe some of the differences compared to the parks you buy today?

Mario: That community was a poster child of what we want to buy. It was full for the most part. There’s only a few empty lots, very mismanaged. Real briefly on this is pretty neat. We bought the note on it. A friend came to us and said, hey look. This bank has this mortgage that’s defaulted. It’s this mobile home park right around the corner from you. You want to take a look at it?

We know notes. We understand buying debt, but we didn’t understand the mobile home park business. It was managed by a receiver, so the financials were super clean. Of course, the receiver was milking it for every dollar they could. They’re pretty much feeing the property so much that it was breaking even, and it was just very poorly managed. The owner had bought it for $4.5 million to redevelop it, missed the market, tanked, and then they ended up owning it, didn’t really ever intend to manage it.

There’s just a lot of good opportunity in it and we ended up bringing in some homes, build back water sewer, raised rents pretty aggressively, and made it a nice community with landscaping. It was a home run. We ended up going full cycle and selling that deal about a year-and-a-half ago. We didn’t want to sell it but somebody came to us with an offer we just couldn’t refuse. It was a phenomenal deal.

Andrew: That’s so awesome. That is an amazing story. Most people on their first park wished they would have done something differently, but that’s fantastic that you guys were able to be so opportunistic.

Mario: Don’t get me wrong. It didn’t go perfect. There’s a lot of surprises. Anybody who says that any park that goes exactly where they planned probably isn’t telling the full story. We definitely ran into issues throughout it, but we bought that and sold it for over six times what we bought it for.

Andrew: That’s fantastic, and was that in Minnesota or was that down in Florida?

Mario: Naples.

Andrew: Down in Naples, wow.

Mario: It’s right around the corner from our office. It was just a great opportunity, a great learning experience for us, too.

Andrew: That’s very cool. How many parks do you guys own and manage today?

Mario: We bought 11 communities today. We own 10. That was the only community we’ve ever sold. We’ve been approached a lot to sell it as I’m sure you have, but we try and hold on to it as long as we can. We do own a little bit of self storage, but our main focus is manufactured home communities. We do own them throughout Florida, the Atlanta market of Georgia, and then we’ve recently acquired a community in Minnesota, so going back to the roots, buying some things up in the Midwest, hopefully.

Andrew: There you go. Fantastic. How many lots is that?

Mario: About 800.

Andrew: About 800? Okay. And what’s your average number of lots per park?

Mario: Our average is about 70. Our smallest community is (I want to say) about 40 lots, 38 lots. Our largest is 120. […] in the 100+ and the rest are kind of the net 60–70 range.

Andrew: That’s fantastic. With the ones you own in Florida, when I speak with a lot of investors, they always ask about the hurricane and tornado risk, and what happens when this huge storm comes through and just wipes out the whole community. Maybe you can shed some light on what you guys have done to hedge against that risk?

Mario: It is a little scary, I’m not going to lie. You can do all the things that you possibly can to protect yourself, but every time there’s a hurricane heading towards Florida we definitely pray a little bit harder. But really because it is a distraction to daily operations. It does throw you off a little bit. But insurance is huge. We’re heavily insured both from a property liability and also loss of business income like business interruption coverage. That’s something that you need to have on any community that you own.

We lost a self storage facility up in the Panhandle for hurricane Michael about two years ago. It got completely wiped out. I mean flattened, and they think the tornado hit it behind the hurricane, but business interruption was just a lifesaver. We have been through a catastrophic event on a property not a home mobile home park, and learned a lot from that.

In preparation for storms, we typically get in contact with our managers and we have an actual procedure that they need to follow. There’s communication with the residents, there is making sure that all the debris and things that could be sitting out are cleaned up or tied down, the residents need to be out of the communities. We typically do a drive through video of the community before. Really it’s tying things down.

The great thing about Florida is that a lot of homes are wind zone rated to two or three, so they are prepared a little bit more for the storms. Thankfully, we haven’t lost anything. We actually had hurricane Irma come through Naples and we still owned our community in Naples. It wasn’t necessarily the wind or the rain. It was the trees that we were concerned about.

We do trim up the trees, make sure that any loose branches or branches that are near homes, if we can get those trimmed up before hurricane season. We want to do that because those can really be the biggest risk. Thankfully in that community, we lost probably 12–15 trees, and they fell between homes. In every situation it was a single home.

Andrew: Your praying paid off.

Mario: It was a miracle and thankfully nobody got hurt. That was a bad storm. I would say, if you’re investing passively, too, Andrew—because I know a lot of your listeners are LP passive investors—I think that’s a great question to ask a sponsor, is what are you doing to prepare for a catastrophic event? If you’re buying in the Midwest, there are tornadoes.

There are other catastrophic-type weather and storms that can happen in all parts of the country. You should be asking them what type of insurance do they have and what are they doing, do they have a procedure in place for their community managers, their tenants, and residents in preparation for those things? I don’t think you can escape catastrophic events. You just need to do your best.

Andrew: Do your best, prepare for it. I like that. Mario, what other questions should LPs ask operators before doing a project with one?

Mario: I think the basis of investing as an LP is you need to understand enough about the business to be dangerous. You need to be able to ask the right questions, listening to podcasts like this podcast, starting up going to maybe even a mobile home university or something like that, hop on bigger pockets and these other websites that you can learn, so that when you start talking to an operator you can tell whether they actually know what they’re doing from experience or if they’re textbook.

The first thing I would do is make sure you study up. You should find someone that you trust. Trust is a difficult thing to build and it takes some time. If someone is pushing you into an investment quickly, that should be a sign that they’re having trouble raising capital. I’m not saying that raising capital is always easy, but you need to look deeper into that.

We’ve built our relationships very slowly with our capital partners. So really getting to know them personally, to understanding their thought process both on investing but also their general life principles. You can be a good business person, but that doesn’t mean you have integrity. That doesn’t mean that you’re honest, that you won’t look for ways to take advantage of situations, and do the right thing. Getting to know them as a person and taking your time to make that investment, I highly recommend.

Also, alignment of strategy and timelines. I think your podcast is great because you’re interviewing all these different operators that have different strategies. Some people are wholesaling deals and doing short-term or even 3- to 5-year investments. They run a fund or maybe they’re long-term. I heard a couple of your guests that are very long-term investors and they’re bill buying legacy assets.

Your strategy—both either value add or stabilized assets—and also the timelines, mean for us, we’re a 10+ year investment. We’re looking at buying things that we can hold for a long time. Someone who is looking to invest for 3–5 years and constantly be turning their capital, we wouldn’t want to have that partner because their timelines don’t align. So really taking the time to invest, understand their investment strategy, and your timeline is going to save you a lot of headaches in the long run.

And then, obviously, this isn’t really tied to the sponsor, but if you are dabbling with the idea of investing in manufactured housing industry, or still trying to pinpoint what asset or property type you want to invest in, you should really be considering investing in a property type that aligns with where you believe the economy is going.

I’m not an economist. I can’t predict where the economy’s going to go, but I have a pretty good idea of what direction I feel like it’ll go. You should be investing in that type of property type if you feel like the economy’s going to get really strong and explode, then you should probably be looking at Classe A-type of luxury investments. If you think it’s going to get tougher, you should probably be investing in assets that are going to do well in sound economies, such as affordable housing.

Andrew: Maybe you can shed some light on that with how you see the economy playing out, and maybe also discussed how you see mobile home parks play out in the economy.

Mario: If I said I was an economist, I’d be lying to you. I can’t predict. Actually, we’ve typically gotten out earlier than later. As I mentioned 2015, we got out of a single family home business thinking that things were heating up. You can’t predict the economy. We’ve been very cautious and conservative, so we thought the single family home market was overheated back in 2015. We thought apartments were expensive, and look at where we’re at now.

I would say just be ultraconservative. We had a great run in the economy for a very long time, and what goes up must come down. I’ve actually heard the opposite, that for multiple reasons it can continue to go up. It can for some period of time, an unpredictable period of time, but there will be a correction for one reason or another. For us, we’re investing in assets that we think are going to outperform others in a down economy.

That’s really why we got into mobile home parks. We saw that, historically, they do very well when the economy is not doing well. People are struggling financially. They’re not buying luxury homes. They’re not moving into luxury apartments. They’re downsizing. They’re finding ways to tighten up their expenses and manage what they have. If anything, we expect more and more people to downgrade into quality, affordable housing. That’s what we’re trying to offer people.

I would also look at our industry as a consolidating industry. We really like the fact that the sellers of the communities that we’re buying have owned them for a very long time. There’s a lot of upside on them. There’s a lot of opportunity to add value, clean them up, make them better places for people to live. In that situation there’s also the opportunity to generate a lot of revenue and also a lot of our capital gains on those properties.

Over the next several years, you’re going to see consolidation happening. We’ve already started seeing multiple REITs in the industry now. We’ve got a lot of larger private equity that’s jumped in. I think that’s going to continue. It does bring a lot of the legitimacy to our industry and it’s going to only (I think) pick up faster and faster now. With that, it becomes more and more difficult to buy.

Even when we started buying communities in 2015, we’ve seen just a massive increase (I’d say) probably in the last 24 months. Just tons of people getting out of other property types and looking for yields. They’re running to the mobile home park space, so prices have gotten more and more difficult to make work. It’s very competitive.

Andrew: I agree. I attended the J. Scott Scheel’s Commercial Academy and Diamond Inner Circle meeting seminar. He’s been in commercial real estate for quite a while and he said that now is the time to sell. If you’re going to sell one of these mobile home parks, the pricing is at a 50-year high. It was pretty interesting to hear that, but with a strategy like yours—the buy-and-hold long-term, weather the storm—I think that makes a lot of sense.

Mario: We fully predict a down economy, and that might also mean that financing gets more challenging to obtain, which means even commercial real estate, manufactured home communities may become a little bit less liquid in the coming years. With a longer investment view, we’re fully prepared to weather that storm when we think there are really some great opportunities to buy.

I would say that there are definitely some people who are buying mobile home parks, that maybe underestimate the operational complications that come with it, and are probably buying more than what they can handle. And there might be some opportunities. We’ve actually bought one community. Great guy, but he bought it, realized this is not the property type I thought it was, and got out of it pretty quick. I think we’re going to see more of that coming up.

Stronger operators, people who have the liquidity and equity to go out, and the track record, are still going to be able to have access to capital and even some debt. With a strong track record they’ll still be able to get the debt needed in those tougher times for financing.

Andrew: I think that’s going to be key, what does the financing environment look like. Even during COVID, it was pretty eerie when we had a deal under contract that we’re trying to get financed and it was like we’ve paused our financing for 90 days until further notice with several banks. It’s definitely something you want to make sure you’re liquid. That’s what Scott Scheel has mentioned. It’s definitely a time to get liquid right now because he thinks the same thing that as the economy goes down there’s going to be a lot of opportunities.

Mario: Totally agree.

Andrew: Maybe you could shed some light on how you guys manage these assets. Like you mentioned, operations is not passive. Owning one of these assets is very involved. Maybe you guys can share how you guys manage these and what your team looks like.

Mario: I envy our capital partners because they definitely have the benefit of watching and hearing about what we’re doing but not actually doing it. That’s a great position for them to be in. I’ve heard a lot of people talk about the manufactured home communities, mobile home parks as being cash cows turnkey. When a property gets stabilized, they get pretty boring. That’s what we want. We want boring properties. But typically, there’s a lot of turn-around in what we’re buying at least. There’s a lot of complexities in the operations.

We self-manage. We started out with a third-party manager—great guy—but as we started to grow our business, we realized we don’t really know if there’s a problem until it’s too late. If we’re running it, then there are still problems. As you know, there are surprises every day in this business, but at least we know about them. We can pinpoint the problem and work to solve it. We started a management company about 2½ years ago, brought on a great guy to run that company, so we manage internally.

I would say, the property management side of it, the home sales and in-fill are probably the most complicated parts of the business because we got this hybrid property type. We’re in the rental business, so we’re collecting lot rents. But then, we had the sale aspect, then there are the dealership liaisons; there are certain regulations with that. Even with financing those homes. You’re not only looking for residents who can pay lot rent, but they also need to be able to buy the home with a certain down payment. They have to have that ownership mentality where they’re going to show pride of ownership. It’s just a lot of different angles to it.

Pre-call we’re talking briefly. We talked about the different companies and entities that we have. We got four. We’ve got our investment company, Real Estate Acquisitions USA; we’ve got our dealership entity, REACQ 1; we’ve got The REA Group which is really our acquisition division; and we’ve got REA Management which is our management company. We’ve got these different businesses all just to operate this one community, and they all have legal issues we got to deal with, financing.

In addition to the buying the community, doing improvements there, and the capital that is required, you also have these capital drains with bringing in new homes and the set-up costs. There’s just a lot of different aspects to the business. I’d be lying to you if we had it all perfectly figured out. We are constantly learning and trying to improve on what we’re doing, learning from guys like you and other guys.

Andrew: We’re learning, too. I think it’s an ongoing process. It’s tax time, as we’re recording this. It’s March 30th and we’re trying to get the K-1s out before the end of the month here. There are complexities on the bookkeeping side of this business as well because, like you mentioned, there’s the home sales and home expense in that separate entity other than your management entity, other than your real estate owning entity. It’s just complexities, too. You don’t think about when you’re like, oh we’re going to go buy this mobile home community and collect lot rent. It’s going to be easy. No. There’s a lot more to it.

Mario: The accounting aspect is complex. We actually hired an in-house accountant versus having a third-party contracted accountant just because it’s so high-touch. Like what you just said, you buy a home. Well, there’s some accounting complexities with that. Then you fix it up. Well, that’s also complex. Then you sell. It’s so high-touch with the accountant and trying to explain what’s a…

Andrew: Calculating the basis of each lot. Yeah, we’re on the same page there. I do think that managing in-house is the way to go. After interviewing several operators, I think that most of them, about 90% of them are managing in-house, which I think is a little bit of a nuance to this industry.

I had an opportunity to speak to a group of investors recently. I was communicating this split structure. They were mainly used to multifamily deals where the operators maybe get a 20-80 type of split or the GP will take 20% in the LPs will be in a pool of 80%. I told them the typical mobile home park splits are a lot different than that. The GPs are able to get more because, again, it’s very involved, it’s very hands-on. It’s more of an operating business.

For multifamily operators, most of them can hire a local property management company to take the apartment complex, manage it for a decent price, and do a decent job. It definitely is different in that aspect.

Mario: It’s really a blend. If somebody were to ask me how would you describe or how does the mobile home park world work, how does the industry work, I would call it a for-profit homeowner’s association blended with a builder. You’re basically bringing in homes and doing that home sales side, so you’re almost like a developer-builder. But then, you’re also kind of like a homeowner’s association. You may not own most of the homes, but you’ve got to enforce rules, you’ve got to maintain the common areas, so it’s kind of a blend of those two.

Andrew: It’s very interesting. I could imagine trying to hire someone that can run an HOA but also knows construction. It’s very difficult to have that overlap. There’s a lot of complexities. Mario, tell us, do you guys have an investment fund or are you doing syndications on your acquisitions?

Mario: Great question. We independently sponsor each one of our deals. Our offerings are 506(c) offerings. We only have about five partners. Thankfully, they’ve been very, very scalable, they’re very much in-tune with what we’re doing, and we’ve got a great working relationship. Even though they’re basically passive, our partners’ involvement and get their input on things, really listen to what they think.

For example, we’re implementing something new in our business coming up here soon. I met with each one of them and said you’re going to be directly impacted by this, so we want to talk about this. What ideas do you have? Regardless of their voting authority or even their control, we still really want to hear what they think because they’ve got great ideas. They’re great businesspeople, they’ve invested a lot of capital with us, and they trust us. They are technically syndications, but we try and keep our group of partners relatively small.

As you know, the capital-raising business is a totally separate business. Everything we just talked about throws in another aspect of raising capital, so we try to avoid doing any type of capital-raising campaigns or anything like that. We’ve really been blessed with good people as partners that are scalable so we can keep growing without having to go out to market and find more partners.

Andrew: That’s huge because raising capital for a deal—marketing, talking with each of them—just takes a lot of time. When I was reading your bio, I saw that you do acquisitions, investor relations, and then you also do the operations. That’s three positions in one, so I totally relate to it because I do the same things. Sometimes I have to be the janitor and I have to clean up the office, sometimes I’m raising capital for a deal, and sometimes I’m under a mobile home changing out the ball valve on a water riser. You just have many hats in a small business, right?

Mario: It really is. My whole goal this year—not to get off-track—is to become unnecessary in my business. We do have a really great team of people both in the field and in our corporate office. Temporarily I am sitting in a couple of different seats, but I will be rehiring somebody to run our management company again so that thankfully I can go back to focusing on the investment side. It really takes good people and, like you said, often it’s wearing multiple hats as you grow. We’re in that weird space where we’re too big to do it on our own but too small to really staff-up fully.

Andrew: Totally. We should talk later because one thing we did is we were able to bring in some VAs for certain silos of tasks and that’s been huge to help out with some different things on the management side.

Last question for you, Mario, because we’re running a little long. I wanted to ask, if you were going to tell a passive investor one thing, what is the most important thing they need to know about our asset class—mobile home parks—before making their first investment?

Mario: That’s a great question. I would say the most important thing that they need to know is the complexities, and that there are great returns in the business; you can earn great returns. People ask me a lot, I’ve heard those are great cash cows or they’re a great investment. They say about self storage, too. They’re a great investment at the right price.

I think there are a lot of investors overpaying for property right now. I just can’t understand how they’re paying those prices. Maybe they’ve got the secret sauce that I just haven’t figured out or they’re just being ultra-aggressive. If you’re passively investing with someone, understand that a business plan is great, not everything always goes perfect. You may have a great business plan but if you’re overpaying by that much where you just can’t correct it if things don’t go perfect, you’re probably going to get hurt. Just be careful about the prices that the sponsor or sponsors are paying. And infill is very challenging. If they’re buying something on a very large infill pro forma, just be careful with that.

Andrew: That’s great advice. I think I read this in one of the books I was reading. It said, “A good operator can make a bad deal good, and a bad operator can make a good deal bad.” I think it’s important to look at the full picture as well.

Mario: And the right price, too.

Andrew: And the right price, of course. Mario, how can our listeners get a hold of you if they’d like to do so?

Mario: I think the best, most interactive way would be to connect with me on Facebook. That’s where I try and put out a little bit of content and connect with people most aggressively. LinkedIn as well. You can also check out our website, realestateacq.com, and they can learn a little bit more about our investment company. I hope to connect with a lot of viewers and I hope that we are able to add some value to them. It’s been a great conversation with you, Andrew.

Andrew: Great speaking with you as well, Mario. I really look forward to continuing our relationship, talking more about the different operations, management ideas, and strategies. Thank you so much for coming on the show and taking the time to speak with our listeners.

Mario: Thanks again. It’s been real fun.

Andrew: Awesome. That’s it for today, folks. Thank you so much for tuning in.