Transitioning into real estate from mobile homes

[Ian Smith]

Hi all, my name is Ian. I am a 23 year old investor located in the Charleston, SC area. I originally got into real estate to work on the investment side, but I have also been a licensed agent since I was 18 years old and spent my first four years in the industry on a top producing team and have done about 100 closings and/or $30m in sales. For the past two years, a partner and I built another business that revolves around flipping mobile homes. We mostly do quick turnaround flips but also do rehabs. We are somewhat knowledgeable in the rental/owner financing side of the business, but have not dove into the passive income side of things yet. We have built a very strong market presence in our area and are on track to have the net worth of the business to $500,000 before the end of the year.  

Getting into mobile homes was a stepping stone for us to break into the commercial real estate market but we now have such a monster of a business that we believe it can continue operating with low overhead and still produce great profits/active income. We have also cast our lines in the residential vacant land market so that we can start working on land/mobile home package deals that can be sold and financed traditionally. That is our main game plan for 2023.

My question for you is, at this point, where would you go? I like to consider ourselves pretty go-getters so we like having active business(es) to keep us busy but it is time that we start planning for the future. We have many options to dive into such as mobile home parks, owner financing actual mobile homes, owner financing vacant residential lots, breaking into BRRRRs in our local market, etc. We have done our best to write out our options available but are still unsure on what is the best way to diversify and really break into the next tier of business. I heard someone say on the podcast "You can't expect to make millions if you are only making hundred thousand dollar actions." and I think that perfectly describes where we are at. 

Any and all input is greatly appreciated. Thank you BP family!

[Rachel H.]

@Ian Smith It will depend on what exactly you want to do and the kind of lifestyle you want to lead. The bigger the asset, the more involved it can be and the more management it can take. There are some real estate investors who go big into commercial real estate which can take up a lot of your time especially if you're working with multiple partners. On the other hand, there are others who prefer to stay small and do individual deals on their own that do not work with partners for their deals. 

What you decide to do will depend on your personality and what type of team you want to work with when doing deals in the future including how large or small the deals you want to do will be. Hope that helps!