Overcoming Adversity to Build Wealth: John Laine’s Journey from Illness to Real Estate Success - podcast episode cover

Overcoming Adversity to Build Wealth: John Laine’s Journey from Illness to Real Estate Success

Jan 28, 202541 minEp. 53
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Episode description

Episode 53 – John Laine

 

“It is expensive. I mean we have a list of no less than 30 contractors, right? I mean, it's a paperwork nightmare. But the end result is you get to help somebody become a homeowner for the first time. I mean, yes, what we do is time consuming and costly, but the net result is you're stabilizing homes. You're giving kids a better chance to grow up in a better neighborhood. They're more likely to have healthy marriages, happy marriages. They're more likely to go to college. You're helping someone go from the bottom rung financially to the first step onto financial freedom. Like your podcast is called The Millionaire Journey, it starts with ownership.”

 

Join me this week as I interview John Laine, the Compassionate Capitalist and founder of the Condo.Fund. John has had an incredible entrepreneurial journey starting at the age of 11, when he and his twin brother created a “chain” of Kool-Aid stands. He bought his first house at 19 and was “house hacking” before the term existed. Fast forward to his late 20s, John was diagnosed with a brain tumor and due to medical debt lost his car, his home, and all the financial benefits he had worked to achieve. During that challenging time, John discovered flipping houses and started his path to real estate success. Today, John focuses on condo conversions with a mission to help others overcome homeownership barriers using innovative investment solutions.

 

John and I discuss:

 

·         His entrepreneurial beginnings: Kool-Aid stands and fish breeding

·         The impact of terminal illness on his financial journey

·         How adversity influenced his life mission and career

·         Rebuilding his portfolio after the financial crash

·         Innovative solutions for housing affordability

·         The basics and process for condo conversions

·         The life-changing impact of home ownership

·         How tenant ownership improves community stability

·         Solving the housing crisis with compassion and creativity


LinkedIn: @john-condo-fund

https://condo.fund/


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THE MILLIONAIRE JOURNEY

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Podcast Management by Kelly Carlson Creative Services

Transcript

Glenn Today my guest is John Laine, founder of Condo.Fund. Welcome, John. John @ Condo . Fund Hey there Glenn, how are you? Good to be here. Thank you for having me. Glenn Yeah, I'm excited to have you on. I found you on LinkedIn and found your information inspiring through financial freedom. And would love to hear your story. John @ Condo . Fund Yeah, it's kind of a goofy, cheesy little story, but I like it. It all kind of started at a Kool-Aid stand. My brother and I grew up on the army bases. This is circa 1977, right? You've got Jaws, you've got Star Wars, you've got Close Encounters, right? You've got the greatest movies of all time ever. Like just boom, right after another. And I'm 10, 11, 12 years old. And I want to go to these movies. I want to buy Star Wars toys. Mike and I wanted like to get into the Star Wars craze and buy all the action figures and the Star Wars guards and my parents were broke. My dad was an army officer. He flew helicopters on the army bases where we grew up. So we figured we'd start this goofy little Kool-Aid stand, borrowed 10 bucks from my mom, the bank of mom, and she charged us interest, of course. Glenn What was the interest rate? John @ Condo . Fund Oh, 10%. Come on now. This is this is late seventies man. 10 % was a good rate. Glenn Oof. Come on, Mom. Rates weren't up until the 80s, right? She was ahead of the Fed. John @ Condo . Fund Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But it was, it was pretty entertaining. Mom even charges. Had to borrow $10. We got the Kool-Aid. We got the lemonade. We got the slushies and I mean, it was, it was awesome. We started out with just one little stand and then started, because we're twins. then we “hired”, our neighbor next door to run our third stand. And I mean, we were like 11 years old, 1977. And it was awesome. My dad was a helicopter pilot. He was making around $800ish a month. And Michael and I were making $200 a month tax free at a Kool-Aid stand. Like it was awesome. I mean, it was goofy and fun and it just started us on that entrepreneurial journey. Yeah. Glenn It was worth way more than 200 bucks though, what you learned. John @ Condo . Fund My God. Yes. We were, I mean, for that summer, I mean, we made, we made close to a thousand dollars that in that summer, like in 1977, we were selling 10 cent cups of Kool-Aid. Yeah, it was goofy and then I got the entrepreneurial bug. We went from selling Kool-Aid to buying a fish tank and then starting to breed fish. And we got a bunch of guppies and a bunch of betas. And yeah, we started breeding fish, so summer ended winter began and we just started another business. Yeah. Glenn So when did you decide to get into the real estate world? John @ Condo . Fund So because my dad was Army, we moved around a lot and I was 19 and I bought my first house. I was just Joe Schlepp working as a carpet cleaner. I was pushing the broom basically doing carpet cleaning and...my folks wanted to move again. And I'm like, ain't doing this. I'm done. Paid $2,500 for my first home, as a down payment and had, had a couple of my friends move in and we were house hacking before the term was even coined, but I had three roommates at 19 years old and paying my mortgage. I'm 57 now. So I've had 35-36 years of compound interest working in my benefit and nobody really gets the power of how important that is until they've experienced it firsthand. Yeah, buying that first house when I was super young has been kind of the pinnacle for where we are in our lives right now. That one decision just opened up, literally opened up the doors of my life. And it was a complete accident. I had no idea what I was doing or how I was doing it. I just knew I didn't want to move again and I knew that this house was probably a good place to be. Glenn So when I was reading your profile, I saw that you ended up accumulating a lot of houses. If you could talk about that a little bit. John @ Condo . Fund So, I bought my first house when I was 19. I bought my second house when I was 29… 26. I hadn't started the process of building a real estate business. That was never the goal. The goal was just to be financially stable. I bought my second house in my late 20s and then I got sick, right? You'll notice I have a weird speech cadence. I have this strange pattern of speech. I ended up with a golf ball sized brain tumor and, frankly, it kicked the shit out of me. Like, ended up - lost my house, lost my cars, lost the 401k, like all this financial benefit that I had accumulated as a young, young person, was basically stolen from me because of either medical debt or I lost it, my house and the foreclosure. And I was pretty hot. I was pretty pissed. Right? I mean, you have to buy into the American dream and it turned into a nightmare in front of me. And so as I was in the process of going through chemo, I ended up basically homeless, couch surfing on other people's spare bedrooms, while I was like going through chemo and all that crap. But I saw a Robert Allen infomercial one night and he's talking about how you can make money, flipping houses. And I'm like, I was faced with, I had to make a hell of a lot of money fast, or I was just going to die. Right. There was no… the American healthcare system gives you no choices. You either have a lot of money and I mean, tens, hundreds of thousands of dollars, or you go bankrupt or you die. Like those are the three real options for American healthcare. And I wanted to live. I was 30 years old at the time and the bank had just stolen $75,000 of equity from me. And I figured, okay, I have this illness. I have lots of time. I can read. So I just learned everything I could about the foreclosure process. Glenn When you say the bank stole $75,000, what does that mean? John @ Condo . Fund My house was worth $250,000 - $260,000 and I owed $175,000. I mean, it went to auction and whoever bought the house got instant equity because it's standard foreclosure stuff. People lose their homes in foreclosures all the time. And, fun fact, 70% of people who have medical problems end up in bankruptcy. Like it's just… I'm sorry, I misquoted that… it's, uh, God dang it. Now I can't remember. It's like something like… I was trying to give you a hard fact and now it just escapes me, but something like 70% of people with medical issues end up in bankruptcy. I mean, it's a big, big number. Yeah. So anyway, that's how I started my real estate business. I was pissed off at the bank and I wanted to make a bunch of money. And I had free time, right? So, the guy next to me in the chemo ward, he's in the same boat I was. Glenn Terrible. John @ Condo . Fund And I mean, he was an older person, much, much older. And he was, we were both terminal. I just happened to live and he did not, but I bought his house and flipped it for a $25,000 profit. Took me six weeks to do my first transaction. Yeah. Glenn So then, how did you go from there? I mean, because it showed that you accumulated a large portfolio. John @ Condo . Fund Yeah. So, between 2001 and 2008-2009, we bought about $80 million. $77 million in assets, 429 doors to be specific. And this is well decades before syndication. This was all just me and a bunch of our private investors. Yeah, we were buying or selling a house literally every day. Glenn So did you, were you able to hold on to that inventory through the recession or you lost it or…? John @ Condo . Fund Lost it all. It took me nine months… I'm sorry… Nine years to build this $77million in assets and about nine months to lose it all. Our primary bank was Lehman brothers. Who knew? And when they collapsed, so did we. There was no surviving it. If we had picked any other bank, we probably would have been fine, but because we were partnered with Lehman brothers, they called every one of their loans due and everything went into receivership. And that was 429 doors, about 300 single family res, and another 113 in apartment buildings, 13 story apartment building and it all went into receivership. It was just this cascade event that couldn't ever come… Glenn Terrible. Yeah, whenever I worked at American Homes for Rent, I started in 2013. And every single person I talked to was going through that. Just, yeah, it's kind of… going through it, I could imagine… I personally have gone through it, just not me personally, it was family members and it is just very catastrophic. How did you recover from that? How did you get back into buying real estate? John @ Condo . Fund So let's – we don't want to gloss over this - the great financial crash probably touched every person our age in America. Right? I mean, we had residents who had lived in that same houses that they were renting from us for 10, 20, 30, 40 years… parents, grandparents, children, all of these people. I mean, the, the great crash, I mean, that was a big, there's still trauma from that. Right? I mean, there's the housing crisis that we have right now specifically stems from all of the developers like me who failed back then. It depends on which report you look at, but somewhere between 4 and 15 million missing residents in America that just simply were never built, which is why we've got the housing crisis we have right now. You had tens of thousands of small businesses from drywall, sheetrock, lighting, electrical, plumbing, all of those businesses went out of business. And so, and that's what's causing the housing crisis now. There just aren't enough units out there. Glenn Yeah, I mean, I completely agree. Mobile home parks are, you know, we focus on affordable housing and I know that there's just not enough of it. John @ Condo . Fund Yeah, that's what we focus on now. Our primary goal is to help solve the housing affordability crisis. That's like our number one pathway. Glenn So let's talk about that. You do condo conversions. Is that your main focus? How did you get into condo conversions? John @ Condo . Fund Yeah. Well, one of the buildings when I started in 2008, I bought a 13 story apartment building and that was in the process halfway through the process of being converted when we lost it. So I love the idea of helping people become homeowners, because of my own personal story. I am extremely passionate about helping people become homeowners. And so even back then, 15 years ago, the plan was to help people own their units. Fast forward. Now we're partnered with nonprofit organizations now. And so we're not really… we use the term compassionate capitalism. We don't really try to make the bougiest, prettiest, nicest condos. We try to build what's called 80 % AMI area median income. So we try to build 80 % AMI units so that average Joe's without a bunch of money can buy their first unit instead of renting. So our goal is to take a person who's renting and transition them into home ownership, in the same building, right? So we'll buy a 23-unit. Ideally, the people who are living there, let's say they're paying, let's say $1,100 a month rent. If we can get them to parody rent, rent parody, rent and mortgage parody of about $1,400 we can help them become homeowners. Yeah. Glenn So does that get financing through a bank? How does that work? John @ Condo . Fund Yeah, standard financing will provide the a portion of the down payment for them and so if they're living in the building, we're gonna give them 1-3 months of rent as a rent credit to help them with their down payment so instead of 20 % down, $20,000 down kind of thing. And our partnership with the nonprofits, we're able to get the building qualified at like a 90-97 % mortgage. Glenn Like a FHA. John @ Condo . Fund Yep, 3.5 % FHA loan. We have to do a lot of hoop jumping to get that done, but it is really important to us to help serve these people who would normally not have access to home ownership. Glenn So when you buy these apartments, are looking at it as like you have a certain entrance price and then you have a certain exit price. And are you trying to sell it to the renters that are living there now or is it like a mixture of it to where you're renovating it once, you know, the tenants move out. John @ Condo . Fund It's a mixture. Our best case scenario is to sell it to the people who currently live there, right? That's our first goal. Glenn Mm-hmm. John @ Condo . Fund The affordability problem is a national problem, right? And so there's no preservation dollars for these nonprofits. So the buildings get worn down and they're not, there isn't enough money to deal with the upkeep. Right. And so I would buy at let's say $150,000 a door because of the damage done to these buildings. They have to sell them substantially below market because there isn't value there. Um, so we get a really good basis in purchase price. Then we, as developers, so we'll buy, for example, we'll buy it for 1.5. This building was assessed tax at 3.2. But we buy at 1.5 and then we come in and dump another 1.7 into renovation, rejuvenating the building to homestead quality. And then ideally sell the unit back to the person who's living there. Glenn Wow. Glenn What locations are you buying in? John @ Condo . Fund We're here in Portland, Portland and Virginia. So Oregon, Danville, Virginia, Baltimore… We've got teams across the country. We're looking at expanding into Tacoma. We're looking at expanding into Seattle. We partner with other developer teams out there. We know that we have created the blueprint that solves the affordability crisis on a national scale. We know that. We've already succeeded on this front. Now we're partnering with other organizations across the country to take our blueprint out to the masses. Glenn So, what's like the turnaround time on something like a project like that? John @ Condo . Fund 12 months, could be as low as 9 months, but I don't want to make that promise. Well, 12 to 18 is really our standard. Like that's our sweet spot. We return capital back to our investors with somewhere within 12 and 18 months. Glenn Yeah, 18. And then what's the equity on the backside once the capital is returned? Is there any ownership or how does that work? John @ Condo . Fund Yeah, our investors. Are you talking about from the investor side or the buyers? Glenn Yeah, so for the investors that put up the funds, you buy the apartment? is there still ownership of the apartment even though there's none…? John @ Condo . Fund Nope. The whole transaction gets done in 12 to 18 months. And we're generally returning capital about a one, three, five equity multiple. So put a hundred thousand dollars in, get a $135,000 back in 12 to 18 months. Glenn And is it inside that? I mean, I know all deals are different. Is there any like cashflow on the way, or is it just, it's more of like a development project? John @ Condo . Fund It is definitely a development. I do have investors who like their cashflow. Most of our investors want the equity, the upside, because it is good, but we do have a few select investors who want 12 % on a recurring basis. So we do give that as an option to a selected few investors. Because we don't need that much debt capital where we definitely like the equity piece better, but our last transaction, we raised 1.6 total, uh, one point…. I'm going to try to do the math… one point. Well, we raised 550 in debt, paying 12%. And then the remainder 1.50 was in equity. Yeah. So we can split it so that investors can get their monthly cashflow if that's what they're looking for, but you lose the upside benefit. Glenn Yeah. Yeah. So it's more of like somebody that just looking for cashflow they're getting 12%, which actually do does, it's almost like the equity investors might have to put up a little bit of extra just to fund the 12 % investors or cause you're funding, cause is there… there's not really cashflow because you're turning over the units and redeveloping and selling, right? John @ Condo . Fund Yeah, we do not get the means. So our first transaction, we bought it in February, Valentine's day specifically, of ‘24 and then we'll probably be done March or April of this year. So that's going to be a 14-month transaction. The midpoint in June, the building was empty. July, July midpoint, the building was empty, right? And there was no cashflow. So they're not really cash flowing transactions. We do have to over raise in order to pay those monthly investments, cash flowing, requirements. Glenn Yeah. So when you're looking at an apartment building, what is something that you would look for to make sure that, it is able to be converted? Like what is the thing that makes it convertible, like an apartment? John @ Condo . Fund It's a very specific buy box. We won't touch anything in the mid-seventies, garden style, right? If it’s got balconies, we won't touch it. We're looking for where the water can intrude. Right. Balconies are no go. Patios are no go. If it's got vinyl, I'm going to probably stay away from it. Glenn Yeah. John @ Condo . Fund (26:25.16) I love brick. I love stucco. I love early turn of the century, 1910-1920s architecture. Those for whatever reason fit the bill really well. Glenn So you said 1910… 1920 construction? Wow. John @ Condo . Fund Yeah, yep. All three of our buildings are 1912, 1917, and 1909. Glenn So in Florida, we have a lot of issues with like reserves and stuff like that. What is the requirements for the condo conversions? John @ Condo . Fund If your guests could see me, the moment you brought up word Florida, I started shaking my head. There are three states I will not do conversions. California, Florida, and New York, they make it virtually impossible to do conversions in. Famously you guys had a condo fall into the ocean… Glenn Yeah. John @ Condo . Fund …a couple years ago. So I mean they just make it impossible. Glenn But… John @ Condo . Fund But normal states, normal states don't have those issues. Glenn They don't have reserves for the condo or the reserves are like, there, what are the requirements for a condo conversion generally? John @ Condo . Fund So we make a choice. In Oregon, you don't have to start the condo association out with reserves. We make a conscious decision to fund a full year of reserves for the residents because we know that we're working with people of modest means, this is their first home. So we're going to overfund the reserves from the profits of the transaction into the reserves so that they have a stable and safe place to live. And if there are unforeseen issues, that there's enough reserves to cover it. So we're, we've made a conscious decision to do that for our units. That is not a requirement of the state. Glenn So how do you figure out what the condo fees would be for something that you converted? John @ Condo . Fund So you have to go through what's called a reserve study. There's going to be a condo specialist, they're just going to look at how many windows, how many doors, what's the square footage of the roof? How old is the plumbing? How new is the electrical? They're going to take the entire mass of the building and run it through their calculators and figure out what's the cost to maintain and manage this building. And so you're gonna get a reserve study. We go through five different firms, different companies to get our reserves budget completed. Like it's a pretty extensive process. Glenn So with the places that you're saying that there are about like seven, I think it's 17 unit building that you converted to condos and do you have to… John @ Condo . Fund 15. Glenn What's that? John @ Condo . Fund 15. Glenn 15, yeah, so do you have to structure the condo association and elect board members or how does that work? John @ Condo . Fund We set up what's called the CC and ours and the bylaws, right? We're going to create the legal framework. We're going to go get surveys done. We're going to create the legal framework to convert from an apartment into a condo. I mean, that's generally speaking five different documents. Glenn Mm-hmm. John @ Condo . Fund And then you have to go to the state, the state approves it. I mean, it’s a yearlong process. There's no… Glenn Yeah, I would see the red tape being the hard part. John @ Condo . Fund It's… I mean, I'm in Portland, Oregon. Okay. Like let's talk about this for a second. Super blue, super liberal. It's not that hard. I mean, you're going to hire… Yeah. Glenn Yeah, I could see that, yeah. Once you get it down, yeah. If it's your first time, you know, it's like a lot of brain damage. After you've done it a few times… It's kind of like running a mobile home park. First couple, pretty brutal. John @ Condo . Fund Yeah. You're to fall flat on your face a couple of different times and you just brush yourself off and keep going. But it's easily $150,000 to do a conversion. Right? I mean, it is expensive. We have a list of no less than 30 contractors, right? Various different people that we have to call through the supply chain, lawyers, accountants, all of these vendors that we have to work with. I mean, it's a paperwork nightmare. But the end result is you get to help somebody become a homeowner for the first time. Right? You get to help someone and watch that light bulb click of “last month, I was paying rent this month I own it.” Right. I mean, yes, what we do is time consuming and costly, but the net result is you're stabilizing homes. You're giving kids a better chance to grow up in a better neighborhood. They're more likely to have healthy marriages, happy marriages. They're more likely to have to go to college. You're helping someone go from the bottom rung financially to the first step onto financial freedom. Like your podcast is called “The Millionaire Journey,” it starts with ownership. That's the core essence of what we're doing. We're helping people go from zero to one. And it's, it's pretty impactful. You watch these people as, I mean, tears streaming down their face as they get their keys. Glenn Yeah. John @ Condo . Fund I'm telling you, it is a life changing moment to help someone. You bought your house. How old were you when you bought your first home? Glenn I think I was 27. I bought a condo. John @ Condo . Fund Okay. Okay. And that was your first place to live, right? Glenn Yep, 2015 maybe? John @ Condo . Fund Alright, and how excited were you? Glenn (34:17.247) I'm always stressed out, always got something to worry about. There's always now I got to do the work… No, obviously I was excited. I left Red Lobster within a year or two, I was buying a condo and it's something I never thought could or would happen. There's really… when you first buy the first one, you just never thought, there's no way I'm buying a house right now. John @ Condo . Fund That light bulb moment, something switched in your life to say, I'm going from rent to own. And every investor, every investor who's listening to this podcast has gone through that exact experience. That one moment, aha, where I go, I'm no longer paying rent. I'm an owner. Your life is better. Your marriage is better. Your kids are happier. You have better vacations. Everything in your life generally gets better if you're an owner. Glenn Stability. John @ Condo . Fund Stability. Yeah. It's huge. And we're giving people that first moment of finding the first taste of finance and it's, it's amazing. It's incredible to watch somebody who never ever thought they would be able to afford… Glenn Definitely. I mean, we do it. I know it's not the same thing, very similar to mobile home parks. We buy park-owned homes and we convert them to tenant-owned homes. Same story. John @ Condo . Fund Are you able to carry the contract? You buy the whole park and then you're gonna become the bank for these residents. Glenn Yep. We do rent to own payments. Yeah. So generally we put between $5,000 and $15,000 into each unit, depending on the size. I mean, there's some double wides, we'll do $20,000 into them and then we'll sell them for $30,000 to $50,000 a piece. Well, 20,000 to 40,000 is what the range that we usually do. And, you know, charged lot rent, but the lot rent pretty much covers the grounds keepings and septic tanks, wells, and we're constantly improving the park. But the second we sell those mobile homes off, the difference between… because we did park owned home for two or three years, and the difference between a park owned home resident and a tenant owned home is ownership, of course. So they'll put new window shutters on their mobile home. They'll add a carport if they can and, you know, a new porch, maybe a screened in porch, you know, stuff like that, stuff that with a park owned home, it turns into where it's just maintenance and people just want you to fix everything and, yeah, you might make a little bit more cashflow, but you're not going to have a long term plan as the residents taking care of their own stuff. You know, so, it's very similar to what you were saying. You know, the people, certain people that would not even be able to afford anything else except for these mobile homes is what we're selling. John @ Condo . Fund Yeah. And I love that, being able to be the bank for your residents. You give me - a whatever - three, five, six, seven thousand dollars down. And now we're going to carry that contract and you're going to own this place for the, for the rest of your life. That is such an empowering moment for so many people. Yeah, I’m very impressed by that. Glenn Yeah, it's something that also, generally, when we're buying the parks that are really kind of like what you're saying really rough shape, lots of neglect, and you're bringing it back to life. Like it's what I call… it like Warren Buffett, the cigarette butts or the cigar butts. We're buying those. You know, you get the cigar butts and you smoke it to the end. But what we're doing is we're bringing it back to life. You know, we're bringing it back to where it's like… John @ Condo . Fund Yeah. Glenn Now this is a place where people can bring their kids home, care for them. You know, live in a place where you don’t have drugs or crime happening around their units and stuff like that. Kids can play outside and not feel worried about bad neighbors and trash and stuff like that. We really focus on the quality of the parks for sure. John @ Condo . Fund That's so important. Tenant quality is definitely something from both of our business models. You got to look at tenant quality. The building we're about to buy, the next one kind of on our radar, we have a resident who has been in the same building since 1969. I just, I can't even fathom it. Glenn We refer to them as residents, a lot of landlords… Yeah, we refer to them as residents, but that resident quality of who, who is there? And I mean, if you get a lot of people moving in and out, moving in and out, moving those, we tend to stay away from with mobile home parks. John @ Condo . Fund You're seeing consistently people who have been in that park for a long time, I imagine. Glenn Yeah. The hardest part about the conversions and having the regular residents, like you were saying, the 1969 resident is it's like, you're trying to make it affordable. But you have to raise the rate on those people a lot of times, cause there'll be like, we have a couple of parks where we bought them and they're living in these huge mobile homes for 500- 600 bucks a month. And you're like to make this back to where it needs to be, it's gotta be, probably $1200 a month to get it to where it needs to be. And that's the hardest part, you know, cause really these people that, you know, that 1969 resident is probably living on social security at most, maybe $1200 a month income. And you're like, how do you… you know, it's a hard, it's a hard line to, you know, to be able to push because you have to raise rates. You can't not raise rates. That's why the place is in bad shape. John @ Condo . Fund Our conversation with the seller is like, same scenario. The average rent in Portland is about $1750, right? If you're non-subsidized, your standard rent is about $1764 specifically. This person is renting at $725 a month, like full thousand dollar delta between what it should be and what it currently is. Glenn Maybe the taxes and insurance are covered, you know? John @ Condo . Fund I'm telling you, it's rough. We have a conversation that like, look, somehow, some way this person will not be able to afford to stay here. We have got to get some kind of subsidy. We have to get some kind of way that we can offset because that person, I could never kick that person out. I couldn't do it. Right. I don't have that kind of blood lust… Glenn Yeah. John @ Condo . Fund (42:32.494) To be like, “Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Jones, you're going to go from $700 to $1,700.” Like that would break their backs financially. Glenn Yeah, yep. And they're really, where are they gonna go? That's the problem. That's the problem. John @ Condo . Fund Yeah, I just, I don't have that. I mean, we're working with the seller on a way to potentially offset that. And we're working with the nonprofits, right? So, I mean, we think we can structure it so that this person who's lived in the same place for 50 plus years can…still live there and not have jacked up rent. Like it's, financial engineering. It's possible to do. You just gotta be creative to buy the deal and creative to sell the deal. Glenn Yeah. That could be where the charities get involved. John @ Condo . Fund Exactly. And you, I mean that you're in the business of creative financing every single day. Right? We get to do that a little bit on our end when we buy as well. Um, yeah. Yeah. I love the real estate business. It’s a lot of fun. How long ago did you got your first park? You said ‘14, ‘20. Glenn (43:58.44) 2020. I bought my first condo and some houses and stuff like that. And then I bought a three-unit mobile home park. And then a nine-unit mobile home park right after that six months later. And that nine-unit pretty much covered all my expenses is what happened. John @ Condo . Fund Nice. Yeah. Yeah. Glenn But it kind of snowballed the buying of lots of other parks on top of that. John @ Condo . Fund So you've got what 550 units? How many? Glenn 650. Yeah, we specialize in buying smaller parks as well. Buy small parks, convert them to from park owned to tenant owned. And the main goal is to make them a nice park, make mobile home parks great again. You know, we focus on quality and there's things that are very sad, you know, you go into these parks and they're not habitable, but people are living there. So you have to convert them to more of a habitable condition. We replace a lot of sub floors, a lot of roofs, a lot of, you know, just replace the whole units on the interiors. So just to get them to where they're… John @ Condo . Fund Can you do like a studs out remodel on the mobile and still make it profitable? Glenn Yeah, so we generally buy the mobile home park for the for the lot rents and by the time we're done with them, it's a lot of people say like the 1 % rule, you know, when you buy an apartment, you have the lot, you know, the apartment rents are $1000, you're buying them for $100,000, we're buying them for generally $45,000 a pad and getting like 1.5 % of that. So we get the higher lot rents, but we also offset the mobile homes, fix them up nicely, make a nice community, reasphalt the parks, a lot of potholes in mobile home parks. Generally, the stuff we buy, you know, slumlords… and not even so much slumlords. It's just tired landlords that have no more funds to fix them up. So we inject a lot of money into them to get them stabilized. That's how we do it. It sounds exactly what you're doing, just with the condos. John @ Condo . Fund That's… Yeah. I love, I love that you're helping people become homeowners. I think that is amazing. it's, it's such a… You know, the talk in the real estate world is make as much money as you can, right? But we neglect to talk about like, these are residents, these are people. There has to be some level of compassion when you're working with these people. And I think as a whole, as a group, real estate investors get a bad rap because we don't talk about the people enough. I love hearing what you're saying about the people as well. I think that's really foundational. Glenn Yeah. Definitely. So where can people find you? John @ Condo . Fund John at condo, C-O-N-D-O dot fund, F-U-N-D, very simple. John at condo dot fund. Glenn I found John on LinkedIn. No “.com?” John @ Condo . Fund Nope, nope. John at condo dot fund. Easy to remember. Yeah, and then I'm always on LinkedIn. Search John at condo dot fund on LinkedIn. You'll find me. I'm easy to find. John at condo.fund and then our website is obviously condo.fund. Glenn Awesome. John @ Condo . Fund I try to try to make it easy. Yeah, this has been a lot of fun, Glenn. Thanks for, thanks for having me on your show. Glenn Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being on the show. I really enjoyed the conversation. John @ Condo . Fund I really did too. Thanks for having me, man. This was, this was really, really good. Let me know if there's anything I can help with. All right. Talk soon. Glenn Alright, thanks.
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