MHP Brokers Tips and Tricks Podcast, Frank Rolfe Interview

The Mobile Home Park Broker's Tips & Tricks To Investing

In this episode of The MHP Broker’s Tips and Tricks podcast, Maxwell Baker, president of The Mobile Home Park Broker, interviewed Frank Rolfe, a Top 10 Community owner and co-founder of the highly respected CRE University.

This and every Tips and Tricks podcast episode are brought to you by The MHP Broker’s’ proprietary Community Price Maximizer. Use this four-step system to get the highest price possible for your mobile home park or RV community when you sell it through The MHP Broker. Guaranteed. Ask Max for details.

Here Are the Show Highlights:

• Frank Rolfe is a legend in the business as the co-owner, with Dave Reynolds, of some 200 communities in 25 states, with 300 employees. Frank also co-founded CREUniversity, a leading educational resource for commercial real estate investors. (Max, 0:22)
• Frank’s daily planning process involves starting his workdays by first plotting the phone calls he intends to make and the trips or activities that will also make up his day. (Frank, 2:43)
• The goal is to plan out every minute of the day for maximum productivity. Though Frank uses Google Calendar, he’s never stepped away from keeping old-school hand-written notes, his primary form of day planning. He also does a lot of driving between properties. He used to have offices in various communities, but he now works from his home or car. (Frank, 3:02)
• In addition to daily plans, Frank has long-range plans projected five and ten years into the future, and still has records from such planning from as far back as 1980. (Frank, 4:49)
• Here are the top five lessons, or “aha moments” Frank has learned and profited from during the course of his career… 1.) Don’t be afraid to make needed personnel changes. (Frank, 6:02) 2.) Think like a lender. In other words, be able to judge your park like a banker would, and keep it in the kind of condition that would impress such a lender. (Frank, 7:29) 3.) Take “other people’s money” very seriously. When investors trust you with their funds, that should create a lot of pressure to use that money to the benefit of the investor. The pressure is (and should be) much greater than when you’re spending your own money. (Frank, 7:57) 4.) Each of the 50 states is different in terms of rules, laws, regulations, statutes and cultures regarding mobile home parks. The way you’ll operate your park depends greatly on where it’s located. (Frank, 8:26) 5.) Moderation is important in business operation in this industry. Think before doing. (Frank, 8:26) 6.) Even the mobile home park owner associations are different culturally, from one state to another. (Max, 12:44)
• Some park owners can grow aggressively, taking on new partners and sources of funding to continually add park inventory. But that’s not for everyone. Some park owners would be better off staying small. Just know what you can comfortably take on. (Frank, 14:19)
• It’s a quality of life issue. Constant growth, with its risks, could make your life worse rather than better. (Frank, 14:49)
• Frank’s own company grew organically from the 1990s, when it was nearly impossible to be taken seriously by banker when you wanted to invest in mobile home parks. That’s really changed lately, though. (Frank, 15:54)
• It’s easy to get arrogant and over-confident if you have initial success in business. It can make you think you’re a business wizard, and that can lead to failures down the road. So stay humble. Know your strengths and weaknesses. (Frank, 16:51)
• Over the next five to ten years, Frank sees much higher rents and unsustainably high new-home prices. (Frank, 18:57)
• As the cost of affordable housing continues to rise in the U.S., Frank sees an ever-expanding market for mobile home housing. (Frank, 20:10)
• Now the emphasis has to be on figuring out how to manufacture more affordable new mobile homes. (Frank, 22:13)
• Frank agrees with Max that there’s a market for tiny homes. But the obstacle he sees is that homes manufactured to gain HUD seals aren’t as cool or highly sought as homes not built to such specs. This is the challenge the industry will face, but there’s great upside if they can figure it out. (Frank, 22:54)
• When Frank co-founded CREUniversity in the 1990s it was because there was no information out there on mobile home park investing. He found two old books, and that’s about all of the educational resources on the market (besides the hucksters). There was an opportunity and a need, so CREUniversity came into existence. (Frank, 29:18)
• Frank picks and choose chapters from various business books to read, but one of his all-time favorites is Am I Being Too Subtle: Straight Talk from a Business Rebel, by Sam Zell. He highly recommends it. (Frank, 35:58)

Reach out to Max to learn more about trends in the mobile home park industry and find out how to sell your property for the best possible price. Just drop Max a line at [e-mail] or give him a call at 678-932-0200.

Power Quotes on This Episode:

“(CREUniversity is) the best educational platform…for mobile home park investing.” (Max, 00:22)

“So I plan out my day in advance, trying to utilize every minute of the day for the maximum amount of productivity.” (Frank, 3:02)

“I’m a huge list-maker, planner guy.” (Frank, 4:29)

“I'm still pretty much on plan with my 1980 plan, even though it's like 42 years ago, but yeah, I'm a big believer that you can't really get anywhere in life unless you plan a lot.” (Frank, 4:49)

“...we have found over the years that if I have a park that is not working, probably I need to change out the manager because, you know, we typically only have in any given property one employee, the manager. That's our quarterback, running back, wide receiver, the whole team.” (Frank, 6:12)

“...as long as you think, ‘okay, what would a lender do with this property?’ it's hard to go wrong.” (Frank, 7:29)

“Another aha moment is that America, although it's all one nation, it's more like 50 European countries, every state is so insanely different in everything…” (Frank, 8:26)

“Things that work in some states don’t work in others.” (Frank, 8:36)

“...the risk and reward is, the risk (of continued growth in the industry) is it's very scary, very serious business. So there's nothing wrong with staying small.” (Frank, 14:19)

“The key is just your quality of life. And if you (have) one park, and you're happy, then stay with one…” (Frank, 14:58)

“So in other words, people need to be thinking, ‘how do we build a cheaper (mobile) home?’” (Frank, 22:13)