How To Buy Mobile Home Parks Off Market with Amanda Cruise

Amanda Cruise: [0:00] So we had a couple of years of real estate experience at that point. We knew, hey. Sure. We got into this duplex, then we did a BRRRR. You know? Those things were all fine and dandy, and we learn, and that's not gonna get us to where we need to be with both of us quitting our jobs. So we have to go to that next level. Mhmm. So we just absorbed all the information we could about mobile home parks for about six months

Mike DeHaan: [0:25] Mhmm.

Amanda Cruise: [0:25] And then spent the next six months trying to find one.

Speaker 3: [0:29] Welcome to the Collecting Keys Real Estate Investing Podcast with your host, Mike DeHaan and Dan Austin. From wins, losses, horror stories, and tactics for optimizing your business, Mike and Dan take a real uncensored deep dive into the ins and outs of running a full time real estate investment and wholesaling business.

Mike DeHaan: [0:52] What is going on, guys? Today on the collecting keys real estate investing podcast, we have Amanda Cruz, who is a super inspirational investor out of North Carolina that in a very short period of time went from buying residential properties to becoming a mobile home park and commercial investor. And she dropped some incredible knowledge on this show that's gonna leave you thinking like, it's it's really that simple. What have I been doing if I'm looking to make that leap? Like, it's really not as hard as so many people make it sound. No. You just

Dan Austin: [1:24] have to put in the effort like she talks about, putting in the effort, putting in the time, be willing to pay to get to places faster, you know, joining and getting around people that know what they're doing. I always think about this too, like, when I'm like, oh, that's gonna be hard to do. It's like, well, there's other people doing it, so I should be able to do it. Just how do I get from me to them Exactly. In the shortest period of time as possible.

Mike DeHaan: [1:43] Exactly. Yeah. And as we kinda get towards the end of the show, she starts to talk about, like, her general process for how she finds the leads and sort of, like, her entire business operation, what it looks like. And I mean, spoiler, it is surprisingly simple, but she does give you like literally the blueprint about how you can go and do exactly what she's doing. So, you know, she scaled it very, very quickly. Super great listen. You guys should definitely reach out to her as well. She's more than happy to chat with people. That's why people come on these shows. They want to get exposure to other people. So don't be afraid to reach out to her. Let her know you found value. Let her know that you're looking to get some more information about what she does in the mobile home park space. And I'm sure she would have some incredible knowledge she'd be happy to share with you. So anyways, guys, enjoy the show. Please go and share it with anybody who has any interest in real estate investing, making money in general, or just wants to hear some about story from someone who is crushing it. Lots of, you know, great motivational stuff there regardless of what you're into. You can also go to collectingkeyspodcast.com/free. Get our free five step guide to generate off market leads, And then you can also start buying some higher class assets just like Amanda does. Anyways, guys, really awesome episode today.

Mike DeHaan: [2:53] Enjoy this episode with Amanda Cruz. Alright. Amanda Cruz out of North Carolina. Super excited to have you on. You're a very highly referred person from Sarah Weaver who we had on the show a few weeks ago. And really excited to hear your story and how you've gotten into all such you're doing. So I guess people that don't know who you are, haven't heard about you before, give us the details. Give us the lowdown kind of where you started, what you're working on now, and everything in between.

Amanda Cruise: [3:23] Absolutely. So thanks, Mike and Dan, for having me. So my name is Amanda Cruz. I'm from North Carolina. I grew up pretty traditionally as far as jobs and work. My mom retired from a public school system, so I sort of followed the same trajectory of education. I got an undergrad in chemistry from NC State and then did nothing with that. I moved up to Washington DC and started doing wargaming analysis for the Department of Defense. Yeah. Got a master's in applied statistics while I was doing that, and then ended up hopping down to Richmond, Virginia and joining Capital One, where I worked for about a decade. I was managing a team of analysts there. I loved it. Super exciting, challenging. And I also realized through that that I was working so hard for somebody else

Mike DeHaan: [4:14] Really?

Amanda Cruise: [4:14] And not for myself and my own family. So eventually, I ended up starting in real estate investing as a way to sort of see if I could make it on my own and make my own money. My husband and I started with a duplex. We fixed it up. We put tenants in place. We ended up selling that. A few years later, we did a couple of smaller things in single family. We tried to gut one. We moved into that one. We did another burr. Those were fine. They went well. We didn't love managing contractors, but we didn't lose our shirts on anything. And I'd heard from this investor who I really, really respect, Bill Cook, who's just an amazing deal structure. He's really big into creative deal structuring. And so I'd heard from him there's one deal that if somebody he really respected could do for the rest of their lives, and there was only one type, would be a Lani deal, which is essentially you buy a mobile home just like you do a single family home. You buy it from somebody who, you know, really needs to sell, and you buy it for a good price, and then you turn around and sell it to some other family who's gonna live there, and you carry the note. Right? You're the bank.

Mike DeHaan: [5:25] Mhmm.

Amanda Cruise: [5:26] So we did a couple of those. They went really well. Those notes are at 18% interest, so that worked out, and we wanted to do more of that.

Mike DeHaan: [5:35] Mhmm.

Amanda Cruise: [5:35] So we ended up getting into mobile home parks. We did that in 2020, and we have a handful of parks now and, you know, have just really embraced commercial real estate and sort of haven't looked back to residential.

Mike DeHaan: [5:49] Yeah. That's fantastic. So what what's the time domain of that, I guess, from when you, I guess, started to now you're buying mobile home parks in 2020, which was probably one of the toughest times to buy start buying mobile home parks because Brandon Turner had already spilled the beans on BiggerPockets, and everyone was chasing him at that point. So I guess what what's all the steps in, like, the timeline in the middle there?

Amanda Cruise: [6:11] 2018 is when we bought our first duplex.

Mike DeHaan: [6:14] Nice.

Amanda Cruise: [6:14] 2020, we bought our first mobile home park. So funny story, that was actually a really good time at the beginning of the year. Mhmm. And, yeah, so people had started talking about them, but it was pre COVID craziness that happened with all real estate. So anybody who caught something prior to that, you're so thankful that you did. Right? Totally. We closed on ours the first week of April twenty twenty.

Mike DeHaan: [6:36] Nice.

Amanda Cruise: [6:37] So we went under contract in January before the world changed and closed in the middle of the pandemic. Like, was terrifying. It was the biggest purchase we'd ever made. I underwrote it, like, 50 or a 100 times.

Mike DeHaan: [6:49] Mhmm.

Amanda Cruise: [6:50] But it made sense. 50% of the people would have to not pay for us to not be able to make our mortgage payments. The fundamentals made sense, and we did it, and we haven't looked back. So I would say now is a much harder time to buy mobile home parks than 2020.

Dan Austin: [7:03] Yeah. Right. Fantastic. I got a question before we and because I know you're here to talk about real estate, but what does wargaming analysis look like? What are you all doing down there in Washington DC?

Amanda Cruise: [7:13] I always said it was like the most boring video game you've ever played.

Mike DeHaan: [7:17] Really?

Amanda Cruise: [7:18] Yeah. So we were basically trying to understand in a war scenario how certain aspects would go down or, you know, there were certain scenarios we'd play out. Obviously, it was classified.

Dan Austin: [7:30] But Right.

Amanda Cruise: [7:30] We were trying to understand different pieces and what was likely to happen, and we run all these scenarios and make projections.

Dan Austin: [7:36] Is it kinda like doing, like, game theory? Like, hey. If this person does this, then we would expect a logical person.

Amanda Cruise: [7:42] Not psychological. It was more like Monte Carlo simulations.

Mike DeHaan: [7:46] Oh, okay.

Amanda Cruise: [7:47] People would think it sounded really, really cool, but it was the slowest Super boring. Boring video game you've ever seen actually play out.

Mike DeHaan: [7:53] Nice. That's funny. Because so Dan's actually been to war, so it'd be interesting to see What happened? What the

Dan Austin: [7:59] analysis said versus what actually happened. What actually happened? Really funny. Interesting.

Amanda Cruise: [8:03] Oh my goodness. So we worked with a lot of guys who who had retired from the military, and then they would come over and they would see our analysis, and they would just be like, you know, it was a very good dynamic to have both minds there for sure.

Mike DeHaan: [8:16] That's funny. Yeah. Wow. I mean, it's it's something that's infinitely unpredictable. Very much. But no. That that's interesting though because like, I bet that that experience probably teed you up for real estate pretty well. Right? Because you already had that mindset to do the deep analysis and to think of all the potential black swan things. Right? That was part of your job. Uh-huh. And even though they're not directly related, I mean, the skill sets are slightly parallel, I would imagine.

Amanda Cruise: [8:43] Yeah. I mean, kinda like you see a lot of engineers in real estate. Right? Like, it's the analytical background.

Dan Austin: [8:48] It's us.

Amanda Cruise: [8:48] Yeah. That is that is my brain. Like, that's how I I work. So that worked out really well. And then being at Capital One, I was managing a team of data analysts in the finance part. Oh, okay. So I really got to understand balance sheet and income statement and all the different pieces of that, which was also really helpful in now running our business.

Mike DeHaan: [9:07] Uh-huh. Now that that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. So, yeah, for engineering background yeah. You're right. It is a but there's always two people, like, two kinds of people I feel like do really well in this business. And they're people that are really good at the analytical side of it, or the people that are really good at the sales side of it. And, you know, you find two people that are both, you know, good at those and they partner up. That's when, like, really successful businesses come together. Right? Yeah. So no. That that's cool. So you started investing in this real estate, you know, in 2018. Were you still working your w two? I guess, do you still work your w two? Or are you full time real estate now?

Amanda Cruise: [9:39] I'm full time real estate now. Yep. I left my w two in 2022.

Dan Austin: [9:44] Oh, great.

Mike DeHaan: [9:45] Nice. Good for you. Congratulations. Thanks. Yeah. So as you started to make that leap into real estate, how did you balance all that? That's always kinda one of the biggest questions people ask, especially because you were doing renovations. It wasn't like you were buying turnkey properties. I mean, there's a lot of work that goes into that, as anybody who's dabbled in this business knows.

Amanda Cruise: [10:05] Yeah. It was very stressful for years. We also had two children, or one at the when we first started.

Mike DeHaan: [10:13] So, you

Amanda Cruise: [10:14] know, anybody who is really, really smart would get into real estate prior to having children, not when they have a one year old.

Mike DeHaan: [10:20] Yeah.

Amanda Cruise: [10:21] That's not what our path took us on, so we just made it work. And it was a lot of hours, and it was working in the evenings and on weekends. Now we got lucky in 2019. My husband got laid off from his IT job. And I was like, do not go get another IT job. We know we wanna do this thing. Yeah. Like, I was always supposed to be the one that left first. This like, real estate was my thing. Okay. We otherwise would never have quit our jobs. Like, one of us would not have quit our jobs then. We only had a couple of properties.

Dan Austin: [10:51] Right.

Amanda Cruise: [10:52] But it worked out. And so he could be the one to go manage the contractors at that point and, find the mobile home parks and manage those.

Dan Austin: [10:59] Yeah. That's helpful. A little push, so to speak.

Amanda Cruise: [11:02] Yeah. Yes.

Mike DeHaan: [11:03] Now that that's great balance. And I appreciate you, you know, to be honest about that too.

Dan Austin: [11:06] That is a lot of work.

Mike DeHaan: [11:07] Totally. That's something that a lot of people tend to, like, try to skip over. But that's part of the gig. Right? And so you know, Dan and I story, we were doing real estate individually on our own until we started partying up in 2020. And now now we have this big off market business, you know, we've done hundreds of deals over the past three years, make pretty decent money with our business doing this whole thing. And people are always like, I feel like you did that so fast. I'm like, well, you don't see the part where we work fourteen hours a day for two and a half years.

Dan Austin: [11:35] Yeah. Right? Grinding it out, and the hustling, and the Right. Getting it done quietly, then all of a sudden Yeah. Then it pays off.

Mike DeHaan: [11:41] That's right. Exactly. So, it's funny. And you can use leverage, you can use team members, all that sort of stuff, but you're gonna have to put that work in eventually. Mhmm. So that's awesome. So then, I guess, to make the leap to mobile home parks, you first started buying these mobile homes and selling them on rental and options. Right? But are are they written or did they sell or finance? I guess, how would that normally work?

Amanda Cruise: [12:02] Seller finance. Yeah. They'd give us a and job we just held on to the note.

Mike DeHaan: [12:06] Cool. So you were completely off title at that point, and they were the full owner of it. Yep. But that from that jump to a mobile home park, I mean, that's a pretty big jump. Right? I guess unless they're really small parks. Because, like, that's like saying, I own a house. I'm gonna own a neighborhood. Yeah. You know? Like it's like a big step up very, very It

Amanda Cruise: [12:23] was and it wasn't. So we had a couple of years of real estate experience at that point. We knew, hey. Sure. We got into this duplex, then we did a BRRRR. You know, those things were all fine and dandy, and we learned. And that's not gonna get us to where we need to be with both of us quitting our jobs. So we have to go to that next level. And it made sense at the time you know, we had that experience with mobile homes. We understood how mobile home parks worked, and we were ready to go bigger. So we just absorbed all the information we could about mobile home parks for about six months and then spent the next six months trying to find one. And we actually our first park was a 50 lot park.

Mike DeHaan: [13:04] Oh, wow.

Amanda Cruise: [13:05] So we didn't necessarily buy, like, the small one next, which is another reason we were absolutely terrified. But ultimately, we knew it was the right thing.

Dan Austin: [13:14] So this Mike and I, like, this is our business. Right? We search out and find deals before they are in the market. How do you find deals, and how did you find that first one? Because that is like the biggest hiccup for people to start anything is how do you find it?

Amanda Cruise: [13:28] So we did the same. We have our parks, our off market direct to seller. That's a lot more competitive than it used to be. Now I didn't put the time into the broker relationships in the mobile home park space that I should have initially. And also back in 2020 and 2021, you could get a lot better deals for things in mobile home park space. The sellers didn't realize what they were sitting on

Mike DeHaan: [13:52] Mhmm.

Amanda Cruise: [13:52] Quite yet like they do now. I am putting a lot more effort into, like, the broker space with other commercial assets. We are under contract and hopefully gonna purchase a 47 Lap Park from a wholesaler

Dan Austin: [14:06] Nice.

Amanda Cruise: [14:06] In Tennessee next month. So, you know, kinda here and there hitting different places. But to begin with, it was strictly off market, making phone calls, figuring out who even owns the parks around, and then just making calls to them.

Dan Austin: [14:23] Right. Oh, just so you guys actually cold called these folks, or did you do mail or anything like that?

Amanda Cruise: [14:27] We did cold calling, which is how we've gotten several parks. We have done some mailers, but never consistently enough to get anything from it. Do you guys do mostly mailers or calls?

Dan Austin: [14:39] We do mostly mailers. Mostly mailers, but on the residential single family, small multi, it's a little bit different than buying a 50 unit asset. Right?

Mike DeHaan: [14:48] Yeah. It isn't. It isn't. I mean, we got that that 55 unit that we did over in Ohio.

Dan Austin: [14:54] You could totally get yeah. I don't disagree. You can totally get it, but can you build your business on one thing in an asset class like that? I don't know. Yeah. I would I would assume you have to have, like you're saying, broker relationships and really curating the relationship with the sellers. Because they're probably old baby boomers prepping to sell.

Amanda Cruise: [15:10] Ideally, that's who we would like to buy from. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. I mean, if if they're in their eighties, would I see a phone call coming up? Like, sweet. This is I don't wanna when I see somebody my age, I'm like, they're doing exactly what I'm doing. This one time I talked to this guy who was my age, and I was confused on the phone. I was like, hey. I don't usually talk to people my own age who are really open to selling and having a real conversation about it. And he ended up like, his dad had passed away. He got the park he didn't mean to. It was like a, you know, kind of crazy story. But otherwise, if it's anybody under the age of, 55, I'm like, no. It's not gonna work.

Mike DeHaan: [15:44] Right? That's probably not gonna work. Yeah. So that that brings up an interesting I have question I have on that. So, obviously, you're you're doing these calls. You're pretty targeted with that, I would assume. I guess, where does your basic criteria come from? Are you are you actually looking for a tier in the park? Are you looking at criteria for the seller? Like, in trying to find the people that are more likely to wanna sell to you at a good price.

Amanda Cruise: [16:07] The parks. That's a a much easier way to go about it. So we're looking for parks in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee. We want them to be 20 or more units. We don't want well and septic combined. I'm good with septic systems. We don't want any wastewater treatment plants. We want them to be where populations are growing, where there are some jobs around there. And so it's a lot easier than mobile home parks base to kind of figure out where all the mobile home parks are and then figure out who owns them because I don't know their situation.

Mike DeHaan: [16:40] Mhmm.

Amanda Cruise: [16:40] I'm not gonna not have somebody call them just because I can see that they're 45. Right?

Mike DeHaan: [16:46] Right.

Amanda Cruise: [16:46] We'll still do that. It's just unlikely it's gonna work out.

Mike DeHaan: [16:49] Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. That's cool. So then I guess as these first ones, you know, you started to find the opportunities, you were doing this outreach. How did you, like, know it was a good deal? Yeah. Was this just you and your husband, or did you have a mentor that you were working with that was helping you out? Did you have another partner? Or are you guys just, like, going for it and, you know, see what happens?

Amanda Cruise: [17:12] Just the two of us. So as far as underwriting and executing, it was the two

Mike DeHaan: [17:17] of us.

Amanda Cruise: [17:17] Now we listen to Kevin Bup used to have a podcast on mobile home parks back in the day, so we listened to like every episode of that.

Dan Austin: [17:25] I used to listen to him a lot. He's a great guy.

Amanda Cruise: [17:27] Yeah. I think he has a he has a different podcast as well on, you know, real estate investing in general. And for a while, he had a mobile home park specific one, which was very informative. And then we actually took a course from Frank and Dave. If anybody knows Mobile Home Parks, they know Frank and Dave. And so Dave. Yeah. They have the CD course. Literally, it's in CDs. I think they've upgraded it since COVID, but we bought it.

Mike DeHaan: [17:53] Nice.

Amanda Cruise: [17:53] And listened to 18 different CDs of Mobilize. Now this is in 2019, which you would not expect to be listening to CDs in 2019, but here we were. Luckily, I had an older car at the time that had a CD player.

Mike DeHaan: [18:06] That's funny. That was great. No. So that's great. So then, I mean, just confidence going into it. Mean, I I love the fact that you just went into it and pulled the trigger. You know? And I think that's where most people get stuck is they're not willing to do that. Right? And you even did it too. Like you said, you closed on it after COVID. So you had every reason to do what everyone else did, which was not follow through. Nothing. But I would imagine that it was probably a very good decision at this point that you Absolutely.

Amanda Cruise: [18:33] It was a very good decision. That has paid off in multiples. Now I don't want it to sound like I wasn't scared. I was terrified. What I think I'm able to do, one of my strengths is being able to put logic to fear in order to move forward. So what was the worst case scenario that was gonna happen to us at that time? Everybody would get laid off. They wouldn't be able to pay their rent. We would not be able to make the mortgage payment. We may have to, you know, go through all of our savings. And worst case, we're in our thirties. Right? Like Mhmm. It's just okay. So then we have to go get jobs. Then we have to stay at jobs longer, which we were already I was already doing. And so Mhmm. When you're able to take a step back and say, first of all, I run these number. I ran them. I know the numbers. 50% of people have to not pay to not make the rent.

Mike DeHaan: [19:22] Like Mhmm.

Amanda Cruise: [19:24] It's a solid deal. And my mom was like, sure you wanna do this right now? You know? Of course, everyone's saying, it sounds so risky.

Dan Austin: [19:31] Yeah.

Amanda Cruise: [19:32] Because that's what people say anytime you're getting into real estate investing. That sounds so risky. Do you remember the Great Recession? Yeah. But ultimately, if you're confident in your numbers and you know it's the right step forward, what's the worst thing that could happen?

Dan Austin: [19:45] Yeah. Yeah. You're absolutely right.

Mike DeHaan: [19:46] That's going back. Have you ever heard of, like, Tim Ferriss', like, fear setting

Amanda Cruise: [19:50] Yes.

Mike DeHaan: [19:51] Sort of practice that he does where you say, like, the worst case scenario, and then you give what the next step is after that. And then what's the worst case scenario from there, and then you get the next step. And what it allows you to do is mentally overcome a lot of, like, the unknown that you could face from the worst possible situation.

Amanda Cruise: [20:08] Yeah. Absolutely.

Mike DeHaan: [20:09] Essentially what you did. No. That's cool. So how do you buy that first property too? Because that's always another thing as well with commercial assets is lenders, if you don't have any experience, I mean, you didn't have like a key person that totally knew how to run and operate these deals. Did you raise money for this? Did you, like, have the cash for it? Did you get a bank loan? Like, what was all that situation?

Amanda Cruise: [20:32] So we sold our duplex

Mike DeHaan: [20:34] K.

Amanda Cruise: [20:34] As part of the money is we knew we were looking for a mobile home park, and we took some money out of our retirement accounts. So we did we did it ourselves. We didn't want to bring in outside investors on something so new to us that was such a big leap, but we were able to have the capital from obviously having good w two jobs and saving up. So we took some out of our retirement.

Mike DeHaan: [20:56] Sure. And come on. You've never been on Instagram. It's all about OPM and you're supposed to be money. Just max leverage and lose their money. Don't lose yours. You did it wrong. Come on.

Amanda Cruise: [21:04] And we we do. So we do have investors now Now you do. That were several commercial deals in.

Dan Austin: [21:10] They have experience. Yep.

Amanda Cruise: [21:12] Exactly.

Dan Austin: [21:13] So I have a question too on that. Well, because you talked about doing what I think you called this Lejuani loans to these mobile home purchasers. So when you buy a part, do you want to buy it with homes? Because I know that also comes with its own challenges.

Amanda Cruise: [21:28] Okay. My preference is to have tenants own their own homes because it's more streamlined.

Mike DeHaan: [21:33] Mhmm.

Amanda Cruise: [21:33] That being said, there are lots of things changing in the industry right now. The way that mobile home parks traditionally have been valued is different than how brokers are valuing them today, where the park owned home rent is counting towards the net operating income and being capitalized in order to make the price work. And that is kind of how brokers are running things today.

Dan Austin: [21:56] Interesting.

Amanda Cruise: [21:57] So that being said, any long term plays that we might wanna hold on to, I'm definitely would prefer the tenant owned model. But anything like, we have this one park. It was a complete disaster that we are turning around. It's this big project we're currently working on. That one, I don't mind keeping more of them as park owned homes to have that additional income because I don't plan on holding that one for very long.

Mike DeHaan: [22:22] Right. Okay. Yeah. Mike and I

Dan Austin: [22:24] were underwriting a park, and one of the challenges this is a couple two, three years ago. One of the challenges with it was the seller owned, like, half the homes, and then the tenants owned, like, half the homes. And then getting the financing lined up and all the issues with that because he was looking at it as, look at all this income, but then we were looking at it from a lender's perspective, which is like, yeah, that doesn't count though. Mhmm. And, you know, they didn't like the asset. And so I could see that being a challenge. And so you're saying now the way brokers are counting that towards NOI, are lenders actually also counting that as income?

Amanda Cruise: [22:55] Sometimes. Okay. So you have to have the right lender. And there are lenders who are who do a lot of mobile home parks. So one thing I would say if you're looking at financing a mobile home park, make sure one of the first questions you ask any potential lender is if they already have a mobile home park on their books. If they don't, it's way too risky that their underwriters will not understand the asset class or feel comfortable with it and then walk away at the last minute,

Mike DeHaan: [23:20] and you'll

Dan Austin: [23:20] be That's good to know.

Mike DeHaan: [23:22] Great advice. That's great advice right there. That's that's a huge tip. So I guess on that note, to for lenders with this, like, you looking at, like, local lenders primarily? Or

Amanda Cruise: [23:33] Yeah. So Fannie and Freddie have gotten into the mobile home park game over the past decade. So they will fund some parks. They need to be, like, 50 plus lots and paved and in, you know, certain areas. Mostly, though, it is these smaller commercial banks. So these local banks are the ones who are financing a lot of mobile home parks just like a lot of commercial real estate in general right now because guess what? It's gonna be personally guaranteed Unless you have this, you know, 50 plus lot paved community in Charlotte, North Carolina or something like that, then you're gonna be personally guaranteeing it's gonna be a local bank, and it's gonna be a lot on you

Mike DeHaan: [24:11] I know.

Amanda Cruise: [24:12] And your personal finances, which is part of the game

Mike DeHaan: [24:15] Mhmm.

Amanda Cruise: [24:16] In commercial real estate until you're playing with ten, twenty million dollar assets.

Dan Austin: [24:21] Yeah. Yeah. So true. Like, people are always like, don't get any recourse debt. It's like, well, if you're doing it the right way and you're growing up in the industry, you kinda have to take on some of that risk until you get that experience and you're in the stripes.

Mike DeHaan: [24:34] Yeah. To be fair, we hear that a lot from a lot of people. I've never heard that from, like, not a rich old white guy that's been in the game for thirty years. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I take on

Dan Austin: [24:43] no rich no debt, or if you're in other people's masterminds that tell you don't ever guarantee a loan. It's like, well, I don't know how you do it then.

Amanda Cruise: [24:51] A lot of times that works in multifamily a little bit better because those assets are priced so expensive. It's pretty easy to go find a $10,000,000 asset.

Dan Austin: [24:58] They miss.

Amanda Cruise: [24:59] But in mobile home parks, you're often working with 1,000,000, $2,000,000 assets. And those, you aren't gonna have to personally guarantee.

Mike DeHaan: [25:07] Yeah. Absolutely. No. That's awesome. So, obviously, you bought this first one. What's your total portfolio look like now over you know, since the last, what, three years? I think you scaled up pretty quickly.

Amanda Cruise: [25:19] Well, we have four parks right now, a 113 lots.

Mike DeHaan: [25:22] That's awesome.

Amanda Cruise: [25:23] We're under contract on another 47 lots right now that

Mike DeHaan: [25:26] That's great.

Amanda Cruise: [25:27] You know how that goes where we've been negotiating back and forth, I feel like forever, where next week is the end of our sixty day due diligence. So one way or another, it's gonna either happen or not after next week.

Mike DeHaan: [25:39] Nice. Go. That's cool. And so are have all those been direct to seller? And with you guys being, like, the just primary drivers, have you brought in partner? I know you've raised a little bit of money.

Amanda Cruise: [25:50] Yeah. So the four that we own right now, those are all direct to seller. We had another two that we ended up assigning to other investors, so those were also direct to sellers. The one we're working on right now was a wholesaler that brought it to us. So, you know, we're kinda going in that direction. We do have a partner on one small park where we just went fifty fifty in it. And then on our last park that we bought, that's the project one where we're doing a big turnaround. We did our first syndication last year, so we do have investors in on that one, and we'll bring investors in going sworn.

Mike DeHaan: [26:23] Right on. Yeah. Nice. That's great. I love that. Like, just keeping it simple, you know, and you maintaining most of the ownership like that as well. I mean, that's where real, totally, wealth is made. That's always kind of the thing that drives me crazy with state of real estate right now is you have all these people that are like, I own a 130 doors. It's like, yeah, but you're an LP in like a fund that, like, bought a bunch of stuff. Like, you don't actually own anything. You know? You have, like, a tiny fraction of an already watered down tiny fraction of what you invested in.

Dan Austin: [26:51] That you have no control over.

Amanda Cruise: [26:52] Yeah. It's easy to get in. Like, that is one of the things when you get into the circles of commercial real estate. It's like, oh, well, I have 100,000,000 assets under management. I have, you know, it's just such like a it's a little bit ridiculous, but you just have conversations with actual individuals who are doing stuff you can kinda get away from showing off it.

Dan Austin: [27:12] Yeah. It's way more impressive to meet somebody that's like, yeah, I own a 150 doors than somebody that says, yeah, I'm a syndicator with a 100,000,000 under management. Like, somebody that actually owns the doors outright, like, like, damn, that is like legit. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [27:25] But it's all about marketing. Right? You gotta get like the normies who are trying to get their money. You gotta make them think that you're a big deal. So no. That's awesome. So I guess, going forward, are you planning to stick with mobile home parks? Are you starting to look at some other stuff?

Amanda Cruise: [27:39] I love mobile home parks. We will keep buying those for sure. I also like other commercial assets. I like the ease of management. One thing we really like about mobile home parks is value add opportunities. We are value add investors. And those opportunities exist as well in the nonresidential commercial space. And there's not as much competition in that space because there's no game plan

Mike DeHaan: [28:05] Uh-huh.

Amanda Cruise: [28:06] Of here's exactly what you do. Every asset is different, and it's more challenging that way. So I've been looking at a lot of strip centers, flex spaces, some industrial buildings, some kind of small offices, not the office parks that are kind of loss leaders right now

Mike DeHaan: [28:23] Mhmm.

Amanda Cruise: [28:23] Our environment, but sort of retail slash office spaces where you can put a hair salon or a CPA firm, those sort of things.

Dan Austin: [28:30] Yeah. Okay. So this is the second time you're really kinda in your career going from one asset class to the next. Like, how do you spin that up? Like, what are you doing? When you say I'm looking at that, what is that first thing you started doing to get prepared to buy something in that area?

Amanda Cruise: [28:44] Yeah. So I joined a mastermind with Ash Patel, who's he is one of Joe Fairless's podcasters on the best ever podcast. Right? So he has a ton of commercial experience. He knows what he's doing. And so I'm in their mastermind. So for instance, there's this one deal that I'm working on this week getting under contract. It's in or outside of Atlanta. So I called his business partner, Rinku, and I was like, hey. Let's go in on this together. You're the local one here. I'm not in Atlanta. And so being able to just have an instant phone call to look at my underwriting, an entire group of very experienced investors, we meet every Tuesday. So, you know, putting money into stuff like that and the knowledge for me is well worth it right now.

Mike DeHaan: [29:27] Yeah. I love it. So your whole formula for how you've gotten where you're at is invest in education, invest in your network, take action. Like, really is that simple. Right? And then you

Amanda Cruise: [29:39] have It does simple.

Mike DeHaan: [29:41] But mean, that it is that simple, though, honestly. Like, if you look at its core level, and you chose to take action on mobile home parks, you know, and actually take action on commercial stuff, You're finding the people that know how to do it to pay for speed, so you can learn to do it faster and learn to do it more efficiently. I'm sure in those, you have a network of people as well that are like minded that are helping you make decisions faster, learn faster, you learn from their mistakes. You know, they can encourage you and keep you accountable in what you're doing. And then you're doing the small boring stuff to take action over and over and over again. And, you know, I feel like most people, they never get anywhere because they don't do any of those steps. Right? They're like, I'm just gonna watch more YouTube videos, consume more podcasts, read more books, but I'm never actually going to do anything that drives and propels me forward.

Amanda Cruise: [30:25] That's true. And a lot of times, it's connection. Like, nobody wants to make phone calls. I dread it truthfully. No. Even when I see a seller call that somebody set up for me on my calendar, I'm like, oh, okay. I have to pick up the phone and I have to call somebody. And I have on my calendar every week I have to follow-up. And then I have to call brokers. I'm like

Dan Austin: [30:41] Yep.

Amanda Cruise: [30:41] Okay. You're right. That's part of the game. And it's those small things that you just have to do because that's what your business requires or else you're not gonna have a business. You just have to make sure that happens every week.

Dan Austin: [30:53] Yeah. Absolutely. It's not overly complicated. You just have to recognize that other people are doing it so you can do it and be willing to, like, what Mike was just saying, be willing to

Mike DeHaan: [31:01] pay pay to get there faster. Exactly. Awesome. Well, that's great stuff, Amanda. I love just like the trajectory that you've gone. It's so repeatable. It's very, very impressive, like how you've done it in sort of short period of time. And it, you know, just comes down to good old fashioned hard work, which I'm always a soccer for.

Amanda Cruise: [31:17] So Thank you.

Mike DeHaan: [31:17] That's good stuff. Awesome. So we're going to dive into the last few questions of our show here. The first one, and I'm hypothesizing that you might have some good stories from your, you know, your asset class. But what is the craziest real estate investing story that you have? This can be a big win, a big loss, anything in between. Crazy tenants. Yeah. A crazy tenant.

Amanda Cruise: [31:41] A big win, but I feel like people probably always share those. So I will share something that happened to us that is just terrible. So when we were doing the individual mobile homes, right, we had my, at the time, three month old son in the back of the car. And here, my husband I'm on maternity leave. My husband and I are going out to look at this mobile home. We had it already agreed on the price. We were buying it on a Friday with the intention of selling it on Sunday. Great. We go out. We buy it Friday. Saturday, we're out there. We had already contacted somebody to come rip all the carpet out because the carpet looked terrible. We wanted to do that before we sold it. The guy comes on Saturday. He rips it all out. I go in afterwards just to check and make sure everything's good. I walk back out, and I get into my car with my son in the back, my infant son. And these little black bugs are jumping off my ankles. Oh, wow. The house was in

Mike DeHaan: [32:33] a sea

Amanda Cruise: [32:33] of fleas.

Mike DeHaan: [32:34] Oh, no.

Amanda Cruise: [32:35] There were fleas jumping off of my ankles, and I wore, like, sandals. I didn't know any That's

Dan Austin: [32:40] so bad.

Amanda Cruise: [32:40] I'm such an idiot. Yeah. So then, of course, we were, like, freaking out about that, and we had to, like, have the car in heat. It's the middle of the summer, luckily, so they ended up dying over the next few days. And as far as I know, my son never got a flea bite or anything like that.

Dan Austin: [32:54] Fleas.

Amanda Cruise: [32:55] But I felt worse for the guy who actually took out all the carpet because he we just found him on Craigslist. He shoved it all into his car and he was like driving And off with so that poor guy, I'm sure had like so many flea bites from that.

Mike DeHaan: [33:08] Oh, man. Probably I'll wear

Dan Austin: [33:09] the flea collar after that.

Amanda Cruise: [33:11] Right.

Mike DeHaan: [33:12] It's funny. That's something that we don't really deal with up here in the Northwest. But we have friends that are down in your area, and that seems to be a really common thing throughout like the Southeast or like we have a friend in Texas who finds fleas all the time. Fleas and termites.

Dan Austin: [33:24] We don't really have those problems.

Amanda Cruise: [33:25] We've had that too. Yeah. Termites.

Mike DeHaan: [33:27] Yeah. We don't we don't have any of those issues up here.

Dan Austin: [33:29] We don't have any scary bugs or animals up here, really. Like, we're pretty chill in Washington. Down south, you get some big spiders, snakes True.

Mike DeHaan: [33:37] Gators. We we we have yeah. Gators. Yeah. We we have bears, but if you have a house with like a bear problem, that's just kinda cool, honestly.

Dan Austin: [33:44] Yeah. Right. Yeah. Just make your door stronger.

Amanda Cruise: [33:46] You guys just have frozen pipes and stuff like that. That also is scary.

Dan Austin: [33:49] Yeah. We do have that. We do have that.

Mike DeHaan: [33:52] Yeah. We have a lot of that. That's for sure. Awesome. Well, glad you got out of that one unscathed. Okay. Cool. Next question. What is the number one tip you would have for either a new investor looking to get started or a small time investor looking to take their business to the next level?

Amanda Cruise: [34:07] It's hard. I mean, it's not easy. It's hard right now. It was hard years ago. Since 2018, 2019, everyone was talking about how real estate was overpriced. Yeah. Well, it's only gotten more so, and it's not going back really. It's hard right now because prices are dropping, and sellers don't want to acknowledge that. So there are less deals right now.

Mike DeHaan: [34:27] Yeah. Yeah.

Amanda Cruise: [34:28] But it only takes one. It only takes one really good deal to change your life. It's not gonna be your first one, but you have to get there. You have to get to that one that's gonna change your life. And so just keeping on with it, it is possible. Go for it every day.

Dan Austin: [34:44] I'm glad you recognize that.

Mike DeHaan: [34:45] That's hard. What you're saying is people need to be consistent with what they're doing and just do

Dan Austin: [34:50] that for, like, the long term. Put the effort in. Be willing to put the effort in longer Yeah. Than you think you need

Mike DeHaan: [34:55] Yeah. I was leaning into that because we always joke that like all the real a players that come on here, the tip they always give is about consistency in some The flavor of the form

Dan Austin: [35:03] and form. Yeah. It really is. Consistency over time.

Mike DeHaan: [35:06] Yeah. That that's how we know that someone's actually walking the walk is when that's their tip versus if they have something about like, you know, oh, you need to I don't know. Some way to, like, make it happen faster or whatever. It's like, everyone that's actually playing the game knows that that's not how it works.

Amanda Cruise: [35:21] You never know when it's gonna be the home run.

Mike DeHaan: [35:24] Totally. Exactly. That's a very good point as well. Awesome. Alright. Last question, Amanda. Where can people find you or follow you and reach out to you if you'd like to do so?

Amanda Cruise: [35:33] Yeah. My website is voyageinvesting.com. If you're interested in getting on our newsletter and seeing the offers that we have come out, you can join our investor circle there. I also post a lot on LinkedIn, Amanda Cruz. And on Instagram, it's at investing with Amanda.

Mike DeHaan: [35:50] Awesome. Well, thanks, Amanda. I really appreciate you coming on the show. And you guys, you should definitely reach out to Amanda. I mean, if you didn't hear this and think, she's crushing it, I wanna do what she's doing. I mean, I don't know what to tell you. She is an absolute inspiration, and I'm sure she would be happy to chat with you about kind of the stuff that she's worked on and the stuff that she is working on too and probably has some great knowledge that she'd be willing to share with you.

Amanda Cruise: [36:14] Absolutely.

Mike DeHaan: [36:15] Yeah. So absolutely reach out to her, guys. And thanks for listening everybody. If you could please share this show with anybody who might find interesting at all. And I mean, I don't know how anyone could not find this interesting if they have any interest in changing their life valuable at the very least through real estate cash flow or building wealth. So please share this with everyone that you know, and go to collectingkeyspodcast.com/free. Get your free five step gap generating off market leads. And here's a secret as well. It doesn't have to just be for residential props again, I do. You can use the tactics in our ebook to get mobile home parks just like Amanda Cruz does on a very regular basis. So thanks for listening everybody, and we'll talk to all next week.

Speaker 3: [36:53] Thanks for listening. Please leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts, and check us out at collectingkeyspodcast.com for tips and guides on starting your own real estate investment and wholesaling business.