Aaron Bihl
Aaron Bihl has been a guest on Collecting Keys, the real estate investing podcast hosted by Mike DeHaan, Dan Austin and Dylan Koch, 4 times.
Operate Like a Recession Is Coming (Even When You're Winning) w/ Aaron Bihl
Dan Austin hosts with guest Aaron Bihl while Mike is away, walking through the contradictions in Pace Morby's recent live call with Brandon Turner ed personal guarantees he later says his advisors won't let him honor, an unnamed syndicator losing $40M, and a San Angelo apartment bought with a 50-year mortgage that Pace now says he hates. They then get practical about why wholesaling subject-to deals creates permanent liability, how insurance works (and breaks) on sub-two, and why buying real equity is the only protection in a market nobody can predict.
Key takeaways
- Wholesaling a subject-to deal doesn't end your involvement ed both the seller and the buyer keep calling you for years when payments stop, logins break, or escrow changes the payment.
- Aaron shares two botched sub-two cleanups: one tied up in suit and countersuit for 2.5 years with nobody paying, and one where a servicer tried to foreclose on a property the seller already held title to.
- On sub-two insurance, the common move is to mirror the seller's policy with the new buyer as named insured and the old party as additional insured ed but a real claim is where it gets messy, since insurers look for reasons not to pay.
- Pace publicly promoted his San Angelo apartment deal (nothing down, 50-year mortgage, overpaid) for years, then called it a deal he hates on a live call ed on a 50-year amortization you likely owe more than it's worth and can't sell out of it.
How to Profit on Mobile Homes W/O the Parks with Aaron Bihl
Aaron Bihl returns to explain why he left San Antonio for Greenville, South Carolina, and shifted his focus to buying cheap off-market lots and placing brand-new manufactured homes on them. He walks through his target numbers (all-in around $135K-$160K, selling in the $200Ks), the trades involved in setting a home on raw land, and why new mobile homes qualify for FHA financing on day one. The hosts also cover why most hard money lenders avoid mobile homes and the difference between balance sheet lenders and loan traders.
Key takeaways
- A brand-new manufactured home on land is FHA-eligible from day one, which solves the problem Aaron had flipping used mobile homes where buyers wanted FHA but the homes wouldn't qualify.
- Aaron's target is buying lots off-market at $10-15K and being all-in around $135K-$160K on a new mobile home build, then selling in the $200Ks. Buying lots from wholesalers on-market puts you at $170-180K all-in for a $225K sale, which is decent but thin.
- Lot due diligence matters more than he expected: perk tests (roughly $1,000, two to three week backlog), land clearing, septic ($6,500-7,000) and well (~$6,000) costs, and topography that looks fine online but turns out to be a hillside.
- Detitling a mobile home is handled at the county level in South Carolina rather than the state level as in Texas, so timelines and rules vary by county, and a change in ownership can restart the process.
What’s Changed in Real Estate: Buyer Behavior, Closing Times, and More w/ Aaron Bihl
Mike DeHaan and Dylan Koch are joined by San Antonio investor Aaron Bihl to compare notes on how their markets have shifted: flips sitting without showings, investor buyers stalling decisions, and dispo taking weeks instead of hours. They also discuss building commission-only acquisition and dispo teams, where AI actually helps (and where it burns leads), and how to handle the mental swings of losing deals.
Key takeaways
- Dispo has become a sales job: buyers now slow-walk decisions to the last day of the contract, so deals that used to move in a day can take two weeks — often back to the first buyer who called.
- Buyer fatigue is measurable. Mike's team tracked unsubscribes and Investor Lift views: roughly half their buyers list unsubscribed in six months, and deals that once got 150-200 views now get about 20.
- Market conditions are highly local and cyclical — San Antonio flips can sit 30 days without a showing while Central Kentucky wholesale deals get 15-20 responses in 20 minutes.
- Going back through an unworked CRM backlog reveals deals lost to poor follow-up; Dylan found five or six leads in a few days that sold to someone else below his numbers.
Becoming a Self Proclaimed Trailer Boy with Aaron Bihl
Aaron Bihl, a San Antonio investor buying six to eight houses a month, walks through his path from oil and gas engineer to agent to off-market buyer, and explains how he built a niche in mobile homes on land. He also breaks down how he structured a partnership with Jason after selling him a deal, and the specific gotchas of financing, titling and rehabbing manufactured housing.
Key takeaways
- Aaron churned through several acquisitions managers before realizing he was better at sales than anyone he hired — the common advice to hire an acquisitions manager first can actually replace your strongest skill instead of your weakest.
- Multiple coaches will each give you a different 'only right way' to build a business; the real work is deciding what you want your life and business to look like and following people aligned with that.
- Only buy mobile homes that sit on land, and treat the build year as a hard filter: pre-1978 (HUD standards change) homes are very hard to finance, so plan on cash or owner financing, and pre-1980 ones should be nearly free.
- Convert the mobile home from personal property to real property so it's treated as a house; questions about axles, wheels and how many times it's been moved are largely formalities, and Aaron's default answer is that it has never been moved.