Closing Cocktail: Eric Wanck – 160 Lot MHP in Georgia

In this episode, we check in with The Mobile Home Park Broker Eric Wanck and one of his most recent successes. Eric was the broker who sold Green Acres Mobile Home Park in the Atlanta metro.

As always, this episode is hosted by Maxwell Baker, co-founder of The Mobile Home Park Broker, and brought to you by our proprietary Community Price Maximizer. With our four-step system, we guarantee you a higher price when you later sell your mobile home or RV community.

Here Are Some Show Highlights:

• Eric has had a very successful year, including the sale of two or three parks in the last 30 days alone. (Max, 0:22)
• The highly desirable Green Acres MHP was one of Eric’s most impressive recent sales. It’s known as a “trophy park,” one with more than 150 pads. In addition, the park contained mostly tenant-owned homes (TOH), which tend to be easier to sell. (Eric, 1:53)
• Eric had lined up five or six bids and had a buyer with a high 5 CAP bid in about 24 hours. (Eric, 1:53)
• Eric brought bidders, including the buyer, to the table from among investors he’d already established relationships with. The transaction reinforced the importance of sellers to connect with The MHP Broker ® on a regular basis so Eric remembers them when he comes across a deal he thinks would be ideal for them. (Eric, 3:39)
• One minor challenge for Eric was working with another broker as part of a connected land sale. Though representing the buyer, the broker was not experienced in the mobile home park industry, so wasn’t able to take the lead in due diligence–which would normally be the responsibility of the buyer’s broker. (Eric, 5:02)
• Eric and the company ended up with a happy seller and a buyer with whom they might do future business down the line. (Eric, 7:21)

Want to learn more about the process we take at The Mobile Home Park Broker in successfully representing both buyers and sellers? Just drop me a line at info@themhpbroker.com or give Eric or me a call at 678-932-0200.

Power Quotes From Max and Eric Wanck on This Episode

•  “…dude, you’re killing it this year.” (In recognizing Eric’s results in 2021.)(Max, :22)
• “…within 24 hours we located a buyer at an amazing price.” (Eric, 1:53)
• “…every 30 days, send me a text, send me an email, call, whatever it might be, and check in with me, because a lot of times it’s timing and if I know that you’re qualified, you have funds available, and I come across this lead today and you happen to call me tomorrow you’re going to see it and I’ve put together a lot of deals where it really was a matter of timing with some of these buyers and sellers.” (Eric, 3:39)
• “…we like to do business with people who like to do business with us.” (Max, 4:29)
• “I think the fact that we’re able to move quick, get it wrapped up and move into due diligence helped us get this deal done.” (Eric, 5:02)
• “Whether we represent the buyer or seller, we’re gonna get it done.” (Eric, 5:02)
• “Telling your clients, the good, bad, the ugly, telling them if there’s issues with the county, moving mobile homes into your park because of that, and not leaving that kind of stuff out, that’s the type of long term relationship stuff that we do as a company for you, as the buyer and s” (Max, 6:55)

00:02 Eric Wanck

Hello, and welcome to the mobile home park brokers tips and tricks. This is the podcast where we talk about mobile home park investing because that’s what we’ve been involved in for the last decade. Let’s dive into today’s episode. Here’s your host, Maxwell Baker.

00:22 Maxwell Baker

Hey y’all and welcome to another beautiful episode of the Mobile Home Park Brokers tips and tricks podcast. Today, I am pleased to once again say congratulations to Eric Wanck and another closing cocktail, Eric. Two-three parks sold in the last 30 days I think it is, dude, you’re killing it this year. I think this is going to be a record-breaking year for Eric and a lot of people on the team. But Eric follows a system and follows the process and does a really good job here at the firm and it’s an honor to have him here on the team. And before we jump into his deal, this episode is as always brought to you by the Community Price Maximizer. This is a proprietary system here at The MHP Broker ® that will guarantee you the park owner, RV park owner or mobile home park owner, the highest price when you sell your mobile home or RV community, like I just said in four simple steps. If you have any questions about it, I’d love to talk to you about and how we can add value to your pocketbook when you co sell your community. So Eric, which part you want to start off with?

01:33 Eric Wanck

Let’s start with Green Acres.

01:34 Maxwell Baker

This one is a beautiful park in Atlanta and the MSA. Eric tell us a little bit about Green Acres and the buyer profile that we have covered. I was a little bit involved in a deal, but Eric did as always the heavy lifting. Tell us a little bit about the deal.

01:53 Eric Wanck 

Yeah, Green Acres was one of these trophy parks as we like to call them anything over 150 pads. Mostly tenant owned homes, this one was all tenant own homes in and you can get that inside of a big metro area like Atlanta, it’s a lot of times a slam dunk for a lot of buyers out there, they’re looking for more of these institutional great parks. This particular deal really was just through relationship-based. Both Max and I knew the seller for many years and met with them and this was actually being brokered by someone else for some additional land the seller had by the park. And we just happen to come across the fact that we’re the park brokers, and it made sense for them to sell both the park and the land together. So we got the first call from this broker out of Atlanta and within 24 hours, we located a buyer at an amazing price. It’s not just this buyer ended up buying it. We sent out an NDA’s to a good few select folks that we do business with time and time again and I think we actually had five or six offers within 48 hours for the seller.

02:57 Maxwell Baker

What kind of cap rate is this kind of a record-breaking cap rate that just on the park the land is obviously totally different subject.

03:04 Eric Wanck 

Yeah, just on the park itself was high five cap.

03:09 Maxwell Baker

High five cap, y’all and this park had goats in the middle of it. I mean, it was one of those times.

03:17 Eric Wanck 

You know, that’s the beauty of a good part, good location, great buyer and the seller was surprised by the fact that we were able to not only put one but five, six offers in front of them really quickly.

03:29 Maxwell Baker

Power of specialization, y’all. You always hire a specialist when you sell your mobile home or RV community. Tell us a little bit about what you learned in this deal?

03:39 Eric Wanck 

Well, for those that may be listening and saying, how could I get on that list of few select folks that saw this park upfront and this is something that I tell a lot of buyers, contact our office or contact me directly, is stay in front of the broker all times. It doesn’t have to be every week, but every 30 days, send me a text, send me an email call, whatever it might be, and check-in with me because a lot of times it’s timing and if I know that you’re qualified, you have funds available, and I come across this lead today and you happen to call me tomorrow you’re going to see it and I’ve put together a lot of deals where it really was a matter of timing with some of these buyers and sellers. So this lesson for those that may be out there don’t think the broker is always going to bring you every single deal that comes across his desk because quite frankly, we’re scatterbrained and we multitask.

04:29 Maxwell Baker

Now, amen on that. Another thing I’ll say is we like to do business with people that like to do business with us quote is from Todd Conner, one of our brokers here and what that means is if buyers and sellers are out there reciprocating business, give us the dogs in your portfolio and we will sell them we’re very good at selling the value add deals. This one was a turnkey deal. We like to do business with people that bring us business as well. So obviously keep that in mind. What else did you learn from this? We had a couple of other things we want to talk about?

05:02 Eric Wanck 

I think a big thing is that we wanted to show strength and we wanted to move quickly on this and that’s something that we kind of prequalify our buyers. Now this buyer was more of a regional buyer than he was looking for bigger size parks. So we’re able to get a quick LOI, quick contract drafted up and I think that meant a lot to the sell-side that we meant business. Instead of going back and forth on the contract for 30 days, and it’s 30 pages long, I mean, we’ve seen those. I think the fact that we’re able to move quick, get it wrapped up and move into due diligence helped us get this deal done. As far as other things that we learn there, Max, this one was a little bit tricky, because as I alluded, we were working through another broker out of Atlanta, and he was not specialized in this asset space, had no idea how to work, the due diligence process. So even though we represented the buyer, typically the seller’s broker would kind of be initiating all that due diligence items. In this case, it was not it was essentially handed over to us saying, you contact management or whoever you need to, to obtain these items.

05:57 Eric Wanck 

While a little bit new, at the end of the day, we had to take that precedence and get it done. So that’s just what we do for our clients, whether we represent the buyer or seller, we’re gonna get it done. So it’s just a matter of a lot of brokers and not throw anybody under the bus, but a lot of brokers are one-time transactional agents, they’ll sell you a park they may facilitate the sale of a park for you and never hear from me again, but we try to look for the long term relationships, just as Max said, with his little motto there. We want to do business with people that do business with us. So we try to look at that relationship specially here with a buyer that we had make it as smooth as possible for him. And they were out of state. So I was making multiple trips down to the park to meet with the park manager to get information. You know, and I think that if it didn’t happen, I’m not sure that the other broker would have done. It’s just a matter of controlling the deal. Always control the deal.

06:55 Maxwell Baker

Yeah, amen on that. It’s all about long term versus short term thinking. A lot of brokers out there, a lot of people out of business people are short term thinkers. When I first started, I was very transactional. I just wanted to get a deal done and move on to the next one. Wham bam, thank you, ma’am. That’s it. I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older, and I’m sure Eric can agree is that the only way you can make sustainable wealth in a brokerage world because it’s very transactional is by developing relationships. Telling your clients, the good, bad, the ugly, telling them if there’s issues with the county, moving mobile homes into your park because of that, and not leaving that kind of stuff out, that’s the type of long term relationship stuff that we do as a company for you, as the buyer and seller. We’re here to watch your back. If we’ve got to sacrifice something on our end, we’ll take a hit sometimes just to make sure that you guys and girls are taken care of. I just wanted to keep that in mind that the biggest thing that make you stand out as a buyer because I know a lot of buyers are watching these videos is to think long term. I think that wraps that part of it up, Eric, anything else you want to talk about on this one?

08:09 Eric Wanck 

Yeah, it was a great one to get done. We don’t see a lot of these large parks, especially inside the perimeter as they call it here in Atlanta for sale. So this one’s a great one to get done. Very few hiccups every deal seems to have a little hiccups in the park business but we got it across the finish line. We got a very happy seller and we got a great relationship going forward here with our buyer.

08:30 Maxwell Baker

Yes. So great job Eric. That pretty much wraps it up 678-932-0200, give us a call ask for Eric Wanck, he does a lot of deals here in the southeast, up north obviously in PA as well and he knows all about the Community Price Maximize. It is our proprietary system here at the mobile home park broker that will guarantee you a highest price when you sell your mobile home or RV community four-step program. You want to learn about it. Give our boy Eric a call here again, that’s 678-932-0200 thank you all for listening and I hope you all have a great day.