MHP Brokers Tips and Tricks Podcast, Women of WAMH Interview

In this episode of The MHP Broker’s Tips and Tricks podcast, Maxwell Baker, president of The Mobile Home Park Broker, interviewed three representatives from Women Advancing in Manufactured Housing, or WAMH.

This and every Tips and Tricks podcast episode is 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

• This interview is with Justine Natalie, Maria Horton and Max’s wife, Kathryn Baker. All three women are involved with a young non-profit organization, Women Advancing in Manufactured Housing (WAMH). (Max, 00:22)
• The idea of WAMH originated with a group of women who were all members of Southeast Community Owners (SECO) and started a chat line to network and converse about their experiences, needs and opportunities. They put a panel discussion together for a SECO meeting and decided to expand their concept into becoming this new organization. (Justine, 1:41)
• The purpose of the group is to help women in the industry network, to recognize their achievements and offer education and support, but the over-arching goal is really to help everyone in the industry regardless of gender. The group started by offering webinars and Zoom meetings featuring successful women in the industry who could inspire other women. (Maria, 2:57)
• The group initially started connecting with members and running contests through LinkedIn. (Maria, 4:06)
• Justine owns an industry consulting group called Dynamic MH Solutions. She works with manufactured home community owners in multiple facets of their operations. She and partner Mike Schaeffler started the business in 2021. (Justine, 5:27)
• Maria has worked for Newport Pacific, a property management company, for the last 18 years and worked for another company in the same line of business for three years before that. She also has her brokers license and sells manufactured homes, and is on several industry groups locally and statewide in California. (Maria, 6:24)
• Kathryn handles the day-to-day operations and manages team members at Mobile Home Park Broker, the company she co-owns with her husband, Max. (Kathryn, 9:01)
• One of the pursuits the group is working on now is WAHM Workwear for Success, an initiative which is centered around the clothing for women and men in the industry.This includes proper attire both for those who are working in the office or with others, such as salespeople, and for park workers who might have to climb under mobile homes or otherwise work outdoors. (Justine, 11:10)
• Another initiative by WAHM is an educational excellence program held in partnership with the Manufactured Housing Educational Institute. The winner of this scholarship gets to take for free any one of 39 courses offered by MHEI on all aspects of succeeding in the manufactured homes industry. (Justine, 14:09)
• Those interested in joining the group or getting further involved can go to WAHM’s new website at womenadvancingmanufacturedhousing.com. You can also join the LinkedIn WAHM group. The group also has corporate support at three sponsorship levels: The $250 sponsors are called Single Wide Supporters. (Justine, 15:01)
• In ascending order, the group also has Double Wide ($500) and Triple Wide ($1,000 and more) supporters. (Justine, 16:41)
• Those interested in joining or learning more about WAHM can also call Maria directly at (949) 500-4794. (Maria, 18:06)
• Or call Justine at (303) 619-7948. (Justine, 18:14)
• In addition to co-chairs Maria and Justine, other members of the WAHM executive committee are Deputy-Chair Sherrie Clevenger, Secretary Kim Schultz-Rainford and Treasurer Maryun Barberan. (Justine, 20:06)
• In general, WAHM wants to uplift the reputation of mobile home parks as being a high quality lifestyle totally divorced from the old image of trailer parks. (Maria, 21:22)
• The women in the group have followed many avenues of employment in the industry from park operators to sales and leasing agents, and others. (Justine, 23:36)
• Key sponsors so far include Pentagon Properties, Manage America, Dynamic MH Solutions and Nelson Communities (Triple Wide Supporters), Rent Manager, Zippy and Legacy Housing (Double Wide Supporter) and Mobile Insurance and Affordable Casa Group (Single Wide supporters). (Justine, 30:53)

Besides the phone numbers given, you can also reach out to Max and Kathryn if you’d like him to learn more about WAHM. Just drop them a line at info@themhpbroker.com or call The Mobile Home Park Broker at 678-932-0200.

Power Quotes in This Episode:

(At SECO) “…we were all virtually chatting and…it became very clear very quickly that there was a need for a female-based group where people could find other females within the industry, and network with them.” (Justine, 1:41)

”So we started thinking of having webinars or Zoom meetings where we could have speakers who could inspire others.” (Maria, 2:57)

“SECO is an amazing, amazing group that is very supportive of the women’s movement here in the industry.” (Maria, 8:05)

“I’ve always said that women are better managers than men.” (Max, 10:20)

“I just think 2023 is going to be where we really start the momentum going forward and get more exposure and get more women involved.” (Justine, 11:10)

“…we need to make sure people understand what our industry is about. That it is not the old trailer parks of yesteryear, it is now about beautiful communities that people live in and share a wonderful lifestyle. (Maria, 21:22)

00:02 

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 welcome to another beautiful episode of the mobile home park brokers tips and tricks, podcast. As always, this episode is brought to you by the community price Maximizer. It is our proprietary system that will guarantee you a higher price. When you exclusively list with us four step process. Give us a call. Y’all know the number, but I’ll give it to you anyways (678) 932-0200. And as always, we are very excited to be having three ladies one being my wife, Kathryn and Justine Natalie and Maria Horton, who actually started the WAMH or Women Advancing in Manufactured Housing. It’s an association exclusively for the ladies out there that are in the industry. Welcome to the show, y’all.

01:17 Kathryn, Justine and Maria in unison

Hello. Hi. Thank you so much for having us. Great to be with you.

01:21 Maxwell Baker

Awesome. I’d love to hear a little bit about why y’all started this, what the agenda is what project shell are working on, I really just want to dissect kind of what y’all are doing for women in the industry, and what women can do to help further the cause that y’all have just started. Yeah.

01:41 Justine Natalie

Well, thank you so much for having us on max, we really appreciate your time and a little bit of, you know, exposure for WAMH. I think this group, we were actually at SECO back in 2021, everything was virtual. So,we were all virtually chatting and there was a women’s kind of chat going on and it became very clear very quickly that there was like a need for a female-based group where people could find other females within the industry, and network with them and things of that nature. So, we actually, were asked to do a panel kind of, you know, on the spur of the moment at Seco. So, we did that Maria, myself and a handful of other women that were there, one of them being Kim Reinhardt, and then another Marjorie. So, we were kind of talking and just had a bunch of different conversations and the idea just kind of came out and everybody was really excited to jump on board. So, that’s basically how we how we got started.

02:47 Maxwell Baker

I saw you all on LinkedIn, really pushing kind of the groups and whatnot. And I saw Maria, Maria, did you have any comments, I don’t mean to cut you off there.

02:57 Maria Horton

This was a movement that was long in thought, for many, many years, that we wanted to do this, and get together and give women a networking opportunity to get to know each other, to find out what accomplishments women had made in the industry. We just formed this organization, we knew it had to be somewhat of a nonprofit because we were not we’re not trying to profit from this, we want to help other women in the industry, as well as other men, we are not limiting ourselves to women but we wanted to make sure that we started to recognize what women had done in the industry. So, we started thinking of having webinars or Zoom meetings where we could have speakers that were successful women in the industry that could inspire others to make sure they knew. It is possible to do something greater than what they are doing and that there are opportunities to meet other women that are doing those things that they may dream of.

04:06

So, we decided to come through with some contests and Justine will tell you all about the contest that we have. It’s been a fabulous way. We decided to start with LinkedIn to get everyone that we all knew to join, and just have us all be talking to each other and to share articles on LinkedIn to help them along the way and learn about what other women were doing in the industry because, you know, there are so many women that have done marvelous things in this industry, but perhaps not received the recognition that they deserve. So, this was just a good idea for us. We all felt good because it was the year of the woman and it just all worked out to be great timing to start this whole movement to do this in our industry. Everyone has jumped on board. We are so excited because the people, the companies in our industry have been very, very positive about the movement. So, I’ll let Justine go on and tell you some more about this but, it’s a very exciting time for all of us to be doing this.

05:13 Maxwell Baker

Yes, Justine and Maria and Kathryn. Just so people know like, what do you all do in Manufactured Housing day to day?

05:21 Justine Natalie

Great question. I can start if you’d like?

05:25 Maria Horton

You can start it off Justine.

05:27 Justine Natalie

Okay. So, in manufactured housing, I actually own a consulting group called Dynamic MH solutions and our group works with owner operators in the MH space to help them navigate field operations and home sales for the end buyer. So, we actually started back in 2021, and have similar to WAMH just was really well received by the industry. It’s kind of a hybrid model. It’s not third-party management. But we come in and we kind of help people build out their own internal team so that ultimately they can take it and run with it. I’ve been in the industry since 2016 and worked with some of the larger operators in the space prior to going off on my own. Well, not technically my own, my business partner Mike Schaeffler, and I, we, we started this business back in 2021.

06:21 Maxwell Baker

Nice. Awesome! How about you, Maria?

06:24 Maria Horton

Let’s see now where I start, I work for Newport Pacific, which is a nationwide third party property management company and I have been with them for 18 years, and I have been with a previous management company Les frame management for three years prior to that. So, it’s 21 years in this business. What I do? I do possibly a little bit of everything. I am a regional manager that oversees seven properties, and oversees the management, the managers, everything about what’s happening in those properties throughout California and then I also a marketing person that goes out to conferences across the country, and represents our company at conferences, and, you know, nationwide, wherever we are invited, and I am certainly sitting on boards across the country that hopefully we can make a difference in what’s going on in our industry and listening to you know, making sure I’m aware of what’s happening. Just industry wide as well. I’m also a licensed salesperson and so, I sell homes as well. Let’s see, I sit on a lot of boards for cities in California, and I’m on the National Board for MHI. The National Communities Council and I sit on a couple of other California state boards and just you know, just a little bit of everything that I can get my hands into (Laughs)

07:52 Maxwell Baker

Nice, awesome. I’ve known Maria for a long time. I think when I first started Maria, you were going to one of the few first SECOs goes back in 2010, 2009. It’s been a long time, it was a long time ago (laughs)

08:05 Maria Horton

For so much. I was so involved in Seco doing the manager Mondays and helping out with putting together their conference that is so amazing, and we owe so much to SECO for giving us the opportunity to really put this together and come together. They have supported us whether through sponsorship, whether it’s through or giving us the opportunity to get together and talk SECO is an amazing, amazing group that is very supportive of, of the women’s movement here in in the industry and just to make sure that all women are recognized for as much as they provide for all the companies in this industry. So anyway, Justine can tell you a little bit more about that.

08:48 Maxwell Baker

Yeah, definitely and then Katherine, how about you? Do you want to kind of enlighten us all I know what you do from day to day, and I know that you’re a rock star, but most people out here don’t. So why don’t you let them know what you’re involvement in manufacturing housing is?

09:01 Kathryn Baker

Of course, I tend to be more in the background. So, I handled the operations for our brokerage company The MHP Broker, kind of the inner workings of how our entire team works together and I also manage the management for our properties that we own personally. So, a little bit of what Justine us but on a smaller scale more internally, where I set up the processes and how the team works together in order to manage our properties and put forth the best service that we can for our tenants. I’m very excited about WAMH I just wanted to share that just hearing your backgrounds. More of what Justine, you and Maria do. I remember hearing about WAMH at SECO this past year and it was right in line with where I was thinking where are all the women in this industry because I would like to get more involved and just kind of learn everything that I can so, very excited to learn more on this podcast.

10:00 Justine Natalie

Yeah, well, we’re excited to have you I love that you are getting active in in WAMH. And I just love that you’re here. So that’s, that’s great.

10:09 Maxwell Baker

Yes and I am lucky to have Kathryn really as my partner in crime because I have given her some pretty crazy basket cases of deals…

10:20 Justine Natalie

(Laughs)

10:20 Maxwell Baker

…and she is definitely turned them around very well but, she has always stepped up to the plate. I’ve always said that women are better managers than men. I’m a little biased on that just because I don’t know, for some reason I me as a guy, like I lose my patience and sometimes I just storm off but, just in my experience, Kathryn has been able to keep her cool every single time and just kind of like, make it happen and really step up to the plate and just hit it out of the park. So, just wanted to give her a shout out on how great of a manager she has been for us as a family in all aspects.

10:57 Kathryn Baker

Well, thank you!

10:59 Maxwell Baker

Yes, of course.

10:59 Justine Natalie and Maria Horton

(Laughs)

11:00 Maxwell Baker

Moving on to What are y’all working on right now? Like, what kind of projects? and are y’all doing a meet up? And kind of what’s the agenda for WAMH over here in 2023?

11:10 Justine Natalie

Yes. So, you know, we really took this last year to just come together and kind of determine which direction do we want to go, we set we set up our nonprofit and all that kind of stuff. So, I think 2023 is going to be where we really start the momentum going forward and get more exposure and get more support and get more women involved. We’ve got a couple of really awesome programs that we have going on and we’ve run it just for the past two quarters, we’re kind of doing these programs quarter by quarter right now. The first one is called WAHM Workwear, for Success. That program is geared toward anyone in the industry, male, female, doesn’t matter who it is, anyone who works in the industry, and they are needing something to enhance their work wear so that they can do their job in a more functional way. And so that could go that could be anywhere from not just business attire, you know, professional attire in the office, but that could be new work boots, maybe outerwear, if they’re outside, quite a bit, really anything that people need.

12:18

So, we had one winner last quarter and then I actually got the pleasure of speaking to two of our applicants just over this past week. It was so cool to talk to them, they were so excited to get basically what you do, you apply kind of tell us a little bit about yourself, you know what you need, why you need it, why you feel like, you know, you may stand apart from other people. So, we get, all of these great applications, and just get to read through so many, people and so many women, honestly, that are just they’re making this industry tick, you know. So, then seeing what they’re what they’re looking for, you know, some of them are looking for professional were, but a lot of them are like, Yeah, I’m in the office, but I also have to like go under homes, and I’ve got to go out and do inspections, and I have to trample through mud. So, they need they need clothes that they can do that, too. So anyway, that’s been really cool. So we had one winner, last quarter we had, we actually have three winners this quarter, we had one winner and two runners up, because we just felt like we want to be able to give more, and we had a little bit more support so that we could. So, that is one of our programs and then our other one is an educational excellence program. That is geared toward helping people within the industry, again, male or female, to provide them either funding or scholarships, or something that they could use toward advancing their education within the industry. So, for this last quarter, we partnered with the Manufactured Housing Educational Institute, and they are actually donating a free course to our winner for this quarter.

14:05 Maxwell Baker

Nice!

14:05 Justine Natalie

They get to choose from one of 39 courses that they offer and they get to do that completely for free.

14:12 Maxwell Baker

That’s very cool. Yeah,

14:14 Maria Horton

It is opportunity for someone who is sitting at a desk and would love to learn to be a sales person would love to learn to be an outdoors person, whatever their opportunity is, that they want to look into that they never thought they could have. They could have this opportunity. It’s so exciting that MHI did offer this to us, and we are so pleased and so appreciative to them and MHEI is certainly a great group that would put this together for our group and we’re excited to announce our winner soon!

14:49 Kathryn Baker

(Laughs)

14:49 Maxwell Baker

Awesome, I love it! If somebody wanted to donate time, energy, money, all the above, how would they go about to finding WAHM?

15:01 Justine Natalie

So, we have a couple different ways we do have a website. It’s womenadvancingmanufacturedhousing.com. I know that’s a big mouthful, but it was a domain that was available for us and it was perfect for what we were doing. So, we do have a website available, you can contact us through there, we also have a LinkedIn group and that’s probably where a good portion of our general communications are going. When we do announcements, when we’re letting people know, when our member meetings are things like that, we definitely post those on LinkedIn. So, that is technically a private group. But as long as people go to that group and ask to be included, we vet everyone, just to make sure that yes, they’re in the industry and they make sense to be a part of the group. It’s open to men and women, so anybody can jump onto that LinkedIn group. So that’s, more for informational stuff. As far as donating time and money, we have a couple different levels of supportorship is what we’ll call it. We’re not we’re not necessarily calling them sponsors, but we have three different levels of supporters. The first level is a single wide supporter, and that’s going to be $250. Sorry, thank you, Maria $250 (laughs)

16:22 Maria Horton

I like it Burbage, don’t you like it Burbage?

16:25 Maxwell Baker

Oh, that is so good (laughs)

16:28 Justine Natalie

Then we have a double wide supporter, that’s gonna be a $500 donation…

16:33 Maxwell Baker

Woah! I love that!

16:34 Justine Natalie

…it’s annual donation and then we have our triple wide supporter, the American dream of owning a triple wide, right?

16:40 Maxwell Baker

Yes!

16:41 Justine Natalie

Triple wide supporters are $1,000 or more and so all of our supporters, they get their logo up on our website, they get called out on LinkedIn, we have some fabulous, you know, fabulous supporters in here in a moment, I can actually list them off to you but, that’s another thing. So obviously, any kind of donations are helpful and you can actually do it right online, there’s a QR code, or a link that you can just click on, you can donate virtually, so we tried to make it as easy as possible.

17:12 Maria Horton

Or they can contact us, they can contact us individually. If you know any of the five executive committee members, you certainly can get in touch with us and personally talk to us about supporting us. If you don’t feel comfortable doing it that way we do accept you know, we can give you an address to mail checks as well or do something along those lines. So, you know, sometimes people are not comfortable with just doing it everything online. So, please contact us if you have any, any ideas that you would like to like to share with us and like to support us with some you know, funds that you would like to donate, we are a nonprofit once again. So, it’s a, it’s a good, good place to send some money to help both men and women but, it’s just a good place to recognize people in the industry.

18:02 Maxwell Baker

What phone numbers, should they call if they wanted to call y’all?

18:06 Maria Horton

They can call me at (949) 500-4794. Justine, you have a number?

18:14 Justine Natalie

Yes, they can also call me it’s (303) 619-7948.

18:21 Maxwell Baker

Awesome!

18:22 Maria Horton

Yes, we’d be happy to speak to anybody about WAHM and I get so many questions when I when I visit conferences and talk to people. As matter of fact, I’m meeting somebody in Houston at the MH AI conference coming up that sent me an email that says, I want to join and I want to help out, I want to see if we can arrange for a cocktail reception or coffee for people who are interested in learning about WAHM. You know, we will meet up and talk about this at this particular conference. And then, you know, plan for something with our executive committee for the future but, that’s it. Women are excited about doing something and if you’re in a position that you can do something, even, you know, something along those lines, that’s great. But even if you just join and join us to be a member, we’re so happy to have you because the more members we have, the better we are as an organization, and that everyone can do, can arrange for situations where we have set up a meeting a meet and greet or whatever but but as long as they are, if they are present, they can come and join us. So, anyway, we’re excited about it. There’s so much excitement about this whole movement and we hope you’ll join us to Max.

19:37 Maxwell Baker

I’m always down. I’m a big supporter of women you get into obviously, I’m always telling my wife, I’m always cheering her on. I’m all about the girl power.

19:48 Justine Natalie

(Laughs)

19:48 Kathryn Baker

I can confirm that (laughs)

19:50 Justine Natalie

Thank you!

19:52 Maxwell Baker

So yeah, happy to support. Glad y’all came on to the podcast. Really get it out to all of our listeners that listen to Tips and Tricks here. Do you guys have any closing comments before we sign off here?

20:06 Justine Natalie

Yeah, so I just wanted to throw out a couple other names, just so that everyone knows our entire executive committee. So, if you know someone else, so our Deputy Chair is Sherry Clevenger. She’s fantastic. Kim Schultz Rainford is our Secretary. She definitely keeps us on track and then Maryuri Barbie-en I can never remember (laughs)

20:31 Maria Horton

Barberan (laughs)

20:31 Justine Natalie

Okay, thank you. I can I never say it, right but, Maryuri is our treasurer. So, just a fantastic group of people and then we actually just added a couple more to our executive committee. That’s going to be great. So, as far as donating time to I mean, anybody who wants to join us, give us topics to talk about, bring their expertise to the group, we really would love to just have people posting things on LinkedIn more often, so that we can have larger conversations, and we can share knowledge. So, I think if you can’t donate money, time is great. Knowledge is great. We would love to see more conversations going on LinkedIn, so that we can just keep that conversation going and give somebody a good opportunity to network with other people in the industry.

21:19 Maxwell Baker

Nice. Awesome. Maria, did you have any other comments?

21:22 Maria Horton

This is just one part of, of what we do and one part of the industry that we are trying to make a difference, but there are so many so many avenues that this opens up, you know, it opens up our lives to as well. I mean, I am hearing so many different things that are going on in the industry, across the country when I attend these conferences, and there’s so many movements going on that WAMH can certainly help as well with other movements. There is a new movement that is starting that I don’t know if you’re all aware about the MH awareness. MH awareness project is about making sure that across the country that aren’t image of our industry is uplifted. So, we as media people, we as people out there, doing what we do, even with the group that we’re running the WAMH group, we can also come up with discussions about what we think is best is how we can show our industry in the best light to all across the country trying to uplift it, because we need to make sure people understand what our industry is about that it is not, not the old trailer parks of yesteryear, it is now about beautiful communities that people live in and share a wonderful lifestyle. So, everyone affects everything about our industry all everybody, including everybody in WAMH, we all have a part in what we do, to do it our best to make it our best to really show that we have a wonderful industry that is thriving and needs to be shared with the world.

23:08 Maxwell Baker

Yeah

23:09 Maria Horton

So, there’s just a lot that happens. Lot’s going on in our industry right now. So, we’re excited to be part of WAMH and hope that wham can make a difference as well across the country.

23:21 Kathryn Baker

So, my question for y’all is tell me a little bit more about the members of wham, it sounds like you probably have a wide range of people coming from all different aspects of the industry. I’d love to kind of hear a little bit more about who the members are?

23:36 Justine Natalie

Yeah, we do. Our executive group has a ton of industry experience. You know, Kim is an operator, Maryuri, she works for Pentagon properties. Sherry was in MH previously, and she is she’s still inhibit kind of in a tertiary mode but, I can’t think right now at the moment where she’s at. We get people who are doing like fix and flips to manufactured housing. We’ve gotten obviously, community operators are a big, a big piece, especially the female ones who are like, I don’t know, any female operators in the space. So, we’re starting to like see those types gravitate toward us. Then, you know, people who are on the ground doing the work. We’ve got community managers, we’ve got sales and leasing agents that work in communities. We’ve got, you know, just a ton of different types of people.

24:32 Maria Horton

Just remembering our first meeting one of our first meetings, we had a community owner who had inherited a park from her father, and didn’t know the first thing about operating that park and was just, you know, and she was so much more comfortable coming to us as a group of women talking about what it is where should she go to do this or to do that or what’s necessary and it was fabulous. She was so great and I’m sure she’s doing very well now but, do you remember?…

25:06 Justine Natalie

Yes, she had a ton of questions. It was, yeah, it was fantastic!

25:10 Maria Horton

…a great member of our organization, she really appreciated having the opportunity to talk with people, other women who could direct her to places to go for her, what she had to do, which she didn’t even realize what she had to do, you know, state associations, what to belong to what to do. You know, this is this is what happens in it, and a great deal of times where people inherit these parks from their families, but don’t necessarily they’re not necessarily in the business of operating these parks. So, you know, we have community owners that contact us, we have managers, we have everything possible from people working for other aspects of the industry, any particular aspect of the industry are contacting us this, hoping to get a contact to know, you know what to even get into because they don’t know necessarily they start off as a Secretary, I actually started off doing this for a management company that the president of the WMA, and so he needed some additional help in the office. So, someone I knew that work there hired me to come in and be his assistant while he was out at meetings all the time for this association. So, I learned a lot about the business and then moved on to Newport. It’s been a fabulous experience, I’m telling you, it’s just, you know, it’s got it’s a godsend, because for me, I’m a people person and this is like the best industry to be. If you’re a people person, this is the place to be because every aspect of our industry involves people, everything about people and doing the best you can to please people and educate people and you know, people are our best resource. So, you know whether they’re residents, whether they’re employees, whether they’re, you know, owners, whatever they are in every aspect, it’s dealing with all of them. That’s really fantastic.

27:17 Maxwell Baker

Awesome!

27:17 Kathryn Baker

Yeah, that’s great. My final question I have for y’all is, what are some hot topics that WAMH is going to be touching on this year?

27:27 Justine Natalie

Good question. Well, obviously, one of the pieces of our mission is to help drive positive perception in the industry. So, I think that’s going to continue to be a hot topic throughout 2023. You know,what can we do as a group? and who can we partner with to try and change that narrative? Or, you know, I think the other piece is education to those that are coming into the space that maybe don’t know, that’s something that I, you know, my company really focuses on is, hey, how do you come into this space and make it a valuable place for people to reside, to potentially have a home ownership? and how do you do that in a way that’s positive where your residents come first. So, I think that’s going to be probably one of the main topics.

28:14 Kathryn Baker

Those are great topics!

28:15 Maria Horton

You know, how we affect the image in our industry. You know, we have media companies right now that are working on all of this manufactured homes.com They are working with associations, they are putting out videos all the time on, on the internet, and everywhere about our lifestyle. So, our lifestyle is in communities, also, MH village, they work very closely and trying to do MH insider, MH village, data comp, all of those, those groups also are trying very hard. They’re all working with associations across the country, our state associations in our industry, to try to get more exposure to people about what our communities are really like, because people have had this very old vision of what lifestyle in a community is, but you know, everyone knowing their neighbors, everyone feeling part of the community, it’s very, you know, it can be very inviting and very exciting for people to look forward to.

29:19

So, you know, depending on what the company that owns the property, or the property owner does for the residents for amenities for you know, all of those type of things, you know, it’s a great lifestyle if you if you can find the right place for you. So, many seniors need that kind of community as well to live in, where they’re looked after or where they know that someone knows who they are. Because you know, it’s a very, very empty feeling to be just left alone and not have any not knowing any of your neighbors not have a manager that knows that you are in there. You know, perhaps you’re not doing well or, you know, can look out for you. So, there’s so many aspects to our, to our whole industry and to what we offer people. Of course, you know, the wonderful homes that we offer. We don’t need to have all of the media just advertising that somebody’s roof blew off, you know, an old trailer. Every time there was, you know, high winds, we need to have, we need to have better press, and they seem to love to say that for some reason (laughs).

30:29 Maxwell Baker

I mean, it’s pretty common out there.

30:31 Maria Horton

Frequently as it used to, but Oh, my goodness, it’s about all that we get advertised for and it’s not a pleasant, thought. So, we’re hoping to change that whole thing, you know?

30:43 Maxwell Baker

Yeah, definitely

30:45 Maria Horton

WAMH can make a difference as well. So, in that arena.

30:48 Maxwell Baker

Justine, did you want to give a shout out to some of the sponsors you had over there?

30:53 Justine Natalie

I would love to, yeah. So, I just Yeah, I want to just do a quick shout out to our 2022 supporters that we got donations from, and kind of helped us really get moving this past year. So, Pentagon properties was one of our triple wide supporters along with Manage America, Dynamic MH solutions, and Nelson communities. Then our doublewide sponsors, that was Rent Manager, Zippy and Legacy Housing. Our single wide sponsors were Mobile Insurance and Affordable Casa group. I just want to throw out a big thank you to them, because they definitely helped us get the gears moving on WAMH. So, thank you!

31:35 Maxwell Baker

Awesome! All right, before we wrap it up, y’all. Do y’all have any other comments, before we wrap up the little show here our podcast?

31:44 Maria Horton

I just want to say thank you, Max for this opportunity to have us on your show and just really, you know, shout out to everyone about the movement that we are trying to put forth and hopefully they will join and enjoy. Enjoy the times the meetings that we have. They’re very informative and we have great speakers and it’s time well spent. We hope that you will, you will join us too Kathryn and, Max, you both can join us and have a good time with this.

32:20 Kathryn Baker

I’m looking forward to it. I’ll see you guys on the 15^th.

32:23 Justine Natalie

That’s awesome. Yeah, thank you guys so much for your time, and just letting us kind of explain what we’re doing and why we’re doing it and trying to gain more traction, get more people involved. So, thank you.

32:34 Maxwell Baker

Awesome. Well, y’all, this kind of wraps up this episode of the mobile home park brokers, tips and tricks, podcast. As always, this episode in every episode is brought to you by the Community Price Maximizer. It is our proprietary system that will guarantee you a higher price. When you exclusively list your community with us. Give us a call (678) 932-0200 If y’all have trouble getting in touch with the WAMH. Give us a call here at our office. I’m sure Kathryn or myself or any of our team members can help get y’all in touch with them. Thank you all for listening and let’s keep moving forward