Welcome To The Real Estate Underground Show #100!
In this episode, we have the pleasure of hearing from Franco Perez, the founder of Franco Mobile Homes.
Franco's journey began when he and his family immigrated to the U.S. from the Philippines. Growing up with a single mother and younger sister, he had to drop out of school to support them financially. This experience fueled his drive to help others facing similar challenges. Although he initially found success as a real estate agent, he realized he was only serving the wealthiest clients. This led him to discover a solution: mobile homes.
In this episode,
If you're interested in learning more about these affordable mobile homes or reaching out to Franco, visit his website at www.franco.tv or simply search "Franco Mobile Homes" on Google.
Resources:
Additional Resources:
Welcome To The Real Estate Underground Show #100!
In this episode, we have the pleasure of hearing from Franco Perez, the founder of Franco Mobile Homes.
Franco's journey began when he and his family immigrated to the U.S. from the Philippines. Growing up with a single mother and younger sister, he had to drop out of school to support them financially. This experience fueled his drive to help others facing similar challenges. Although he initially found success as a real estate agent, he realized he was only serving the wealthiest clients. This led him to discover a solution: mobile homes.
In this episode,
If you're interested in learning more about these affordable mobile homes or reaching out to Franco, visit his website at www.franco.tv or simply search "Franco Mobile Homes" on Google.
Resources:
Additional Resources:
And this is Real Estate Underground. Greetings and salutations, real estate undergrounders. It's Ed Matthews with the Real Estate Underground. Thank you so much for joining us today. Today is a really cool episode because, you know, one of the things that I'm passionate about, and our guest is passionate about, is affordable housing, and, you know, providing clean, safe and well-appointed homes for folks who work hard for a living and usually have more than one job. And so, you know, we invited Franco Perez from Franco Mobile Homes to join us today, and we're going to talk a whole lot about affordable housing, as well as his experiences, both in his backyard out in California, as well as in the Midwest and upper Northwest.
Speaker 1:So Franco welcome to the show. I'm really excited to have this conversation and, yeah, let's get on.
Speaker 2:Cool. Thanks for having me, ed. Yeah, my pleasure, my pleasure.
Speaker 1:So you know I came across you had to be on LinkedIn and so you know been watching your business and you know, honestly, man, I have a ton of respect for what you do and your vision and how you do it. And so, for those folks that may not have found out about you yet, why don't you explain who you are and kind of you know how we got here? Yeah?
Speaker 2:sure how we got here. I guess it really long story short moved here from the Philippines. At a young age there was a weird situation where my parents split. My dad was the only breadwinner, my mom was my I was 17 at the time. I ended up growing up with a single mom. I'm, in my younger sister, dropped out of school just to work full time to help my mom pay for rent and just to keep up every single month at the end of every month, worrying about the stresses of if I'm going to be able to pay for rent this month.
Speaker 2:And I remember these really hard moments of having to borrow money from my friends or family just to make ends meet. And it was really the hardest point of my life and that is kind of a. I say that because ever since then, that pain right there. I know that currently today there's people going through that pain and when I got into real estate I ended up becoming a real estate agent, did pretty well at doing regular real estate, but I hated it because I ended up gravitating towards helping the richest people I knew get the best investments that they could and unfortunately it pained me so much to have to turn away people and tell them hey, you don't make enough, you don't have a down payment. Once you do, come back to me and I'll be able to help.
Speaker 2:And unfortunately, that's kind of the real estate world today and I wanted and I hated that so much so I wanted to find some way that I could help those people that were in my shoes back then. How can we create a stepping stone that help people get out of that rental rat race? Hursued, trying to work with the government on affordable housing Realized.
Speaker 2:I didn't like working with the government that much and came across mobile homes and was shocked that there's so many mobile home parks across the country. There's so many mobile home parks in many metro areas. I'm out of the San Jose area and there's so many hidden mobile home parks in the Bay Area where you wouldn't be expecting mobile home parks. And then got into helping people get out of that rental rat race into their first piece of through mobile homes and watch people financially benefit and get their first stepping stone into assets and then from there they can sell on into getting into that real estate piece of ownership too. But yeah, that's how we grew to where we are today and now we're converting a lot of old mobile home trailer like homes and turning them into massive 15, 100 square feet to 2000 square foot luxury style mobile home. So that's what we're doing today.
Speaker 1:That's amazing, and so, just to be clear, you're renting those or you're selling those.
Speaker 2:So the park itself, the land is being rented, but what's clear is you own that home that's above it, and you also own the contract that you have with that location as well, which has the big value in it as well.
Speaker 1:Right, right, right on, okay. So yeah, I mean, it's amazing. You know, the fact is that one of the hidden impacts of the 2008 great recession, right, is that a whole bunch of general contractors shuttered their businesses and went on and did something else, and what that did was profoundly impact availability of affordable housing throughout the country. I the last I read, I wanna say it was like just under four million affordable housing units are needed in the next 10 years to keep up with demand and there aren't enough hands and feet running to make it all happen. So you know what you're doing is really amazing, and there are a lot of states out there I live in Connecticut so I know the Connecticut rules, but you know there's a lot of states here that are mandating or beginning to mandate affordable housing. You know at least 10% of your housing stock in each town here in Connecticut needs to be affordable housing and if it's not, then what our legislature's doing is looking at increasing property taxes so that people are highly motivated to get over the not in my backyard thing and, you know, actually allow properties to either be rezoned or, you know, so that they can you can put in affordable housing.
Speaker 1:In fact, there's also a lot of programs throughout the country. In Connecticut it's called 830G, which basically is a zoning override, so you can buy a, you know, a residentially zoned property and as long as you adhere to building code and local safety codes and a little weird, but I guess I understand why the largest fire engine in the fleet of the town you live in has to be able to do a K turn in your complex. Don't know why, but that's there. And if that's the case, then you can build. You know, in my world it's multifamily and you just you know, if there's a covenant I think it's a 40 year covenant that you'll provide 30% of the housing stock within that multifamily property for affordable housing, and that does apply to mobile homes as well. So you know it's an interesting thing and I'm seeing this all over the country now and I'm sure you are as well.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely, and part of why I my experience with the government, too, is kind of frustrating as well is that you know what really classifies as a portable housing and what does you know?
Speaker 2:Sometimes a lot of these government funded programs like Section 8 or low, you know, low rent situations don't always benefit people as much as they think they it does, you know, whereas I feel like it's so important to create affordable ownership opportunities right, because there's all of these benefits that people are able to get from owning a home or owning real estate, and it's unattainable, and that gap between who can afford and who can't afford is widening and it's only getting worse, right, and that's that's the key thing.
Speaker 2:And what we're finding with this mobile home financial model is that it's really a hybrid ownership and you're able to grasp a lot of those benefits of ownership at an entry level cost right, a more attainable, less down payment, more comfortable payment, but you still get a lot of the home ownership benefits. You have appreciation, you get tax benefits, you have, you get to have benefits from getting a mortgage on that home too, versus having all of your money going towards rent right and and yeah, that's a, you know, it's really the first step to generational wealth, and it's so important without a doubt.
Speaker 1:And so the question I have is you know, from a mortgage perspective, do these properties, do they qualify for FHA in the 3% down program? Or like how are people financing?
Speaker 2:these they don't yet, so FHA in those they don't. For inside these mobile home parks. The big benefit of FHA is a very low percentage down payment. But one thing to keep in mind is that with these price points it's much lower than regular real estate, which allows for the down payment to be less. So we're typically seeing 10% down for a 25 year mortgage on these loans.
Speaker 1:Okay, and you know typical price point for some of the properties you're working on. I'm just I'm curious about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so my area. It might shock people in most of the country, but but keep in mind that these numbers will change based on different areas. So in my area I'm in San Jose, in the Silicon Valley average rent for a two bedroom apartment about $3,500 a month. Average purchase median purchase price for a single family home is $1.6 million Right, so that's a big gap between right and yeah, shocking, but this is kind of happening in many metro area. Now, in in our area, for example, the median mobile home for like something that's decent, 1500 square foot, three bedroom, two bath, we're looking at about $330,000. So with that, what you'll see is a down payment of 10% is about instead of a big, massive six digit down payment for a single family home, they're able to put about $35,000 down and start, you know, paying a mortgage. Their total housing payment would be the mortgage would be about $2,800. And their space rent would be about $1,100. So in total, their payments just a little more than if they were to be paying for a rental, an apartment.
Speaker 1:So if you have a pretty good chance you can afford the mortgage on this. I mean the spread. I'm just marveling at the spread right of the average home. I just did some quick math and the you know the mortgage on a 1.6 on an average house in your area is at a 7% rate is $10,645 a month. My God yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, now these numbers that I'm saying are big, but you know, the same goes in a lot of other metro areas, right, like Atlanta or Austin and that sort of thing. Like the numbers might not be that high, but we're really talking ratios here, right, like it could be a median sales point of $600,000 and it could be a rent of $2,000. But the mobile home element in between is really key that it's accessible as a stepping stone to get you out of that rental or up race right? Absolutely yeah, you know.
Speaker 1:It's just fascinating. We live in the same country but our financial worlds are entirely different, right? Because you know the average. So I live in central Connecticut. I don't live in the fancy part, you know where all the rich people hang out. I live in central Connecticut where we have cows and you know horses, and the average home around here is about the same little bit more than what your mobile homes cost in your area. So just to give you an idea of the difference, it's crazy how the difference in you know economies and costs of living.
Speaker 2:Oh, exactly, yeah, totally. I wanted to touch on too is like fairness of value, because people are gravitating to these areas, like because they have good job opportunities, because they have a good school right, and that's, you know it's. We need to keep it fair and equal for middle class people to be able to survive and live in this area, right? So, like our teachers, I'm very passionate about helping these teachers get home ownership as well, because there's still there's such important people to our society. But I know a lot of teachers that are pushed out of these metro areas. They can't raise children in our areas. They kind of afford housing in this area if they don't already own homes, right, I just did a. I just helped a few teachers and they they're so grateful that they get to stay in this area because they own a mobile home and it's really allowing for people to stay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean just doing quick math on you know that $10,645 a month average payment, that means you've got to make about $426,000 a year. That's like a holy cow, and that's just you know. Keeping your, your, your housing costs at 30% of your income. Right, it's just, yeah, yeah, it's, and that brings it back to that wealth gap situation.
Speaker 2:If your family doesn't really didn't already own a home, if they don't have some sort of huge inheritance, it's kind of like the American dream of home ownership for so many people is is getting further and further away. Yeah, and we can't let that happen. I that's why I'm so passionate about this is we got to keep that opportunity available and whether you're in a huge metro, expensive area like ours or any other cities or any other metro areas, right, it's just we can't. We can't let this gap keep spreading at the rate it is and with construction being more difficult and with more people going into these areas, it's just getting worse and worse.
Speaker 1:And super expensive, right? You know what, as a general contractor, what you could build, you know, at least in this area, at a hundred and 500 and 10 a square foot is now 150 to 200 a square foot, depending on where you are, and that's just material costs, right. And I mean, that's not, that's not a developer gouging anybody, that they're. They're making the same amount of money. Everybody else is making a lot more, so it's crazy. So, so, so I know that you have expanded your business outside of California as well. I believe you're in, you say, montana, when we were talking.
Speaker 2:So so a friend of mine is doing something in Montana that I've been consulting for, a guy opening a park in Austin and then another one in Nevada exploring Phoenix areas. With that. I mean it's really kind of a national thing and it's really makes sense in mostly these, these big, bigger cities and metro areas that have these huge entry-level costs for regular real estate.
Speaker 2:So so but oh, I'm sorry you touched on the construction side of it and I think that's very important to mention as well is because that problem of construction and when you relate it to how these home, how we're building these homes, it's so important to mention that too.
Speaker 2:Because, like you said, getting contractors, the cost of building homes are getting more and more expensive.
Speaker 2:And if we could imagine cars before we're only really affordable by the wealthy and the rich until it was built on an assembly line in a very fast, streamlined process, is when they were able to get it cost effective for everybody to be able to afford a credit. And we have to innovate and change the way we build construction and how we build these homes. These mobile homes that we're building, the are actually built in a factory, on an assembly line, and we're able to cut so much cost and, and you know, get basically get more output per construction worker and be able to build so much faster. And plus, not only that, we save more on the environment, we use less material, less waste, and that's something that's that that needs to be understood about what we do as well, as we have to change the way we're building homes and keep it very cost effective as well, and that's exactly what we're doing with these homes, and if you see our YouTube stuff, you can see how they're being built.
Speaker 1:You can see the beauty and the quality of how they're being built, and yeah, it's interesting because you know I mean the average waste on a regular single family homes, usually, I don't know, 12 to 15, maybe 18%, right? So I'm curious what the waste is on a mobile home that's being built modularly like that Right.
Speaker 2:I was just talking to a factory consultant the other day and he said on an average site built home, we have three large truckloads of dumpsters per 1500 square foot of real estate built on our homes. 1500 square foot home, we have less than a half of a dumpster alone and that's huge. It's a huge difference because and if you think about it, it makes so much sense because when we're, when we're building on site, you have to transport so much material and many times it's cheap to just throw it away versus reuse. When building in a theory, if you imagine the lumber, you're cutting so many pieces, but guess what, it's easy for you to just restore that piece so that it can be used somewhere else later down the line. And the two benefits of that is one you're saving you're spending less on material and because you're reusing and the other benefit is saving the earth by not wasting that much material as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because you know one of the other things that a lot of people know I think flippers and you know folks that do what we do for a living, value added multifamily investors, as well as, you know, general developers the quality of the lumber that you get today is very different than the quality that we got, you know, 30 years ago.
Speaker 1:Right, and the reason being is that there's been so much, so many trees taken down and they are replanting. They're doing the wrong, responsible thing and replanting, but they're forcing growth. So the trees that grow in that are replacing the old growth are far more weak and that's why building codes have changed. Where, like here in Connecticut, you can't build a single family home with two by fours anymore, you have to use two by six construction, and it's because of that right. So you know there is no, wherever you fall in the political spectrum or wherever you fall on climate change and all that, there is a structural reality of the fact that a two by four, a 2023 two by four and a 1995 two by four are not the same from a structural perspective. They're not even close.
Speaker 2:And what? Yeah, and no matter which side of that you're on, the cost benefit is going to help you regardless, right? So? That's the most in many cases.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so in terms of okay. So I think I understand how your customers win. Right, how do you win in this Like, what's your, what's the other part of the business? I mean, obviously you're creating these and selling them, but is there a rental aspect as well? You mentioned the land. That's what it carries about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so. So if we're talking on the investor side, it's very it is a little bit complicated and difficult to explain, but there's our business elements is really we really try to be everything in anything, service for anything around mobile homes, right. So we really started out by just being kind of a brokerage agency and just helping resell mobile homes to people getting out of renting and and want to get into these, and then we got into development of these. So now big part of our element is helping consumers. To these people that live in these mobile home and mobile home parks, they're like, hey, I'm having a growing family. This home is too small for me. Can you retrofit our lot so that we can? We can have extra bedrooms, we can double our square footage. And that's exactly what we do.
Speaker 2:We go in. We look at their 800 square foot single wide. We're like, hey, because this was built in the 70s, we didn't max, they didn't maximize your lot. We can actually build a 1500 square foot home. And that's pretty much what we'll do.
Speaker 2:We'll do the logistics of first seeing, if it's feasible, how big of a home we can fit. What's it going to cost you? Do the numbers make sense If it costs 250k to remodel it, but my home at the end is going to be worth 400k and boom. It makes so much sense for you to do the financing and make this work. So we'll do that at the consumer level and then we also do that for the park, for the park owners as well. So the park owners, their their incentive or what they're looking for is to raise value of their communities. And one is building these vacant lots or replacing these old, unused lots bring a ton of value for them. And the other is is how do we kind of analyze this so we can create more revenue for the park owner? And the ratio of having old homes removed and having new homes in their parks just have a whole different vibe to it and it actually raises the value itself alone as well. So we help with the consulting for park owners as well.
Speaker 1:Right on, man. So I mean, basically you're affecting the demand curve, right, because the, as you're, not only are you uplifting the quality of the buildings that are in that in that park, but you're also filling gaps and reducing the number of available lots, which is creating additional demand. So the aesthetics of of driving through the park, you know, a family of two or three or four are saying, wow, this is a really nice place, we want to live here. Well, there's only two more lots available and you know. So it gives the. It gives the. You know, it gives the family a nice place to live, it gives the park owner a good return on investment. And obviously you're doing well, you know, creating those homes. So, yeah, seems like everybody's winning here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's you know. What's interesting is, I love the fact that it's like a three or four way win. You know, the residents. This is, I think, that's one of the biggest things of entrepreneurship, and I'm very fortunate to have, like, friends in the Silicon Valley that helped me open my mind to different ideas and concepts and feeling that there is a win, win, win situation. Right, and that's exactly what we're trying to accomplish here. Is, you know, how do we build something that helps park owners, that also help residents get, you know, a stepping stone towards home ownership at the same time? Right, and that's what I love about this. It's really an ecosystem that benefits all.
Speaker 1:And the interesting thing is, the model is applicable everywhere, right? Because I mean, you're making it work in what I would argue is one of, if not the most expensive area of the country to do this, and you're doing it quite effectively, right? So I can only imagine what it's like to do this in Montana or Indiana or Georgia, where things cost at least a little bit less, right, and you still get the, you know, the family still get the same benefit. The developer gets their benefit in terms of creating the homes, rehabbing the homes and building new ones, you know, adding on to the space to create new ones Again. There, in fact, you're directly affecting the look and feel of the park, as well as helping himself. Lots, him or her, so lots, right? That's amazing, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's really cool so question for you? How did you, just how did you figure this out that this would work?
Speaker 2:Through pure frustration. Honestly, it was, you know, I think you know I did a deep year or so trying to analyze housing and all the problems and in all like how can we really benefit? And you know, I came to that realization that I was explaining earlier is that there's these huge. You know, the ownership element is so beneficial and it's so crucial if there's a family that wants to get wealthier or get ahead, right, and the key to that is ownership. And I stumbled across these.
Speaker 2:You know, I actually looked at Google Earth and I'm looking at you know, hey, why is this land unused with this? And I was like holy crap, there's so many of these weird shaped things. These are mobile home parks and they're right across the street. There's ones right across the street from Google. There's ones right across the street from Samsung building Like these are high tech, high pay areas and I'm like these are. And then I drive into it. I'm like these are kind of low quality homes. But you go into these communities.
Speaker 2:Our personal stigmas of mobile home park are from breaking bad or from Eminem, and I think they're just the worst and the lowest and unsafe of the situations. But you go into them. Wow, these are actually pretty nice, right. The people in here are great, humble people and they're the teachers of our area and there's so much to be done.
Speaker 2:And the other element of how I found out is one is like these people, unfortunately, because of their situation, people aren't servicing them. People don't. You know, there isn't a world of people that are helping mobile home owners, and to me that wasn't okay. So I just, you know, got into it and really came to realize and deep studied this that this is a perfect financial model that actually makes sense and it's keeping people. It's keeping people in our to be able to live in our areas and it's so crucial. But it was really by accident and through frustration, and I'm very grateful that I went through that past history of financial struggle, because that's really what drew me to every day to just figure this out and how do we help these people. That's awesome.
Speaker 1:Kudos to you really seriously, it's really impressive. So I want to, I want to stay on track here because we're coming up on the clock, we're getting there, but so I want to talk through the final four, which is our. You know the four questions I ask everybody. Okay, you know, typically, you know leaders like you and people that run companies. You know they tend to be leaders, tend to be readers, right, but these days, obviously, reading, you know it can be audio books, youtube videos, conferences, you know physical books, whatever. So questions, it's a two part question One you know, how do you consume information, how do you kind of sharpen the saw?
Speaker 1:And then also I'm curious about who you're paying attention to these days.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I guess the first question is keep in mind, like I think the word resourcefulness is kind of the most important thing, and what I find is that people that go through a huge struggle financially, they end up having to be forced to be resourceful, and I think with that, with and I say that, but also keep in mind, I had a dropout of college. I didn't have any informal education after that, but I literally learned everything through YouTube or through books and through that sort of thing, because the fact that I wanted to figure this out, I had to figure this out right, and the big concept I want to express here is that the information's out there. It's just how resourceful we are of using that information so that we can build something right. It's the key thing is resourcefulness. Honestly.
Speaker 1:But you said something really interesting there. I'm going to stop just for a second. You said two sentences I wanted to do this and I had to do this right. And there's a difference between want and had their want and must right. And one is you know, wow, I wish I could affect change, right. The other is I have to right, this has to happen. And I think you are clearly. You fall into the latter category, not the former. Right, you had to do this, right. Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:Oh, totally. I mean, just just knowing that I would be able to help one single family, be able to really get out of that rat race, felt so important to me. And then, after helping one family, I was like, shoot, we got to help more, we got to help more and more, and that you know I'm all cheering up. But like I still cheer up today when I see a family that felt like they could never afford anything be able to get their first, it's insane.
Speaker 1:It's something about turning the turn in the front door key on something you own right, yeah, yeah, when you talk about videos and all that, I'm curious who you know. So you answered how, or you know how you consume. Who do you pay attention to these days in terms of you know YouTube or whatever else you're paying attention to?
Speaker 2:I feel like the stages and elements. I think what's interesting about what I learned from a lot of these entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley is that you find out what your weaknesses are and then you find out who you should follow and what you should be resourceful to reading, you know, at my very hardest times. It's interesting that Tony Robbins was a big psychology guy for me. It helped me stay motivated and want to make a difference and make and build energy and get motivated. And then you know there's also the messaging side. There's Simon Sinek that I'm a huge fan of. He helps kind of really design these messages and how do we explain things so that people can understand and that sort of thing. And now I think one of our big problems is really how do we scale and grow and build processes. So that's kind of one thing that I'm still today trying to learn how do we build better processes and systems. There's no person I'm actually following, but like EOS is a big one that we're getting into.
Speaker 1:So Michael Gerber might be somebody you want to check out. So that's a myth, right? Exactly yeah, and so I'm a Silicon Valley recovering Silicon Valley technology, and so I was a Gerber guy before Gino Wickman. Well, gino Wickman was probably in high school when I was reading Gerber's stuff, so, but the fact is, is that there's. You know, if you want to build systems, it's those are the two people you should be paying attention to right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think the advice comes to you when you need it and it's contextual to you when you need it as well. Right? So if my biggest problem is I want to understand marketing, I'm going to find who's the marketing guy that I should be listening to, reading or following. If the if the problem is something else, then I'll chase that and again, what's the?
Speaker 1:what is it called the reticular activation system? Right, you know that if you need something, you start to see it in the world, right, if you want to go buy a car and you only want a white car, that's all you see for the next few days, right Is, oh, that's a white car, oh.
Speaker 1:I can believe how many people have white cars, right, yeah, so yeah, no, I totally get that. So there was one word there that you use that I want to drill into advice. So I'm also curious about you know and you mentioned Tony Robbins and Sinek and you know a few others but in your personal life, in your personal world, what was the best advice you ever got and who gave it to you?
Speaker 2:Hmm, oh, that's a tough one. I'm not ready for this, let me think so. The best advice I've ever gotten, you know, I think it's really interesting. This is going to be weird, but there was a time I was in high school and this really clicked for me. At that time I wanted to do so many things and I couldn't get anything done. And this high school teacher of mine said Franco, you have to figure out what is your biggest priority and focus only on that. And when he said that, it just stuck with me even today. His name is Mr James, but still still today.
Speaker 2:You know, we have five to ten problems that we want to deal with, but we can never chase all five or ten. You have to the most. The more important thing is to identify which one is going to provide biggest impact for the rest to be able to thrive. And I think that's what's key. If we don't pick, if it's really hard to pick one over the other, but it's necessary and it's required to be able to have progress. So I'd say that's probably the biggest piece of advice that I've got. Damn good advice.
Speaker 1:It's interesting, it just brings I'm smiling and as I'm listening to you tell the story, because I had a mentor actually a very close friend of mine now, peter Black, who always used to say it because I was prone to doing a lot of different things when I was working for him and he's like, hey, keep the main thing, the main thing. And I'm like got it. You know, that's all I needed, and I mean he's probably said it to me a dozen times and you know it's focus is a superpower if you can harness it right, absolutely so. So let me ask you a loaded question here If you had to do it all over again, what would you do differently?
Speaker 2:Huh, that is a loaded question, I'm thinking.
Speaker 1:They get easier from here, by the way.
Speaker 2:So I'd say you know it's interesting, I really appreciate the way things panned out and I don't know that. You know. I think the problems and the difficulties are really necessary for each thing to grow, but I think, really understanding that people make the difference and that's in keeping good people, hiring good people. What I love about our company and what's really grown us is having caring people and really high quality people, and the people that work with us also the ones that really make the impact also didn't come from a huge schooling background or that sort of thing, but because they understood the impact that they were creating. They're so hardworking and relying on good people and educating good people of how they can create an impact. I think that's what I wish I could. I known before and I feel like I would have been able to grow faster before, but now we're doing that at a better level.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I mean, you get education in a lot of different places, right. I mean, I went to college, but I can tell you I was actually on Twitter this morning going back and forth with a buddy of mine and he'd asked the question what did you study in college, what's your degree in, and are you using it today? And I'm in real estate investing, right. So that's marketing and finance and all that. I was an English major and a mass communications mind. I learned how to communicate with people. That's about it, right. And do I use that? Yeah, probably.
Speaker 1:But that degree qualified me to be an English teacher or go get a grad degree, which I never got. And so it's interesting, some of the smartest people I ever met I've met. The wealthiest guy I ever met was a plumber, and at some point I'm not going to take up time but another real estate investor and the smartest guy I know is my brother-in-law, who's a. He just retired, having been working in public works for 40 years, so, and he is legit and worked in Silicon Valley. Right, there are smart people there, but my brother-in-law is probably 10 to 15 points smarter than all of them. So you don't need a college degree. You certainly don't need a college degree to be successful at this, and so you need to be resourceful, and you got to figure out how to persevere, so all right. So I've asked you the hard questions. Now I'm going to ask you the easy one. So, when you are not talking real estate, what do you like to do? How do you spend your free?
Speaker 2:time. Oh, I've always loved. I think as a kid I've always wanted to be a videographer. I love video, so, um, yeah, so just for fun, like there's no money involvement into it. I love making videos for small businesses and good food. So we love featuring vlogs of restaurants, of like these mom and pop restaurants and doors like that. So that's probably like my big hobby, that I love doing that's very cool, so all right.
Speaker 1:Well, hey, franco, I've really enjoyed talking with you. Thank you again for all your experience and wisdom. If people want to reach out and learn more about you or get in touch with you, you know, regarding your business or whatever what's the best way to get a hold of you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, actually, it's on what you said. The link, all of our links are on wwwfrankotv or you can Google Franco Mobile Homes and you'll find us there. So, yeah, we have YouTube channels where I really urge people to take a look at how quality these homes are and how quality, how high quality these communities are, because it'll shock you. Every time I have people watching. It's shocking yeah.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, hey, franco Perez, thank you so much for your time today. It's really good to see you, my friend, and we'll talk soon. Awesome, this has been the Real Estate Underground podcast. Thank you so much for listening. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe. It helps us grow. Until next time, happy investing.