Manufactured housing

Well, I was raised [clears throat] in the affordable housing industry.

My dad, Wallace Conner, his company was the largest retailer of manufactured homes, mobile homes, trailers-

Interesting.

Yeah

Another guy's gonna tell you that epoxy floor coverings are better than polyurea.

Another guy's gonna tell you that stick-built homes are better than manufactured homes, which all of those we don't agree with because there's exceptions to everything.

It depends who's building the individual things.

However, what we wanna make people clear of is you and I like manufactured homes.

Absolutely.

We're, we're gonna take a few minutes and talk about why we like manufactured homes, and a guest is going to help us.

Why don't you introduce our guest, buddy?

We've got Chad Braun from Diamond Modular and Manufactured Homes with us, and Chad knows better than anybody we've talked to about this product.

And we can talk about the future moving forward.

But you also manufacture manufactured housing, right? And I'm assuming that means like...

you know, mobile home parks,

right? That is what we mean by that.

You know, by and large, that's institutionally owned and operated.

Does that make sense? Yes.

If you were to look at manufactured housing and storage and look at the ownership profile, that's overwhelmingly owned by mom and pop owner operators.

So that's when I say fragmented, that's what I mean.

Um, you know, ultimately the, the quality really matters in terms of your ability to, uh, to ultimately create value for our investors.

So Rich, uh, Devin opened the door to asset type when he, uh, he gave a plug for manufactured housing.

Um, I will say that I've seen a market shift in investor preference in the last year really, uh, where I would say in the last 10 years prior to this year, industrial and multifamily were probably the two preferred asset types, and maybe they still are.

But I've seen office and retail, um, in many cases not only, uh, catch up, but a step ahead of them.

And if they can do that, Class A apartments can be a really attractive investment alternative.

But there's maybe even some opportunities to do light value add, uh, in, in some higher quality Class B.

But more importantly, when we think about living, we try to think about it holistically and look across the spectrum, whether it be Class A apartments, whether it be build to rent or manufactured housing or senior housing or even student housing in selective markets.

If you take a holistic view to living, we actually think there's a real opportunity to add some value and not be siloed into buying Class A when in fact there's nothing wrong with Class A, but if the growth isn't attractive enough relative to cap rates, then your long-term return potential could just be underwhelming.

Well, it comes down to soil saturation and friction.

Manufactured homes are typically secured to the ground using ground anchors, often helical tie downs, which look like giant steel screws driven deep into the earth.

OK, I've seen those.

Right.

Yeah.

But, you know, our conversation today leaves me with a pretty fascinating lingering thought.

Yeah, I mean, we learned today that modern manufactured homes are built to these incredibly strict standardized HUD codes.

which dictate how the structure responds to expected wind loads and thermal changes based on decades of historical weather data.

Yes.

Manufactured homes are nice.

Well, manufactured homes...

Matter of fact,

I think...

You're buying the dirt.

I look at a manufactured home like a luxury trailer, pretty much.

people would call it trailers back in the day now they're manufactured homes exactly right because