GI301: Investing in Mobile Homes with Walter Johnson

GI301: Investing in Mobile Homes with Walter Johnson

Walter Johnson is a finance professional, real estate investor, and syndicator with over 16 years of experience, starting his personal real estate portfolio with just a $1,500 investment. Today, his firm, Sonos Capital, invests in manufactured housing communities across the United States.

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Transcript:

Charles:
Welcome to another episode of the Global Investors Podcast. I’M your host, Charles Carillo. Today, we have Walter Johnson. He is a finance professional, real estate investor, and syndicator with over 16 years of experience, starting his personal real estate portfolio with just a $1,500 investment. Today, his firm, Sonos Capital, invests in manufactured housing communities across the United States. Thank you so much for being on the show!

Walter:
Thank you. Thank you for having me. It’s gonna be a cool show.

Charles:
So you’ve been you’ve been investing in real estate going on almost two decades, and can you tell us a little bit about yourself, both personally and professionally prior to getting involved in investing in real estate? Yeah.

Walter:
Well, I think I was investing in real estate since I was 22. Yeah. I would tell you when I first bought my first investment property, but before that it was a lot of education. So I remember, you know, I would talk to my friends and you know, read a lot of real estate books and you know, I would, I would, you know, they were into different things and I was reading about lending and, and LTVs and down payments, and I used to go to ’em and say, Hey, you know, there’s like a Fannie Mae program or a Fedie Freddie Mac program. You can do three and a half percent down or zero down, and you can buy a fourplex. And, you know, they laughed at me. So I think that’s when you, I guess my, my, you know, you kind of outgrow your friends, so to speak. And that’s kind of when it started clicking. So I, I believed in, you know, my passion more in believing, just hanging out. And so I think that’s what separated me to go to the route for real estate investment.

Charles:
And it’s really interesting. I bought my first multifamily property in when I was 22 as well in 2006. And it was a three flex house active. And I can’t tell how many people I told to do the same thing I was doing, and no one did it. So it was like you know, it’s, you, you, you’re a little different when you’re taking that route. ’cause It’s a, it’s not traditional, you know what I mean? So you kind of have to change your networking group and change the people kind of that you’re listening to and so forth.

Walter:
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. So that’s how I got started. And then I got started. I I got started, this was kind of a, you know, I guess we would say hack these days, right? But this is a, let’s say a hack. Then I said, okay, if I wanna learn about real estate and how you buy it and what’s the best way to buy it? And like the ends, I’m actually gonna get into mortgages. And, or actually I became like a, let’s say a, a a loan processor first, right? And that was kind of a, a it was a Tim job, and I said, okay, this is actually what I’m gonna do just to learn the business of real estate investment. And so based on that, and I seen these mortgage brokers, you know, making a ton of money back at the, you know, this is before the hike. This is probably 19, I would say 99. So right, so 99, 2000, right? So they were dressed up in suits. It’s a lot different. What, what, what it is now dressed up in suits. And they were doing well, and they had the bins. I was like, okay, I wanna be that. Right. It was almost that pursuit of happiness type, you know, type feeling. And and that’s how I got into to mortgage brokers.

Charles:
Interesting. Yeah, that was a, that was quite the difference back then because the internet having come through and the internet obviously does disrupted tons of industries and definitely mortgages and real estate to some degree real estate. But you know, mortgages definitely, I mean, you don’t have to go to somebody’s that your real estate agent’s mortgage broker anymore. And you know, you can now find and contact lenders and brokers all over the United States. So it was definitely a different time, that’s for sure.

Walter:
Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, absolutely. And, and at that time, you know, they brought in, I was a kind of a loan processor. They brought in these, these files. Right now it’s all digital via email, you know, emails and all that great stuff you upload. But back then they copied, they had to send in the documentation and somebody had to copy the the, you know, the pay stubs, w twos, bank statements, et cetera. So I, I was seeing these files and then I would see how much the, the mortgage brokers were actually making. I was like, wow, that’s cool. And they’re always on their cell phones and, you know, making deals. So <laugh>, it was cool.

Charles:
Yeah, it was an interesting thing. And then I think I remember I bought a second property in like 2008, and when I bought oh six versus 2008, I mean, it couldn’t be, it was about exactly two year difference for me from those two closing dates and the change in real estate. I mean, we hadn’t hit the bottom yet. It was just like 2008, just everything kind of blew out. And it was just you know, I, yeah, I had, you know, it was different real estate agents that were there, but the brokerage, I remember my broker was telling me that the brokerage, he, the loan mortgage broker he worked for this guy, his, his firm. He said they had two secretaries. And he said that one of ’em took care of like 23 of the different brokers that were out there selling mortgages.

Charles:
And him and one other guy had one secretary himself. That’s how many deals they did. ’cause They had real, you know, they had real rolodexes back then of clients that they were getting business from. You know what I mean? And like, those are the people that stayed on everybody else kind of got washed out, all these people doing fraud and stuff like that. It wasn’t, they didn’t have real businesses and stuff like that. So it was definitely a, definitely a changing time for mortgages and real estate. I mean, it was, it was such a, such a difference between those over that you know, two year, three year period going from, you know, oh five all the way to oh 9, 0 8, something like that.

Walter:
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. It was, I remember, I think I was like 23, 24. I had a personal assistant that I was paying. I had no management skills, but I needed it. Right. So sometimes in that, in that business, you need it. Yeah. Necessity. ’cause You have so much business. So let’s

Charles:
Talk about how you kind of made the tradition over transition over to like mobile home parks and how your kind of investing career kind of evolved from starting off in oh eight. So

Walter:
Starting off in oh eight and let’s, let’s kind of you know, kind of go back to like oh six, just a, a little bit, right? So I’ve seen the market kind of, kind of make a turn before, I think if you’re in the inside, that’s what I wanted to tie it to. If you’re in the inside, let’s say mortgages are lending, you can kind of see what’s happening before the general public, right? I, I would say that’s safe to say. So it’s usually about a six or eight month gap, right? Until about two, end of 2006, I started seeing the, the landscape change in lending. So a lot of programs, let’s say for buying a a, a investment property or, or a, a fourplex or a triplex, those lending opportunities or loan programs were actually going away, right? So, and then at times, lenders just wouldn’t approve.

Walter:
So it says, okay, this is a little bit different until I stopped. I actually moved to Denver and I moved to Denver and I I kind of just retired, right? Because I had a lot of properties and I was oh 7, 0 8. So in oh eight I had a friend of mine that told me about mobile home parks Jerry, and he sold actually manufacture homes to park owners, and he sold them from, you know, to in Arizona, California. He was telling me you know, at the time I was doing a little bit of flips, but he said that, ’cause he would sell, let’s say a park model, manufacture home in a home community. So he would buy it for, let’s say, $15,000 or so and sell it to a, a park owner in California for 40,000. I think that, you know, that’d be a, a great way, ’cause you don’t actually have to fix ’em up like a, like a single family home.

Walter:
But he says, Hey, so have you ever thought about since you like real estate and income, have you thought about mobile home parks? And I said, no, not at all. Did never even cross my mind right before that. I had no idea who lived in manufactured homes. I, I had no idea how it worked at all. Right? So I, I kinda let it go and just said no. And then a couple years after that, I, I was, I was looking at a, like a wholesale, like we were talking about websites, and I seen a mobile home park go for really cheap, but the income was about 45 grand a month, which was, I mean, it’s phenomenal even still today. And I think the, the price was just shy of 400 grand. So I said, let me learn. I mean, $45,000 a month gross is actually a lot of money.

Walter:
So I called area and I said, Jerry, can you kind of tell me about mobile home parks? And so he told me a little bit about what he knew, but he introduced me to a few park managers. And then he introduced me to a huge park owner. I think they’re probably the number one in California, or at least the top five, I believe, but I believe they were number one. So I actually had an opportunity to meet, his name was Jim to talk to this guy by the name of Jim. And it was a world of knowledge. And so I studied parks for about three years. So, so I learned everything I could about parks. I, I, I put out mailers and, you know, they would call me seeing, you know, if they wanted to sell, and I would just pick their brains. It’s almost similar to buying real estate, right? Talking to a, let’s say a seller. And I just, I just drove everywhere. I had a Prius at the time, and, you know, it was a great gas mile, so I didn’t mind the drive. So I would drive to yume, I would drive to California just to, you know, drive and, and talk to these, these owners. And that’s actually how I got my start in, in learning about manufacture homes or mobile home parks.

Charles:
Interesting. Did you ever partner with them on any deals like that? Or did you just, your first deal, you just did yourself

Walter:
First deal? I did myself. I mean, they, they were, they were, I mean, they’re huge. You know, we’re talking about, there’s a guy in, in, in Palm Springs. I, I think at the time, I mean, he’s just, the land alone was $10 million. So I, I just imagine what the park was worth. So I didn’t have that capital at the time, and so I just, I picked their banks. How did you get started? What did you do? What are your pitfalls? How do your tenants work? How does it compare to single family homes or apartment buildings? I just asked them all these questions. How do your utilities work? What is this? It’s called a skirting. Why do you have steps like this? Right? Like the, just the, the simple questions if I, I would say if I was in elementary school, right? And that’s how I got my start.

Charles:
Interesting. So let’s fast forward kind of to what you guys are doing now kind of what your company’s current investment criteria and strategy is, and kinda different like fund offerings that you guys are working

Walter:
On. Sure, sure, sure. So current it’s funny how you say that. I just got back from Wyoming where we’re actually gonna be buying a part for about 15 million that throws off about 23% cash from cash return. So it’s actually a great part. Yeah, yeah. Really good part. So let’s just talk about that one since that’s, I just came back and, and it’s kind of, we’re working on it in, in real time. So that criteria, one, it has double digit cash from cash returns. It’s a seller financing. The down payment is 30%, which is not bad. And it’s 80% occupied. So looking at something like that, I would say that’s our buy box. I don’t, we don’t like to dip below, I would say 65% occupancy. And if you can buy something in that, it kind of, in that, in that buy box, I think anyone would do well.

Charles:
Interesting. How did you guys source that deal?

Walter:
Our marketing. So we actually have marketing. So we do we actually have people that call on, on park owners and we do mailers. So it’s a combination of both.

Charles:
What have you found to be most successful or putting them kind of mending them together, makes it a successful kind of marketing strategy?

Walter:
Yeah, I’d say blending them together. I would say a lot of it’s timing. Some per people may not, you know, like the phone calls or may miss it, but they might like how you wrote the actual letter and vice versa, right? So some people just don’t like the letter, but they appreciate a phone call. So it’s a, it’s a blend.

Charles:
Interesting. Yeah, I think definitely like, definitely direct mail is a very, very very successful avenue for, we have sourcing multifamily properties. Definitely, I mean, a unique properties and stuff like that, and sourcing ’em directly, it’s a you know, we found it to be extremely successful, you know what I mean? It’s, it’s a great marketing channel. You know, this one, you said that you sell our finance debt, which I imagine is a, for these type of assets that might be a higher percentage compared to other asset classes that are seller financed compared to, you know, multifamily or retail or self storage, maybe in some, some parts. But what are your primary funding sources outside of seller financing for these parks deals? I mean,

Walter:
You can get one is funny how you say that. We can go back to, you know, when I was 19 talking about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. So you can actually get a, a loan now through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for mobile home parks. Now usually, you know, what was the case is that you would actually, those, so those mom and pops usually did sell their financing when they acquired the, the parks. So usually they’re, they’re used to it. And I think they’re more apt to actually take that. And the reason why I say that, ’cause they can actually, we structured a deal to where the, the park owner was drawing about about $90,000 a year off this park, right? Not this one, but just another one that we acquired. So I said, okay, I will give you 20% down and I will give you payments, which is, you know, your mortgage and equivalent to what you were actually paying yourself. So it’s actually a win-win. So she’s like, okay, well that makes sense. And so they don’t lose their, their quality of life, they just get a chunk of change as, as far as a down payment.

Charles:
Interesting. Yeah, that’s a great way, that’s, that’s one of the benefits of seller financing is that you’re able to go in and really manipulate the down payment, the interest rate and the terms of the deal specifically for what you’re, what the goal is. Because in this situation, it wasn’t really the sale price that they wanted a different price on. It was really that they wanted to have that income stream coming in. So you, you put it all together for it and you’re able to do it because do you find that it’s, what do, what do you think one of the big hangups is when you’re negotiating seller financing? Is it always the selling price or is it something else, usually in the background that you wanna thought of first?

Walter:
I think it’s a background. That’s actually a really, really great question for your audience. I think it’s a background. I think it’s the down payment and trust. So down payment, trust and, and then the income, right? Or the, the, the payments that they’ll get. But one, if they can trust you, if you actually have a track record, I, I like to meet with my, with, with the sellers face to face. I’ll go to breakfast, lunch or dinner with them. It’s actually great. You can hear their story. They can hear yours and get some type of, I guess some type of, you know, create a, a type of bond there. That’s one. But two, if you actually saying, Hey, I can, I can, you know, bring this a million dollars or $2 million, or even five, you know, $500,000 free your down payment. And then if you carry the, the, the paper as Heller financing, that makes sense. So is trust down payment and and the market payments.

Charles:
Interesting.

Charles:
One of the things I’ve found when I speak to mobile home investors, I mean, due diligence is important with all different types of pro properties. I mean, obviously we do a thorough due diligence with multi multifamily properties when we’re buying ’em. But kind of what do you think are some of the due diligence that you perform for new mobile home park acquisitions that, you know, might, you know, other o operators that you might be competing with, they might overlook, right? Maybe not even competing with, but other o operators that are out there. It might be something that they don’t really do, and you guys are a little bit more thorough. You’re going through, I’m like, and how does that really look your due diligence portion when you’re buying one of these parks?

Walter:
Yeah, so we do phase one surveys. We do environmental surveys, which is almost unheard of, let’s say if you’re buying a, a single family home, right? Or you know, a small duplex or

Charles:
You do on everything, no matter who’s financing it. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>.

Walter:
Yeah. If the bank, actually, usually if we’re going through a bank, the bank actually orders that, right? And so we still do, we don’t necessarily do appraisals ’cause we actually look at the books, right? Or the, not the books, but the, I would say the, the rent role is the p and ls, the tax returns, right? We can kind of get it at this stage a, a gauge of what we’re looking at. But I would say one thing that we do is that that’s a little bit different. Or may it could be a tip for your audience as well, is that we’ll call the association in that particular, you know, state saying, Hey, we’re looking at acquiring this park. What should we know about one this park? Does it have a history of, of anything that, or any red flags, or are there any state legislations that are coming down that we should be aware of? So, little things like that. And that’s, you know, I know it, it sounds like unnecessary, but it’s, it’s a 10 minute phone call that that can save you, you know, thousands of hundreds of thousands of dollars and save time down the road.

Charles:
Yeah, no, that’s a lot of great information. One thing I’ve always found is that the infrastructure, and it’s one thing we look at with older multi-family properties too, like plumbing for, for example. But it’s also just something that even with these parks, I’ve heard people that have due, you know, they perform due diligence on ’em and inspect them, and they’re telling me, you know, how terrible some of the infrastructure can be on some of these parks. So, I mean, thorough due diligence is, is extremely important, is what I understand. Oh, yeah.

Walter:
Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, we were looking at a park in another state from Arizona, and we found out that we couldn’t, it, it wasn’t, it sounded like a great deal on, on paper, but when you do the due diligence, we found out, wow, this is actually out of compliance. We have to take, if we wanted to do anything, we had to take, we had to actually basically shut down the whole park. So we don’t have the business. So we actually didn’t end up buying it. I guess the the zoning and setbacks were actually incorrect. Oh,

Charles:
Wow. Yeah. That’s, that’s not something you can just you can just correct <laugh>. Correct. You know what I mean? So, you know, we pretty much for multifamily value add type stuff, you know, we’re, we’re raising rent, we’re going in, we’re doing work to units, bringing more up to the area standard rents and quality. What does a standard value add strategy look like for mobile Home

Walter:
Park? Oh, standard raise rents, decrease expenses. <Laugh>, I would do that just off the bat, right? There’s always something you can actually decrease expenses on, right? I have, I have one that I’m looking at their credit card fees, they’re just credit card fees of $40,000 a year. So, ’cause they’re not, they’re not doing online, but if you actually do online, and you know, most states, if you actually have a credit card fee, it gets passed on to the tenant, right? So that’s, that’s what extra, and then a CH doesn’t cost any much doesn’t cost any anything. So we, we would be saving $40,000 a year. I think it’s $46,000 a year by going online or a CH, yeah,

Charles:
$4,000 a month. Really. I’m saving on that. That’s crazy. But when you’re, you know, ’cause I, I speak to like self storage operators and they’ll tell me, oh, you know, like a value add strategy there ’cause you, you know, what is that? And they’ll say, oh, we bring in U-Haul or we do this, or something like this to add another value add service to clients there. Is there anything else like that? I mean, you don’t probably want to own or own many of the homes, so you can’t really do anything there. But like that’s pretty much, that’s pretty much the whole thing going in there and try to raise rent a little bit so you don’t have too much pushback. And then you’re just going in there and, I mean, ’cause lowering the expenses when we buy a property, we can lower expenses. I can, you know, we can change out, say, you know trash, right? But that’s like a onetime thing, you know what I mean? Obviously it’s like, you know, it does it for year one and going, you know, I’m not gonna be paying the same as the last guy was for future years. But the thing though is that it’s still, I’m not gonna have another decrease or any other bump in income. Just off that, is there anything else that you guys are doing that’s going to kind of in increase the NOI?

Walter:
Sure, sure, sure. So we, we would bring in, there’s, there’s another, another strategy, we’ll, we’ll actually bring in fiber optic internet. And, and so that’s one. So we’ll let that company actually get the rebate from the government. So they’ll install it to us for free, but we’ll actually charge the, the residents for the high speed internet. Well, we’ll charge ’em, it’ll be cheaper for them to actually go through us. That’s one. And then two, that’s, let’s just say if it’s $40 a month, which is, which is relatively cheap for, you know, fire optics or times that by a hundred spaces, whether that’s income generating at, you know value add. That’s one, two, bring in new and used homes. That’s another one. Another one is renting spaces. So if there’s a vacant empty space, you can actually rent that out. Someone can use it for storage. That’s another one. Another one would be bringing in storage units since you mentioned that. So we can actually just bring in storage units and have people who actually rent those. And that’s at 40 or $50 a month, but that’s actually cheaper as well than, let’s say another line and pop self storage or a, you know, one of those, those big box self storages down the street. So there’s, there’s definitely other avenues to increase revenue. Yeah,

Charles:
Storage for the park is a, is a double for you guys because you make money on it, but also it cleans up the park, you know what I mean? We have that with, with our apartment buildings. I remember we were checking on one property, I was like two or three months ago. Everything was perfect except people had stuff in front of their doors, you know what I mean? And you’re like, you gotta get this, like, we gotta get this all cleaned up. Like you can’t like, have people storing stuff in front of their units it looks like, do you know what I mean? It just like decreases what we’re trying to do here. So much to new tenants coming in, people that are already living there and your guests that are coming in as well. So the small stuff like that actually is, you know, a win-win win because now those people don’t have to drive anywhere to get stuff their own personal items access to it.

Walter:
So, absolutely. Yeah. No, so we’re big on self storages and, and one, we’re actually dealing with a park right now. It’s where people have there a lot of stuff in there in their yard. So we’re cleaning that up. So I definitely understand what you’re talking about.

Charles:
One thing is that you know, you’re dealing with older properties, and this is with any type of older properties. And there’s always, there’s certain things that are like grandfathered in. There’s always kind of like that there might be some zoning or, you know regulatory restrictions when you’re renovating or upgrading a park. I mean, how are you guys navigating that? I mean, is it just I mean obviously you do a lot of due diligence beforehand to make sure that there’s nothing where immediately that’s happening. But when you’re going through and, you know doing this value add strategy with work you’re doing there, how are you kind of navigating all of that to make sure that you’re keeping everything above board and it’s not gonna come back from some local municipality?

Walter:
Yeah, usually mul home parks are grandfathered in. If you’re trying to, I would say get anything rezoned, then it gets out of that grandfather clause and we don’t allow, or you have to build, let’s say, a structure and it kind of changes things. So we don’t, we don’t usually do that.

Charles:
When you are handling these parks after you purchase them, you have ’em all over the place. I mean, how is the property management handled? Is it something where, I mean, obviously you’re, you know, you’re looking for a certain size park where it’s gonna make sense and make it a little easier for you guys to manage it. But typically with your parks, how are they, how are they handled? Do you have a third party firm? Is there someone on site that lives there that’s handling ’em? Are you guys you know, just one of your team members just does it offsite?

Walter:
Both. I would say, so we don’t have any third party management companies. Either our managers live offsite or they live on site, or our maintenance guys live on site or they live offsite as well. We, we prefer them to live on site and not necessarily just so they can keep an eye on the park, but it actually, it’s, it’s cheaper for us. So if we can buy a park and have someone live on site, we can give them free rent. They pay their utilities, but free rent, give ’em a small salary versus giving ’em a larger salary. ’cause You know, we don’t have that, I guess we don’t have that that incentive to, to give them free rent.

Charles:
Interesting. Yeah, that that’s a great, that’s a great process. So some of the advantages that I usually see when working with listening to people about mobile home parks and whatnot, and it’s pretty much that you guys have a motor around your business because they’re not really building anymore. And if they’re building more, they’re very high end parks. Right. And I also feel that with the cost of housing that keeps on going up, it keeps people pretty much in that almost single family type mentality of living. ’cause It’s much different going into an apartment after you’ve been living in a house, say if you came into financial difficulty. But going further, what are some of the disadvantages or complexities of mobile home and park investing? Hmm mm

Walter:
The complexities and disadvantages. I would say that it’s a lot more moving parts than, let’s say a single family home or a, an apartment building. I would say that absolutely. So when you buy an, let’s say a fourplex, most likely you’re not doing environmental survey. So you don’t, you don’t, you don’t know what that looks like. And you most likely you don’t know how to read that, absorb that information. That’s one. But then what if you actually have to get a phase two survey so that, that information, right? That’s, that’s different. Two is that when you’re buying, let’s say a fourplex, right, you don’t necessarily have a p and l right? On these, you have a p and o, so you want to, you want to go by line by line and might actually look at RET tax returns. And, and that goes back to me being a mortgage broker. I just read, probably read about 13,000 tax returns. So looking at tax returns is probably second nature to me. However, you still have to read ’em. So little things like that. Interesting.

Charles:
Now, getting into your business of what you guys are doing, you’re raising money through funds. How has going from or into a fund model benefited both you and your investors from a, I guess, traditional investing strategy of just a one-off syndication, which I think is more normal for larger, say, multifamily assets and other assets like that. But I feel the fund model is much more common with people that are picking up smaller self storage and mobile home

Walter:
Parks. I would say the fund is actually a more, what’s the word I’m looking for? Less exposure, less risk than one off. I, I would say that a fund, ’cause it spells out what you’re going to do to me, like a syndication or just a one-off is like, Hey, we just wanna buy this property. We, we wanna make money, right? So let’s create this agreement and then let’s buy it fine fund saying this is actually what we’re gonna do. This is how the, the funds, the money’s gonna get, you know, distributed. This is win. This is. And so I think, and per the SEC, I think, you know, if, if anything happens or, or you had any legal challenges the SEC would put, if anything came in a fund would actually look more favorable.

Charles:
Yeah, no, I can see that. Yeah, definitely spreading the risk is a huge benefit with that because it gives you a lot more for a, say a 50,000 investment. You’re getting exposure over x, many apart and, you know what I mean, and markets and all the municipalities and all the risks get really watered down because the chance are that’s happening at multiple parks is rare, whatever might happen. You know what I mean?

Walter:
Yes. So, so we have a park that’s, that’s doing 40% cash on cash return, which is great. Then we have one that’s doing like 21% cash on cash is great. And then we have one that’s 19. But if you look at that, I mean, maybe if someone said, Hey, I’ll put $200,000 in, it’s, it’s really difficult for them to actually lose money with those type of returns and that, that many properties, let’s say.

Charles:
Interesting. So kind of as we’re wrapping up here, I always like to ask people I mean, especially yourself, you’re going to 17 years of real estate investing experience plus all of your experience just working around investors and, and property owners. The, what are some common mistakes you would see mobile home investors make over your years of doing this?

Walter:
Oh, a mobile home park. I would say not doing a lot their due diligence and and just buying something just based on, you know, the numbers and not really diving in deep into it. So I, I say if somebody’s like, Hey, I think this is actually a great 10% cash on cash return, or 12% cash on cash return, well, I mean, that’s relatively low in our world, right? Unless you’re in let’s say California or Washington or something, something along those lines. But for the most part it’s, it, you know, if you look at those returns compared to, let’s say a single family home, it looks great. But we’re, we’re, I think we’re chasing higher returns here. So I think looking for actual deals,

Charles:
No, let’s say the due diligence is a killer. It’s a mistake I think all new investors make, you know what I mean? I made it myself, you know what I mean? And, but it’s something that you just kinda have to learn from mistakes. It does <laugh>.

Walter:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I would say, I would say one, I mean to help people is that, you know, usually there’s a 45 day due diligence in like a 60 day, you know, close something like that. I put my 60 day due diligence and 60 day close. So if I find out something at the 12th hour, I can, I can cancel that. ’cause You just never know. Right.

Charles:
That makes perfect sense. So Walter, as we’re wrapping up here let’s say over this couple years, a couple decades of you of being a professional, what are some of the main factors contributed to your success over these years?

Walter:
Mentors learning on my own. I would say networking in a sense, right? So networking with the right people and having the, the right circle around you. That goes back to, you know, my friends at 19, 20 years old. So having those people that will support you and understand where, like your struggles and what you’re going through. I, if I didn’t have, I say the mentors that I have and the people that I, I can really talk to about, you know, investing or like what you go through investing, I don’t think I would be in this position I’m today. Yeah,

Charles:
No, that’s a lot of great information. So how can our listeners learn more about you and your business? Yeah,

Walter:
Just go to sonos capital.com. I’ll reach out if, if someone actually has a, just a general question, just alter@sonoscapital.com or give me a call in my office, (480) 674-2035. The reason why I give out my information is ’cause I’ve been there before.

Charles:
Well, thank you so much, Walter, for coming on today. We’ll put that link and phone number into the show notes, just letting you know people, it’s Sonos. So it’s S-O-N-O-S capital.com. And Walter, thank you so much for coming on today and looking forward to connecting with you here in the near future.

Walter:
Absolutely. Thank you.

Links and Contact Information Mentioned In The Episode:

  • Website
  • Email – walter@sonoscapital.com
  • Phone: (480) 674-2035

About Walter Johnson

Walter is a Finance Professional and Real Estate Investor/Syndicator with 16+ years of experience serving the Real Estate and Banking Industries. Over the years, he has served in various capacities, from Real Estate Investor & Vice President to High Converting Banker & Sales Manager. He is adept at spearheading strong teams and creating robust business development plans. He is an avid seeker of knowledge who highly appreciates continuous improvement and aspires to become an industry leader. Driven to influence and impact other’s lives for the better, he is passionate about inspiring today’s and tomorrow’s generations to strive for long-term business success and prosperity.

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