Ep #32: Part 2 - The TOP 10 mistakes to avoid when investing in Mobile Home Parks – with Jefferson Lilly

Jefferson Lilly is a mobile home park investment expert, educator, and industry consultant who has been featured in the New York Times and Bloomberg Magazine.  Prior to co-founding Park Street Partners in 2013, Mr. Lilly spent seven years investing his own capital at Lilly & Company where he acquired and continues to operate mobile home parks in the Midwest, and consults to mobile home park owners in California.   Prior to becoming an investor full-time, Jefferson spent 10 years in sales leadership roles with several venture-backed startup companies in Silicon Valley that were acquired by Openwave Systems and VeriSign.  Earlier in his career he held operational roles at Viacom and was a consultant with Bain & Company.   In this episode, Jefferson shares with us the Top 10 mistakes he made when getting started in this business with the hopes that you can learn from his mishaps and avoid these same pitfalls   In this interview with Jefferson you’re going to learn: ·         The benefits of having a dedicated greeter at each one of your parks ·         Why you should never rely on mobile home park dealers to fill your parks with new residents ·         Why outsourcing key parts of your business is essential if you want to scale ·         Why you’re letting money walk out the door if you don’t have a website showing the amenities of your park and the available units ·         The benefits of using local banks on deal sizes of less than 1.5 million vs. the larger regional multi-state banks ·         How syndicating deals and raising private equity has allowed Jefferson to grow much faster than he would have doing it on his own money