Making $40,000+ Profit Per Deal & Building 50+ Affordable Homes a Year

Episode Summary

Chris Gavre joins Kevin Bupp to break down the land home package strategy his business uses to create new, affordable housing while maintaining attractive development margins. Rather than building traditional subdivisions, Chris and his partner acquire infill lots or larger parcels with existing road frontage, prepare the land, install new manufactured homes, permanently affix them to the property, and sell the completed homes to retail buyers.

Chris explains the economics behind the model, including typical all-in project costs of roughly $150,000–$160,000, sales prices around $230,000–$240,000 in his market, and net profits that can exceed $40,000 per deal. He also discusses why double-wide homes, FHA financing, public water with septic systems, and markets with sufficient manufactured-home resale values can help make the strategy work.

The conversation goes beyond the headline numbers into land sourcing, zoning, deed restrictions, title retirement, appraisals, utilities, permitting, inspections, and manufactured-home dealer licensing. Chris shares costly early mistakes involving HOA restrictions, utility connections, and FHA-compliant decks, along with the due-diligence procedures those experiences created.

For real estate investors and operators exploring manufactured housing or small-scale development, the episode provides a practical framework for evaluating lots, controlling development costs, selecting a repeatable home product, and determining whether a market can support profitable land home packages.

Key Takeaways

• Start with the resale economics. Chris looks for markets where manufactured homes can support a minimum sales price of roughly $210,000–$215,000 because many home, utility, and setup costs remain relatively fixed across markets.
• Treat land due diligence as a margin-protection exercise. Confirm zoning, deed restrictions, covenants, soil conditions, utilities, topography, floodplain issues, and infrastructure costs before closing.
• Standardization can simplify execution. Chris repeatedly uses the same double-wide model and follows the county’s inspection sequence, allowing a small team to complete 50–60 projects per year.
• Don’t automatically pay for higher-end finishes. Chris found that a more expensive drywall-finished home did not produce a corresponding increase in resale value, making the less expensive model more profitable.
• Build lessons learned into future projects. After costly mistakes with title restrictions, utility locations, and deck requirements, Chris changed his title insurance coverage and due-diligence process to reduce repeat risk.

Key Topics Covered

• Land home packages
• Affordable manufactured housing
• Infill lot development
• Manufactured home investing
• Land acquisition and direct mail
• Market selection and resale comps
• FHA financing for manufactured homes
• Manufactured home title retirement
• Septic, water, and utility due diligence
• Zoning, deed restrictions, and covenants
• Double-wide home economics
• Manufactured home dealer licensing
• Development costs and project margins
• Manufactured home appraisals and appreciation
• Permitting and county inspections

Episode Chapters

00:00 Intro
Kevin introduces Chris Gavre and the land home package model, which combines vacant land with new manufactured homes to create lower-priced housing for retail buyers.

01:27 Land Home Packages 101
Chris explains how the strategy works, from acquiring infill lots or road-frontage parcels to installing double-wide manufactured homes and selling the finished properties. He also breaks down typical pricing, buyers, financing, and project costs.

06:42 Market Criteria & Finding Land
Chris shares the market characteristics and resale prices he considers when evaluating expansion opportunities. He also discusses lot size, septic requirements, direct mail, wholesalers, zoning, deed restrictions, and title retirement.

11:02 Appraisals & Appreciation
Kevin and Chris discuss how manufactured homes are appraised after being permanently affixed to land, whether they appreciate, and why Chris favors double wides over single wides.

13:16 Real Case Studies
Chris walks through the economics of a recent project, including land, home, development, financing, seller concessions, and the final profit. He also explains typical project timelines and manufactured-home dealer licensing.

15:49 Painful Lessons Learned
Chris recounts an early project where overlooked subdivision restrictions forced his team to relocate a home and absorb significant development costs. The experience changed how the company handles title review and title insurance.

17:31 “Sweet Spot” Manufactured Homes
Chris explains why his team repeatedly uses a 1,680-square-foot, four-bedroom, two-bath double wide and why paying for more expensive finishes did not produce higher resale prices. He also discusses scalability, land sourcing, and lead qualification.

23:15 Chris’s Step-by-Step Process
Chris provides a detailed walkthrough from putting a lot under contract through soil testing, zoning verification, title review, utility quotes, land preparation, home delivery, installation, and county inspections.

26:37 Common Mistakes to Avoid
Chris shares additional lessons involving water and sewer mains on the opposite side of the road and decks that failed FHA and county requirements, illustrating how seemingly small due-diligence misses can quickly consume project margins.

28:32 Connect with Chris!
Chris shares how listeners can reach him, and Kevin closes the episode.

Full Transcript

[Transcript begins]

Kevin Bupp: What if you could deliver a brand-new home for roughly half the median home price in your market and still build a profitable real estate business around it? This combines something that I am pretty familiar with, and I’m excited to hear more about this affordable solution.

Welcome to the Real Estate Investing for Cash Flow Podcast. I’m Kevin Bupp, and my mission is to help you build durable cash flow and long-term wealth.

My guest today is Chris Gavre. Chris and his partner own roughly 30 mobile home parks, but over the last few years, they’ve also built a unique land home business, buying individual lots, placing new manufactured homes on them, and selling the finished properties to retail buyers.

Chris, welcome to the show, my friend. Been very much looking forward to this conversation, having you on the show here today.

Chris Gavre: Absolutely. I appreciate you having me.

Kevin Bupp: Chris, you and your partner, you guys have built what I feel is a fairly unique business around manufactured housing. Again, not just owning the mobile home parks, which is what our business is, so very familiar with that. But ultimately, what we’re going to talk about today is you guys are taking individual lots, you’re placing new homes on them, and then selling those finished as land home packages directly to retail buyers.

I know you’re doing quite a number of those on an annual basis. I think 50 to 60 of these each and every year and have plans to continue scaling from that point forward.

So I’m just excited here today to really just unpack. We’d love to talk about the economics around these deals, the ideal markets that you guys are targeting, what the financing looks like for the end buyer, the zoning, development risk, all these other aspects of this business model that might be different for you from that of the traditional mobile home park.

And so maybe to kick this off, Chris, for someone that’s maybe just first hearing about this land home strategy, maybe just walk us through exactly how this business works from the time that you identify a lot to the time that you hand the keys over to that new end buyer.

Chris Gavre: Yeah. So basically the general premise of it is we’re buying a piece of land, whether it’s a half acre or maybe it’s five acres and we’re going to subdivide it into several lots, buying a brand-new mobile home, specifically a double wide, moving it out there on site, setting it up, and then selling it on the market.

Kevin Bupp: Are you asking for the process of that? What the whole kind of breakdown of how it works is? And I mean, we could talk about maybe as we get further on, we could talk about maybe some of the geographical aspects, demographics that you’re looking for, population, median incomes, things like that.

But so from a general sense, would you say that the majority of the deals that you do, are you buying one individual lot that’s going to encompass one home? Or are you actually buying a larger plot of land and then subdividing it and creating more of a neighborhood than that of just a standalone home?

Chris Gavre: Yeah, so we’re only doing lots that are infill lots or like a five-acre parcel that has a bunch of road frontage and subdividing it. We’re not doing a subdivision in the traditional sense because the cost of infrastructure and doing roads and all that just kind of blows up the numbers for us.

But most of our lots will come from a two-acre parcel and we’ll subdivide it into three lots or something all along the road there.

Kevin Bupp: I guess give us maybe what that delta looks like, what the margin looks like, when you sell off one of these finished land home packages compared to what the similar-size stick-built might be in that marketplace.

Chris Gavre: Yeah, and that’s the biggest thing. So we’re selling in our market on average around $230,000, $240,000 sales price. To get a stick-built home in our market, you’re probably pushing $275,000, $300,000 for kind of a starter home, maybe not updated, but livable kind of thing.

And if you want something that’s maybe new construction or a renovated starter home, you’re probably pushing $350,000 in our market. The median sales price for homes in our market is about $450,000-ish. So we’re coming in at about 50% of the median sales price.

Kevin Bupp: Got it. Got it. And who is that? I mean, is it the first-time homebuyer? But who’s that target individual that is seeking that type of home versus that of, again, a more traditional stick-built home?

Chris Gavre: We’ve seen that most of our buyers are first-time homebuyers, I would say, on average. I think 96% of our buyers last year were all using FHA loans. So usually it’s a starter home or young couple, something like that, getting an FHA loan.

We’ve also seen it where it’s an older couple maybe looking to downsize and looking for something more affordable, but that’s not as common for us.

Kevin Bupp: Okay. And so I would say that the buyer is predominantly driven by the affordability aspect, right? Compared to what you had mentioned to be the median home price in that marketplace of north of $400,000. So, no, very interesting.

Have you seen any concern with retail buyers? Maybe it’s the first time they’ve ever looked at a manufactured home. Obviously, there’s lots of great things about manufacturing, but obviously, there’s plenty of folks that would probably be naysayers as well about that type of housing product.

What are you seeing from the buyers themselves? Hesitation, or are there a bunch of them lining up saying, man, I want this. This is a great deal. This is exactly what we’ve been looking for?

Chris Gavre: Yeah, so we used to flip houses, and we’ve done a couple of spec builds, or stick-built houses. And what we noticed is that those slowed down. It’s a lot harder to sell those now than it was three, four years ago.

But the manufactured homes that we’re doing, on average, after we list, we’re under contract within a week of listing to sell. So we haven’t seen much hesitation at all. There’s only been, I think, maybe three projects that we’ve done the past three and a half years that sat for longer than a month. So all of these have still been flying off the shelves for us, thankfully. Knock on wood.

Kevin Bupp: And what’s your typical all-in cost? I mean, lot acquisition, obviously probably some infrastructure. I don’t know if you’re putting well and septic in or if these are your city utilities, obviously the cost of manufactured home, then you’ve got the transportation, the setup. And then maybe walk us through what’s your all-in cost on your standard home that you might sell? I think you’d mentioned maybe $230,000. What are you into it for?

Chris Gavre: Yeah, we’re in it for $150,000 to $160,000 on average. That’s house, land, and all setup and infrastructure costs. With our cost of financing, we’re usually running about $14,000, $15,000. We’re using hard money lenders primarily. With our private lenders, it’s cheaper, of course.

Kevin Bupp: Got it. Got it. Is it difficult to find the land that’s already correctly zoned for this type of product?

Chris Gavre: Not necessarily in our market. When you’re within the city limits, there’s zero hope of finding land that’ll allow mobile homes. But when we’re out in the county in our area, it’s not really difficult to find it zoned for that.

And I would say that traditionally it’s harder to go find a house to flip, just competition and all that for those kind of assets. But I wouldn’t say it’s been too difficult to find land.

Kevin Bupp: Are these typically on private utilities where there’s a septic and a well?

Chris Gavre: Probably 95% of them are doing septic. We don’t touch wells as much as we can help it just because of the cost of them. So they’re usually public water and then we do septic.

Kevin Bupp: Got it. Got it. I know you’d mentioned that you guys focus predominantly in the, I think it was the Greenville, South Carolina market. Is that correct?

Chris Gavre: Correct. Yes.

Kevin Bupp: Okay. Have you looked at any other markets? And where I’m going with this is just what are some of the demographics? If you were to move to another marketplace, as far as population, median household income—we talked about median price a little bit—but what would you say would be the sweet spot that you feel another market, a new market to you, would be worth going into and be very compelling?

Chris Gavre: Yeah. So we’ve done it in Charleston Metro and Greenville Metro primarily. We’ve ventured into Charlotte Metro as well and some parts of Georgia, not particularly at scale, just some one-off deals.

I think the main things to look for is a decent-sized metro. I’d say 100,000 or more on the lower end, and then within usually an hour of that. So Greenville itself is relatively small, about 100,000 people within the city limits, but the broader metro is about a million, a little under that. And it’s a decent-sized city. I’d call it more on the smaller side. And there’s a lot of demand to live there.

As far as demographics in regards to income and all that, I don’t know the demographics of our area like that or what we would necessarily look for.

What we’ve looked for in the past and what we advise people in our coaching group to look at is really the sales price of other mobile homes. This is kind of a newer strategy, so you’re not going to really find comps of other brand-new ones, but we’ll just go off of the used mobile home comps and what’s been selling on the market.

And what we’re really looking for is a minimum sales price of usually about $210,000, $215,000, because a lot of these costs are fixed, right? What I’m paying for a house in Greenville is the same as what I pay for a house in Atlanta, at least the new home ordered.

And a lot of the setup costs, the cost of a septic is generally the same, cost of a water meter, cost of grading. I mean, some of that can fluctuate, but a lot of these costs are fixed.

So when I’m selling in Greenville for $230,000 and netting $40,000, the guys that are down in Florida doing this and they’re selling them for $275,000, well, they’re making $75,000 on each of these projects because a lot of their costs are the same, but they’re just getting a higher sales price.

Kevin Bupp: What is the typical lot size that you guys are seeking?

Chris Gavre: Usually a half acre minimum because we’re doing septic most of the time. So in order to fit the drain lines and all that, we need on average about a half acre. You can do it with smaller than that, but you’re going to do an engineered septic, which will cost you about double what a normal conventional system will cost.

Kevin Bupp: How difficult is it to find land that’s useful for this type of product?

Chris Gavre: We send out a lot of direct mail and also have a lot of relationships with realtors and wholesalers that send us deals. It comes and goes. Some months are great. We get 10 lots. Other months, we get two. We average around 50 to 60 per year.

Our budget for marketing is $7,000, $10,000 a month, so we’re not spending an exorbitant amount to get that either.

I think that generally land is a lot easier to find than other assets because a lot of people either inherited it or they bought it 10 years ago thinking they’d build a house on it and never did. And, I mean, all they’re doing is paying property taxes every year. So there’s not that emotional connection with it either. So I would say, generally speaking, land’s probably the easiest asset to do marketing for.

Kevin Bupp: Are there any zoning ordinances you have to be worried about, or can you basically put a mobile home on pretty much any vacant home site?

Chris Gavre: That’s really going to vary on county. Pickens County, which is the county we do outside of Greenville a lot, they just came out a year ago and said they no longer discriminate against mobile homes. So if it’s zoned for residential, anything can go there, mobile home or stick-built.

Where you’re really going to get in trouble is deed restrictions or covenants, which is beyond the county level. That’s tied to the deed itself. We’ve gotten burned several times on that. So whenever you are going to close on a lot, double-check with the title company or closing attorney that there’s no covenants or deed restrictions or anything that would prevent a mobile home from going there.

Kevin Bupp: How’s the title work once you put it on the land? I’m assuming you put it on a solid foundation. Do you actually pour a concrete slab?

Chris Gavre: No, we’re not doing concrete slabs. We’re doing basically a crawl space, brick foundation, brick skirting.

Kevin Bupp: Okay. And what happens? Does the title of that mobile home get retired after the fact and become real property then?

Chris Gavre: Correct. Yes, we are retiring the title and detitling it to the land.

Kevin Bupp: Which at that point in time, it would then qualify for conventional financing?

Chris Gavre: That’s correct. So we do that every single time. You can do FHA, VA, USDA, any loan type someone would want. Once it’s retired and permanently affixed to the land, it qualifies for all of that.

Kevin Bupp: On the appraisal side of things, are appraisers using other stick-built homes as well as comps, or are they traditionally just looking for other land home-type scenarios to use as sale comps?

Chris Gavre: They’re generally looking for other mobile homes, whether it’s brand-new or used that’s been renovated. When they don’t have that available, I don’t know how they really calculate it based on other stick-built houses.

Generally, in the areas that we’ve been in, there’s been other manufactured home sales, used or new. We don’t attach any additional value to it being brand-new compared to a used comp. We just assume it’s going to sell faster just because it’s more desirable that it’s brand-new, but we don’t attach any increased value to it.

Kevin Bupp: Have you found that this finished type of product, does it carry the same appreciation as a traditional stick-built home, being now that it’s on land, it’s got a retired title? I mean, it really is, for all intents and purposes. I mean, it was built in the factory, but outside of that, it’s very similar to that of a traditional stick-built home.

Chris Gavre: It is. I don’t know if it would appreciate to the same percentage. I think a lot of people say mobile homes or manufactured homes don’t appreciate at all. I highly disagree with that. I mean, a rising tide raises all ships, including manufactured homes.

Kevin Bupp: Yeah, I agree.

Chris Gavre: I don’t believe they appreciate to the same level, but they absolutely do.

Kevin Bupp: And then I know you mentioned that you guys always put double wides in. Maybe give us the case for that, double wide versus a single wide.

Chris Gavre: Yeah. So what we’re paying for a double wide is about $20,000 more than what you can get a brand-new single wide for. In terms of setup costs and all that, kind of like I said, a lot of your cost is fixed. So what we pay for a septic tank with a double wide is exactly what you’d pay for one with a single wide.

Your setup costs will vary a little bit. I think it’s maybe $10,000 more in setup costs for a double wide compared to a single wide. So I’d say all in, we’re spending $30,000 more.

On a resale side, though, you’re going to get a lot more than a $30,000 increase on a double wide compared to a single wide just because they’re more desirable, they’re more spacious, more fit for a family.

Kevin Bupp: Right. Well, they look more similar to that of a traditional home as well, right?

Chris Gavre: Yeah, absolutely.

Kevin Bupp: It’s pretty obvious, a single wide, that it is a mobile home. But I’ve seen some of the newer models of double wides out there, and a lot of them have architectural features that it becomes more difficult to distinguish them from a traditional stick-built home. But I’ve not seen that to be the case with the single wides.

Chris Gavre: Yeah, they can be deceiving.

Kevin Bupp: Yeah, yeah, I know. We’d love to maybe walk us through a deal. You guys do a lot of deals, but I love real-world case studies. Maybe walk us through a recent project, put some real numbers around it. What’d you pay for the land, the home, site work, utilities? And then again, what was that all-in basis versus the eventual sale price of what you sold it for? Do you have one recent that you could share?

Chris Gavre: Yeah, absolutely. So most of what we do, we’re paying about $30,000 per lot. I paid $35,000 for this lot, but it already had a septic tank in place, so I was able to save on that.

I had to do some clearing for the lot itself, moving some dirt around. That cost me about $10,000. The home, I paid $64,000 for it. Setup and all the rest of the development costs was about $45,000. I was all in for $153,000. Sold it for $230,000.

Cost of financing cost me about $10,000. Seller concession of $8,000. We’ve seen on average we’re paying $5,000 to $8,000 in seller concessions to these buyers, help with their closing costs, paying down their loan, whatever. Of course, I had realtor commissions.

All that, I netted about $45,000, $44,888.

Kevin Bupp: Got it. $44,888. So $153,000 all in on that. And that was after my cost of financing and everything.

I’m out of touch with the FHA world. What does the traditional FHA loan look like nowadays? It’s still 3% or 5% down?

Chris Gavre: Correct. Yeah, minimum is 3.5% down, and we’ve seen most of them are doing that minimum.

Kevin Bupp: Got it, got it. You have similar rates to that of a traditional mortgage? I mean, 6.5%-ish?

Chris Gavre: I think it’s maybe half a point or one point higher than that on average. Don’t quote me on that.

Kevin Bupp: Yeah, no worries. All good. How about the timeline of one of these projects? From closing on the lot to completed home, ready to list in the market. How long does it take?

Chris Gavre: Yeah, that’s my favorite part. So if we close on a piece of land today, we’re set up and on the market within 45 to 60 days on average, closer to 45 usually. That’ll kind of vary depending on lead time for the house delivery. Once the house is on site, we’re 30 days out from being listed. So once the house is there, it all goes pretty quick.

Kevin Bupp: Are you guys able to become licensed dealers in order to get the houses at wholesale price, or how does that work?

Chris Gavre: Yeah, you will need that. Also, just from the regulatory perspective of how many you can buy and sell per year in each state. But you will need that license to be able to go direct to the manufacturer and get it at a wholesale price.

We have our license in maybe eight or nine states. So sometimes we’ll sell people houses if they don’t have their license in those states. And you can do that. Usually it’s marked up $7,000 to $10,000, depending on who you go through. But there’s still, depending on your market, there’s still a margin to be made there, even if you don’t have your license.

Kevin Bupp: You guys got a lot of these under your belt now, but maybe walking back to the beginning, I’m sure there were maybe some mistakes that were made, lessons learned with this new strategy.

Obviously, you guys were already familiar with manufactured housing. You own a number of more traditional mobile home parks. Talk to me about some of the deals that maybe didn’t go as planned or some of the early ones that you learned a lot along the way. So what were some of the big lessons?

Chris Gavre: Yeah, big one was the deed restrictions, HOA covenant thing. We bought a lot. It was on a street that had a bunch of other mobile homes, but behind it was a subdivision of traditional stick-built houses.

What we didn’t catch when we bought it, or the attorney didn’t catch, rather, was that this street that we were on, there were seven lots that were still technically a part of that neighborhood. They just never developed them. And this was the last lot undeveloped that was technically a part of that subdivision.

We put our mobile home out there. We were probably two weeks to completion. And then the neighbor comes out and, long story short, sues us saying that, hey, you can’t do a mobile home here. Yeah, HOA restrictions, all of that.

This was like the third one that we ever did, too. We lost maybe $20,000, $30,000. We had to move that house to a different lot. Thankfully, we partnered with a guy that brought the money, and he had another lot just a mile down the road that we could move it to. But all that cost and the development that we had already done was gone.

And we basically had to do, long story short, a title insurance claim, get back what we had in the land. But the main things that we learned there is, of course, check those restrictions every single time.

But also the title insurance policy, naturally, you’re only covered for what you pay for the land when you close on it. So now every time that we buy a lot, we have the title insurance policy coverage up to our full cost of the project. So if that were to happen again, we can get covered for all those costs.

Kevin Bupp: Gotcha, gotcha. No, that makes sense. So you mentioned double wides. Obviously, those come in many different sizes. Have you found a sweet spot as far as number of bedrooms, bathrooms, square footage?

Chris Gavre: Yeah. Yeah, so we use the same house every single time. We’re doing a 1,680-square-foot house, four bedroom, two bath. I think that one’s maybe $5,000 more expensive than the three-two alternative. And we found it’s just worth an extra $5,000 to get a fourth bedroom in there, assuming that there’s enough room for an extra hundred feet of drain line on your septic to allow four bedrooms.

We’ll do the same three-two model if we don’t have enough space for that.

Kevin Bupp: Are there any certain features that buyers absolutely love about these units? I mean, back when you started buying them to the model you’re buying today, countertops, type of cabinets, flooring, all those features, anything that really stands out to the crowd?

Chris Gavre: Yeah, so when we first started, we were doing the more higher-end houses. They were drywall finished, nicer kitchens, all that. And what we found was you’re not going to get a higher sales price for that.

That house was about $20,000 more than the one that we use now, and we were not able to get an extra $20,000 in sales price. So the first probably five or six that we did were that drywall model. And then we talked to some other guys, like, man, try the board-and-batten model. We did that, and it’s $20,000 cheaper and same sales price.

Kevin Bupp: Wow. That’s actually shocking. I would not have thought that, which obviously you didn’t either, right? Which is why you put the more expensive ones in.

Chris Gavre: That’s right. But I think what it goes back to is that you’re kind of capped at what you can sell these at, because if we go too high, then we’re getting close to stick-built house price range, and people are like, well, I might as well just go buy a stick-built house.

Kevin Bupp: Interesting. How about scalability of this model? Obviously, you guys are doing 50 to 60 of these in a given year. You want to get that number up, continue growing. I guess if capital wasn’t a constraint, what prevents you from going to 200 a year, 300 a year, 400 a year? Is that possible?

Chris Gavre: I think it’s probably confidence more than anything. Yeah, it’s venturing into other markets. I don’t know how feasible that would be in just our market.

I think the main bottleneck there would be finding 200 or 300 lots, to use your numbers. But, I mean, Robert and I, just us, did 50 or 60 per year. And he just now started to hire an assistant to help him with some of the innocuous tasks.

But you don’t need a big team to do this at all. I mean, when we were flipping houses, we needed other people to manage all the projects. This is such a streamlined thing because it’s the same thing every single time. Once you do five of them, you know what you’re doing for the most part.

So I think the main bottleneck is enough lots in one market for that.

Kevin Bupp: Okay. I know you guys are doing direct mailers. Is that predominantly your source of new leads, direct mail?

Chris Gavre: Yeah, direct mail. We started out, we were doing cold calling for years and switched to direct mail just because it’s easier to manage. Direct mail and wholesalers, I would say, are our biggest deal sources.

Kevin Bupp: How many direct mail pieces do you need to send out in order to land a lead that fits your buy criteria?

Chris Gavre: I would say on average, we probably get one deal per every thousand mailers we send out.

Kevin Bupp: Got it. And what’s that internal process look like as far as, when that call comes in, do you have a call center it goes to? Does it go to one of you guys directly?

Obviously, the scalability factor of all this, if you’re doing thousands of mailers, getting a lot of inbound traffic, filter through the leads that are coming in, discard the ones that don’t fit the buy box, you’ll keep the ones that do. But how do you manage that process?

Chris Gavre: Yeah, well, you’re talking to the call center right now. We did have a third-party call center that we used for years, and those were great. The main thing with that, though, is that I found it can be challenging to get people back on the phone sometimes.

And so I actually prefer them to come to me so I can try and just get them to sign a contract as soon as they call me. But we did do the call center before. I think if you’re doing this at scale, at big scale, you absolutely would need that.

I don’t really trust a VA or anyone to sort out my buy box. I want us to determine that just because there’s kind of a lot of factors to it. So I prefer to be hands-on with that as much as I know I probably shouldn’t be.

Kevin Bupp: Do you typically make the offer right over the phone, or do you go visit the property first? I mean, it’s just a big piece of land. So it’s not like you’re buying a single-family home. We got to go walk it and have that whole negotiation there on site.

I mean, have you found that you’re able to actually close these deals or at least get a verbal confirmation on pricing over the phone?

Chris Gavre: Yeah, absolutely. I think every time I talk to someone, I either get a number out of them or I’ll just kind of throw them something to see if they bite on it.

Generally speaking, I mean, if someone gave me a lot right now that’s in our marketplace, I could tell you within 30 seconds if we’d buy it or not. Just a quick look at topography, floodplain, all that, and just general area.

So generally, yes, I am either getting a firm number out of them or making them an offer and seeing if we’re even in the same ballpark.

Kevin Bupp: So I know that we’re simplifying this whole process here. We’re making this sound just uber easy. Maybe it is that easy, but my guess would be that there’s quite a bit more complexity here.

So what looks easy from the outside but ultimately is more challenging? As you guys have grown this business, what are some of the bigger challenges that someone new just getting into the space is going to face?

Chris Gavre: Yeah, the main thing that we ran into when we started was we had never developed land before. I mean, we had mobile home parks. We understood the mobile home game in general, but we had flipped houses and all that, but never really developed land up until that point.

We had done maybe one or two spec builds, but didn’t have the experience of the process of going through the hoops with the county and what all that looks like. We also didn’t know what should grading and clearing cost, what should a septic tank cost.

I think just kind of fumbling through that was difficult. And I also think the confidence part of it. Really, I mean, we started doing this in the very beginning of 2023 is when we bought our first lots to do this.

Back then, no one was even talking about land home packages. I mean, I thought we were wizards. I thought we came up with it. And I never heard anyone talking about it. And so there weren’t any resources to really go learn about it like there is for wholesaling or mobile home parks and podcasts like this.

So for us, the challenge is just fumbling through the process and kind of seeing if it’s even a legitimate idea because we didn’t know anyone else that was doing it.

Kevin Bupp: Interesting. Interesting. Chris, what questions haven’t I asked you that you think are relevant to someone that’s interested in this topic, might want to pursue this type of investment strategy?

Chris Gavre: I think the main thing is probably just the whole process. And I’m happy to go through that, just kind of a 10,000-foot view of it. I usually do that. Other than that, I mean, you’ve kind of touched on everything.

Kevin Bupp: Okay, yeah. Well, I mean, what’s a 10,000-foot view? Give us a walkthrough if you would.

Chris Gavre: Yeah, so if I go under contract on a lot today, first thing we’re going to do is order a soil test, assuming that it’s on septic or will require septic, to confirm that septic will go there.

We use a third-party company. You can use DHEC or the government resources, though they’re very slow, so we use a third-party company.

Sometimes we’ll get a survey. If we’re subdividing, we definitely will. Otherwise, if there’s a recent plat on file, we won’t.

Order that soil test. While I’m waiting on that soil test to get done, we’re going to confirm zoning with the county. We’re going to notify the closing attorney or title company, hey, we’re doing a mobile home here. Can you double-check any restrictions, covenants, anything like that that would hinder us?

We’re also going to get our quotes in that meantime, a grading quote. You’re going to need a mobile home installer to actually block and tie down the home. You need a guy to do the brick skirting. At least we do brick in our market. There’s other options depending on where you are.

Running water lines. We’re going to call the utility company. Make sure there is water on site at the road. How much is a water meter going to cost us?

We’re going to get with the power company. See, some places you have to pay for power, other places you don’t. So we’re going to see, one, that power is available and, two, how much would that cost?

Once we have all of our quotes, once we’ve confirmed soil test is good and water is good, we’ll go ahead and close on the lot.

As soon as we close, we’re going to go ahead and order that home. While we wait for the home to arrive, right now it’s about three to four weeks out. That lead time will ebb and flow. Two months ago it was about two weeks out. So it can be really fast or it can take a little bit of time.

But while we wait, we’re going to go ahead and clear and prep that land. So you’re going to grade it out, clear, get rid of all the trees.

Depending on the market you’re in, we use ABS pad footers. Other states will require concrete footers. It just depends. If it’s ABS pad footers, we just have our installer install those at no charge when he’s installing the home.

If it’s concrete footers, you’re going to want to pour those concrete footers before that house is on site. That way, when it’s delivered, the installer can just drop them right on there and you’re good to go.

Then after that, it really just comes down to that county and their inspection process. So you’re going to want to look up whatever county you’re in, what their manufactured home inspection list is.

Some counties it’s only two inspections or one inspection. A county here in Charlotte I’m working in now is five inspections. But that inspection list is going to tell you the order in which you do things.

So once the house is there, they might require that you do HVAC and electrical for the second inspection. And the third inspection’s plumbing and HVAC or whatever—making it up. The order of inspections will tell you the order in which you need to do the different trades. And so then you just go based on that.

Kevin Bupp: Okay. No, good, good deal. And then I didn’t ask you this prior, but the manufacturer that you guys use, you buy the same model. Is it a Clayton home?

Chris Gavre: No, we’re using Cavco Phoenix model. They’re out of Hamlet, North Carolina, the plant we use.

We’ve used Clayton. We’ve used Champion. Clayton, we found, is a good product. It’s a little bit more expensive than the Cavco unit. Like we said, we didn’t really get an increased sales price. That was the drywall model that we were using, actually.

And Champion, we’ve had some okay experiences with, but we prefer Cavco.

Kevin Bupp: Chris, before we wrap this thing up, I know it’s not as easy as what we’re making it sound here today. And I know there’s probably some additional lessons that you’ve learned along the way. You probably got some scar tissue to prove it.

So I know you kind of shared one story already where you lost a little bit of money. But any others that come to mind that are worth sharing that, again, we might all be able to take a lesson away from?

Chris Gavre: Yeah, absolutely. There’s another project we did that was on public water, and this one had public sewer access. So we did our normal quotes, $5,000 to tap into the water main and run the line.

What we didn’t account for, though, or what we didn’t look into, is which side of the road that water main was on. And so come to find out, the water main was actually on the opposite side of the road, which meant they had to bore underneath the road in order to tap into it.

And so what we thought was going to be $5,000 turned out to be $15,000. And same with the sewer main. It was the same thing. So that was another $10,000 there, too.

So all in all, it cost us $20,000 to learn that lesson, which was not very fun. We still got out alive and actually made some money on that deal. But now we know moving forward, we’re always going to check which side of the road the water and sewer mains are on.

One other one was we had built decks on the house. This was like the very end of the project. We were doing the decks, the final stage of it.

And at that time, what we didn’t know was that for it to be FHA compliant, the decks actually had to be freestanding, as well as it was a county code that we didn’t know about as well.

And so we had them attached to the house, not freestanding decks. And so we had to go in there after the inspector went out there for our final inspection. We had to go out there, rip out all of our decks and replace them and make them freestanding.

And that was a $7,000, $8,000 lesson there as well. So those were the main things that we learned along the way. But it’s the kind of thing where once you learn it once, you’ll never forget it.

Kevin Bupp: Hopefully you don’t make the mistake again, right?

Chris Gavre: No, it’s like riding a bike.

Kevin Bupp: Yeah, yeah. Well, good deal, Chris. I appreciate you getting on here, buddy. I mean, for those that tuned in here today and they want to know where they can connect with you, learn a little bit more about what you’ve got going on, where’s the best place to do that?

Chris Gavre: Yeah, they can reach me on Facebook. Last name—first name’s Chris. Last name’s Gavre, G-A-V as in Victor, R-E. I’m the only redhead Chris Gavre on Facebook you’ll find.

I also give out my phone number. I don’t know if that’s a thing here, but I’m happy to have people text me: 770-862-0246. If you call me and I miss it, leave a voicemail so I know what you’re calling about.

Kevin Bupp: You’re a brave individual handing that out over the airwaves.

Chris Gavre: I might regret that.

Kevin Bupp: Yeah. Well, Chris, buddy, I appreciate you coming to the show. And no, it’s been great chatting with you here today.

Chris Gavre: Absolutely. Thank you for having me, man. I appreciate it.

Kevin Bupp: And guys, as always, if you enjoyed today’s episode, please do us a favor. Subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast platform. And then also do leave us a rating and review and share this episode with someone who you think would benefit from it.

So with that, guys, I will check you out next time. Take care. Bye-bye.

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