Chris & John
- Apr 8, 2021
- 3 min read

Ep 138: Everything You Need to Know About Mobile Home Parks with Apurva Shah

An engineer by day and a Managing Partner at JAYS Properties the rest of the time, Apurva Shah brings equal parts compassion and mathematical acumen to the real estate space. He joins us on the show today to share his experiences and offer advice to others in the industry, particularly with regard to mobile home parks. We begin by sharing insights on what the migration of people throughout the United States is doing to the cap rates in certain areas. We follow on from this with a discussion about the recession resistant nature of mobile home parks and what this has meant for the value of these assets during the past year, the underwriting strategies used by Apurva’s company, and how they figure out comparables. Apurva feels strongly about community building and shares how he maintains good relationships with the people he works with. Finally, you’ll hear about the importance of understanding the utilities component of a site before taking a deal, highlighted by Apurva’s first-hand experiences.

Key Points From This Episode:

Hear about Apurva’s early introduction to real estate and his current focus in the field.
Apurva’s engineering background and how it complements the real estate side of his career.
Migration of people to different US states and the impact that this is having on the cap rates.
How mobile home park investments have fared during the pandemic, and why.
Apurva’s company’s underwriting strategy and the reasons that it is working out well for them.
How Apurva and his company maintain good relationships with the people they work with.
The importance of community building.
An example of how Apurva’s company decides what price to set their rentals at.
Why the human element is just as important as the numbers.
Advice for finding the best partners to work with in your real estate deals.
Tools that Apurva’s company uses to find comparable mobile home parks.
A practice that Apurva’s company uses in the mobile home park space that is considered a “sin” in the residential space.
Why you should make sure you understand the utilities component of a site when assessing the feasibility of a deal.

Tweetables:

“In the mobile home park investing side of it, these assets are phenomenal. The pandemic really hasn’t impacted us all that much. I think we’re still at 95% collections, we’re almost at 90% occupancy.” — Apurva Shah [0:10:03]

“We say one thing and we execute on that thing. We’re paying that debt down and committing to what we’re saying we’re going to do.” — Apurva Shah [0:13:55]

“We want to build a community, we learned this pretty quickly because building a community is super important. If your tenants are on your side, they’re going to be ok, they’re going to pay, they’re going to figure it out and if they’re going through a hard time; we’ll help them and retroactively work with them to see what the next steps are for them.” — Apurva Shah [0:15:40]

“The numbers are one thing but I also have to like the person who we work with.” — Apurva Shah [0:22:37]

“Understand what you bring to the table and where you can provide value for others and see where you need help.” — Apurva Shah [0:23:59]