Welcome to The Purpose Driven Investor, where we build more than portfolios, we build communities. I'm your host, Robert Howell, a real estate investor and founder of Defined Communities. Each week we'll explore how purpose and profit connect through affordable housing, land home packages, and impact-driven investing. If you're a lender, land seller, or a partner who believes money should move with meaning, you're in the right place. All right, welcome back to the Purpose Driven Investor Podcast. Happy to have everybody here today. We've got a great guest to join us and talk about one thing I love, land home deals. And Sean is based in North Carolina and he's been quietly building a land home operation, not a small one by any means, a fairly large land home operation. And we're excited to hear from him today. So Sean, welcome to the show. Thanks, Robert. Appreciate you having me here. All right, great. Well, hey, before we get into talking about deals and what do the deals look like, let's talk about how you got here and let's talk about your origin story. So why don't you start from, hey, what, where'd you, or how'd you end up getting into real estate? Yeah. So that takes me back to 2018. I had just moved from Philadelphia to Portland, Oregon, to take an outside sales job for an apparel company. I'd never been on the West Coast before and just kind of packed up and moved out there at 24. And while I was out there, I was at a sales meeting this one day and a guy comes up to me and goes, hey, you're the only, you know, other young person in here. Have you ever considered, like, investing in real estate? And I had no idea anything about real estate, but he's like, there's this thing called house hacking. Like, you should go buy a duplex, live in one unit and rent out the other. And I was like, cool, that sounds great. I like the idea of that. And without really thinking too much about it, I just started looking at duplexes in Portland and I found the cheapest, most rundown duplex I could find, and I moved in. And within 2 months of moving into that duplex, I hired a contractor off of Craigslist who broke an angle valve changing a toilet and didn't know how to turn off the emergency water valve. So water flooded for an hour. I was actually on a sales trip out to Alaska at the time, and he calls me up and he's like, hey, so we have a problem. Where's your water valve or where's your shutoff valve? And I was like, man, you're the contractor. I have no idea what a shutoff valve is, so I don't know how to answer that. Water flooded for an hour and I get back from Alaska from my sales trip and find my entire duplex top to bottom, all 3 stories completely gutted from to the beams. So that was the first property I ever bought was this duplex. And you can imagine at 24 years old, everyone I knew was like, I told you, you shouldn't be buying real estate. You're too young for this. This is why you leave it to the people that are rich. It was a nightmare. It was so stressful. And it literally took me 10 months of rehabbing that property before I was able to move back in. I had to go live in temporary housing that insurance covered. Thankfully, the general contractor I hired off Craigslist did have insurance, so we were able to use his insurance to cover it. But it was a miserable situation. I closed on the property December 31st, 2018. In January, it flooded. I didn't move back into that property till October 2019. So that was my first ever property. Took some licks there, had a very stressful 10 months figuring all that out with insurance. Then October, I moved back in, my tenants moved back in. I'm living for free because they're covering my mortgage and I'm like, this is great, let's go do this again. And then January 2020, COVID hits and Portland, more so than most cities, shuts down. I'm like, well, I'm not going to be buying any real estate right now. I don't know what's happening in the market. And, you know, there was furloughs and you didn't have to pay rent. So I actually ended up buying a business that was closing. I bought a terrarium store. That was closing down. So I bought that and as well as a laundromat and kind of gave up the real estate stuff for a little bit. And the next 3 years I owned a terrarium store, which is basically plants in a glass jar, a self-sustaining ecosystem, if you will. And then a laundromat. I did that for 3 years. But after, you know, 3 years of doing that, my family was all here in North Carolina. It was very difficult for me living out in Portland with the family here. So I decided I was going to sell the duplex, the laundromat, and the terrarium store, pack up and drive across the country, move back here to North Carolina. And then when I got here, I had a little bit of money saved up from selling everything. North Carolina is a very real estate friendly area, so I decided I was going to get back into real estate and ended up buying an 8-unit and a mobile home park, you know, with a partner out here. And that mobile home park is what led us into getting the dealer license and start doing these land home packages. Got it. Okay. That's quite the story. And amazing that you stuck with it. Yeah, it was very easy to just decide, you know what, maybe real estate's not for me. You know, that, that first flooded property, it's $150,000 insurance claim. It was really bad, like everything down to the studs. But it worked out really well in the back end, like his insurance covered it. 4 years later, when I went to sell the property, I was able to say new plumbing, new wiring, new flooring, like everything but the roof is new. So it actually worked out really well. But it was very stressful for those 10 months living in temporary housing and fighting with insurance to get it done. But it did allow me to move to North Carolina with a little bit of money in my pocket so I could then go buy, you know, an 8-unit in a mobile home park to actually kickstart the real estate career. So Blessing in disguise, for sure. That's great. So why did you settle on mobile homes versus everything else? I mean, you had some experience in other assets. What? Yeah. So I had some mentors in Oregon that were big mobile home park investors. A guy named Gabe Hamill, who I've always looked up to, a guy that I really aspired to be like. He owns a lot of mobile home parks and I love the way he had his business and his life set up. Constantly with his family, a very good dad, a very good husband, and he lived an awesome life. And he did all that through mobile home park investing. So I was like, you know, I really want to get into that. I want to recreate what Gabe has. And I knew when I was moving to North Carolina, this is a very pro real estate market and there's a lot of mobile home parks in the area. So I got connected with a, you know, a real estate broker, ended up being a partner of mine, and we found a mobile home park, I think on like a Facebook investing page, like North Carolina Real Estate Investors or something like that. And we were able to buy it with seller financing. And, you know, that worked out really well. All tenant-owned homes, you know, all we had to do is pump the septic tanks and maintain the road and just kind of fell in love with that. So we had a couple of mobile home parks at the time. This was like 2023. And then a mentor of ours was like, hey, there's this thing called a manufactured housing dealer license. You should go get a license and you could start placing double-wides on land. He didn't call them land home packages. He was just like, you could start dropping double-wides on land and selling them as affordable housing. And, you know, this is the end of middle to end of 2023. Rates were at the highest they were. There's a huge housing shortage in North Carolina as well as the rest of the country, and there wasn't really a solution for affordable housing. So we saw that this was a huge opportunity. I'll be honest, I was pretty skeptical of the idea of like I could just put a double-wide on a property Attach it, add a brick skirting, a deck and a driveway, and sell it as a single-family home. Like, it seemed too easy and too good to be true. But we did that first deal in early 2024, and I probably did everything wrong. It took way longer than it should have taken, and we still ended up walking away with like a $40,000 check. And I was like, this is awesome. Like, this is really cool. I need to do more of this. And at the time it was like a little bit of wholesaling, a little bit of flipping, a little bit of looking for multifamily and trying to find the passive investments. But I really liked how that worked and I knew we could just get better and better. You know, we made all of those mistakes and we still made that amount of money. It's like there's actually a business to be had here. Did a second one, same thing, made some mistakes, took longer than it should have, still made some money on it. After the second one, we're like, we're all in, we're burning all the ships, we're building a huge business out of this. So then year 2, We did 2 the first year. The second year we did 10. And the goal was like, let's just do as many as we can until the systems start to break. Like, let's figure out where our issues are. And it turns out that the number was 10. You know, once we got to doing 10 at a time, we realized we needed to improve our systems. But it was— I mean, to me it was very scalable, is very repeatable. It was predictable and it was just a matter of finding land. If you could find land, this, this business model works. Anywhere and it's solving a huge problem that we had in North Carolina, which is, you know, there's not a lot of homes for under $250,000. So I was able to make a little bit of money and provide affordable housing. I'm like, this is, this is the answer. That's great. I love that. So you really, really skyrocketed then going from 2 to 10 year over year. That's huge. What— let's jump into kind of your team and what does that look like? So is it just you or you've got a team that you're working with? I do a lot of JVs, so I like partnering with others, other investors. So like I have the dealership, the license in my name, and it's a virtual dealership. Like I don't have a brick-and-mortar store, but I have the license in my name and I have two different GCs that I work with in two different areas of North Carolina. So depending on the side of the state, it's a different general contractor to basically serve as the project manager. And then a setup crew for each of those areas. So I use the same setup crew in both, two different setup crews, one in each county and what each area, and then a civil engineer. And like, that's the main team. I let the GC find the masonry guys, the plumbers, the, you know, the HVAC techs. So he'll find whoever's the best price. But the GC, the civil engineer, and the setup contractor are typically the same for each project because those are, to me, the hardest ones to find. And then I kind of run all the backend stuff. So like through my Google Drive folder or project management, you know, CRM that I have, I kind of track everything on the backend and do all like the capital raising, deal with the land flippers, the wholesalers, the lenders. Like I kind of do all that on the backend and I let my GCs kind of run the projects for me. Got it. Okay. That's a good setup. You mentioned engineer. What we don't use for our land home projects in South Carolina, we don't have to use an engineer. What do you using an engineer for? Yeah, so we have a civil engineer to sign off on like the structural foundation as well as like, you know, for our piers, for anything over 3 feet, I think is the number you need an overheight certification. That's for our FHA and VA certifications. So I think we maybe pay like $800 a deal for an engineer to sign off on the foundation, to sign off on the piers and just say that this adheres to FHA and VA guidelines. So that was just the way I was taught to do it by our mentor a couple of years ago. And we've done that on every deal. And, you know, maybe we don't need to do it, but it's been very helpful in selling to FHA and VA buyers to be able to show them an engineering report saying it's signed off on by a civil engineer. It's been helpful for us to do that. Got it. Okay. So walk us through a typical deal from the time you buy it to the time you sell it. What's that? What's that look like? Yep. So typical deal, I actually buy a lot of my land off market from like land flippers and wholesalers, and I'm typically trying to buy the land at, you know, 10 to 20% of what my exit value is going to be, just depending on, you know, utility situation and site prep, you know, how much work is needed. But once we close on the land, I'll order the home. You know, as a dealer, I go directly to the factory, typically takes like 4 to 6 weeks for the factory to build the home for us. During that time, We're getting building and zoning permits in place. If there's septic needed, we get the improvement permits and construction authorization as well. Clear it, grade it, pour the foundation, which is the footers and the runners. That's going to be done in that 4 to 6 week period. Once that's done and we have delivery scheduled, the setup usually takes like another maybe 1 to 2 days depending on our setup contractor. Once it's set on the foundation, then our GC comes back in. Hook up the utilities, do the brick skirting, deck, porch, trim out, and a gravel driveway. In a perfect world, that would take us like 45 days, but we always have some sort of delays. Like right now we're dealing with weather delays from snow and ice and rain. So normally we're probably another 60 to 75 days to actually get certificate of occupancy. But you know, if we were to have no delays, probably be a little bit closer to like 45 to 60. So all in all, we're like— the time that the house delivers. Yeah, from the time the house delivers to the time of certificate of occupancy, you know, it's called about 60 days. So about 2 months after delivery. And I know that can be improved. I know people that are doing that a lot quicker. So that's part of my goal this year is to cut that time down to closer to 45 days on a regular basis. But normally from start to finish, like 3.5 to 4 months to get certificate of occupancy from the time I close on the land and then another, you know, maybe 45 days on market, another 30 days to close. So we average about 6.5 to 7 months from start to finish by the time I actually sell the property. Got it. Okay, that's nice. Well, what's your average profit on each deal? Average profits, normally my cut after I pay lender fees, real estate commissions, everything, I'm typically looking to make $30,000 per deal. We've had deals that we do a lot better on that are all cash, but we're typically also paying about 12% on hard money fees. So I typically look for like a $60K gross and a $30K net on all my deals. Love it. All right. And what's your goal this year? So you did 10 last year. What are you trying to hit this year? Goals to do 20 this year. I'm trying to do more minor subdivisions. So rather than doing infill lots, going out and buying like 5 acres and doing 3 to 5 homes at a time, It's getting a lot harder to find infill lots, but my goal is to do 20 this year as well as do another 10 to 15 site drops for other investors where I'm selling them double wides. Love that. That's great. All right. So let's talk a bit about— we've talked about your process. Where do you think people mess this up? Like, what's— what do you see in the market? I think the biggest thing that people mess up is the financing portion, because a lot of people I see getting into this are like legacy house flippers that are very used to being able to to just go get maybe 80% of the cost financed for them. And then they get into manufactured housing and realize there is not a lot of lenders that are going to lend on the manufactured housing space for construction. So I think that's the biggest surprise a lot of people face is like you either need to have private lenders that are going to help you out or you need to have a very high level of trust with a hard money lender that's going to take the risk on you or you got to come in pretty cash heavy. So I think that's the biggest moat people have getting into the industry. I know a lot of people see, all right, the factory's doing the building. I just got to do the site prep and a little bit of utility hookup. Like, factory does 80% of the build for you. So it seems like an easier path to get in. But then they realize, all right, I need, you know, all the money for the land. I need all the money for the home. You know, this, this just turned into a very expensive project where they're used to bringing little to no money for flips. So having an understanding of like you need to own the land free and clear and you probably have to come up with another 20 to 30%. So you're probably bringing 50 to 60 grand to the table when you're just getting started. That's a surprise to some people. What else? Biggest surprise, the land. Finding land zoned for manufactured homes, I think, is harder than people think as well. Let's talk about how are you— how are you finding your land consistently? Yeah, mainly through land flippers and wholesalers. I was doing my own lead gen at one point a couple of years ago, and the 5,000 mailers a month, the text messages, the calling, it just wasn't a business I enjoyed. So I rely on other people that have land flipping businesses, and I buy 99% of my deals off market through land flippers and wholesalers. I've bought one property on market that was a 6-acre tract of land I'm doing a minor subdivision on. Everything else has been off market. But that's also a big challenge people have getting into the industry is like they don't realize how few areas of land are zoned for manufactured homes. So in my area, you know, we're typically looking for like AR, agriculture residential zoning. If I could find AR or RA zoning, I know that's usually pretty good. But that's, that's a big challenge that we have is there's just not a lot of land zoned for manufactured housing right now. Yep. Yep. 100%. All right. Well, listen, you got some big goals. Let's talk about your purpose and your mindset. So simple question to start. Why do you do this? I think there's a huge need for affordable housing. I think there's a lot of people putting up half-million-dollar homes, million-dollar homes, like these luxury mansions. And, you know, it's great to build those, but it doesn't help a majority of the people. And I think the manufactured housing industry has made so many improvements that most people don't realize how nice these homes are. I live in a 1970s, you know, split-level home. I would choose a brand new 2026 double wide over this if I had the option. It's a nicer home with nicer finishes, nicer appliances. But people just don't realize how nice these homes are. There's still that stigma of like it's a 1970s, you know, trailer. So I think that's the biggest thing is just educating most people that these are really nice homes that are being made to a very high standard. And if you could just go see a factory, if you could see the level of inspections that they're required to go through and how efficient those factories are, most people would be blown away. I remember bringing my general contractor to the Champion factory here in North Carolina who came from a stick-built background, and he walked out of that completely floored by how nice that factory was and how efficient they were. Totally changed his mind on, okay, this, this industry is legit. So, you know, I think all that to say there's a huge shortage in homes. There's a huge shortage in homes less than$250,000. And I could, I could build a repeatable and predictable business around this where I'm solving a huge, a huge issue. And it's very nice to be able to provide that type of housing and make some money doing it. Yeah. Wonderful. All right. What's the hardest part so far? Right now it's the land. Finding price land that's priced appropriately. Like I said at the beginning, I'm trying to find land where I'm buying at 10 to 20% of what the exit value is. So if I'm going to sell a home for $100,000, I want to be buying that land between 10 and 20. And that range just depends. So I have septic and well, or do I have public sewer, public water, and the site prep needed. But the cost of land in these areas, I mean, I'm constantly seeing 25 to 30% of the exit value. And then when you factor in development costs, the horizontal and the vertical work needed, as well as lender fees, there's not a lot of meat left for me to take the risk. You know, I don't want to do a $200,000 build and only walk away with, you know, $3,000 to $5,000. It's not worth it at that number. So to take the risk and to go raise that amount of money and to, you know, spend 6 to 7 months building a home, I need to be buying in that 10 to 20% range. And it's getting harder and harder with the more people that are getting into the industry and the amount of wholesalers that are getting in the industry. So that's the biggest challenge that I'm seeing right now. Got it. All right. What keeps you going? It's fun. I enjoy it. I mean, it's, it's fun getting creative, especially when you start doing these, you know, these minor subdivisions where it's like, all right, how can I take 6 acres and turn it into like 4 1.5-acre lots? Or how could I go build a road here that's going to allow this land to be buildable? It allows for a little bit of creativity. To me, it's a lot of fun doing this, like constantly looking at land. I, you know, I get to sit online in my own house and, you know, work from home, and then I'm constantly driving from site to site. So it allows me to be creative, allows me to, you know, build a business out of this. Rather than just chasing the next deal. And honestly, I just, I have a lot of fun doing these. That's great. I guess that's important, right? Make sure you have fun. All right. Well, hey, let's, let's conclude with a rapid fire. I've got 3, 4 questions here. What's the best advice that you have for someone starting? Best advice that I would have is, is just pick one area and go all in on that. Don't try to learn 5 different states or multiple different counties at the same time. Learn one county and find the best areas in that because every county has different zoning requirements, different inspection requirements, permitting requirements. So, you know, find the area where you have the advantage, whether you know the area or you know people there, but just learn the process in one area first and get to really know the numbers there because it gets a lot easier once you, once you know what land and homes are going to sell for, everything else kind of falls into place. So like, keep those horse shutters or horse blinders on and just focus on that one thing in that one area and not let the shiny objects get to you too much. Got it. All right. What's the biggest mistake to avoid? Biggest mistake to avoid? Not checking for soil studies. So that the worst deal I ever had is a property that we didn't check what the contractor had a soil study for. We didn't check the soil study for the land. We just assumed a 3-bedroom could go there and it only allowed for a 2-bedroom septic. And that hurt the deal quite a bit. So trust and verify. Just because a seller tells you it has a perk test for a 3-bedroom home does not mean you should trust that blindly. So verify every permit yourself before closing and don't close on any land without knowing what that soil study says. True story. All right. What's one thing that changed everything for you? One thing that changed everything— getting my dealer license, being able to buy directly from the factory made this way more attractive to me rather than paying those retail markups, like being able to be the dealer myself. And that comes with its own stresses and challenges. But if you're committed to this being a business and you're going to do this full time, not just like a side business, I think that made the biggest difference. And this is all I do. Like all I do is manufactured housing and land home packages. So if I was doing this on the side, maybe I wouldn't do that. But if you're going all in on this, it's worth spending the time and the money to get licensed. Got it. Well, hey, Sean, I really appreciate you joining. Where can people find you? Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, just my first and last name, Sean Ade, S-E-A-N-A-D-E. I post quite a bit about the deals that I'm doing, so I try to keep people updated on what I have going on and challenges that I'm working on, but you can find me LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. Those are the easiest places to reach out to me. Great deal. Well, hey, everybody that's listening, reach out to Sean. He's got some great advice, great insights I think that he can share with you. If you're interested in affordable housing, mobile home parks, land home deals, he's the man to call in North Carolina. So appreciate you joining, Sean, and you have a great day. Thanks, Robert. Great being here. Appreciate it. Thanks for listening to The Purpose Driven Investor. If today's episode sparked an idea or inspired you to make an impact, connect with me at howellandsons.com. Join our community of purpose-driven investors who are helping families find stable homes while building real returns. Because when we invest with purpose, everyone wins.