Robert — Mobile Home Park (MHP) Opportunity with Dean

Strategy capture · 2026-06-27 Source: Granola recording "Robert MHP Opportunity" (Stacy + Robert working session). This is a clean structured capture of the live brainstorm — speaker attribution wasn't cleanly separated in the transcript, so this reflects the ideas, not who-said-what. Flagged assumptions and open items are marked.

1. The opportunity in one paragraph

Dean is an operator/investor who buys and repositions mobile home parks (MHPs) and RV parks. Robert is exploring a partnership where Dean stays the "tip of the spear" (sources, negotiates, closes, and ultimately sells the deals) and Robert provides the "depth and breadth" — effectively a COO / operations-and-systems partner who builds the engine so Dean isn't stuck in feast-or-famine. Robert works remotely (not on-site in the parks). The immediate goal is a pitch/model to bring to Dean that shows the full picture and, critically, what Robert can take off his plate.

2. What we're fixing (lessons from "Beyonder")

Beyonder (the prior venture, now defunct) is the cautionary template. Its failures define this model's requirements:

• Feast or famine — no engine bringing in new investors or new deals consistently.
• No optimization plan — they bought, then scrambled to "salvage the shit they already bought." Optimization was an afterthought, not budgeted into the dollars raised.
• Operations was an afterthought — nobody owned how the parks actually ran.
• Brand contamination — the operating brand and the investment-raising brand were the same, so a one-star tenant review in Iowa undercut the pitch to investors.

Takeaway: the model only works if all three legs run together — and operations/optimization are first-class, not bolt-ons.

3. The operating model — three legs

First-glance version for Dean: he should be able to look at one page and instantly see the structure, all three arms focused on deals.

1. Dollars In — Investor Relations Capital sources / investors. Without this, nothing else matters (see Risks). Investors range from an individual ("Fred at the golf club"), to a couple with a trust, to (deliberately kept rare) small groups. Preference is to keep it small — individuals or individual entities, not big investment groups.

2. Deals In — Deal Sourcing Inbound + outbound: web/search/"attract," plus industry conferences (there's a mobile-home/MHP conference circuit). Lesson from before: don't just staff a booth and walk away empty-handed — capture and follow up.

3. The 3 O's — Optimize · Operate · Offload The deal lifecycle. Offload = the sale = where you cash out. Everything in Optimize and Operate exists to make the eventual Offload bigger and cleaner.

4. The engine (the dashboards)

These are the systems that make the model real — and they're the hook in the pitch to Dean (he cares about red-light/green-light clarity, not the guts).

• Evaluation Database — the deal underwriting/screening layer where assumptions run and a deal is judged: Is this a purchase deal? Does the money make sense? This is where investors and deals "marry": an interested investor gets a login to see available deals — what's available, how much. Requires a pitch deck alongside it.
• Operations Dashboard = Optimize + Operate together. This is the "how you squeeze it" + "how it runs" view.
• "Polaris" = the operations engine sitting under the dashboard. Hard rule example: Tracy can't order anything until it's entered into Polaris; if it's flagged yellow, it needs a sign-off. Also handles recurring payments / bill-paying (unless Dean has an accountant who owns that).
• AI applied across all of it — every leg and dashboard is a candidate for automation (screening, due diligence, reporting, etc.).

5. The 3 O's in detail

Optimize (make it worth more)

Not just physical park improvements — revenue optimization to raise the eventual sale value:

• Raise rents (to market)
• Meters + utility bill-backs (older parks leave money on the table by never billing utilities back — a major lever)
• Build-backs
• RV-annual conversion — convert transient RV sites to annual (built-in revenue-per-site lever); could power a dedicated RV-annual rental/sale website
• Park/infrastructure improvements

Operate (keep it healthy — red light / green light)

Dean doesn't want the weeds; he wants to know is it green, and do I have someone I trust who understands the details. What Operate tracks:

• Bills paid? Revenue-positive?
• Legal / rent-pay tracking — who's behind, current lawsuits + status, evictions status (especially if doing a mass turnover)
• Vendor relations (service side — e.g., HVAC, IT/cameras, phone systems)
• Hiring / firing of park managers — e.g., when inheriting a manager (the Isabella example), they must report on the defined items; manager can do first-round interviews + narrow to 3, Robert handles when on-site presence isn't possible
• Robert is the alarm-sounder: managers report up; Robert flags "we have a big problem, boss" or "we have 10 days to hire someone" — Dean parachutes in when it truly hits the fan.

Offload (the exit)

• Market the property; execute the sale.
• Everything else is in service of polishing the asset before this point.
• Timeline: Dean wants 18–24 months per deal; Robert's realistic range is 18–30 months depending on the deal.

6. Buy box / deal criteria

Positioning: "deal-agnostic" generalist who can roll with the punches — but the specialty for both Robert and Dean is the mobile-home/RV camp. Primary target: small–medium mobile home communities.

What we buy: under-managed / high-vacancy / distressed mom-and-pop MHP & RV parks where there are value-add levers:

• Vacant pads to fill (e.g., the Modesto "10 and 10" — 10 vacant lots + 10 rehabs + operations/rent raises)
• Below-market rents
• Utilities not being billed back
• RV parks convertible from transient → annual

Hard filter: if there's no lever to optimize, there's no deal.

Other preferences/notes:

• Clustered in a few target markets (so vendor/management/market knowledge compounds)
• Public utilities preferred
• Local manager available for hire
• Ground-up expansion only on longer holds — exception: entitle-and-sell a detached lot to the next developer (don't pay for undeveloped upside in the purchase price and then have to develop it yourself)
• Dean is no longer doing warehouses/storage (they were on his old site; he's out)
• Geography: Dean is wary of Arizona (saturated with Florida money/competition); knows California. Robert is not the one in the park — runs remotely.

7. Vendor relations (spans Operate + Optimize)

• Operate / service relations: HVAC, IT (cable, cameras), phone systems (e.g., Zoom phone) — recurring service.
• Optimize / project vendors: new manufactured homes (e.g., a "Champion Homes"-type national supplier), full re-plumbs, rehabs, and bill-back/meter installs — this last one is a big national-vendor opportunity (parallels the national electrical vendor used at Beyonder).

8. "Straw" projects Robert can build behind the scenes

Things Robert can own/build that add value (and some that become standalone businesses), without stepping on Dean's role:

• RV-annual website — advertise annual RV sites; pitch Dean as a featured/"front-row" partner (the Get The Lineup model), then resell the same placement to others (e.g., "a son," other operators).
• The "Sifter" — automated first-cut deal screening. Dean's superpower is "I sift and I sift and I sift"; codify his criteria + sources into an automation that delivers a first cut. (He caught onto this one immediately.)
• Evaluation Database — the investor-facing deal/underwriting + due-diligence system (see §4).
• Standardized Due Diligence process — at Beyonder this was the "CARES" report; the CARES acronym is reusable (Beyonder's gone), or coin a new one.
• AI layer across screening, DD, reporting, ops.

9. Entity / brand structure (insulation)

• Separate LLC for operations vs. the investment group. Run operations under a different name so raising rents / a bad park review doesn't taint the investor-facing brand (Beyonder's mistake: "Happy Camper Capital" → Beyonder operating → Beyonder raising money, all tangled).
• This also lets the operator spin off later to manage for other companies (precedent: Sun, Blue Water, "Spacious"-type managers) — not the goal, but a layer of insulation and a fallback to build toward.

10. Compensation & engagement

• Dean wants Robert participating (even doing his own deals — "why aren't you doing your own deals?").
• Landing point discussed: salary + 0.5% of every deal at offload — both, pro-rata, so comp scales with deal count (25 deals is more work than 5). The 0.5%-at-offload gives Robert skin in the game and aligns him to operate toward a strong exit.
• Open: does ops salary get charged pro-rata to each deal vs. carried by Dean? (Robert leaning: every deal carries a share.)

11. Open questions & risks (the "Clyde" list)

These are the gaps to have answers for before/with the pitch:

1. Capital source — the linchpin. You can design everything else, but with no investors there's no business. Where does the money come from?
2. Geographic strategy — where do we focus?
3. Offload risk — what if you can't sell (economy turns)? The model assumes exits; if blocked, you're stuck operating indefinitely.
4. Compensation structure — finalize the salary + % + pro-rata mechanics.

12. The deliverable for Dean

A 3-page document that doubles as a pitch deck. Visual-first, builds up like transparency/anatomy overlays.

• Page 1 — The Model: the three-legs visual, all arms focused on deals. First view shows just the structure / "type of deal" focus — don't over-explain.
• Page 2 — The Sections: each leg spelled out in ~5 bullets each (Investor Relations, Deal Sourcing, and Optimize/Operate/Offload), with the dashboards as the centerpiece. Acknowledge the deal timeline (3 stages within each of investor relations, purchase, and the O's).
• Page 3 — Types of Deals + "What I take off your plate": the buy box, color-coded to show which pieces Robert owns vs. Dean. Frame as partners — explicitly not replacing Dean; here's what Robert can/can't do for him.

Plus branding: logo, color scheme, a name, and a point of view on presence ("what are we wearing / known for at conferences"). Pitch-deck format: lead with the three-legs image, then each subsequent slide fills in one section's bullets until the picture is complete.

Robert's intent: record every call with Dean going forward for AI processing (this session included).

13. Suggested next steps

1. Lock the model (this doc = v1 draft of it).
2. Build the 3-page pitch for Dean (visual three-legs + section bullets + color-coded "what I own").
3. Draft answers to the 4 open risks — especially the capital source story.
4. Name + light brand (logo/colors) for the pitch.
5. Decide which straw projects to stand up first (Sifter and Evaluation DB look highest-leverage).

— Captured by Stacy's CoS terminal from the 6/27 Granola session. Robert: edit/correct freely; this is meant as the shared working draft.