[00:03:28] Patrick Donley: Matt, I wanted to hear a little bit about your first deal, which was a triplex house. I understand that there were quite a few challenges with that deal. Walk us through what that was like for you. Maybe what some of those challenges were, and looking back on things, what you would’ve done differently.

[00:03:44] Matt Whitermore: A really interesting dynamic to that experience was my fiance and my now wife at the time was involved, and she does not come from a real estate background.

[00:03:53] Matt Whitermore: So to me, coming from the world of walking through short sales and foreclosures and some really, really hairy real estate and, and my prior career, this was a clean deal as far as I was concerned. But to your, your average citizen, that it was hairy and it was right at the beginning of Covid. That got delayed because we had an opportunist tenant that was occupying the unit that we were going to occupy as our primary residence, and they held up the closing, refused to get out.

[00:04:25] Matt Whitermore: The seller had to end up paying them, I think, $12,000 cash for keys to get out. So we closed on it maybe six weeks late and it, you know, it was great. We improved the property, renovated some kitchens, some bathrooms, put a new roof on it, improved it and had good tenants. But it was one of those things where you don’t really know until you try it.

[00:04:44] Matt Whitermore: It’s a very kind of particular thing, and it comes with a lot of challenges to be a live-in. Being a landlord 10 miles away from a property is one thing, but sharing a property with your tenants is a whole nother dynamic, which a lot of people are out there doing it. And we capitalized on it only on that property for about a year, but pretty much discovered that that wasn’t the path.

[00:05:07] Matt Whitermore: You know, so, so many people go from one house hack to the next and build a great portfolio doing that. I discovered that I wanted to go another route and scale up a little bit more quickly, and that’s what I did. I, I went on to buy about 30 more apartments ranging from three to nine unit apartment buildings in the next 12, 18 months after that.

[00:05:28] Matt Whitermore: That was a great experience to really just push and hit the ground running. I did all off market deals. Prospecting direct to seller, direct mail, email, cold calling, all the above, and was able to pretty quickly assemble a a little portfolio. It was fun. Always was kinda looking beyond multifamily. What I liked about multifamily is that it’s a very plentiful asset, really in any market, you can build a list of a few thousand properties and go to town on prospecting, and as a beginner.

[00:06:00] Matt Whitermore: You obviously want to treat sellers with respect and be deliberate and everything, but if you stub your toe in a negotiation or whatever, there’s a few thousand more properties to go chase. Whereas more niche type sectors, there’s a much smaller pool of properties. Making a a bad impression with the seller because you’re inexperienced, is a lot more impactful for it in campgrounds and RV parks, for example.

[00:06:23] Patrick Donley: Matt, it sounds like you had a lot of experience in multi-family investing and knew that asset class really well. I wanted to understand a little better why you decided to switch from multi-family into seasonal campground investing. Help me understand that transition for you and why you decided to make it.

[00:06:40] Matt Whitermore: It was largely a successful endeavor, but it was the what ifs I’ll say that were concerning to me because this was largely during Covid and it’s in New York state, which is notoriously not a landlord friendly state. So there was this cloud hanging over me in this portfolio that people might stop paying rent.

[00:07:00] Matt Whitermore: I can’t really do anything about. Albany City, which is where I was based in Albany County, where passing progressively laws that just didn’t make sense. Essentially stripping property owners’ rights away from them, always had an eye for scale and had financed back in, in my financial analyst days, had had assisted in financing a few mobile home parks.

[00:07:24] Matt Whitermore: Continued with this theme of off market prospecting and acquisitions and wanted and built my database of mobile home parks, which is different than an RV park in a campground. There’s people usually interchange those terms and they’re very different. But anyway, had looked at mobile home parks and built my database in a very small percentage of those were actually miscategorized.

[00:07:46] Matt Whitermore: So I had a, a nice response rate and a number of those responders said, Hey, Matt. Yeah, I’m a seller, but this is a campground and not a mobile home park. Are you still interested? And until then, I honestly hadn’t considered it. This was 2020. And so I decided, let’s go check it out. I’m an open-minded guy. I feel that variety is the spice of life.

[00:08:09] Matt Whitermore: So I jumped in the car, drove over to Connecticut, checked out some really cool institutional quality in size parks, traveled to the Adirondacks, to Maine, to Massachusetts to tour all these properties, and learned a ton about the business. Saw the operations, saw the books. And after a few months of that decided this is what I want to do with at least the next five, 10 years of my life and switched and deliberately moved my prospecting to actually chasing campgrounds versus doing it by accident.

[00:08:44] Matt Whitermore: Did that in a year later, close on my first campground.

[00:08:48] Patrick Donley: That’s awesome. So I’m curious, did you 10 31 out of the multi-family stuff that you had into the RV camp or, or no?

[00:08:55] Matt Whitermore: No, because I ended up closing on the campground before I was able to exit out of those apartments. So, you know, I, I paid some taxes on those.

[00:09:05] Matt Whitermore: It was a calculated decision. But ended up using those funds to double down on that campground, so to speak. And that was a big turnaround project that we jumped into. So needed plenty of funds to clean up the property, renovate facilities, and the like, to bring it up to a, an acceptable presentable level.

[00:09:25] Patrick Donley: Somehow you came across a mentor that allowed you to look under the hood a little bit of your, yeah. Of maybe a RV park that this particular gentleman owned. I’m curious about that experience, how you found him. What was the biggest lesson or takeaway, you know, that he taught you? And also like how important would you say, like having a mentor jumping into an entirely new asset class is?

[00:09:46] Matt Whitermore: Very important, and I’ll use the term mentor loosely for him. I mean, he, he taught me a ton, essentially how that unfolded. It was a, a cold email that I sent out and he responded, and this was the gentleman in Connecticut that had two parks that were very, very high quality. Way out of my league at the time.

[00:10:06] Matt Whitermore: He ended up selling them later on for well over 10 million as a package. You know, he shared his books. I asked all my stupid questions that a beginner would ask. He answered them all very graciously, and we continued to volley back and forth and negotiate for a little over a year. Until it fell apart. A, a broker got involved and we were about a third less on, on our offer price than what they ended up selling for.

[00:10:34] Matt Whitermore: So he, he made the right move. He was about 5 million that he, he gained by going with the broker. So I can’t fault him for that, but, It’s really what sucked me into this niche. I tried to use the word campground versus RV park because there is such a wide spectrum of sub niches within the niche of RV parks.

[00:10:54] Matt Whitermore: So I’m specifically within the seasonal campground niche focused in the northeast, upstate New York and, and New England for now. It was the cash flow dynamics that he opened my eyes to of the whole seasonal aspect. So that, that was super interesting to me. We can certainly dive more into that if, if you’re curious.

[00:11:15] Patrick Donley: Yeah. I definitely want to do a deeper dive into all of this. That first deal, it’s in upstate New York, is that correct?

[00:11:22] Matt Whitermore: Yeah. So in the Catskill Mountains.

[00:11:24] Patrick Donley: So explain what’s the difference between a campground versus a mobile home versus a rv?

[00:11:31] Matt Whitermore: I’m a big networker and I, I talk to people all over the country that are real estate investors or perhaps looking for a passive type investment.

[00:11:39] Matt Whitermore: And I discovered early on that I’ll have a whole conversation with somebody about a seasonal campground and they think I’m talking about a mobile home park the whole time. A mobile home park is really, in my opinion, a misnomer for what it’s called. This is a full-time residential property that has either a single wide or a double wide trailer, and that’s somebody’s permanent primary residence.

[00:12:03] Matt Whitermore: They call it a mobile home because you can hook it up to a trailer and move it to another mobile home park if you so choose. But that’s going to cost you thousands of dollars and likely a, a special permit to get that unit on the highway to move it. So that creates a very sticky investment model for mobile home park investors, whereas an RV is a recreational vehicle.

[00:12:26] Matt Whitermore: Usually in my world, not a primary residence. However, that has changed regionally across the country. Now we’re getting into RV parks, which is, there’s various types of RVs. There’s Class A, class B, class C. That means drivable. Your big rigs that are a quarter million dollars, that’s more like a tour bus down to your travel trailer that you hook up to your pickup truck and you tow around to go to campgrounds.

[00:12:53] Matt Whitermore: All the way down to like a popup camper that, you know, is a, a little, a little trailer that you tow behind and you get to your campsite and you open up the popup. And that’s just a little bedroom. Very, very wide spectrum. And since I’m in the northeast dynamic here, that creates really interesting cash flow is the whole seasonal aspect.

[00:13:13] Matt Whitermore: Like for my park in New York. I have to go and get an operating permit, a campground operating permit from the New York State Department of Health every year. That only allots me six months to operate, and that’s because we have harsh winters. Largely, you’d have to do a lot of creative things to winterize your park to make sure that pipes aren’t going to freeze, that the RV pipes won’t freeze.

[00:13:37] Matt Whitermore: So you gotta like put skirting and insulation around the wheels of the rv. There’s very few year round RV parks in upstate New York, in New England, and in the northern states at large. Over decades and decades, this has evolved into a largely full season renter. You’re open for six months. Somebody rents from you for six months, and they pay that upfront before they technically, before they occupy the site.

[00:14:06] Matt Whitermore: But that also turns into a very sticky customer. So I, I have customers at my park that are approaching 20 years at the same campgrounds. That’s not their residence, it’s, it’s their vacation home, it’s their summer. They winterized the rv, shut it down every winter, come back and open it up in May. Pay me that next year’s fee over the off season.

[00:14:29] Matt Whitermore: So back to my guy in Connecticut, that’s what just kinda really slapped me in the face. He had, I think the park had like seven, $800,000 in revenue and he was getting half of that. Typically kind of in a lump sum in the off season, because he’d go to all of his current seasonals, which he had about 200 sites, and like 80 to 90% of those were full season renters.

[00:14:54] Matt Whitermore: So he’d go with the contract for next year, collect a $500 deposit from everybody. So you’re talking $300,000 plus that he gets in August. For the next season, and then he collects the remainder of that seasonal fee, maybe $3,500 throughout the rest of the off season. Coming from the multi-family world where capital expenditures and projects, you really can’t budget for those out of the cash flow of the property, you have to come outta pocket and make a further investment.

[00:15:27] Matt Whitermore: That’s what honestly really sucked me into. To see that, oh wow, this is sort of a budget’s dream. I can take that money. I can set up a debt service reserve. I can set up a capital expense reserve. I can budget for marketing or certain projects, improvements, what have you, which was was really, really interesting to me.

[00:15:48] Matt Whitermore: Kind of a foreign concept. That was one of the dynamics that became very interesting to.

[00:15:55] Patrick Donley: So that first deal, were you actively looking for an RV park? Were you cold calling, just reaching out to owners?

[00:16:03] Matt Whitermore: Yes, that one was. That one was also a cold email. The one that I actually closed was from a cold email.

[00:16:08] Matt Whitermore: They got my email and they said, we’re about to sign up with a broker. You better rush down here. So I drove down there in the middle of the winter. Trenched through three feet of snow in the mountains to go look at this RV park that was closed. So it required some vision to kinda look past all the dead trees and, and three feet of snow and to, I mean, it’s a, it’s a spectacular, very unique property, and it really wasn’t what I was looking for.

[00:16:32] Matt Whitermore: I was looking for more of like the institutional type campground with like 150 200 sites. This one’s only 50 RV sites and 23 tenting sites. But it wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, but it was so very unique and it was a inviting price point at less than a million dollars to acquire it. Checked some boxes that I didn’t really know that I was looking to check, but then after seeing the property, it was like, I think I can make this work.

[00:17:00] Matt Whitermore: Let’s go for it. And 16 months later now it’s, it’s been a fun project. A lot of hard work, but been a rewarding learning experience for. It’s awesome.

[00:17:10] Patrick Donley: It sounds, it sounds like a really cool property. It’s, is it on a trout?

[00:17:15] Matt Whitermore: Yes. Yeah, it is on the Willow Ock Creek, which is famous fly fishing trout, fishing creek in the southwestern side of the Catskill Mountains.

[00:17:25] Matt Whitermore: So very, very remote property. There’s no cell phone service. I mean, it’s, it’s black bear country. So it’s not uncommon to see a black bear on the property like clockwork. A bald eagle flies down the creek in the morning and back in the afternoon. I’ve seen, I’ve been sitting right by the creek and right in front of me, bald eagle just sws down and snatches a trout right out of the creek, which is pretty amazing.

[00:17:48] Matt Whitermore: So that’s, that’s an added bonus that doesn’t show up on the the PNL or the investor reporting that I actually really enjoy going there and, and spending some time there. So it’s a nice added bonus.

[00:18:00] Patrick Donley: Matt, when you first came across the property, what kind of due diligence you did on it? I’m, I, I’ve gotta think, there’s gotta be like septic issues, water issues. Yes. Talk a little bit about that due diligence process that you had to go through.

[00:18:13] Matt Whitermore: This one in some ways is actually a little bit easier than other RV parks because we don’t have any sewer hookups at any of the campsite. So another dirty job for you.

[00:18:25] Matt Whitermore: We’ve got a, a honey wagon vacuum trailer that we have to go around and pump out all the the black and gray water tanks at each rv, which is, it’s a drawback. There’s no, there’s no way around it. We get customers that come in and basically say they’d only rent an RV site that has a sewer hook. But hasn’t been enough of a drawback to hurt our numbers, hurt our projections or anything.

[00:18:47] Matt Whitermore: So that’s just like one less piece of infrastructure that has to be checked on. We do have septic tanks, so we had septic tanks like for the bathroom and for the house that’s on site. We had those inspected, which is really not too much of a lift. You can find the septic inspector to uncover the lids.

[00:19:05] Matt Whitermore: And we were there with them and kinda looked in there and he taught us about all the different systems and everything. And then really your, your main infrastructure other than that is electric, which we have sort of approaching obsolete electric service. The standard is to have 50 amp electric service for the, the newer RVs that they might have, like two air conditioners.

[00:19:27] Matt Whitermore: You really might need that 50 amp. So we have some 20 amp service, which that’ll come to fruition once some of our campers leave. Like we have some campers that have some old kinda vintage trailers that they only really need the 20 amp. That’s something that we’ve been slowly improving as we need.

[00:19:48] Matt Whitermore: But a big job, I mean, it’s 26 acres and they didn’t lay out the electric in the most efficient way. So we have like miles and miles of electric line miles and miles of water line. We have all above ground water line, which is not the most desirable from an aesthetic thing. But once you get into the season, the brush grows in.

[00:20:09] Matt Whitermore: You can’t really see the water lines, and it’s nice if they. You don’t have to go excavating to find where the brake is. You see it spraying up into the air and you can go fix it for essentially black well pipe. That is a pretty inexpensive material, so it could be a $20 fix if there’s a break in the water line.

[00:20:28] Patrick Donley: I’m also curious about the financing aspect of, of the deal. Talk a little bit about that. Was it, did you buy it outright? Did you finance it? How did the banks view financing for this kind of property?

[00:20:40] Matt Whitermore: There’s really two dynamics at play. The first, and this is changing on a daily basis as more attention comes to this sector, but when I was doing this, Still doing it.

[00:20:52] Matt Whitermore: But when I was closing this deal, you know, we socialized it with some lenders we had relationships with, and we find that lenders have trouble wrapping their heads around this type of asset. And I say that that’s changing daily. There’s now very accomplished, well known brokers that mortgage brokers that focus in the space.

[00:21:10] Matt Whitermore: So totally different market than five years ago. Say. The other aspect here is that with such a mom and pop sector of, of owners, You’re going to come across a lot of campgrounds that might not even have any books at all, or their books are just a total mess, and that’s going to be a hurdle with a lender. We seller finance this property that’s 70% of the purchase price at pretty good terms.

[00:21:36] Matt Whitermore: And that’s, I wouldn’t say I’ve resigned myself to seller financing, but I find a lot of efficiency in doing seller financing because you can negotiate the purchase and negotiate the debt in one shot, and then you don’t have to do the grind of put the deal under contract, negotiate that portion of it, and then go hustle around to lenders or engage a broker.

[00:21:59] Matt Whitermore: You know, you can kind of turn that page, turn those two pages, and move right into due diligence because as you mentioned it, it is usually a marathon of due diligence. There’s really not, at least for me, it’s, there’s no quick closes in this space. I’m usually gunning for 120 days of due diligence, and sometimes that even needs to get extended.

[00:22:20] Matt Whitermore: So no rushing in that, in that area by any means.

[00:22:24] Patrick Donley: I’m curious if the seller, since they’re financing it, did, did they stay on as well to kind of, you know, for a period of time to show you the ropes and teach you the tricks of the trade at all?

[00:22:33] Matt Whitermore: I wish. No, they they actually kind of deserted the property four days before closing.

[00:22:38] Matt Whitermore: So they had one of the campers who was a trusted guy, kind of hold down the fort. We didn’t know about that until closing. We closed the deal and then I rushed down there to take control of the property. That was a fun experience. I rented actually a tiny home on Wheels. This is a, a stick-built, tiny home, one bedroom unit on a trailer that I rented.

[00:23:02] Matt Whitermore: I, I come across a builder of these. So I rented that. We closed in August, 2021, so we had the second half of the season to run the property. So I went down there with my wife, who was somewhat reluctant at that time to go live at a campground. So we, we lived there for the three months, essentially closing that season.

[00:23:22] Matt Whitermore: Ran the place myself, worked to get a manager in place and now I have a full-time manager there, so I don’t need to be so present at the property, which has been a kinda a great milestone to get to. Cause they’re management intensive. There’s no, there’s no way around that. The way you get that off your plate is you hire a good, reliable manager, but you’ve always gotta be ready for turnover.

[00:23:44] Matt Whitermore: You never know when an employee is going to quit, so that’s one of the things that you have to be ready to do if you’re going to own these and actively operate them. You kind of gotta be ready to sit behind the cash register if, if worst comes to worst, and maybe run that honey wagon and go and pump out those trailers, which I’ve done a a time or a dozen.

[00:24:06] Patrick Donley: This initial one that you bought, was it something that you bought with the idea of, you know, forcing some appreciation through doing some value add work on the property?

[00:24:15] Matt Whitermore: Yeah, so the last 16 months or so has been a race to clean the property up and that being said, this was sort of turned into a a little bit of a junkyard.

[00:24:27] Matt Whitermore: To date, just on dumpster fees alone, we’ve spent over $50,000 on roll off dumpsters, demolishing obsolete structures, cleaning up all the old broken down equipment and tools, and just all kinds of junk old sections of fence, just like in the woods, just kind of 26 acres of combing through the woods and, and picking up trash and junk effectively.

[00:24:52] Matt Whitermore: That was eye opening to see how long that would actually take to get done. Cause we are in a remote mountain town, so finding labor is a challenge. So it took me about a year to get my reliable crew in place, which is something I certainly underestimated from the start.

[00:25:10] Patrick Donley: What other kind of value add things are you planning on doing?

[00:25:13] Patrick Donley: And once that’s completed, will you refinance then and with the seller? Well, you know, with the traditional financ.

[00:25:20] Matt Whitermore: Yes, yes. We have found just through talking to lenders and anecdotally talking to other operators, that it is a lot easier to refinance these properties than to finance an acquisition. So yeah, we have a, we have a five year loan term and at really good terms, especially with what the debt markets are doing today.

[00:25:40] Matt Whitermore: So we’re really not in any rush to refinance that. So we’ve got, you know, another three and a half years on that loan. And as far as the value add, we’re renovating bathroom facilities, painting all of the outbuildings, the bathhouse, the pump house sheds, just getting a cleaner, cohesive look. Doing a bunch of signage, touring.

[00:26:03] Matt Whitermore: Lots of campgrounds. You find that one of the really kind of inexpensive things that grants a really professional feel to these places is just high quality signage. That’s two to $3,000 of materials just getting the signs printed and manufactured and then whatever the labor costs to have somebody go with a post hole digger and, and put those in the ground.

[00:26:28] Matt Whitermore: And that’s going to, just, that alone is, is going to totally change the field of property and that’s, It was one of the due diligence items that almost blew up the deal was we had this really great spreadsheet that showed all the bookings for all the sites so we could see exactly what revenue the sites were making on an individual basis, but none of the sites had signs on them.

[00:26:49] Matt Whitermore: So we just had to take their word for it, which site was which, and we said, no, sorry. Yeah, sorry. But you have to go put signs on all the sites. You have to label all the sites. I was like, I’m not going to buy an apartment building and you have a rent roll, but none of the doors are labeled with unit numbers.

[00:27:03] Matt Whitermore: Like that’s just not going to happen. So sorry. And that they tried to say they weren’t going to do it, and we’re like, okay, well we can’t buy the property. And of course they went and.

[00:27:13] Patrick Donley: I read one of your tweets you wrote, it might have been a podcast, I can’t remember, but you said it’s, it’s just as easy doing a small deal as it is a big deal, so you might as well go.

[00:27:22] Patrick Donley: I’ve kind of felt that same way with some of the projects I’ve done, whether it’s, you know, doing two units or 20 units, you’re still hiring a plumber, you’re still hiring a drywall guy. You know, you’re still, it is just scaling it for sure. My co-host Robert Feels, doesn’t necessarily agree, but talk to us a little about your future plans to scale the business and maybe some of the deals you’re looking at right now.

[00:27:43] Matt Whitermore: Just cause the nature of the operations. Took my foot off the gas a little bit with acquisitions, but luckily had an iron in the fire on a nearby deal that’s three times the size. So that’s going to be a close to 2.4 million acquisition. This, this one was 850,000. Three times as many RV sites, three times the revenue, and it’s very close by to the current property.

[00:28:08] Matt Whitermore: So tons of economies of scale in terms of operations and staff and sharing equipment. So that’s exciting. You do find that there’s a line in the sands with these deals as to what is going to be interesting to private equity groups or institutional groups, and that’s most investors are hyper focused on what is the exit.

[00:28:31] Matt Whitermore: Not to say that I’m not, but I tend to look at these properties like they might be forever holds. Yeah. I try to align my interest if I’m taking on partners and or investors and have that conversation that, yeah, we’re going to model out a five year refinance in a 10 year sale, but this isn’t an apartment building.

[00:28:49] Matt Whitermore: It doesn’t have that kind of liquidity, even though there is a frenzy in the market for scooping up these properties. Who really knows what’s going to happen in five, 10 years? Are these private equity groups still going to be clamoring for properties? Probably, but at the same time with the cash flow dynamics, to me it’s, as a relatively young guy, it’s interesting to look at potentially holding these properties for a very long time.

[00:29:15] Matt Whitermore: So working on acquiring that next deal in the next couple months, that’s been a long marathon of due diligence on that one. And finally wrapping that up in the next couple weeks, and then we’ll move to closing. That’ll be a nice, kind of a nice cornerstone of a portfolio in my mind. And I’ve, I’ve cut my teeth on the smaller deal and learned what it takes to operate these properties and just immerse myself in the industry.

[00:29:43] Matt Whitermore: So I’m definitely of the mind that even the 2.4 million deal is a little on the small side. Once I close that one and wrap my head around that one, I’ll be focusing on 5 million plus range. To try and be more efficient with my time. Now that I somewhat know what I’m doing, there’s always something to learn, but a little bit more confident in the space and, and what I’m able to handle and take on.

[00:30:09] Matt Whitermore: So that’s kind of my loose minimum target is, is 5 million purchase price. Going forward.

[00:30:16] Patrick Donley: That first deal that you did, did you do that on your own and subsequent deals you’re looking to bring on partners to help with the financing? Is that, am I saying that?

[00:30:25] Matt Whitermore: I have done all my deals dating back, well, not, not the house hack that was just my personal and me and my wife.

[00:30:33] Matt Whitermore: Other than that, the other 30 or so apartments were done with three partners and convinced them to try out getting into the campground business with me. So they were investors in that deal. And I’ve been exploring different types of partnerships. I’d say it’s, it’s kind of a pivotal time for me to select the path going forward because I have the option of passive investors, which is, is nice because you become the only decision maker, but you still, you’re beholden to them.

[00:31:04] Matt Whitermore: You become a fiduciary. You have to make the decision that’s best for their wallets, essentially. And that’s usually not going to turn into a forever hold because most passive investors are concerned with, oh, I want to get all my capital back in five years, and then I want a nice windfall on top of that in 10 years or seven years when you sell, which is fine.

[00:31:25] Matt Whitermore: I mean, that’s, we’re kind of approaching territory where it’s like we’ve done everything to date, largely dictated on what capital was available to do the deals. To now we have some people interested to some institutional private equity groups that are looking for operating partners that have a very impressive portfolio of commercial real estate.

[00:31:46] Matt Whitermore: None in RV parks or campgrounds, but they’re intrigued by kind of the buzz around the industry. And they’re looking to find people who know how to operate them and to throw a serious sum of money at growing a portfolio of these things. So it’s kind of a big choice coming up. Do we just continue with passive investors?

[00:32:05] Matt Whitermore: Do we try and get an institutional relationship? Do we find a, an entrepreneurial operating partner that shares the vision of growing a portfolio of 5, 10, 15, or more of these? It’s been interesting to network and to meet with people and, and see what their appetite is and what their vision is because it’s really all over the board.

[00:32:27] Patrick Donley: Many, many lifetimes ago I used to run a off the grid eco retreat center. We had like some micro cabins and campgrounds, campsites, that kind of thing. And it, I just know from my own experience, it was a ton of work for actually very little money. It was a nonprofit, the way it was structured. I’m curious how involved in like the day-to-day operations are you versus how much time you’re spending trying to find new deals, trying to find financing, trying to find maybe new partners.

[00:32:51] Patrick Donley: It’s kind of a balance, I think, between you gotta understand the business, learn the business, and be hands on. But you also, it sounds like you want to continue to grow too. So I’m curious how you’re splitting your time.

[00:33:02] Matt Whitermore: Yeah, so I’d say for the first three months that I was down there, it was seven days a week all day.

[00:33:09] Matt Whitermore: And then close it down for the season and, and it tapers off and it becomes about planning improvements and trying to find contractors during the off season. It was an hour or two a day to just try and push projects forward, and then it was time to open up again and it ramped up to maybe full-time for a couple weeks to get my new manager settled in, who’s been fantastic and hopefully is a, an awesome long-term partner.

[00:33:35] Matt Whitermore: And in operating these things, Now that I’m at that juncture where I have a really good manager, I’m back to maybe an hour a day of just ownership activities of paying the bills, planning projects, planning improvements. That is kind of one of the double edged swords I’ll call it, of investing in campgrounds, is that you know, you have what you have existing and you want to maximize that, but beyond that, you kind of have a blank canvas.

[00:34:02] Matt Whitermore: So you can really, you can really spin your wheels and just spend all day dreaming up all these creative things you want to do, which can be really fruitful, but can also be a giant waste of time. So that’s what I’ve tried to refocus myself every so often and not. Not just like daydream about glamping and, and what, what I could do with this.

[00:34:22] Matt Whitermore: Cause I need to focus on the next deal and I need to network. So that’s what now, and for the last several months, I’ve been spending most of my time on networking, finding potential new partners, doing due diligence on this new deal and figuring out how to best execute that new.

[00:34:40] Patrick Donley: I know that you’re really into technology.

[00:34:42] Patrick Donley: I think you’re kind of a techy kind of guy, and it sounds, I’m just curious how you’re using technology to manage your deal flow, your acquisitions, even the management of the property itself. Talk to us a little bit about the role of technology

[00:34:54] Matt Whitermore: and how you’re using it. Great question. On the acquisition side, I’m a big proponent, almost kind of an evangelist of, of HubSpot CRM.

[00:35:04] Matt Whitermore: I think its Salesforce is is a great product, but it’s expensive and arduous to implement and administer. So I think HubSpot fills a gap there that is more user friendly, easier to implement and is good for all the companies that aren’t large enough or don’t have a big enough budget to employ a full-time Salesforce analyst or administrator.

[00:35:28] Matt Whitermore: So I’ve always come back to hubs spot. That is what I do, my outreach and through and database properties and manage my pipeline of deals. On the operations side, it’s, it’s been really a lot of trial and error. I’ve tried a few different platforms over the last 16 months and it’s such a young industry, especially campground technology.

[00:35:52] Matt Whitermore: Because you have really all these mom and pop owners that are like in their sixties and seventies, and they manage it on a phone, on a hardline phone, in a notebook. That’s their technology. People call up to book something and they write it down in their notebook. You have all these kind of startups that are trying to become the campground, both the booking platform and the management platform.

[00:36:17] Matt Whitermore: So we’ve tried a couple two. We’ve tried two now, and I’m about to get onto my third because what I’ve found is one company might really nail the booking side of it, but then it’s underwhelming on the management side of it, or vice versa. They’re pretty good on the management side, but they’re underwhelming on the booking.

[00:36:34] Matt Whitermore: So I’m trying to marry those two. And one area that I think will allow us to perhaps exceed our projections is to really dial up the occupancy of, especially our, we have really interesting tent sites, very unique primitive tent sites that people pay a lot of money relatively. You know, you go to a state campground and it’s 22 or $25 a night, and we’re getting all day long, three times that for people to come and pitch their own 10.

[00:37:02] Matt Whitermore: The occupancy is not so good, but if we can dial up the occupancy, then there’s a gold mine there of primitive tent site income, which is, there’s no infrastructure there. There’s no re repairs and maintenance tied to those. Really just takes a weed whacker and maybe some gravel. That’s an area that I have a high level of focus on is getting on to steal a short-term rental term, a channel manager where it gets you on Airbnb, it gets you on vrbo, gets you on hip camp.

[00:37:29] Matt Whitermore: Cause to date we’ve kind of just picked one platform and run with it from a booking perspective. But to me the key is how do I get on all the platforms so there’s so many more eyes on our website, on our booking platform, and ultimately more occupancy. So that’s a huge initiative right now, what other kinds of marketing are you doing?

[00:37:52] Matt Whitermore: Yep. We did a paid social campaign specifically targeting seasonal renters, the full season renters. Because that’s, that’s the really efficient end of this business. You get all that money up front. Like I said, the people maintain and landscape their own sites. It’s almost like a triple net lease. They pay their own electric.

[00:38:13] Matt Whitermore: It’s not quite that efficient, but it’s nearing that territory so that we focused on that. But now we just engage a digital agency to do SEO for us to do social media retargeting. So if somebody goes to our website or our Facebook page, then they will get tagged and they’ll start to get our, our social media, Facebook and Instagram ads.

[00:38:37] Matt Whitermore: That’s the avenue we’re, we’re going. And that’s, again, that’s along the lines of how do we dial upn. And it, it was sort of a dance of we didn’t want to overmarket this thing when it was still not in the greatest presentable aesthetic. As we were cleaning it up, there was dumpsters everywhere. There was construction equipment and contractors going to town.

[00:39:00] Matt Whitermore: We still did fine, but we were kind of concerned of, are we going to get too many eyes on this thing? And then we’re going to get a bunch of one star reviews because it’s really not ready yet. So now we feel like we’re, we’re presentable, so let’s go invest a bunch of money into seo, into the whole general digital campaign.

[00:39:19] Patrick Donley: I also wanted to ask you about, it sounds like you’re involved in another venture called Aqua Venture. Am I saying that correctly?

[00:39:24] Matt Whitermore: Yeah, yeah. Aqua Venture, like acquisition and Venture. Aqua Venture.

[00:39:29] Patrick Donley: Aqua Venture, yeah. Talk to us a little bit about that. What is that?

[00:39:31] Matt Whitermore: Sure. And how, how’s it going? It’s good.

[00:39:34] Matt Whitermore: It’s, it’s evolved from a few consulting engagements that I’ve had that haven’t really had like a formal business name attached to them. And it’s really birthed from the, what we’ve been talking about, the acquisition systems and processes and going direct to seller and just systematizing that, doing that first for small apartments and then dabbling in the mobile home park space and then campgrounds.

[00:39:59] Matt Whitermore: It presented itself as a repeatable process and that it’s really asset agnostic. We are working with small business investors with, you know, without a real estate component, speaking with an attorney, for example, who is looking to grow through acquiring law firms. So we can go out and build a database of law firms, apply the same systems and processes that we have for real estate, and it, it’s going to generate the same.

[00:40:27] Matt Whitermore: Really any, any real estate sector applies, any small business, any kind of private equity. And really any niche where direct to seller is a suitable road, which I would argue is, is really any sector but institutional multi-family, 99% of your deals are going to be brokered just cause that’s, that’s the way the industry works.

[00:40:49] Matt Whitermore: Not saying we can’t add value there, but you know, we’re talking to a lot of sell storage investors, a lot of RV park investors, mobile home park investors, smaller multi-family, and then all, all the, the small business sectors. Really good application there, so it’s end to end acquisitions as a service.

[00:41:08] Matt Whitermore: That means data basing to automating and facilitating outreach to helping the clients manage their pipeline of opportunities to help them shepherd those deals towards closing. Really good fit for lean investment firms that don’t have a whole huge acquisitions team to go tackle these things or, or really any group that’s looking to break into a new niche or a new market where they’re kinda standing up a database in a system from zero.

[00:41:37] Matt Whitermore: We can add a lot of value for them as well.

[00:41:40] Patrick Donley: And again, are you using HubSpot to do that for them?

[00:41:44] Matt Whitermore: Yeah, we’ve become a, a HubSpot partner in the process so we can grant some efficiencies and some discounting and some extra resources as a HubSpot partner versus someone just going direct to HubSpot to buy it and then take it upon themselves to implement it and administer it.

[00:42:02] Matt Whitermore: I think there’s, there’s some value there as.

[00:42:05] Patrick Donley: Matt, it sounds like you spent about 10 years as a W2 employee in the corporate world. Talk to us about that transition from employee to real estate entrepreneur. For those of our listeners, thinking about making that same jump.

[00:42:19] Matt Whitermore: There are some days where a salary does become appealing, and that’s kind of also ties into the Aqua Venture plan and, and approach is that is some sort of recurring revenue that isn’t necessarily tied to going out and acquiring assets.

[00:42:35] Matt Whitermore: So yeah, you, you nailed it there. It’s sometimes it is appealing at other times. Feels great to set your own schedule and. I hesitate to say be your own boss because I’ve got 73 campsites. So at times I have 73 bosses and I’ve got a manager who, she’s my employee, but in some ways she’s also my boss.

[00:42:56] Matt Whitermore: And then I’ve got investors that are also my boss and I’ve got lenders that are also my boss. So I think that’s kind a cliche that isn’t always accurate. So yeah, there’s it’s pros and cons with everything. You just gotta try not to fall into the grass is greener kind of mentality. I’ve definitely fallen victim to that as I’ve figured out how to be an entrepreneur and grow a portfolio of properties.

[00:43:20] Matt Whitermore: It’s a process that is iterative and always changing. Ask me tomorrow, I might have a totally different answer.

[00:43:27] Patrick Donley: Yeah. I think we’ve all fallen victim to the grasses greener and chasing after the new shiny object syndrome. There’s an anonymous account on Twitter guy. I think his handle is real estate.

[00:43:37] Patrick Donley: God, he’s got a program that I think that you may be involved in. I’m just curious your view on real estate courses. For me personally, I, I haven’t done many. I’ve kind of viewed them as, I don’t know, a little scammy maybe, or maybe not worth time or money. Have you done many real estate courses and are, is it, would you recommend them?

[00:43:56] Patrick Donley: What’s your experience been like with courses?

[00:43:59] Matt Whitermore: Specifically, I would highly recommend the Real Estate God’s course. It’s a very affordable price point. I wouldn’t think it’s a profit center for him. He’s, he’s engaged in you know, it’s some very profitable deals. I think for the course for him is really a breakeven.

[00:44:13] Matt Whitermore: You can do a monthly subscription or you can pay for the year, and he gives you insight into all his deals and covers different concepts. For me, it’s, I’ve been around the block a little bit. I’m certainly learning from it, but my desire in purchasing that was get into the community, keep my pencil sharp, read about the things that I’m doing.

[00:44:35] Matt Whitermore: I’ll get some new ideas from it. I think it would be great for beginners. My approach in courses from the early days, I spent a lot of money on Microsoft Excel courses to become really proficient in Excel. I purchased an untold number of books in real estate textbook, some really expensive ones. I spent those 10 years as an employee and as a financial analyst, learning how to be an investor.

[00:45:03] Matt Whitermore: And getting a taste for different sectors. So that, that was my approach. You know, I’d say you, you nailed it with how you described it. Sometimes they do come off as scammy. I think on Twitter they get a really bad rap. It’s almost like a bad word to refer to somebody as somebody who like sells a course, which I don’t think is totally fair.

[00:45:22] Matt Whitermore: There is definitely that aspect. But I would say if you can get a reference, if you can get in touch with somebody who’s purchased that course and they, they say, good thing about it, go ahead. It’s, it’s not going to be a bad investment, especially if you get some sort of community out of it. That’s invaluable in my mind, positive experience so far with that one.

[00:45:44] Matt Whitermore: But I, I haven’t purchased too many other specific real estate courses. I think that actually might be the only one I’ve purchased.

[00:45:51] Patrick Donley: What are some other books or maybe podcasts that you would recommend to a beginning investor in real estate is something that’s made a big impact on your career.

[00:46:01] Matt Whitermore: You know, have, have tuned into this network of podcasts as a recent, so big fan of this one.

[00:46:07] Matt Whitermore: Also early on, I, I leaned on Joe Les’s podcast and his book on Apartments Indications. It’s an entire playbook on how to find deals. Well first, how to study a market, how to select a market, how to find deals, how to evaluate those deals, how to raise money a little bit. That was a foundation for me as I was launching my business.

[00:46:33] Matt Whitermore: So I took all his practices and applied that. Studying the markets and the demographic data. Also Hunter Thompson’s book on raising capital. Very similar framework to being a full playbook like Joe Fairless’ book, but specific on the raising capital side. There’s another Matt Faircloth. It’s one of the one of the bigger pockets books similar on raising capital.

[00:46:58] Matt Whitermore: I probably have most of the bigger pockets books. I think bigger pockets kinda gets a bad wrap sometimes, but they’re publishing and their books are really incredible. There’s one on renovating properties that when I jumped into that triplex and I was teaching myself how to budget for renovations, I used that framework very closely.

[00:47:18] Matt Whitermore: Sat down with my wife and said, okay, we want to do the kitchen. We’re going to do a new tile floor, we’re going to do new countertops. These are the ranges of prices we should expect. And it was very helpful and, and gave us some confidence in jumping into a renovation project that we had really never done before.

[00:47:34] Matt Whitermore: So that was great.

[00:47:36] Patrick Donley: Was that the J Scott book? Exactly? Yes. Yes. Yeah, that’s what I thought. That is a good one. Yeah. Yeah. He’s, he’s been on guest here a time or two.

[00:47:44] Matt Whitermore: Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He’s incredible.

[00:47:47] Patrick Donley: I’ve got a couple of quick questions. The first one is, what’s the best investment you’ve ever made? It could be in time, money, energy.

[00:47:54] Patrick Donley: And then the second one, what new belief or behavior have you adopted recently that’s made a big difference and change in your life?

[00:48:01] Matt Whitermore: So, first one, the the best investment. That’s a tough one. That’s a tough one. I’m going to have to give like a one and a one a for different reasons. I’d say one is the first campground, not for the financial end of it.

[00:48:13] Matt Whitermore: I mean, that, that is working out well. But just from jumping into it, learning it by doing, and now I’m, I’m a whole lot more confident to go by a bunch more campgrounds. The other one, which is totally the wrong way to invest in real estate and not the way you should do it, was a single family primary residence purchase that just totally benefited from the crazy market during Covid.

[00:48:38] Matt Whitermore: Bought the house for 200,000, owned it for a year, did nothing to it, and sold it for $260,000 a year later, and I felt like I was overpaying for it at $200,000. Pretty significantly. I, I, being an analyst, I would’ve pegged it out like 1 70, 180, then we threw it on the market, went down to Florida for a week, let the listing agent do our thing.

[00:49:01] Matt Whitermore: We came back to 15 offers, 12 of them way over asking no contingencies. We’re like, okay, we’ll take that one. Obviously we’re going to have to pay taxes on that. But was just a basically $40,000 that we found. Dumb luck, right time, right place outta thin air. So can’t beat.

[00:49:19] Patrick Donley: That’s awesome. How about a new belief or behavior that, that you’ve taken on?

[00:49:23] Matt Whitermore: I’d say that’s something I need a little bit more of in my life. I’ve just closed on a, a new house that I should be able to settle into for the next 10, 20 years. It’s been a little crazy for the last 18 months. Relocating cities. Sold my house and all my properties in Albany, and then bought an RV at the campground.

[00:49:45] Matt Whitermore: And I’ve been bouncing back and forth as I’m looking for a house in this ridiculous housing market, bouncing back and forth between my RV at my campground and my in-laws house. I’ve been certainly lacking and striving for routine and getting settled literally this week. Now I’m, I’m settled into the house and something that is always rewarded me is just going for a nice long walk in the morning.

[00:50:09] Matt Whitermore: And sometimes I listen to a podcast, but honestly the most rewarding thing for me is just going for a walk by yourself. No podcast, no headphones, no music, but that’s the way you start your day. You’re going to do some of your best thinking, doing that. You’re going to come up with great ideas, strategies. You know, almost want to bring a little notepad and, and jot down the ideas or do like a voice memo on the phone or something as, as you do that thinking.

[00:50:33] Matt Whitermore: So that’s something I’ve been making a point to get back into as I get settled with my personal life here.

[00:50:40] Patrick Donley: I love that. I think I don’t know if you follows, SEIL Bloom, I think is the guy’s name. He recommends the same thing. Go for a walk. Oh yeah. No podcast, no tech, no, just you, your thoughts and just walk for an.

[00:50:51] Patrick Donley: So, Matt, this has really been great. I really appreciate your time and all the insights that you’ve provided here today. But if you had to give one big takeaway that you’d like our listeners to walk away with today, what would be the one thing you’d you’d want to say to them?

[00:51:04] Matt Whitermore: Just jump in and get started.

[00:51:06] Matt Whitermore: I was definitely one of those paralysis by analysis type people where I made a career, a 10 year career out of learning. And yeah, I, I, I made some money, I had a salary, I got paid to do it. But my portfolio would be so much larger today if I had cut that off at five years instead of 10 years and just said, you know what?

[00:51:29] Matt Whitermore: Let me figure this out. Let me jump in. Let me buy my first property and get that ball rolling. Because you know, it’s a little bit of a cliche, but you see it all the time, is the first deal’s the hardest. You build all those systems and processes and relationships, the second deal’s going to be easier. The third deal’s going to be even.

[00:51:47] Matt Whitermore: And then you just, you keep that momentum and you just roll downhill and keep it going. And before you know it, you’re going to have 10, 20, 30 properties. That’s probably the biggest piece of advice I’d give to people that reach out that are new. It’s, you know, figure it out, get started. Even if your first deal’s a big loser, you lose all the money you invested.

[00:52:07] Matt Whitermore: Probably going to be less than a year of college education and you’re going to learn infinitely more. So just go.

[00:52:14] Patrick Donley: All right, Matt, thanks again for your time. Really appreciate it. This is awesome. For our listeners who want to learn more about you or maybe reach out to you, what’s the best way for them to connect with you?

[00:52:24] Matt Whitermore: I’d say probably on Twitter, big for the last year, been a, a big, big proponent of Twitter, which is just an interesting kind of mind-blowing thing, especially in the real estate and small business community. I’d say prior to a year ago, Twitter was kind of a toxic thing in my life as I was just following sports and news, and it’s honestly been one of the best, biggest things in my life since I’ve made that switch.

[00:52:47] Matt Whitermore: So on Twitter, I’m @ibuyrvparks. Happy to connect with anyone and share my findings and my learnings. You can also email me at matt@aquaventure.com. That’s the root of the word acquisitions and venture, aquaventure.com

[00:53:05] Patrick Donley: I concur with Twitter. It’s been, it’s just such a good education. My wife doesn’t agree with, like, she thinks it’s like Facebook or something.

[00:53:13] Patrick Donley: I’m like, it’s not Facebook.

[00:53:14] Matt Whitermore: It’s like mine’s starting to come around because she sees how many meetings I can drum up off of Twitter and how many really impactful people I can meet with. And honestly that’s, I’ve written maybe 10 mediocre threads over a year and, and not a whole ton of effort. It’s just engagement and you know, I’m excited to turn my focus to that and write more content and add more value and it’s, it’s such a rewarding and encouraging community.

[00:53:39] Matt Whitermore: It’s been a blessing and a truly positive experience. So highly recommend that for anyone.

[00:53:45] Patrick Donley: I’ve really enjoyed your threads too, so I, I’d encourage any listener to go check them out, so yeah, I appreciate that. Anyway, Matt, thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate it.

[00:53:53] Matt Whitermore: Yeah, likewise, Patrick had a lot of fun chatting and excited to tune into the, the podcast going forward.

[00:53:59] Patrick Donley: Okay guys, that’s all I have for Real Estate 101. I hope you really enjoyed that episode, and I’ll see you back here next.

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