Bonus Depreciation, the ability to write off up to 100% in the first year via cost segregation accounting, was permanently restored in 2025. Little did anyone realize that mobile home parks are, by far, the biggest winners from this, as studies began to show that a typical mobile home park has 3 to 4 times the amount of bonus depreciation than any other real estate sector.
In this in-depth video discussion, Chris D’Antin with Cost Segregation Specialists guides us through the history of Bonus Depreciation and why mobile home parks have more opportunity in this sector than any other property type.
MHP Owners: The New Kings of Bonus Depreciation - Transcript
0:00:00.6 Frank: One of the gifts that President Trump has given all of us in the real estate industry is something called bonus depreciation. And I'm getting more calls on that right now than just about anything else that happens. It's an interesting amenity to mobile home park investing that in our sector, we get roughly four times more depreciation per dollar than the other real estate classes do. And since I get so many questions, I thought it'd be easiest just to answer them all with a discussion with Chris Danton from Cost Segregation Specialists. This is something that they deal with all the time. And Chris can answer your questions and show you how cost segregation and bonus depreciation work. There are other styles of depreciation. You've got your regular old, I guess, straight line. Chris, I'm not an accountant, I think that's what you would call it. But if you're trying to shelter income, the fact that mobile home parks are the MVP of that concept is intriguing. It's something we all just kind of lucked into in the mobile home park space. It was never by design. We never dreamed there would be bonus depreciation, and nor did we ever think for a moment we would be the kings of bonus depreciation. But sometimes in life, things just happen through fate, and that's what's occurred. So, Chris, can you hear us okay?
0:01:28.1 Chris: I can hear you great, Frank. And I want to thank you for having me back. This is such a unique opportunity, and it really comes down to, you know, let's just look at this first slide. I've been in cost segregation study business for six years. I have owned 51 rental properties since 2011. So I've been, you know, very actively involved in real estate. But I want you to look at the very first slide here, and I want you to look at where it says potentially three to four times tax benefits for a mobile home park owner. So what does that really even mean? Well, as you see, my company right here, we've always targeted the big business, the multifamily, the skyscrapers, the big old buildings, because they're 10 million, 15 million, 20 million. But in reality, if a mobile home park was bought for $1 million and one of these buildings was bought for $1 million, and let's assume the land was the same, a mobile home park is going to get three to four times the tax benefits. So first and foremost, what I'd like to do before we jump into slides, because they get kind of...
0:03:00.7 Chris: I work for an engineering firm, so, you know, these engineers love to make this very difficult for me. So we're going to keep this really simple. So before we jump into the presentation, this is the one thing you have to understand so you can comprehend why this is such a big deal for you. The first thing is, what is a depreciation expense? Because that's what we're talking about. And what is a depreciation schedule? So what a depreciation schedule is the job of your CPA or tax preparer. They say, what did you buy the property for? What was the land? Did you make any improvements? That's what's called your cost basis. For easy numbers, I'm just going to use a million dollars for cost basis. So if you had a million dollar cost basis, the IRS says we are going to allow you to depreciate or have a depreciation expense of a million taken over 27.5 years. So if you take a million divided by 27.5, you have $36,000 as what's called a depreciation expense. So the IRS is telling you is, listen, you bought an asset and in reality it's going to depreciate. So we have to help you offset some of these expenses.
0:04:38.6 Chris: So in this scenario, if you have a depreciation expense each year of 36,000, all that means is for the first $36,000 of taxable income you have from all rental properties, or especially for this property, you don't pay taxes on the first 36,000. That is what Frank was speaking about. It's called straight-line depreciation. You get this automatically. So if your cost basis was a million and we're depreciating this over 27.5 years, hey, guess what? If you're in the mobile home business and you only make $36,000 a year, you don't pay taxes ever. That's just the way it works. It's called a depreciation expense. But what about when you start making more than $36,000 a year? This is when cost segregation comes into play. So before we jump into cost segregation, how did this even happen? What happened was it was a court case back in 1997, and all the court case was basically a hospital up against the commissioner, that's kind of like the IRS. And they said, listen, we just spent $100 million, or whatever that number was, $100 million on a hospital. We all know that building components fall apart at different years, some in five years, some in seven, some in 15.
0:06:08.6 Chris: Why are we having to take this $100 million and dividing it over 39 years? Why 39? Because it's commercial. Mobile home parks are 27.5. That's when the court said, you know what, okay, I get it, but we're not in the business of putting things in different tax lives. We're not appraisers. This is where cost segregation was born. It said, hey, if you want to go hire a firm like us to place value on the building components and put it in its proper tax life, you don't have to take the million dollars over 27.5 years. Remember we did the example of a million divided by 27.5 is $36,000 depreciation expense. So now the IRS is saying if you're willing to hire somebody who knows what they're doing to place the building components in their proper tax life, you don't have to take the million over 27.5 years. Then what Frank said is the big bomb. In late 2017, we have this Tax Act that was passed that basically said now any building component that falls into a 20-year tax life or less, you can take it all up in the very first year.
0:07:47.7 Chris: So once again, before we get into the details of PowerPoint, we know what you get automatically for free. A million divided by 27.5 is $36,000 depreciation expense. You get it every, you don't have to pay for it, every year. The first $36,000 of your income, you will not pay taxes on any passive income from this property. So we got that. So what's a cost segregation study? All a cost segregation study is saying, hey, I don't... If the IRS, for the specific purpose of this mobile home park, you can take anywhere between 60 to 100% of that million in the very first year. So it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what do you mean I can take it all? Well, the IRS, because mobile home parks, the majority of the time, 90% of the time, everything on a mobile home park has a 20-year life expectancy or less. A mobile home, like a mobile home itself, is seven years. Everything on your property, pads, tie-ins, hookups, signage, roads, those are all what's called 15-year land improvements. So the only time that you have building components that don't fall into a 20-year tax life or less is if you have something like a laundromat or maybe like a small restaurant for some reason, or a rec center for some reason.
0:09:34.7 Chris: Now those would have a 27.5, but if you're talking about a traditional mobile home park, literally you take your purchase price minus your land, and literally you have the permission, you don't have to do it, but you have the permission, to say, I'm gonna use an easy number. Remember, I'm gonna say 65% of a million is $650,000. So all you're doing with a cost segregation study is saying, I'm willing to pay a one-time fee, on the low end four grand, on the highest end ten grand. I'm willing to pay four to ten grand to not have the IRS hold on to $650,000 of my depreciation expense. Because why? You're probably making more than $36,000 a year. So all cost segregation studies are basically saying is they're giving you the permission to take what the IRS is holding on for you and giving it... Because if you take 36,000 and multiply it by 27.5, you know what you get? You get a million. So you're just allowing the IRS to hold it for you on your behalf. So when I tell my clients, this is a business decision, not a tax decision, because why? All we're saying is, rather than taking this depreciation expense over 27.5 years, I want to take as much of that tax benefit now so I don't have to pay taxes.
0:11:22.9 Chris: Because if you're not paying taxes, what are you able to do? Have more down payments on mobile home parks. So I just wanted to make sure that was, like, that is the whole entire presentation. So if that resonates with you, these are just... I'm about to give you some icing, but what I just gave you was the cake. So I want to make sure y'all understand that. And that is how mobile home parks are so different, because all of these buildings that we're looking at here in this presentation, maybe 15% can be accelerated. For you, it's 65 to 100. And here's the great news, it does not cost any different to study a skyscraper than it does to study a mobile home park if they were both of the same value. So it's not like you're going, oh, well, that's just, we're a mobile home park. No, we're talking about a $250,000 mobile home park could get you a $200,000 tax benefit assuming you have low land value.
0:12:43.4 Chris: So now we're gonna just jump into it. Okay, I just wanted to make sure that that is the cake, is, do you want access to the tax benefit that the IRS has afforded to you now so you can make the decisions on how you want your benefit, or do you want them to give you $36,000 a year? And what I've seen is a business owner would say, hang on, why would I not want that? And I'd say, that's why we're doing this, that's why we're here, is to explain to you as a business owner, the purpose of a cost segregation study is to help you not pay taxes so you can take that amount of taxes you were gonna pay toward a new down payment on another property and do it over and over and over again. So we're gonna jump into the presentation. So once again, here's my engineering PowerPoint. It's really, all it's saying is the purpose of a cost segregation study is you're paying engineers to study your property, your mobile home park, and whatever the place value on the building components, and whatever those building components that fall into a 20-year tax life or less, you can take it all up front. It's up to you. You might say, Chris, I want to take it over five years, I want to take it over 15 years. That's your decision. But you have the option to take it up front. Remember, this is not a tax credit, it's a depreciation expense.
0:13:57.6 Chris: So it's like a deduction. So of course if you're not paying any taxes, you don't need cost segregation. This is for people that are paying taxes. So if you're paying taxes, we're trying to show you how to get that money back. That is the 100% focus. What I want you to see here, I have never, personally, I have never done a study on a mobile home park that we could not take at least 75% or more and take it up front. Remember, a million dollars, assume that's the cost basis. If we could take 700,000 of that, but you say, Chris, I don't make $700,000 of income. I get it. But remember, this is a one-time thing you pay. One time. It's not some mortgage payments. It's one time. So in this scenario, to keep it really, really simple, if there was a million-dollar building cost and we could accelerate even 50%, which I've never seen, I've only seen 75 or up, let's say 50. And if you had to write a check for five grand, five to six grand, and it allowed you to get a $500,000 accelerated depreciation, all that means is on the next $500,000 of passive income, you don't pay taxes.
0:15:22.6 Chris: Pay five grand to not pay $500,000... To not pay taxes on the next 500 grand. It's just the way the tax code is set up. Remember, this is not a loophole. This is in the law. Now listen, they're not doing you any crazy favors. They understand that a mobile home, guess what, there's a reason why it has a 20-year tax life, because a mobile home, the pads, the tie-ins, they don't last 27.5 years. So nobody's doing you a favor. It's just acknowledging that a mobile home park owner has to do more maintenance than if you owned a multifamily because there's just more specialty functions that you're not gonna have in a multifamily or residential property. It just happens to be that the lion's share of what you bought is something called a land improvement. Remember, we already know that a mobile home has a seven-year tax life. But everything else on the property, the pads, the tie-ins, the hookups, the signage, that's all 15-year. So that can be accelerated. That's just what makes a mobile home park so different, is it has tons of 15-year...
0:16:39.7 Chris: Think about 15-year land improvements or the assets that you have on your property outside, where a normal building, all of the value's inside, but it's normally structural, so it lasts 27.5 or 39 years. All this is just another example. What is a cost segregation study? It's basically saying, we got this million dollars that's spent, how do we put them into buckets that can be accelerated? Remember, all we're doing is we're finding a way to accelerate a depreciation expense so you don't have to wait 27.5 years. Another example. These are just buckets. This is the million bucks, okay, the 39, the 39, 27.5. This is when you spend the million dollars. Then they say, okay, now of the million, what can be put in a five-year bucket? What can be put in a 15-year bucket? Okay, now we already know mobile homes itself are seven years. We already know that it's gotta be a mobile home, you gotta be able to move it. But everything else is gonna be 15-year unless you have other long-term structures, like you have an apartment complex or you have a laundromat, or you have a restaurant of that nature. But the lion's, remember I told you every study I've ever done, the lion's share is in five-year. Because we already know, because remember, you can have a tenant-owned.
0:18:12.4 Chris: This is also important. You have tenant-owned versus, sometimes it's tenant-owned, sometimes it's, you know, property owner... Park owned. The key is, either way they work the same. Because if you own the mobile homes, you get to accelerate it. If you don't own the mobile homes, then you're just accelerating all of your land improvements. So just know this, you will get the same bang for your buck or better even if you have a tenant-owned mobile home park. Because why? You own all the land improvements, everything on the property, that's where the bang for your buck is. So remember, tenant-owned, non-tenant-owned, both works the same. Don't exclude yourself 'cause you go, I don't own any of the mobile homes. You own all the land improvements. Here's a great example. I want y'all to take your time, and we're gonna spend some time on this. This is the results from one of the studies that I did, okay? So I want you to start off on the left-hand side and I want y'all to see where it has the cost. Well, forget, I'll go all the way to the left, property category. This is kind of giving you a breakdown of what makes up the cost of the entire mobile home park. You will see the cost is 2.7 million. That is what the building cost or the purchase price minus the land was 2.7.
0:20:05.7 Chris: So on the left-hand side you have property category, which is the cost detail. Then you have the cost. Then you have us doing our study of placing a value on each one of the building components. But remember what I said, anything that has a 20-year life building component can be automatically accelerated. So of the 2.7, only 3.6% couldn't be accelerated. So in this scenario, this person on a $2.7 million cost basis can accelerate 97% of 2.7 million. And the cost for that study might have been six grand. And you're saying, well what am I gonna do with all that? I'm just saying it's yours. We can always determine how you want to use it. Maybe you want to take the 700,000 over five years, maybe you want to take it... Maybe you want to take the 1.9 over 15. It's all about how much money are you making. Everybody's different. We're just saying here's what's available, here's the 2.5 million bucks or 2.6. And in reality your CPA says that's too much. Okay, then we'll take it over a different way. I'm just saying we're trying to show you options because we don't know, maybe you sold off something where you have a $1.5 million cap gains and you can use it right there. So these are ways to know. This is a perfect example of if this was a regular building, this 27.5 would probably be more like 85%.
0:22:01.9 Chris: That's the difference. That's what separates a mobile home park from every other structure. Now, what Frank was talking about is phase-out, because it was bonus depreciation. Remember what we're all saying, remember, bonus depreciation is saying nothing more than if you're gonna allow me to accelerate 65 to 100% of my cost basis, bonus says you can take it all in the very first year. So here's where I want y'all to take some notes. This is probably the most important part. Number one, a cost segregation study can be for a property you have not bought, so obviously in the future. But you can also go back and study any property that you bought without having to amend your return. That is huge. So you didn't miss it. You didn't miss out. Ah, Chris, if I'd have known you back in 2019. Nope, I'm still here. All we have to do is do something called a 3115. It costs $750, and 50% of the studies I do need a 3115. So what I would say is, do you own, in a perfect world, talking perfect world, if you look at this phase-out, the bonus started in late 2017. So let's just say for easy numbers, if you placed a property in service, let's say you bought it from 2018 to 2022, you can take 100% of that bonus.
0:23:44.3 Chris: If you placed a property in service in 2023, you can take 80%. If you placed a property in 2024, it's 60%. And then now in 2025, we're back to 100. So once again, any property going forward, you're at 100%. Any property that you placed in service back in 2018 through 2022, you still get 100%. If you placed a property in service in 2023 and 2024, you get 80% and 60%. But here's my point for mobile home parks, it never made a difference because y'all's acceleration was so unbelievably high that normally you can't even handle the amount of acceleration that a mobile home park can get. But if you were a regular building owner and you could only accelerate, remember, like a multifamily or residential, you can only accelerate 20%, it's a big difference if you only can get 60% of 20, but your numbers are so large. So just know now you're getting back 100%. I don't want to trigger an audit. What we'll tell you is that, and this is an older slide, we've done, as I shared, over 60,000 studies. We've been audited 23 to 25 times. You don't do 60,000 studies and go through 23 to 25 audits. This doesn't trigger an audit. If this really triggered an audit, don't you think we'd be having tens of thousands of audits?
0:25:23.6 Chris: We've had 23 to 25 out of 60,000. So note to self, this is something that you need to know, that this does not trigger an audit. This is what people in real estate do. And remember, as I shared back again, they're not doing you any favors because assets on a mobile home park do depreciate faster than a traditional structure. So they're just saying, do you want that benefit up front so you can be in control of how you want to pay your taxes? That is what a cost segregation study is. So it's very important you understand that this is not triggering any type of an audit or we would have more than 25 audits out of 60,000 studies. Now this is the one word, recapture. It's important for everybody to understand if you own. This is the negative part of owning real estate. Note to self, I had to get punched in the face. No one told me about this. Okay? Recapture applies to anyone that owns rentals. Remember I told you the million dollars, million-dollar cost base divided by 27.5 years is a $36,000 depreciation expense. So let's say this has nothing to do with cost segregation. You never have met me. You take $36,000 of depreciation expense every year for 10 years. If you sell your properties without doing a 1031, you have to pay back the 36,000... The $360,000 of depreciation you took.
0:27:03.7 Chris: So why is a cost segregation of value? I guarantee you, mark my words, your CPA never told you, hey, you know when you're taking this $36,000 of depreciation every year, let's say that that saves you ten grand, let's say in taxes. Remember, it's a depreciation, it's not a credit. So let's say you're taking that $36,000 of depreciation every year, let's say it saves you ten grand. I guarantee your CPA is not telling you, hey, you need to be putting that ten grand away in some kind of savings account because when you sell in 10 years, you're gonna pay it back. Nobody's being told that. I sure as heck wasn't told that. So all of a cost segregation study is saying, if you're not gonna use a 1031, the best way to prepare for recapture is to do a cost segregation study so you can take your tax benefits up front and you can start to invest it. See, without the cost segregation study, you're just taking that $36,000 depreciation expense at, let's say, a 30% tax bracket, you're saving ten grand a year. But no one's telling you to put that ten grand aside, are they?
0:28:22.9 Chris: No one is. So all we're saying is if you don't use a 1031 and you're just gonna sell out, then we gotta show you how to prepare for that. So that's what a cost segregation study, because that's what my job would be, was to say, hey, listen, you're about to save $50,000 a year for the next 10 years. So guess what? Don't steal from yourself. If your property was the one, the depreciation expense that allowed you to save the 30 to 50 grand, take that money and do what? Reinvest it. So if you do wanna sell out, you got the assets to pay for the recapture. So if you're not doing a cost segregation study, you have no plan for recapture. But if you do a cost segregation study, I'll show you how to plan for it. But if you're gonna do a 1031, we can find ways around it. Because the lion's share of a mobile home park is 15-year tax lives, and those can be put into a 1031 exchange. So either way, and if you really want to get even more crazy, is all you have to do to never pay recapture, let's just say this. Let's say you disagree with me and you go, Chris, I really love saving my $30,000 and I really don't want to invest it. Okay, then you're gonna have to pay a recapture if you don't do a 1031.
0:29:56.7 Frank: But how are you gonna have... But how do we... Then all I'd say is when you sell the property, buy another property of at least equal cost basis, do another cost seg, no recapture. It's no different than a 1031, as long as you continue to do cost segregation, you continue to kick the can down the road as long as the cost basis is at least the same or higher. But what I like to recommend is hold you accountable so you can buy more mobile home parks, saying, hey, if this saved you 60 grand, why don't you just use that for a down payment on your next mobile home park and do it every single time? That's the main goal of a cost segregation study. But it's your decision. It's a business decision. It's up to you how you want to use your tax benefit. Okay, who's CSSI? We've been around for 22 years. We work in all 50 states. We've done over 60,000 studies. And what I'd say is if there ever was an audit, that is part of the fee, is you don't have to worry about that. And once again, we've only been in, I think, 23 to 25 audits out of 60,000. So don't think this is some target for the IRS. This is just a part of owning rental property. So what I really want to kind of end with is really summarization.
0:31:25.2 Chris: Who is this for? It's for anyone that owns rental properties, period. For a mobile home park owner, it just happens to be a much higher tax benefit than a traditional property. So what I don't want y'all to do is to disqualify yourself. If you have a $250,000 normal residential property, might not be worth it. But I guarantee you, if you're a mobile home park, it will be worth it. Why? Because you're getting two to three, three to four times the tax benefit than if it was just some residential property or some kind of industrial property. So once again, this applies to any property that you own, but specifically for mobile home park owners, I want you to go back, let's just say for easy numbers, go back to 2018, and I'd like you to look at any property that you bought and send it to me. Let's have some conversations. And I can say, okay, here's the deal. Hey, guys, you only... Because this property is such a great property, you only have to study one of your properties, and it might give you a $300,000 tax benefit.
0:32:41.7 Chris: You don't have to, when you do a cost segregation study and it creates an accelerated depreciation expense, you can use it against all income, not just income for that property. So, Frank, once again, I get excited about this because I'm not a big fan of, you know, I love to help people not pay taxes if they can, and to be able to put their money back in their pockets so they can continue to buy more mobile home parks, more rental properties, you know, for their family. So if there's any questions or anything I can further assist...
0:33:15.2 Frank: Yeah, let me ask you about the window of opportunity here because, you know, Trump has been a true real estate president. He's maybe the only real estate investment president I can think of. Most presidents come from more of a lifetime political background or maybe some kind of other business, but he seems to be, you know, very favorable to those who own real estate. And, you know, he, leaves office in 2029. So right now there's about roughly two and a half years left to go of the Trump era. When he leaves office, I saw on your chart that 2028 was the last year you had on there, I'm sorry, 2027 was the last year. Does this bonus depreciation go on after 2027? And what happens then...
0:34:08.3 Chris: Great question. Remember, these numbers right here are grandfathered. So you will always be able to, any property that you bought in 2026, 2027, 2025, they can't take this away. This is grandfathered. So the reason why I shared that is I don't want people... I want people to know they can go back and study older properties without amending their return. But yes, 100% correct, as of the present, we're good for the next three years, you know, I'd say, that we are gonna have the 100% bonus. So yes. But the key is, I'm assuming most people that are already in this already own rental properties, already own mobile home parks. So I don't want us to miss that. It's not just for future. But you're right, but these are grandfathered, so you're not gonna lose what you've already placed in service. That's already been established.
0:35:05.6 Frank: And I would assume, Chris, tell me if you think I'm right or wrong, but whoever we end up as president next is or may not have the same real estate focus that Trump has had. And as a result, you probably will not see this bonus depreciation potentially ever again. Is that... Would that be correct?
0:35:25.5 Chris: It could bonus. It could phase out. Like, remember this word, phase out. They'd phase it out again. So let's say another president, you know, comes along in 2028, 2029, it might say 80%, then 60%, then 40%, then it just might phase out. But the good news is for those that do own properties from 2017, in 2026 up to 2026 and 2027, we already know what you're gonna get. That can't be taken away.
0:35:58.6 Frank: Got it. And Chris, for those watching this, it sounds like this really just starts off with a phone call to you or an email saying, here's what I got, what do you think? I assume you don't charge anything for the initial consultation, correct?
0:36:15.2 Chris: Great question. Yes, there is zero cost to get a proposal. Zero cost. I feel very, very comfortable and confident that a mobile home park owner, I mean the multiples, the cost to the tax benefit is normally off the scale. So it's never gonna be about, does this rate of return work? The only reason why the rate of return won't work is if you're not paying income, if you don't pay... Excuse me, if you don't pay taxes. If you don't pay taxes, you don't need a cost segregation study. If you are paying taxes, you do need a cost segregation study.
0:36:57.1 Frank: If someone had a banner year of income this year and they extended their taxes roughly to October and they already own the mobile home park as of a few years ago, can they go backwards? Could they do a cost segregation on the mobile home park now...
0:37:15.3 Chris: Yes.
0:37:17.8 Frank: And shelter their income from this year that has not been paid yet?
0:37:20.3 Chris: So let me clarify. A 3115, it's called a change in accounting method. And for, if you're taking notes, let's just say 2028... Let's say 2018, use that as kind of... That's when bonus kind of started. Any property that you own in 2018, '19, '20, '21, '22, '23, '24, '25, because you haven't filed your 2025 taxes yet, you can use... We can study any of those properties to help offset any tax obligation in 2025. You don't have to have a property in 2025 to offset taxes in 2025. You can always go back without amending your return. So that's why what Frank is saying is if you have a large tax obligation because maybe you sold, then we need to go study your properties in the past to carry it forward without amending a return to take care of a future obligation, which would be obviously right now in 2025.
0:38:24.2 Frank: Now, Chris, some people, when they first brought out cost segregation and bonus depreciation, people in the self-storage industry claimed that they were the kings of quantity. How did we flip around? How did mobile home parks outstrip them, or were they not telling the truth?
0:38:39.5 Chris: It's never been that way. The only thing that could possibly be, which has never happened, not even close, is sometimes in self-storage, and I'll say this publicly, is if for some reason somebody's just buying a piece of crud self-storage facility and they're having to put tons of improvements in, and if all of those improvements are 15-year land like landscaping and roads and signages, or they're doing a bunch of internal improvements, then they can qualify for something called QIP. So the only time that an industrial park, or what'd you say, industrial, self-storage or any kind of industrial would be if somebody's doing literally, let's say they paid 500,000 for the building but they're spending a million dollars in improvements. I haven't seen that, very rare. So they can only put that little feather in their cap in the 5 to 10% scenario. You guys are a 100% scenario. So I would back that with, that's the only way. But the same thing would apply to any property. If they bought a property for 5 million, let's say multifamily... Not multifamily, an office building, they placed it in service, then they put in a million bucks.
0:40:13.8 Chris: Yeah, you could get some high numbers. But still nowhere close to self storage... Nowhere close to mobile home parks. So it's not even close. I would say self-storage would probably be maybe eighth to tenth in best bang for your buck. Are they still great? Do we do them all the time? Absolutely. Because why? Some people like self-storage. But it's not because there's better tax benefits in self-storage than there is mobile home parks. Because a self-storage facility itself lasts what, 39 years. It's the structure, the building. Mobile home parks don't. Tie-ins don't, pads don't, roads don't. That's what separates it. A self-storage has a building that's structural that you can't accelerate. Where a mobile home park, literally everything on the park can be accelerated.
0:41:11.3 Frank: And let me add to those who are watching that, you know, we've had a large number of calls from people in the past wanting to have this discussion on bonus depreciation. And we didn't feel comfortable doing it because we did not think they had enough expertise. These guys are doing 60,000 studies approximately. That is an enormous amount of studies.
0:41:38.9 Chris: I don't think there's any... I would be shocked if there's anybody that's done more than us.
0:41:42.3 Frank: Yeah, I was gonna say I don't think anyone even comes close to that number.
0:41:45.2 Chris: I think it might be maybe 35 to 40,000 maybe.
0:41:48.6 Frank: Right, yeah. So just as when we write articles and talk about the business, you know, our background is we've owned and operated 500 mobile home parks. And that scale gives you a much better idea what really happens because you do a lot of different properties, a lot of different sizes, a lot of time involved in that, and particularly on things like audits and stuff. To me there's much greater comfort in scale when someone has done a large number of transactions. So 60,000 is a lot of them. So I think in summary, Chris, I mean, this is just one more perk to owning a mobile home park. No one should buy a mobile home park, obviously, just for bonus depreciation.
0:42:36.3 Chris: Yeah, if the cap rate works, yes, buy a mobile home park. If the cap rate doesn't work, don't buy a mobile home park.
0:42:43.1 Frank: Exactly.
0:42:43.8 Chris: Is it a good investment?
0:42:45.4 Frank: When I got in the business back in the mid-90s, this didn't exist. Mid-2000s, this didn't exist. 2015, this I don't think existed. So this is just something new again. Park owners are very fortunate. We've totally lucked out on so many things. Demand for affordable housing, the fact America becomes poorer annually. And now here's one more bonus that comes with it. It's kind of like you get a gift from somebody of an old antique box and you think, what a great looking box, I'll put it on my desk proudly, and then you one day open the box. Inside is $1,000 in cash. You think, oh, wow, this is great, I got $1,000 in cash. Then you look at the bills and it turns out the bills are antique from the 1800s. And the $1,000 in cash is worth $10,000 in cash. That's kind of how this is with the bonus depreciation. So again, you know, we can't decide for you, but if this is something that intrigues you, I would call Chris and/or email Chris, and just have a discussion for it. And we felt it important to get it on here because we want all park owners to know all the different options you have, and this is an option that you do have.
0:44:01.5 Frank: Yet we don't know what the time window is, how much longer it is. So when Trump leaves office, it's very likely many of these advantageous real estate things will end. That's scary because as a property owner, not having Trump as president is a little terrifying because he's been bringing stability to the real estate market pretty much since inception. But again, we wanted this to be there for you to decide whether or not you think it's something to check into. But we've had so many questions on this and calls on this, we wanted to just get it out there in a timely fashion for people to decide whether or not this works for them. So if you are intrigued, if you say, hey, you know what, I like this idea, or hey, I'd like to get more information on it, talk to my other partners, talk to my spouse, here's your opportunity. Just call Chris, say, hey, here's what I got. Find out what he says, ponder it. If it works out for you, great. So again, Chris, we really appreciate you being here on this discussion on bonus depreciation and how mobile home parks have about three to four times better treatment than any other asset type. So thanks everyone for being here and thanks, Chris, and we'll talk to everyone again soon.
0:45:20.1 Chris: Thank you, Frank.