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Flagship Communities Executive Takes to the Road, Eyes Future Growth: Nathan Smith Checks in From the
by MHInsider
Flagship Communities Executive Takes to the Road, Eyes Future Growth
Nathan Smith Checks in From the ‘Year in Review Tour’
by Patrick Revere
The backdrop of MHInsider’s discussion with Nathan Smith was a three-week long car tour, Flagship Communities’ chief investment officer and three comrades looping through multiple states in the Midwest to assess existing communities and where further opportunities for affordable housing may lie.
Four people in a car immediately conjures the image of myriad pop culture road trip sagas, if not the classic comical headbanging of Bill and Ted.
“We eat junky food,” Smith confessed. “This week we have Culver’s, last week we had Long John Silver’s… “We have a litany of them. Sometimes we go to Chickfil-A, Freddy’s, White Castle.”
From its base in Northern Kentucky, the team creates a cloverleaf across the central U.S. and parts of the South.
“Once per year, we do what I call the Year in Review Tour,” Smith said. “We do it in December to get ready for the coming year.
“There is an economy of scale we’re looking to achieve,” he said. “When we go into a market we go into with the intent to have enough properties so that we can sell at multiple locations all over town. You don’t want to do TV, radio, and buy ad space that circulates all over town if you’re only selling in one location.”
SSK Origins: The Making of a National Portfolio
Nathan Smith was responsible for one S in SSK, the name of the privately held property ownership and management company that is the predecessor to Flagship Communities, a public entity traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
It was at Northern Kentucky University on the first day of college when Smith met his future business partner, Kurt Keeney, a senior looking for a career banking.
“He was going to be in the banking business and I thought I was going to be a lobbyist,” Smith said. “We both went and did those things, and I was the first one who decided it wasn’t for me.” »
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An Entry to the Industry
Keeney was at Fifth Third Bank at the time he and Smith first talked about becoming owners. He had watched some manufactured home communities, or mobile home parks as they were more often called then, that had come through for financing.
“We were talking about different kinds of real estate that was interesting, and he was the first one to say mobile home parks,” Smith said. “We got an investor. And we were crazy enough to build it. We did that.
“He was the first maintenance guy and I was the first manager,” Smith said. “He could fix a busted pipe, we were real managers and that’s an advantage that we have in the marketplace. We continue to manage properties, that’s what we do. We’ve been out 20 days on the road looking at properties and talking about what we’ve sold. Kurt was at a property in Louisville today.”
SSK continued to build its portfolio, and with time Keeney and Smith understood that going public was the likely course.
“We had started taking investors and private equity, so we created Flagship to house those interests and to begin preparation in branding for the public company,” Smith said.
In 2017, what was SSK began moving into the Flagship Communities real estate investment trust, or REIT, a process that was complete in 2020.
Today, Flagship Communities has properties throughout Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee, Arkansas, Illinois, and Missouri. In 2022, Flagship was honored by the Manufactured Housing Institute as the Land-Lease Community of the Year for the Eastern United States. Flagship has nearly 70 communities and about 12,000 homesites.
Giving to the Industry
Smith himself has volunteered for state and national associations in leadership roles to advance the industry, including tenures as president of the Kentucky Manufactured Housing Institute, the Indiana MHRVIA, and as chairman of the MHI board.
“Many people cannot fully understand and respect how important the trade association is for their business,” Smith said. ”If we weren’t supporting this outward facing effort, a lot of those smaller businesses in the industry couldn’t afford to have that advocacy in place.
Weathering the Downturn
Not each of the years from inception were the growth years the industry enjoys today. When the downturn occurred in 2007-2008, homebuyers began having difficulty finding retailers and financing.
“I came to Kurt and told him I thought the delivery process for these homes was drastically going to change,” Smith recalls.
Whatever street retailers remained were primarily selling homes on a foundation, and in rural settings, and using »
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conventional financing. Communities were left to buy, sell, and rent homes on their own. This meant creating or finding training sales and marketing teams.
“It really was a painful experience,” Smith said. “We lost a lot of employees, because we were now asking them to do so much more… from footers, to decking, electrical, and now they’re going to have to put the sign out and sell the thing, too.
“The community manager’s job has changed,” Smith said. “He or she is more like a local realtor these days.”
At Flagship, a lot of effort is expended to support the sales efforts in communities and throughout the marketplace. That’s one of the reasons Smith and his team take the annual road trip, to see for themselves, to have face to face conversations, and to get a real feel about the direction of the community.
Assessing Properties, and Talent, Too
The team Smith takes on the road for his tour offer specific areas of expertise in interpreting and evaluating the state of home sales in each market.
Rob McCracken, the company’s vice president of home sales, is also a college friend from Scripps Howard. He’s new to the industry and provides a fresh perspective for Flagship’s leadership.
“Sometimes you need someone who can look outside the scope the industry has set,” Smith said.
Ron Papworth is a regional manager of sales for the West division, and Adam Uhlenbroc, at the age of 22, is a new associate with Flagship in charge of inventory management.
“We talk about what size of a home we’re selling at a location and what we should be looking to sell, so he’s in charge with that process,” Smith said. MHV
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