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Grainger knows. When you're a procurement manager for an office park, you're not managing one building, you're managing all of them. And to stay ahead, you need to see through walls and around corners. Lights about to fail, filters ready to clog H Vac on its last leg. If you wait until something breaks, you're already behind. Count on Grainger for quality products, easy reordering and 24. 7 support. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click grainger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.
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This is Scott Becker with the Becker business and the Becker Private Equity Podcast. We're thrilled today to be joined by a brilliant leader, a brilliant founder, managing partner. We're joined today by Nathan Jamison. He's the founder managing partner of ARCS Capital. We're trying to get him to also talk a little bit about his basketball background as well. Nathan, take a moment and introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about ARCS Capital.
C
God, thanks for having me on today. You're the first to raise the basketball background, but you may have to, you may have to give me a little lead in there. I need to know who you're a fan of before I upset you too much.
B
Yeah, it's not, it's easy to upset me, but it doesn't matter because I'm really a Chicago Bulls fan. But I had a couple friends that played basketball, Lehigh, where you had done some coaching. I know. And so. But the Chicago Bulls have been stuck in mediocrity. We're hoping that maybe they're going to start to move in the right direction after this next draft. But it's been a long time since they've been competitive. Let me ask you because we are in the middle of NBA playoff system season. Who are you a fan of?
C
Well, I'm in Philadelphia, so I'd be remiss to say that I am, I am a fan of the Sixers, although I disagree with how they've managed the team. You know, I love that you're from Chicago and that you're a Bulls fan because I grew up with, with the goat. And you try to explain to kids today just how good Michael Jordan was when they didn't have the benefit of seeing him play. You know, averaging 30 plus points a game when the game, you know, the average was 90, 92 or something, he was scoring a third of the team's points and without the prolific three point shooting. So, you know, if you and I can settle the debate over who the greatest of all time is right now, you know, I think we could just take it to the bank.
B
We would agree on that wholly. And I do believe that some people confuse longevity and putting your own team together with greatness. And those are very different things than truly being the greatness that Michael was. We could not agree with you more. I could go on forever on that subject, but I will not. So we get to the heart of the discussion. One of the best. One of the very best. So the Sixers, they had a fascinating rebuild because they had a fasting rebuild where the guy who rebuilt them got fired. Then they got good with a lot of things he did in the rebuild, and now they're struggling again. Is that where they're at now?
C
Yeah, when they fired the second rebuilder here, Daryl Morey. So, you know, as much as I think Embiid is a generational talent, I don't see that he can be the centerpiece of a championship team, Not. Not in today's game. People who compare him to Jokic, he's just not at that level. And what Jokic does for his team without dominating the ball the way Embiid does. I think they should have traded Embiid when he won the mvp. His value is at his highest, but, you know, we don't get to do over on that one. Great to beat the Celtics, but, you know, it's been pretty exciting to watch the Villanova Knicks do what they're doing here this playoffs.
B
It is amazing with the Brunson and so forth. But talk about Embiid for a moment, because when you watch him play when he's on, he is truly a generational talent. But almost like Zion Williamson plays so hard in such a different way that it's hard for him not to get hurt periodically and so forth, and then holds the ball too much. Is that part of the challenge?
C
I think in today's game, the ball really, really needs to move more to. To get the open shots and, you know, the, you know, the weighted average field goal percentage of the three pointer, you know, the analytics all say shoot more threes and shoot layups. Right. I think in the modern era, I'll say post Jordan era, the teams that I most enjoyed were the spurs, when they had kind of their triumvirate of Ginobili and Parker and Duncan. Of course, they had some supporting cast that were, you know, all stars in their own right. And then the warriors at their peak, the way they shared the ball, you know, as a defensive player, your head was on a swivel. You know, it was a top spinning around before you know it, they'd either laid it in or they'd gotten a wide open three point shot. And you know, I don't, I don't like the game when the ball sticks it just to me, that's not what it was meant to be.
B
And how fun is it to watch not just the Knicks play, but the team chemistry amongst the Knicks? I mean, it's simply remarkable to watch these guys and they're funny as can be.
C
Well, I think it's funny. It really relates to business, you know, if we move in that direction. You know, I was talking to somebody about this yesterday that it's amazing how they put the team together. But I'm sure that the gm, maybe he just took a flyer, he had a thought that if I can put three guys together who won a national championship in college, who are talents in their own right, can they do that again at this level? And I think that's what you're touching on, the love that those guys have for each other. I'll just say Hart, Mikhail, Bridges and Brunson, obviously very good players and. But I think the relationship they have emanates outward toward the team and they've got everybody to buy into their style. And I think, you know, they have a very good shot. I'm not going to say they're going to win it. You know, SGA and the Thunder are really, really good. I think they'll put the spurs away, but I think New York definitely has a shot. I give them, you know, 40% odds.
B
Tell us about. Let me take a step forward and talk about your business career in ARCS Capital and what you do.
C
Sure. So I spent the first part of my career about 14 years in land development and home building with a privately owned home builder. And that, you know, it can sound fairly boring to just say it like that, but the reality is I did something new in my career every two years. I started in land acquisition. We were buying land and get entitled to build, you know, villages style communities, but doing it in the Northeast. So going to planning meetings and holding public hearings, convincing residents that we should be allowed to build that kind of community in the general municipality. Then we raised a fund. I mean, imagine this, 2006, we had a capital partner who was having some difficulty deploying capital with other builders and said, hey, you guys seem to be good at what you're doing. Why don't we just restructure this thing? We'll give you guys a couple hundred million dollars, you go invest that money in Builders. So 2006, I flew to the Cayman Islands with our founders and to attend the public companies board meeting to make this pitch on this fund. And for those younger listeners, I mean, 2006 was the edge of the precipice of the great financial crisis, and we didn't have to do much convincing, frankly, they were eager to give us the money. So then I hit the road for two plus years looking for builders that we could invest equity and mezzanine capital into for returns. And because of that, I had a front seat to what was coming. The good news is we invested very little of that money. And most of what we invested, we invested in our own company. The bad news is the builders that we were looking at were operating on razor thin margins as it was, and all of their prospective profitability was pro forma, and it needed kind of annual home price appreciation of 10% and so on. Maybe you've seen the movie the Big Short. I mean, that is exactly what was happening. So it doesn't make sense to have a fund to invest in builders when builders are going out of business by the dozens daily. So I transitioned to operations, and we grew our home building company from about 100 closings or so in 2009 to 450, almost 450 closings in 2015, and about $150 million in sales. And we were one of the largest privately owned home builders in the country. So it feels like the top of the world. And then in 2016, I separated with my partners and began ARCS Capital. ARCS is Latin for fortress. And I began to focus on, I would say, asset classes that were more resilient and more focused on consistent cash flow than the cycles of boom and bust in the home building industry. But I still liked housing. And because of my front seat to the challenges of building new housing, I really centered on attainable housing, specifically around mobile home parks or manufactured housing.
B
Fascinating. And we knew some colleagues have been in the manufactured home business that grew out of the Sam Zell group of lineage that had manufactured housing. Talk for a second about sort of today's steel market, today's investing market. And you've been through a lot and watching the 2007, 2008 crisis some of the other times. What are you seeing in today's deal market? What's going better or weaker than expected?
C
Yeah, well, I would say that the resilience of the values of manufactured housing, mobile home parks has surprised me. Now I'm outside Philadelphia, and you may know or have heard of Peter Linneman, renowned Penn real estate and finance professor who's written and documented how cap rates and interest rates are not as correlated as some may think. So as interest rates went up, we didn't necessarily see cap rates move dramatically off of really low levels when we had 2%, 3% mortgage money. So I'd say, well, intellectually maybe I understood that was going to be the case. I still nonetheless been surprised at how resilient these asset values have been. And I attribute that primarily to kind of an economic lesson that is, you know, we all learned in economics, if there's demand for a product, then supply will rise to meet that demand. Well, real estate doesn't quite work that way because of long entitlement periods and capital that's needed to get plans approved and projects built. But it's even worse than that in mobile home parks where the demand is increasing because of their affordability, demand to live in these communities and own one of these homes, but supply is actually decreasing. It's not even staying level, it's decreasing. And that's because you have municipalities who don't want them anymore, or you have maybe mom and pop owners who haven't maintained the properties, haven't raised rents to keep up with market, and therefore there becomes a higher and better use. And, you know, any number in a given year, there's probably 100 mobile home parks to get demolished nationwide to make way for what someone deems is a higher and better use.
B
And so talk about that for a second. That's so fascinating you think about mobile homes. Manufactured housing is one of the real solutions in a time in America where it's harder and harder for people to own their own home. And at the same time, you do have some of the not in my backyard crowd that doesn't want this in their neighborhood because it's got old vestiges of, you know, being from certain communities or other things. How does that play out a little bit in your investment world and what you look at? And because there's not enough supply, values continue to go up.
C
I think, you know, there's a host of challenges with it. Let me deal with kind of the fiduciary challenges. I still also invest in land development entitlement work, where we're getting land entitled to build, often residential community subdivisions. And in a perfect world, I would get to build a community of manufactured homes. But the challenge is that particularly in the Northeast, the mid Atlantic and on the coast, where values are so high is the cost of installing infrastructure for a home, whether it's a mobile home or whether it's a 3,000 square foot, three bed, two bath, two level home. The infrastructure cost is effectively the same. Building a road, building a sidewalk, installing water and sewer, installing electric and gas, roughly the same. And yet the traditional site built home is going to sell for two to four to five times what I can sell a mobile home for. And because of that, the land is dramatically more valuable for that site built home than it is for the manufactured home. So as a result, the economy, the market, does not build more attainable housing.
B
Gotcha. You could build lots of mobile homes that might retail for, you know the numbers far better than I do, 50 to $150,000. Where in contrast, somebody puts up not manufactured home on that land, it could be 500,000 to a million five. And so, yeah, yeah.
C
One way to think about it, Scott, is that the improved lot value for a traditional cycle home is often the same or more than the cost, the value of the manufactured home.
B
Fascinating, fascinating. So as you look at the business and investing in the manufactured homes, do people still call mobile homes or just manufactured homes or a very distinct difference?
C
People definitely call them mobile homes, but it's a little bit of a distinction without a difference. Ever since the federal government created Housing and Urban Development, or hud, the term mobile home really ceased to exist in the formal lexicon. And today it's a manufactured home. Since the 70s, now you have manufactured homes like the ones that arrive on a trailer with a chassis that theoretically could move off their site. You also have manufactured homes that we would call modular that are affixed to the foundation permanently. There's legislation making its way, you may have read about the housing bill at the federal level that would actually enable manufacturers of manufactured homes to remove the chassis from the home. And we hope then that enable our home buyers to obtain more conventional financing. You know, they're buying 100 and well, call it a 90,000 to $160,000 home, but their loan rate is going to be 50% more to two times what we would traditionally pay in a mortgage rate, because that home is not permanently affixed to the ground. They get assigned at an inferior rate fasting.
B
And in terms of sort of the deal playbook, the investment playbook, how has that changed and evolved over the years as to what you do and you know, around value creation financing, how has that all evolved over the last few years?
C
Yeah, so, you know, the last 10 years, which is how long I've been in this, in this space, has, has been through a couple different cycles. When I was first buying mobile home parks, I always Went to the settlement and I would sit down with the person who was selling it, usually, you know, a second generation owner who was retiring. And I would ask them for advice and ask them what they, you know, what would they do differently if they could do anything differently. And 201, they all said, well, I wish I would have bought more mobile home parks. So I took that to heart and I just, I kept buying initially on my own and then, and then we created some fund investment structures where we invited people to invest alongside us. So at that time, you know, you really were, you were buying on a cap rate basis where you had positive leverage between your borrowing rate and your cap rate. And I think it, you know, I would just say it was easier to make a buy that you didn't have to, you know, be really good operationally. And I didn't know that at the time. But it ended up being a real grace to us as a business because we got to learn without kind of the pressure that exists in the current market to quickly improve operations. Because the values are higher today, cap rates are compressed and we're buying usually value add properties. That means that we need to add value, we need to fill vacancy, we need to repave roads and fix aging infrastructure. And as part of that, we need to increase rents to market and bring in higher quality tenants and so on as we fill those vacant lots. And because values are up, you know, we've got to be operationally excellent. And so over the last 10 years, we've built out a team that allows us to do that not only for ourselves, but then we also are looking for other sponsors who can do that and benefit from our capital.
B
When you look at evaluating an investment, are you evaluating a leadership team, a location? How do you sort of look at how you evaluate who you're going to invest in and how do you think about that?
C
Yeah, well, we are evaluating both of those things for sure. Leadership and location. You know, I would say that leadership is more important, although I would also say that a strong leadership is probably not going to bring you an investment in an inferior location, or I just say a location where the value and the price are misaligned. But I think when I think about how we start looking at businesses, it's quality of leadership was number one and quality of earnings was number two. And so, I mean, when I think about leaders, like I want them to be smart and humble and you don't always find those. I mean, sometimes, you know, we all have been with the person who's the smartest person in the room. But we want to see humility that enables them to navigate volatility that's out there. You know, do they make the mission of the organization to care for their team members, their employees, their customers, their shareholders? And you know, and you can, some of those things are qualitative and they're more of a feel and some of them are, you know, written into their mission. And then you're looking for alignment. You know, are they consistent with what they say and what they do? And then the second part is the quality of earnings, Scott. To me, resilient earnings. And I think we're seeing that in this space right now. One of the reasons manufactured housing has been so attractive to private equity and Wall street is because maybe contrary to the common kind of thinking about it, people pay their rent. You know, these are folks who, they own their home, they want to stay in their home, they pay their rent, they make sacrifices to pay their rent. And so the quality of earnings, the resilience there is significant. The other piece of the quality of earnings in this calculation, and we talked about a little bit, is there's no risk. There's, there is zero risk that will there, that there will rapidly be new supply that will impact the value of the investment. So that doesn't exist in everything. If I was investing heavily in AI right now, I mean, who do you bet on? How do I know the AI tool or LLM investing in is going to exist in a year, given the pace of change that's happening in that space?
B
It'd be similar to investing in physician specialists because there's just not enough of them. But you want to be able to build more. But the time to replace and add more physicians were so far beyond the supply demand curve that very challenging. That's right. Talk for a second about. I'm going to ask you two questions both on leadership traits you look for in CEOs and founders that you're investing with. And is your model one where you end up, whoever you buy from, retain some equity with you typically, or not necessarily. How does that look and what leadership traits do you look for in founders and leaders that you work in investing with?
C
Yeah, we generally are making straight out acquisitions. We would entertain some equity or kind of an upright structure on the real estate side, if we were buying from someone who wanted to keep some skin in the game, so to speak. But generally we're buying outright. When we're buying mobile home parks, we also buy RV parks and value add self storage. But we are also investing in other sponsors who are seeking to grow their business. Frankly, deal flow is one of the biggest challenges. And so we can expand our ability to see more quality deals by looking at other people, other investors, other sponsors and operators who might benefit from our capital and from our expertise. And so when we're looking at those, I mentioned humility, that's number one. Absolutely. An awareness that they need others, that they surround themselves with people smarter than they are. Number two is diligence. And by that I mean it's both work ethic, but it's also effort. We want to see those combined humility and diligence with creativity. In my mind, I don't want to be part of an organization where anyone is ever allowed to say an answer to a question because that's the way we've always done it that just should never be uttered. We want to challenge status quo. And because a lot of our investing has been in real estate or adjacent to real estate, you know, frankly it's, it's kind of a slow moving business. And there's a lot of operators who by all accounts have been successful, but they tend to operate because they've always done it that way. And I like operating in those spaces and investing those spaces because we think we can outmaneuver other people, maybe have been around for a while and there's
B
places to add value there. When people haven't taught me some of the traditional improvements that you folks do to the properties and opportunities, you're looking at 100%.
C
I go back to navigating the Great recession as a home builder. And there were so many home builders again, who, not necessarily the most sophisticated group writ large who just said, well, you know, this is like the last recession, we're just going to wait it out. Well, waiting it out in business is a recipe for death. And you know, I can remember we, we would have regular meetings in the conference room and sit down and say, okay, how are we going to get people to buy homes? How are you going to, you know, what's the problem? The problem's confidence. How do we give them confidence? And you just think through creatively what are actionable ways to drive the business forward in the face of challenge.
B
Fascinating. And just give me a moment on the recreational vehicle business, the park business there and what does that look like today? Just give me a second, if you don't mind.
C
Yeah, so we, we were been investing in mobile home parks for some time and you were looking for similar businesses. And so RV is one of those and I'll clarify or I'll narrow it down a bit. We're not looking for the, you know, RV park that you're driving across I80 and you need a spot 8 o' clock at night and maybe a shower in the morning. We're looking for RV as housing. I say RV is housing, not hotel. And so for much of America, an RV on a lake in the mountains or by the coast is actually their second home. You know, from, from Memorial Day through Labor Day, maybe even beyond, depending on the location, the seasons. They're going to be there almost every weekend. They're going to be hiking the trails, fishing in the streams of the lake, kayaking maybe there's a blob and a pool that the kids are playing on. And so it really is a second home of sorts for many, many people across the country. And they're paying their rent for the year between November and February. So it's cash flow positive when you think about the float there on the cash flow. And, and there's an ability to differentiate yourself through operations, through management, through property amenities. And then the last thing I'll add on the RV is like mobile home parks. They're very positive depreciation characteristics that are beneficial from a tax perspective. When we think about the income that you're able to get from the cash flow and then what your taxable income ends up being after depreciation.
B
Right. So you're able to do a decent amount of depreciation on it to shelter income, taxable income for some significant period of time. Take a second on where you're seeing the most compelling or most interesting opportunities right now. Industries, themes, what types of, of models, you know, RVs manufacture, home. But, but I love what you said about RVs. You're talking home, not hotel. You're not talking the in n out place like the Yogi Bear places. You're talking the place where people really, this is really, they're keeping their camper there, their RV there for either all year often or.
C
That's right.
B
Throughout the season.
C
That's right, yeah. So we think there's opportunity still in the small markets with both real estate, but businesses also. You know, we see, you know, PNC insurance providers and property and casualty insurance providers who are not quite large enough to attract the big private equity groups that are buying these up. We think there's an opportunity to invest preferred equity or debt in those businesses as they're beginning to move toward an exit strategy. We see that happening in the wealth management space, although we're not investing in that right now. But I think the other category, Scott, is because we always have our eyes open and face our own management problems head on. We see where we have vendor challenges and we always go like, oh, is that a business we want to be in? Let me give you a good one. Maybe. You probably know the move of baby boomers out of business is going to really impact businesses that can't just be done away with by AI. And so in our business, manufactured housing, RV parks, water and sewer are really essential utilities. I mean, it kind of goes without saying, right? But many times you have water that's serviced by a well, or you have private water lines and public water, or you've got a wastewater treatment plant that deals with the sewer. The number of professionals that are equipped and licensed to manage those facilities is shrinking as people retire. And just as you said, you know, we're not backfilling them, just like we're not backfilling physicians. And so there is an opportunity there to support our own investments, but also have an additional investment in, let's call it a utility based business.
B
Fascinating. So you see a ton of that where there's just a need. And because you're so close to your own business, you understand these different things. You're trying to find a vendor or supplier or something and then you're trying to figure out, can we make that work, can we staff that we find the right people.
C
Yeah, when you, when you meet, you know, your septic operator and you meet him out there and you know, he's 72 and he doesn't have a succession plan, know pretty quickly we're going, who's going to be there when this guy's not there? And when you see that over and over, you say, well, you know, maybe there's an opportunity. And what I really like in today's moment is we want businesses that won't be replaced by AI, but they may be augmented and enhanced by AI. So you know, for example, in those spaces like the reporting and the data management and the tracking will all be enhanced and augmented through AI to support what is inevitably, you know, a hands on type business.
B
And so you co invest or invest in a lot of sponsors. Just give us a moment. And what do you see others, other investors that you invest with or raising capital, doing right, doing wrong. What leads you to say we'd like to invest with these people versus investing with those people?
C
Yeah, I mentioned how important humility was earlier. So the lack of humility is a big red flag. I mean, I don't know, I think some of it's Human nature. And some of it's just kind of the moment we're in where we've had the longest expansion in economic growth really in history without a recession. Now I'm going to exclude Covid from that because of the quick bounce back and what we saw there. But you know, there's people, it's just shocking to me that the number of alcohol young people who have raised tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars and they don't know the first thing about navigating a downturn. And it scares me, frankly, for the investors, because investors I'll just call retail investors have never had more opportunity to invest in non traditional alternative style investments. But they also have never, you know, the, I would say the waterfront of potential sponsors with whom they could invest. It makes me more nervous than it's ever made me. And we have people who are, you know, you don't know are they, have they done well because they're good or because they're lucky or they have no track record, but everybody got excited and they were able to raise a bunch of money. So that all factors into the lack of humility. I think having your financial house in order, you know, if you don't have a cfo, you don't know what your numbers are, you can't provide regular reporting. You know, that's just, that's a massive red flag for us, no matter how good the potential opportunity. And then I think lastly, you know, we're really looking for someone who knows who they are and what they want to do. So if they have an absence of clear focus, that's a red flag for us. It doesn't mean they have to do the same thing, but they have to understand if they're going to do a new thing, why are they going to do it? I mean, for us, we've got a niche which is unlocking potential in undervalued assets, not undervalued real estate assets, although we do a lot of that. But we are looking at asset based businesses that are undervalued, where we can step in, add value and unlock potential. And so that gives us, I think, a nice size waterfront with which to invest.
B
No, but it's fascinating. A couple of things that you mentioned there resonate so well. I mean, for example, you have people that have done well in one kind of business now raising a fund or thinking they have special insight and sort of as an investor in some of those funds, it's very cautious, scary thing to do because they're not really experienced investors in their own Right. Versus operators in a sector and very different things. And, you know, love what you said about humility and also about a generation of investors who have not seen the same downturns that some of us have seen and trying to figure out risk and how much leverage to do with different things. So that you have some, you know, some, some, some anti fragility in that as well.
C
Yeah, I love that, you know, that word, you know, it says something a lot about somebody when they talk about being antifragile. And you know, I've read Taleb's books and that's, that's what we want to strive for. It's certainly hard, but being antifragile, we want to get stronger in the face of challenge.
B
Yeah, no, it's fascinating. I'm old enough to have invested through the dot com era and thought I was getting rich really quickly and then saw it go in the wrong direction really quickly. So you learn a lot of lessons as a younger investor and then you see him plan over the course of times and then you've seen such a inflated national debt and so forth that has held off lots of different problems and we'll see how it all continues to play out. It's fascinating to watch, but. No, it's fascinating. So one more question, Ethan. I mean, what are you most focused on and excited about for the rest of this year and going into next year?
C
Well, I'm very focused and excited about what we're doing for our investors right now in our second fund. It's a manufactured housing focused fund. We're actually going to have a transaction in the next 60 days where 30 months in, we're going to give folks a massive IRR and a nice return on their equity. We really plan to own these for the long term, but we got kind of an offer we couldn't refuse. And so we're raising our third fund right now. And that's really our focus through the end of the year, is both raising that capital and deploying it in a way that will allow us to continue to meet and hopefully continue to exceed our investors expectations. We're pretty aligned, Scott. I don't know how much was shared with you, but I started this business as the sole investor, I should say my wife and I as the sole investors. And when we thought we had proven that we could do it for ourselves, then we let some friends and family invest and then we proved that we could do it for them. And then we've kind of expanded that. And so it's been, I would say it's been a slow burn in a very positive way. We hope, you know, that our focus and emphasis on building for the long term will allow us to withstand whatever comes over the next year. Well to 60 months.
B
It's phenomenal. I'm going to ask you another question now that you mentioned that 30 months and exiting on a deal with the IRR being where you want it to be and so forth, how difficult a decision is that as an investor you're also the steward of other people's funds to take the safe bet, meaning to exit? Well, it's going great, particularly when you're a steward of other people's funds than sort of riding the bet. How do you think about that a little bit?
C
Well, I think it's extremely difficult. And you know, from a financial perspective, we look in this case, we look at the liquidity options we had. One was a refinance. All right, we could refinance these properties and pull out some equity and return that to investors. One was obviously a sale. And we look at like how much equity is being left in the deal and what can we earn that equity if we refinance versus the sale we could get. And when those yields are too low, and I'll define too low as, you know, kind of a Treasury type yield, then we think we owe it to our investors to sell. Now, you know, in our case, while I'm the largest investor, you know, we have a number of other large investors, some seven figure investors. I called them and I laid out for them how I was thinking about this, the opportunity that we had, and I asked them for their opinion and you know, they were very happy and some of them were shocked. They said, you know what? No one ever calls me. This is clearly it's your decision to make. You can make whatever you want. But thanks for calling. And I will say that I got some real wisdom out of those interactions. Things about election cycles and the ability to redeploy capital and timing of exit that informed the decision. Ultimately we feel really good about it.
B
It's a fascinating, fascinating discussion. And that point about being able to redeploy capital is really challenging too. Depending on an upwardly mobile or costly market, really fastening decisions and really fastening discussions. But it's really, really good, particularly in one of your first funds to get wins on the board and have your investors happy and you and your wife in good shape too, on it. So congratulations, Nathan. What a pleasure to visit with you. I want to thank you for joining us on the Becker business and the Becker private equity podcast. A tremendous pleasure to visit with you. Fascinating what you're doing and congratulations.
C
Thank you, Scott. It's a really great conversation, super engaging, and to be able to range from, you know, the Jordan Bulls to mobile home parks is something I don't get to do every day.
B
Thank you so much. It was really a pleasure visiting with you. Nathan. Fantastic.
A
Grainger knows when you're a procurement manager for an office park, you're not managing one building, you're managing all of them. And to stay ahead, you need to see through walls and around corners. Lights about to fail, filters ready to clog, H Vac on its last leg. If you wait until something breaks, you're already behind. Count on Grainger for quality products, easy reordering and 24. 7 support. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.
Date: June 1, 2026
Guest: Nathan Jameson, Founder & Managing Partner, ARX Capital
This episode features an insightful discussion between host Scott Becker and Nathan Jameson, founder and managing partner of ARX Capital, focusing on resilient investment strategies, particularly in manufactured housing (mobile home parks), RV parks, and value-driven real estate. The conversation covers the evolution of real estate investment approaches, leadership principles, the manufactured housing market, and evaluating alternative investment opportunities— all grounded in Jameson's lessons from previous financial cycles and his focus on antifragility.
On Michael Jordan & Greatness
“You try to explain to kids today just how good Michael Jordan was when they didn't have the benefit of seeing him play.”
– Nathan Jameson (01:39)
On Market Realities in Real Estate
“If there's demand for a product, then supply will rise to meet that demand. Well, real estate doesn't quite work that way...”
– Nathan Jameson (10:14)
On Leadership Traits
“I want them to be smart and humble... see humility that enables them to navigate volatility that's out there.”
– Nathan Jameson (17:39–18:18)
On Operational Excellence in Current Markets
“We need to be operationally excellent. And so over the last 10 years, we've built out a team...”
– Nathan Jameson (16:30)
On Creativity in Crisis
“Waiting it out in business is a recipe for death.”
– Nathan Jameson (22:13)
On Antifragility
“Being antifragile, we want to get stronger in the face of challenge.”
– Nathan Jameson (31:08)
On Navigating Exits as a Steward
“I called [investors] and I laid out for them how I was thinking about this, the opportunity....I got some real wisdom out of those interactions.”
– Nathan Jameson (34:34)
This episode offers a comprehensive look at how experience through multiple cycles, humility, and creative problem-solving build resilient investment strategies, especially in overlooked real estate sectors. Nathan Jameson’s journey and ARX Capital’s approach emphasize operational excellence, antifragility, and a principled, long-term focus. The practical parallels to team sports and openness to alternative asset classes make for an engaging listen for investors and operators alike.