Placer County man a prodigy in business from a young age
Caleb Landon, son of Placer County Supervisor Shanti Landon, is making a name for himself in passive mobile home park investing through his own business, Landon Capital Group.
Before starting his business, Landon showed academic promise by being accepted into Jessup University at 11 years old. Until attending high school at Forest Lake Christian High School, Landon was home schooled.
“My dad’s a math teacher, and every year when I was home schooled, he did two years of math in one year,” Landon said. “So by the time I was in middle school, I had completed all my high school units and everything.”
After completing all of his middle and high school math credits, his mom, who was friends with Jessup University President John Jackson, inquired if Landon could take math classes at Jessup. When he did, it was then Landon was officially accepted at Jessup.
“I was 11 when I got into the math program there, and then I finished my math credits when I was like 12,” Landon said.
Landon graduated from high school in 2020. He expressed interest in continuing to take other classes at Jessup, to which Jackson obliged. Landon began taking business courses at the age of 12.
“I kind of jumpstarted my business stuff because I was taking business-specific courses. I kind of always navigated that area,” he said. Landon actually got to a point where he felt his business courses were “not really challenging me enough.”
Landon is currently a senior at Jessup and will graduate next fall at 20 years old. He was inspired to start Landon Capital Group at 19, in part because of the high rent prices.
“We mostly buy mobile home parks and affordable housing, so we buy portable housing,” Landon said. “I mean, it’s pretty insane what they’re charging. Even here over the summer, the apartments here are $2,300 a month for a two-bedroom apartment.”
Landon Capital Group has Canyon Mobile Home Park in Texas and Lore Mobile Home Park in Iowa. Rent prices start at $385 per lot, which is about half the price of rent for an apartment. According to Landon, both parks are the cheapest places to live in their cities.
“I know what I do differently than a lot of the operators is a lot of these operators, they’re pushing how much they can raise rents, and like it’s just not a good thing to be like that,” he said. “So what I do is I never raise in the market. I never raised rents as much as these guys do, and they’re still astronomically low.”
The process Landon takes to start these mobile home parks is to first get investors. After buying the mobile home parks, they go the extra mile and fix up the roads, even. At the Canyon Mobile Home Park, they redid the gravel road, and at the Lore Mobile Home Park in Iowa, they completely repaved the street.
“I think the main point of capitalism is to invest back in your community. I think that’s just a fact,” Landon said. “I always want to make sure we’re invested in the community. We’re giving back to these tenants.”
Landon recalled that after taking over one of the mobile home parks, tenants described how the previous landlord was “treating them terribly.” So, Landon said they gave the tenants gift cards to show them they wanted to “turn things around,” Landon said.
Landon recently landed a multimillion-dollar deal in Iowa, one he said he almost didn’t get.
“I almost got screwed over like twice. The seller lied to me. I almost lost everything,” he said. “And, it takes a lot of money to basically do it all. So I saved up. At 16, I worked, basically full time and put every single dollar away, and I used everything to start the business.”
There were times Landon said he was so devoted he worked 48 hours straight.
“I didn’t eat, I didn’t, like, leave my room. I woke up and I worked for 48 hours straight to get stuff done, so it was not easy,” he said. “But, things are cooling down now. … It’s a huge barrier to entry to get into the business. Unless you know what you’re doing, there’s no way you can make it.”