What happens when a lawyer realizes the courtroom is the wrong room for him?
Mark Timmins traded litigation for leases, and over the past decade, has built one of the more active commercial brokerage practices in the Des Moines market. In this episode, he joins his brother Neil to talk through the winding path from the University of Iowa to Ave Maria Law School in Naples, Florida, and eventually to a desk at Cushman & Wakefield Iowa Commercial Advisors.
Mark reflects on his first year in commercial real estate, six deals and roughly fifteen thousand dollars in commissions, and what that grind taught him about relationships, patience, and not chasing quick money. He shares how a book recommendation from Neil opened his eyes to commercial investing, why he and partner Jordan Balaslog have worked exclusively together for nearly nine years, and how the team reads market cycles well enough to buy strip centers in 2020 and sell most of them two years later at cap rates that produced fifty percent returns for clients.
The conversation also covers how Mark and his team stumbled into mobile home parks through a referral to Joanne Stevens and why that niche has become a major focus. He details the current listing of Summit and Grandview, two parks owned by the Haymes family in the Cedar Rapids market, totaling 936 sites, roughly 904 occupied, and listed at $110 million. Nine days after hitting the market, the team had 36 NDAs signed and two offers in hand.
🧠Mark Timmins' Top 5 Takeaways:
- How reading the market in 2020 led to buying retail strip centers at mid-eight caps and selling most of them two years later at significant gains for clients.
- Why chasing relationships instead of commissions is the only sustainable strategy in commercial brokerage.
- How a referral to mobile home park expert Joanne Stevens opened an entirely new and active niche for the team.
- Why uninformed sellers in the mobile home park space frequently undervalue their assets, sometimes by as much as 300%, and why proper representation matters.
- How the Haymes family's fully integrated manufactured-housing business, covering home sales, remodeling, insurance, safety, and financing, represents the gold standard for park ownership in Iowa.
👤 About Mark Timmins:
Mark Timmins is a commercial real estate broker at Cushman & Wakefield Iowa Commercial Advisors in Des Moines, where he focuses on investment property sales and mobile home park transactions. A University of Iowa graduate and licensed attorney, Mark practiced general litigation before pivoting into commercial real estate in 2016. He has built a long-running brokerage partnership with Jordan Bouslog and, alongside mobile home park legend Joanne Stevens, has become an active voice in Iowa's manufactured housing and homeownership market.
Contact Info:
LinkedIn: Mark Timmins
Website: Iowa Commercial Advisors
Learn More: www.littleguyloans.com/learnmorepod