EP 40: Secret Behind Zach Haptonstall's $2.2B Real Estate Journey In 5 Years

As a passive investor, you don't have to worry about any of that. You know, you're basically investing with a sponsor or an operator who is doing everything from A to Z, from sourcing the deal to acquiring it, to operating it and then selling it.

Are you frustrated watching your hard earned money ride the knee jerking Wall street roller coaster? Are you looking to diversify into alternate investments and set them on autopilot to achieve financial freedom? It's time to learn the ways of the wealthy. It's time to Think Outside the Stocks with your host, Madhvi J. An immigrant from India and ex IT professional who will bring you industry experts to illustrate a passive and holistic financial approach to build not just passive income, but also your generational wealth. Madhvi is on a mission to change the financial trajectory of one family at a time. And a thousand more to go. Are you going to be part of this vision? And now, without further ado, here is the host of Think Outside the Stocks, Madhvi Jain.

Before we go ahead, just a little bit, 2 cents from my lawyer that this is information and education purpose only. If you want to engage with any of our guests, including Shauna, please do your own due diligence. And I am not particularly a financial, legal or tax advisor or investment advisor. So please seek your own team and maybe Tashana would be one of that team members. Right. And also we, you know, we'll have some examples for educational information purpose only. So keep that in mind. These are point in time. These are not representative of any real information. Hey, hey, hey. Welcome back to Think Outside the Stocks with your host, Madhvi Jain. And we have an interesting question to be answered today with an interesting guest. Zach Hofenstahl is here from Rise 48. Welcome, Zach, to Think Outside the Stocks. I'm very excited about this.

Yeah, thanks so much, Mami. Really excited to be here. Thanks for having us on. Looking forward to it.

Thank you so much. And the important question that we're going to answer is I get asked quite often that, hey, Madhavi, I'm in Austin, right. Do you have any deals in Austin that we can invest in? And I often tell them, well, if you are looking to invest city around you in a multifamily syndication is probably not the right thing for you because there are so many things that go behind that question. Right. And with Zach and his expertise, we are going to answer that question and in a very, very detailed manner. So tune into it before we go ahead. Of course, Zach has a tremendous expertise and this is the Reason why he's here because they come with tremendous experience. Rise 48 in last five years has built a tremendous portfolio. And Zach, amazing, amazing. Congratulations for this success. It's 2.2 billion in transaction, 53 deals, 53 deals that you have closed and 11 deals are full cycle as well. And with that, 10,000 plus units and $1.8 billion current portfolio. This is the expertise Zach is bringing to answer that one simple question for you today. So Zach, again, congratulations on this feed. This is quite a bit in this five year span.

No thanks. So thanks so much, mami. We were fortunate to kind of, you know, ride the momentum and keep it growing and send me the invoice. I'll make sure I pay you well for calling me an expert.

Thank you.

But thanks so much.

I love that, love that modesty, Zach. I think, you know, Trul, we love what you do. You know, we spoke to Bikran some time back and we love what you do. And again, you know, when it comes to syndication, multifamily, you got to really have a thick skin. And we will talk about that. Why so. But before you go ahead, it's a drill, you know that I like to talk about. Three fun facts about my guests and the three fun facts about Zach here is that you can see this massive real estate portfolio. But before that Zach was actually in, was a sports journalist. He was a TV live TV anchor in, in Fox Sports. Right. So that's, that's one fun fact. The second fun fact after that I think it's kind of a serial entrepreneur bugs Zach. He was actually into healthcare which is again completely different tangent and specifically host buys. So that's, that's an interesting background Zach as well. And the third fun fact, and this Zach is my most fun favorite fact about you is that you are a new dad. Welcome to the group of parenting. This is incredible.

Yeah, we've got a little three month year old baby boy. So we're super excited about that. So it's been really fun.

Oh, that's amazing. You know, I know it could be sleepless night, but there's just so much love. It just, I think being a parent just teaches you how to just love. You know, you kind of think that you know how to love, but this is that unconditional love. So how is the new parenting treating you?

It's been great. It's been great. Sure. I'm spending time with little Mav in the morning and at night and so my wife has been great. You know, she's full time, you know Stay at home taking care of him. So I think we've got our roles, you know, well, well designated here and we're able to spend a lot of quality time. So it's been a ton of fun. But it's going by fast. Like when we first had him, everybody was like, hey, it's going to go by so fast. And we're like, yeah, yeah, I know. Everybody's told me that, but now I get it because they're only a baby for so long, right. And when you have your first one, you figure out he'll be a baby a while and I'll have more. But we are trying to really, you know, enjoy the time because it's like you blink and it's three months now and he's already changing. So it's pretty cool.

Oh, well, I spot on, Zach. You know, I blinked and my daughter is about to be graduate. I mean, she's a senior in UD Austin here. So that's just a blink. That's how quickly it happens, flies by.

So yeah, we.

So hold on, hold on to that time. It's. It's so precious, right?

Yeah.

So with that, let's jump into our today's questions. It's city around me, a right market for me to invest. Right. And you know, Zach, we are talking to passive investors. These are, you know, probably W2 professionals, tech professionals, consulting doctors, engineers. And you know, when they often come back to me and say that, Matthew, do you have any investments coming up here in Austin or whatever that market that they are in into. Right. The city around you or in New Jersey or something? And I quite try, I may quite often try to answer that, that, you know, we are looking for emerging market. We are looking for something more than that. Right. So single family home. It's very simple. You look around, you know what that house price is, what that rent is going to be and what is that that you need to look for to get that income and property taxes and insurance. So simple, right? So you don't have to look at too many data and parameters. And that's why, you know, this industry in commercial real estate is more of professionals and a high, high expertise is needed. Talk about, you know, why they should think about little bit bigger terms than just city around them. What is important when you look at, you know, this 53 deals. Wow, that's amazing. What is it that goes behind getting to those 53 deals?

Yeah, it's a great point, Maud, because I think, you know, when you're thinking of just, you know, investing yourself, you Want to buy a single family home. You're probably thinking, I'm going to manage this home myself. It needs to be close to me so that I can go visit it. And regardless of where you live, you might think that that is a good strategy, right? You need to buy a house in your market. But to your point, you know, you really want to look at different fundamentals. So we're looking at, you know, multifamily apartments, large apartment buildings, at least 100, you know, to 300 plus units. We're looking at a few major fundamentals. And so, you know, one of the first ones, Madvi, is job growth. We want to be in large markets. And again, this is, this is our criteria at rise 48. So this is what has been successful for us. And I think a lot of investors, so I mean, you know, everybody can have their own perspective there. But you want to have job growth, you want to have large companies and several companies that are moving to that market and providing jobs. Because basically for these investments to perform well, you need people to rent your apartment and they need to have money, they need to have a job and so that they can get, they go to work, they get paid, they pay the rent and that rent goes through to you as an investor, as cash flow. And you want to have diversified jobs. We're looking at markets. We don't want the employment base to be too heavily concentrated in any one industry. Okay? So we want diversified employment. So job growth is number one. Population growth, you know, is the second, you know, massive category we look at. We want to make sure there's people moving there, okay. That we're focused on the markets that have, that are leaders in the country for new in migration. There's more people moving there than aren't moving there. Because it comes down to basic supply and demand, right? You want to make sure that there's more people moving, there's. And there's more demand for the housing than they have supply. And so those are two really big ones. You know, a third one for us, Madhavi, is we're focused on landlord friendly markets. And what does that mean? That if the tenant, the resident is not paying their rent, that I can evict them in 30 to 40 days. Okay. And we always want to make sure, and we do make sure that, you know, we are doing right by the resident. We're building a strong community and that's really, really why we've been successful. But at the end of the day, and at Rise 48, we are an investment company, okay? And we have a fiduciary responsibility to our investors to protect and grow their money, okay. And grow the wealth. And so if I have an apartment building and there's a resident or a tenant not paying the rent, I need to get them out of there. I need to be able to evict them. And you hear these horror stories of some of these markets. You know, certain areas in California, Oregon, Washington State, New York, New Jersey, some of these areas where, you know, people can't evict tenants for six months or more. And that is very detrimental to the investment, okay. Because the expenses don't go away. Okay? The expenses are still there, but if I don't have that income, I need to be able to get them out. So that's another big one too. So we focus specifically in Phoenix, Arizona, Dallas, Texas, and Charlotte, North Carolina, because those three markets are leaders in all those categories that we look for.

I love, love that answer, Zach. There are so many factors that go behind it. And you know, what you alluded to just scratching the surface. And you and me know that when we do our due diligence about the market and market selection and not just the cities, but the submarket that the property in is that ton of things that go behind it. But you know, listeners, this is, this is at least the least that you can see in the market, right? And Zach, specifically when you talk about being landlord friendly, right, that's so important. Those California markets have had stories about, you know, paying your tenants about 15 to 20,000 just to vacate that apartment, right? So where is that cost going to be? That burden is going to be on the business if they don't pay the rent, that rent loss, where is that burden going to go? That burden is going to come back on the business and back to the investor. So this factor, I mean, I hope it answers your question that, you know, should I invest in market around me with. Especially if you are New Jersey or, you know, Washington or some, some of these areas, right? That's really important. One small decision can really slide the scale of this business investment for you. So keep that in mind. With that, Zach, I'm going to go on your next question, right. So often again, thinking of passive investors, when they compare single family versus multifamily, they look at everything, all the advantages that the syndication brings in, the expertise that the syndication team like you guys have with, you know, this tremendous portfolio, they also look at that, okay, all the statistical parameters are being measured. This, that, this, that. But when it comes to that final decision, right, that the Emotion that drives that decision versus rational. And that's again, an emotion, right, that I need to invest around my city. So that's number one emotion. But the second emotion is that, hey, when I have single family home, I have control, right? And that control is something that they don't want to let go. Right? So. So let's talk about this control that, you know, as an expert, you know. Yeah, the passive investors. There are hundreds of passive investors in one investment. So one person demanding control, and if the other person, other 99 investors, do not have that experience or expertise, do you want the other person to have that control too? Right. So that's a big question. The question, when it comes down to your expertise, right, you know, why the syndication team are placed in a right way to be that expert, to make that decision, to have that control. Let's start talking about that. That. What does it take to be a syndicator? So let's start with the acquisition, right? When they see, for example, the single family deals on the market, MLS listings, et cetera. Right. Let's talk about sourcing. And as a CEO and you know, the relationship with broker and as well as investors, you play that key role in Rise 48. So tell us, what does it take to have this relationship, get these deals off market and acquisition kind of a process?

Yeah, great question, Mavi. So, like in this space, a lot of people don't realize until you actually get into it. I mean, even, even a lot of passive investors don't realize it. Now that we have probably a ton of investors that don't understand how this works because they're passive. Right. But in this commercial multifamily space, there are literally five to seven real estate brokers, individuals who control 90% of the inventory in all these major markets. Okay. It's not like in Single Family, where there's like in Phenix, hundreds or thousands of real estate agents and anybody can get a license. You know, these brokers, they control the market because they've all been doing it for several years, 10, 20 years, and they have relationships, you know, with, with all the big private equity firms and things like that. So if you want to break into the space from our perspective as an operator, not from a passive investor, but what we do is we had to build these relationships, and it took several years to build these relationships with the brokers, earn their trust and credibility so that we can get off market deals that other people don't see. Okay? So this is not the same as just throwing a single family home on the MLS and anybody can come in. I mean, there are deals that get marketed, right? But there's a lot of deals in the majority deals that we've bought are off market where other people have not seen them. And it's because most of our sellers that we're buying deals from are large institutions or private equity companies, hedge funds, life insurance companies, and they want the highest probability of execution. A lot of them also want privacy. And so what I've done over the years is build relationships with these, these real estate brokers. And so I started in Phoenix and built these relationships with the top handful of brokers and kind of prove that we can execute and do what we say we're going to do and close on these new acquisitions of apartment buildings. And then they start to feed you these off market deals that other people don't see that are really the better deals. And by the way, just because it's off market doesn't mean it's a good deal, okay? But if you can have a lot less competition, it just improves your chances and it's a needle in a haystack. Okay? So we're constantly underwriting deals, meaning that we're evaluating them and it's a 2 to 3% hit rate, meaning that for every hundred deals we look at maybe 2 or 3% percent of them, 2 or 3 of them make sense in our model to buy. And so, you know, we did that in Phoenix and got established. And then, you know, once we had that credibility, we were able to call the guys in Phoenix and say, hey, we're going to Dallas. Can you introduce me to your top colleagues in Dallas? And so they endorsed us and immediately started getting off market deal flow in Dallas. We did the same thing going to North Carolina, okay? We called the Dallas and the Phoenix brokers because in this space these are the same large firms, these are the same large brokerage firms, have a presence in all the major markets. So the same companies, the same guys I was talking to in Phoenix, they referred me to their colleague at the same company in Dallas and North Carolina. And that just allowed us to kind of break in and get really a competitive advantage. And so you hear a lot of people in this space, Madvi, say that it's a quote, unquote, it's an unfair game, okay? It's not, it's not as fair. It's really based on relationships, credibility, track record, can you perform? And if you can, you're going to see a lot of opportunities that most people don't see. And so as a passive investor you don't have to worry about any of that. You know, you're basically investing with a sponsor or an operator who is doing everything from A to Z, from sourcing the deal to acquiring it to operating it and then selling it. I'm sure we'll get into some of that, Madhavi. But that's kind of what the acquisitions front looks like.

I love that, Zach. And it's so important. You know, passive investors, they're kind of multiple, multiple layer removed from this, you know, building the relationship portion that you just mentioned about. Right. This is not just, you know, pick your call and create that relationship and talk for half an hour kind of relationship or pick that investment from, you know, listing from, you know, Internet. This is much more beyond that. And this is not just, you know, even taking them out for dinner or something. This is actually genuinely being interested in these people. And that's where you're really. It's not just a business, it's a personal relationship that you're building. And that's why they are referring to their colleagues. And there's, you know, certain protocol in this industry that you need to maintain and you need to follow. Otherwise, you know, once you get red flag, you are kind of red flag. So, you know, as passive investors, you're thinking that, hey, I love the multifamily, how difficult it could be purchase a bigger property, you know, five to 50 units and, you know, put a maintenance crew person there, put an operational person there, and, you know, they're just going to manage it for you. No, it's not. You know, this is acquisition cycles just mentioned. It's so difficult to even find the right deal. You know, if it is not the right deal and you find that you acquire that, you are going to inherit ton of problems with that. Right. So let's talk a little further, more into acquisitions, Zach. And again, this is your expertise. Let's talk about the markets. There are a ton of cities. Really. I mean, there are a ton of cities across us. Why these three cities? I mean, you kind of indicated a little bit about the criteria while going into it. So let's take a look, you know, city by city, and dissect it. Right. When it comes to. Let's start with your first market. Why did you go into that particular market? And, you know, what are the advantage and disadvantage and what do you still continue to be interested? That. And we'll go to Dallas and then we'll go to Charlotte after that.

Sure. Yeah. Great question, Madhvi. So, yeah, I started this in the beginning of 2018. And I know in the beginning, we said, hey, you don't always necessarily want to start investing in your home market. Well, I was lucky and fortunate, Madvi, that Phoenix was a very strong multifamily market. And that's where I was born and raised, right? So for me, I had the benefit of it being one of the top multifamily markets in the country for what we do. And I knew the area, right? And I was local. And so that just made perfect sense, you know, for me to start in Phoenix. And again, it was top five for job growth, population growth, rental growth, diversified employment, things like that. And so that's really, really where we built the infrastructure and started the company. From the investment side, we started the property management company, became vertically integrated. So we manage everything in house. We started the construction company, and we bought our first 40 properties in Phoenix. And we have a lot of. We have thousands of investors. Okay. A lot of them are repeat investors. And for a couple years, we had investors saying, hey, we like what you guys are doing. We like the business plan, but I've invested in, like, 10 deals with you in Phoenix. I want to be diversified into different markets. And we were telling them, hey, we understand, but we are trying to make sure that we build out our supply chain, our operations, all of our systems and processes so that we can confidently replicate it in another market. And once we. Once we can do that, then we'll expand. And so near the end of 2022, we felt good about that. And that's when we went to Dallas and we replicated that same model. So that's kind of why we started in Phoenix. And we still love Phoenix. You know, we have not bought a deal in Phoenix in over a year. And that's because there's hardly any deal flow. There's just not a lot of inventory. Not a lot of people are selling right now. We haven't sold a deal since July of 2022. It's been two years now. So we sold five deals in the first half of 2022. They were all home runs for investors. That interest rates started to skyrocket. Value started going down. And we told investors we're not going to sell these deals and give buyers a discount because of interest rates, you know, so the last couple of years has been a great time to buy new deals, but it's not a great time to sell deals because you're not getting very good value. So in Phoenix, you know, there just hasn't been a lot of distress, and there hasn't been a lot of opportunities to buy. So we are still looking. I mean, we're still getting deals sent to us every week from brokers underwriting them. We just haven't been able to find anything.

Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. So let's talk about, you know, Dallas market a little bit. Of course, Phoenix has its own challenges and we will talk a little bit about those challenges and how you're managing it in a bit. But let's talk about Dallas market. Why did you select the Dallas market? And as you can see that, you know, even I quite frequently do see a lot of deals in Dallas. Right. Dallas just feels like this whole big gigantic city which is just taking all these different type of, you know, properties and investments and people are just flooding there. Why? So why, what's so peculiar about Dallas?

Yeah, and so we looked at every major market, Mavi, in the country and now Dallas just checked all the boxes. And, and by the way, I mean, our, our personal preference is we don't like any other Texas market, really. Like, we don't really like Houston, San Antonio or Austin for different reasons. You know, sorry, not. Nothing personal, Mavi.

I mean, I know.

Yeah.

No, I actually discourage my investors too. So, you know, I'm just kidding.

But yeah, Dallas, Fort Worth, I mean, a lot of the same reasons, Mavi. We like, we like the job growth. I mean, they call it the headquarters of headquarters. You, all these major, you know, national companies have their headquarters there, population growth. So Dallas Fort Worth, like you said, is just a beast. It's a machine of people, jobs, really strong economy, and it's really good for multifamily. And there's a lot of 1980s vintage apartment buildings product that we like to focus on. There's a lot of inventory there where it makes sense. And so, and it wasn't too far, you know, it's like a two hour flight from Phoenix. And so for our first market expansion, we said, hey, this makes a lot of sense because we have the same supply chain here with, with all of our materials, the same cost, the same process, and we can just execute the exact same plan here. So it was a great first market to expand into. And it really just allowed us to replicate what we were already doing.

I love that, love that. And now, congratulations, you added a city. I think you have closed three deals in this new city and that's your new city, which is Charlotte. So let's talk about, you know, your move from Phoenix to, from, you know, Dallas to now expanding into Charlotte.

Yeah. So we moved to Dallas near the end of 2022. And that gave us kind of a blueprint for how to open up a new market, Madhvi, because we learned what it takes for, like, office staffing, local operational staff. What can we keep at the corporate level in Phoenix, and what do we need in that local market? And we talked about the supply chain, and so we were looking for a third market. Okay. So we started to grow in Dallas. You know, we bought almost 3,000 units there, and we still love Dallas and Phoenix. Well, I told you we couldn't. We can't really find deals in Phoenix right now. And we had a lot of investors saying, hey, I've invested in a bunch of these Dallas deals. You know, we want diversification. And so, you know, we had always wanted to go to the Carolinas because we knew it was a strong market. And we were looking at the data. We looked at every single market in the country again, okay, so we looked at Atlanta. We looked at all of the Florida markets. You know, we were looking at, you know, Vegas, all these different markets. And it really came down to Tampa and Charlotte. And we chose Charlotte because Tampa just has really high insurance costs. It makes the economics hard to make sense. And. And I think we will expand there in the future, you know, when things settle down with insurance, and we can figure that out. But we were surprised, Mavi, that North Carolina, at the time of this recording, was number three in the country for new population growth. Number one was Texas, number two is Florida, and number three is North Carolina. And so we looked at Charlotte. It had really strong median income, you know, really affordable rents. And when I say Charlotte. We like Charlotte. We also like what's called the Research Triangle, which is, like Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill area, about two miles. Sorry, two hours east of Charlotte, two and a half hours east. So we're looking in those two major metros. And I always tell people, too, Monvi, is that part of our philosophy is that we want to be in the heart of major markets. Okay? We don't. We don't want to be in some small tertiary market. And some people like to do that, and that's fine. Okay? This is just our. This is our strategy. I don't want to be in a smaller market. I want to. I'd rather be in the heart of a large city. I'll pay a little bit higher price per door, a lower cap rate, knowing that there's really strong infrastructure of jobs, population growth. So I feel more insulated during an economic downturn. And then when you have those. Those strong Economic times, you can, you can experience that explosive growth. And so, you know, Charlotte and the Research Triangle of North Carolina really checked all those boxes. And again, that's only a two hour flight from Dallas. And so we opened up an office in Charlotte here in 2024. We actually had a few local Phoenix staff that voluntarily wanted to relocate to Charlotte. Some of them already had family there, some of them wanted to move there. So we had trusted people that already been with us from like an HR role, an operations role, a construction role, and our supplier has local warehouses there. So again, it's basically just rinse and repeat that same business plan now in a third market. So we've got diversification for our investors. The West Coast, Arizona Central and Dallas and east coast in North Carolina.

Love that, love that. And you know, that's very important. You know, Ken, as passive investors, look at how many different factors that go in when it comes to Charlotte, when it comes to Dallas, when it comes to Phoenix. That diversification of employers that Zach is talking about, that's really, really important. And just having this prime market, these top cities, that being worked on is not only important when you're moving in, but it's also important when you're moving out. When you want to exit these properties, you want buyers to bid for these properties, you want buyers to be lined up. So that's an important aspect. So thanks for throwing that light on it. The next part I would love to talk about from the, the investor perspective is that, you know, somebody who's thinking that, okay, I'm just going to get my friends together and five of us, we're going to divide responsibilities and we're going to. One is going to take care of acquisition, one is going to take care of, you know, this underwriting, one is going to take care of the operations. Let's talk about the operations. It's not as easy at any as we see, right? It's not just put a maintenance person there, put a property management there. We all have been in an apartments, we all see that they're managing it. But there's so many things that under the carpet, right? The problems are, you know, sustaining this employers or just the staff members even from their turnaround or managing the problems or anything. So let's talk about, you know, the operations and this is actually a right time to talk about your vertical integration too. Did you start vertically integrated and what are these problems that you face? And why did you started thinking about your own property management?

Yeah, great, great question, Mavi. I mean, we were, we were we were those people. You know, I was listening to the podcast and I thought, okay, I'm gonna go buy an apartment deal. I'm gonna slap a third party management company on there and I'm gonna sit back and collect the cash and they'll do everything. That's what we did on the first handful of deals. And the very first deal, a couple months into it, we immediately started having issues. Okay. And I'm not saying that you can't use third party management or groups that do it aren't doing it the right way. Everybody has a different experience. But we used multiple. We used three different property management companies. And what we found is that they were not staying on schedule or on budget for the renovations. You know, there were issues with staffing where we didn't have full control. So we never planned to start a property management company. We got into it, we did it out of necessity because we realized, hey, if I'm going to take investor capital, I owe it to them to do the very best that I can do. And they're not going to care if I make up an excuse and say, oh, the property manager company didn't do a good job. That's why I didn't execute on this, this business plan. And so we started our own company, our own property manager company so that we could have full control. So that. And there's a couple different reasons. I mean, one is if that somebody's not performing, I need to fire them, then I need to do that. When you have a third party management company, we had people that weren't performing and they would not get rid of them, you know, and ultimately, you know, we don't have control over that employee, that staff. And so we couldn't do anything about it. Which is crazy when you think about, you know, the fact that you are the one owning the asset. And so, you know, we needed that control. And after Covid, you know, it was very competitive for labor across the country, you know, across multiple industries. But a lot of people didn't want to work. They're getting stimulus checks. And so it started to make wages go up because the good people didn't want to make more money. And so what we did is we started our own company and we gave very competitive compensation and healthcare benefits, the most competitive in the industry that we're aware of, to not only recruit the best people, but to retain the best people. Okay, so we're covering 100% of all of our employees. Medical, dental, vision, 50% of their dependents. We have a 401k program. We match 3%. This allowed us to poach the best talent from other companies and find people who are, you know, incentivized and they're elite at what they do. So we then in turn get better performance at the asset level. And so yeah, I mean that was, you know, we really started out of necessity and we said, okay, this is the way to go. This is how we can build a true, a truly, you know, built out private equity firm for the long haul. We started a construction management company. We started to buy all of our materials directly, wholesale, so that we had full control over our supply chain. We can control our cost. We wouldn't be vulnerable to macro supply chain issues. And so, you know, those three verticals made a huge difference for us to be able to execute these business plans and operate the way we were supposed to.

Thank you for sharing that, Zach. I did not know that you offer so many benefits. It's almost like a corporate level, right? And you're right, it's the vision is like, you know, the private equity firm, it's not just, you know, one or two syndications that you want to do and you know, somebody who wants to get into syndications and just do it as a part time job and you know, build the passive kind of income if you're not into this hundred percent. Let's just look at these challenges that Jack just talked about during COVID time. You know, if when you have such a turnaround, you know, ratio for your staff and you know, say your property management leaves, what are you going to do? Are you going to go and start doing that property management yourself there? So having this, you know, bigger infrastructure and to even start with the vision and it's really important to have that scalability, right? So it's like, I mean you can't just have a property management company vertically integrated. The three kind of pillars that you have, when you have two properties or three properties, where is that scalability really makes sense? In how many properties really?

Yeah, no, it's a good question, Maivi. It's hard to just start out with it because it doesn't make sense economically. And so, you know, we did it right around 2,000 units. Okay. And we were, we were kind of planning it out and around 2000 units it started to make sense. And you know, we, it took us about 10 months for that company to break even. So we spent about 800k that we invested into it. You know, with salaries, all the different stuff that you and I tell people that are in the space, you know, A lot of syndicators that use third party PM companies, you know, they, they think they're running a company. And I tell people, and I'm not trying to sound arrogant, but when I tell people you haven't started a real company until you started a property management company because then you get everything that comes with having an actual organization like all the HR and, and a lot of staff and you know, payroll and you know, all the issues that come with it and all the challenges. And so it is building a real organization when you start to do that. And so, so yeah, I mean that, that's kind of how we did it. I think around 2000 units starts to make sense because when you're smaller, you know, a lot of groups you do have to start out with third party because you just don't have the capital or the revenue to support that.

Yeah, you kind of have to invest into business to make more money. Right. It's incredible.

You're investing in a new business. That's right.

Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That's, that's incredible. And it comes, I mean PM is, is a lot of headache and it comes with a lot of headache. I'm sure you have your systems and processes that you're speaking of and you know, training, because this is, this is a very customer focused role. They said these are the people who are actually representing, representating your brand in a true sense. Sitting that at the department. Right. So incredible. Thanks for sharing that.

That's a good point. Mavi, real quick is we have in house recruiting and in house training staff. So you do, that's critical. I mean you want to be, make sure you're finding the right people and vetting them according to your standards. And then when they start, they need to feel supported, they need to be trained on the property management software. And then we do ongoing training. The last couple days we hired a well renowned sales trainer and he's been in our office the last two days and he, he did sales training on all of our leasing agents and all of our on site managers and assistant managers to help them learn how to close the sale, you know, close the lease. And so these are the things that we do that are different. And most of these third party property management companies, I tell people, madvi, property management is a crappy business model. Okay. It's very low profit margin. And so when, when that is your business model, if you're a third party management company that is your, your, your focus, then you have to cut costs in order to make your business profitable. For us, we're not trying to make money off the property management company. Okay. We make money off of our investment company by getting good results for investors. That's our high profit margin business. The management company is profitable for us, but we just need to break even. So we're spending a lot more money into infrastructure, into our staff, you know, different perks, bonuses, things like that to get better results. And when you have third party, you have to just understand the way that their business is structured. They're not going to do all that extra stuff. So that, that's kind of the difference that we've seen too.

Thanks, thanks for sharing that distinction. That's really important. Right. Because your main model is that investment. Right. So you know, I'm just looking at it at kind of an eagle's eye perspective, Zach. And I'm looking at this, you know, you focus on investors and their well being and what, what's right for them. You're looking at your staff. That's another people portion. Let's start talk about the third people portion which is the driver for everything that drives. And that's the people, people who are staying there, that tenants that are there. Right. And a lot of times multifamily syndicators get a bad rep saying that hey, they're just coming in, they're just pushing the rents and you know, they're just misusing that ability. Right. But, but there is so much more to it. Right. And I know that and I have visited personally your properties after you kind of have acquired them. Right. You have first thing that you start implementing is making sure that the facilities, when it comes to that clubhouse room or something, that you start renovating that. And I was talking to one of your staff member that why is so. And there's like, oh, they're just so good at or you know, it's important for them to run this resident events and programs. Right. So let's talk about those residents there that. What is it that Rise 48 brings us a distinction for residents. How do they make this place a better place to be?

Yep. No, great question, Mavi. And yeah, so you're exactly right. I mean every business has a customer, right? Or a client. And an investment company like this, we have two types of clients. We have our investors obviously as our customer and we have our residents, you know, for our, for our assets. And so we want to make sure the residents have a good experience because in this day and age, I mean it's the right thing to do obviously and word spreads. But in this day and age, with Internet, social media, your reviews and reputation are everything, right? And so we want to make sure that these residents are having a good experience. So we invest a lot of money at the property management level into community events, you know, holiday events, you know, different things like that, Raffling off gift cards. We just finished our Rise supplies event, where basically, you know, we spend thousands of dollars at the corporate level in order to provide school supplies for all of our residents at every single asset. Okay? So we basically give them, you know, backpacks, all of their, you know, pencils, pens, all their supplies, things like that. And that goes a long way. We've been doing that for three years now where we do the Rise supplies event. And so I'm actually going to one of the properties next week, and we're still doing it. We just finished it in Dallas, and we're doing it in. In Phoenix because school is about to come back in session. And so, you know, residents appreciate that. And we do, like, you know, we have food there, we have ice cream, face painting, you know, for the kids, things like that. So those are the big, important things, obviously, is you want to build a sense of community. And we. We brand all of our properties Rise something. Right? You know, rise or whatever it's called. And so you start to generate a reputation within that community. And we've had residents that have literally said, hey, I got to move from West Phoenix to East Phoenix. I got a new job, but I want to live at a Rise property. Do you guys have anything available? And they'll. They'll sign a lease at one of our other properties, because we have that. Right. We also offer. Yeah, we offer, like, referral incentives for residents. If they want to refer their friends or family, they can get, like, some type of discount on the lease. And so those are really important. And yeah, to your point, Madvi, right. When we take over an asset, our primary focus is to improve the amenities. Okay. And the exterior paint. We want to make the asset look cleaner, nicer, more modern. So the residents see. Because the residents know when there's a new owner, right. We are required by law. We have to give them notices. Hey, there's a new owner or new management company in place, and we want to show them that we're here to improve their experience. So whatever it was before, whether it was good or bad, we want to make it even better. Okay? And so we'll. We'll knock out exterior paint, typically in the first eight to 12 weeks. We get new signage, we do new landscaping. So we'll trim all the Trees make the asset look nicer. Like you said, we'll start renovating the clubhouse, the leasing office, the fitness center, the playground. You know, so we want to make sure that these residents see right away, okay, these guys are actually improving, you know, this asset. And if there's some residents that, you know, are. We've bought some assets in the past where you've got some, like, crime issues. And we, you know, we've learned our lesson the last few years not to buy in those areas. But there was one property I remember that, you know, there were drug dealers of the property and we got them out immediately. You know, we hired off duty police to patrol and we had a family come to us and say, hey, I've lived here for years and I love everything you guys are doing. Thank you so much. And they actually said they were happy to pay more money for a renovated unit because it's nicer, the amenities are all new, they feel safer. And so, yeah, I mean, we truly are improving these communities. I mean, it sounds like a cliche, like what a politician would say, but it's true. You look at the before and after photos, every single deal we've bought, it's a lot better than when we bought it. And so people see that and they recognize that. And so, yeah, that is a big component of it.

You do talk about a very, very important aspect here, Zach, and that's the safety, right. When you are renovating and you're kind of completely making this facelift of this community, this place that they call home, Right. One of the unfortunate things, and which is kind of becoming a reality of our country is that home affordability in this workforce, hous people who are working at the Starbucks or Walmarts, their affordability has become an issue. They probably would never be able to afford buying a home in this country with the interest rates high, with the skyrocketing prices, everything is just coming in the opposite direction and taking them further and further away from the homeownership. So, you know, when they actually have this facelift of the community that they are staying in, not just outside, but inside also, probably they will never own a home. But when you come, and I really like you know, to. And we'll talk about your platinum finishes, it's not, you know, it's not a lipstick kind of a flip that, you know, just gonna put some paint in, just put some, you know, standard appliances in it. But you literally bring it up. They have quartz countertops, they have stainless steel appliances, they have wood look flooring. And inside, when they come in, it looks like, you know, a brand new home that probably they, they could stay in without paying the cost of the home. So you are a improving their, you know, the living environment, making that community feel by having this events and you know, kind of making them feel like home inside and outside. And then the safety, you know, for their kids, for their family, if they're what they're going to grow there feeling of safety. And when, when you know, a building goes from this dull and outdated look to suddenly, you know, the, the white and blues that you have, the uplifted color and rebranding, suddenly this place becomes more safer. You know, the motion sensor light, for example, such a small thing. But it adds to their safety. So thank you so much for sharing. On that note. So let's talk about with that, your construction. You know, why, what is it that distinction. And I was actually personally very thrilled to see how you kind of had made it like a machine. Right. Whether it comes to Phoenix, whether it come to Dallas, whether it comes to Charlotte, you have the same kind of blueprint, just, you know, use it in different places. So let's talk about. And I think that's an important distinction for you too.

Yeah, great question, Madhvi. And so, yeah, I mean again, that came out of necessity. I mean, I think most people that are doing value add deals, they're relying on the third party property management company to run all of the construction management, which basically means that you are sourcing, bidding out and managing vendors and third party vendors. So you're acting like a general contractor. And so we realize, okay, these groups, they're not staying on schedule or on budget with the renovation plan. We don't have control. We need to take this in house. And so we started Rise 48 Construction. We have our own general contractor's license. And basically it's really two part. It's the construction management and it's the supply chain. And so we source and purchase all of our own materials for the interior innovations directly wholesale from an overseas manufacturer. So you mentioned kind of finishes mavi that we do, you know, we do a very high level class A luxury interior scope. You know, like you said, most groups are doing what you would call lipstick on a pig. And when we started the first couple years monavi, we did that too. And what I mean by lipstick on a pig is you'll resurface the original countertops, you will paint the original cabinets, maybe you'll put black appliances in instead of white. The reason you do that, people do that instead of a Higher level scope is because it's too expensive to do a higher level scope to get the rental increase that you need. It doesn't make sense economically. Okay. And so once we started to grow and we sourced our materials directly overseas, we got significant discounts, wholesale pricing on these finishes, which allowed us to start doing stainless steel appliances instead of black appliances. Instead of painting the original cabinets, we rip them out and we put in brand new cabinet boxes with brand new shaker doors and brand new hardware. Instead of resurfacing old Formica countertops, we rip them out and we put in quartz countertops with undermount sinks and modern plumbing pull down fixtures. We do subway tile backSplash, we do LED lighting package. So yeah, it looks like literally we rip everything out of the unit and we make it a brand new class A unit. And we can do that because we have so much buying power and scale to get cheaper prices. Right. And so part of that is part of the construction company is having that supply chain. And then also our W2 employees are the ones that are walking these units 40 hours a week, making sure everything is staying on schedule and on budget. So we're not relying on a third party of a third party of a third party, you know, you know, all these subcontractors. And so if somebody doesn't perform, we just fire them. Right. And we have fixed contracts with our, our, our material provider. So we get locked in pricing our materials. We'll use third party labor to actually do the in unit labor. But my guys are on site monitoring them and supervising them 40 hours a week. And so we have fixed pricing with the labor and we require that the labor uses our materials. So they can't mark us up on materials if they're providing, which is what most people do. And so, so that's allowed us to kind of have this blueprint where we can rinse and repeat the same exact plan. We've renovated thousands and thousands of units over the years all to the same scope. And we've stayed on budget because of that. So that, that just kind of allows us to scale to different markets.

Amazing. So how many units did you renovate last year, just out of curiosity?

Yeah, so last year was a big push because we were trying to fight back against all those interest rates that, that shot up 2022. So in 2023, we renovated 1,923 units. So just under 2,000 units in 2023 alone. And our infrastructure of having the property management, the construction management supply chain, you know, that was really the reason why we've been able to continue to grow through this tough environment the last two years with interest rates, whereas most people. Capital calls are losing investor money. We've never done a capital call. It's because we were able to renovate, force appreciation, increase the revenue at these assets, to fight back against these interest rates and reposition assets. And so that's kind of been a big advantage that we've had operationally.

Yeah, let's talk about that. In fact, that was going to be my next question, because the expertise that lies with the syndication team is not just the expertise of what you just talked about, from acquisitions to kind of operations and exit. Right. The expertise is about when the market throws you a curveball, how do you treat that curveball and how do you. You play that along. Right. So how, how you manage the challenges is the most important aspect of it. So, you know, take us a little bit deeper into how did you manage these challenges in last, you know, a year or plus, you know, the, you know, probably 18 months. How did you manage that? Because not only the interest rates are going high and it is unprecedented. Right. Nobody had a crystal ball. Nobody saw that coming right on that side. And then there was so much supply. There was a push of the supply, and then, then you have to push, push down, probably your concessions and stuff like that. And then the rent growth, which was again going up and it almost goes up with inflation. So in some of the areas, there was this 12 to 15% even annual rent growth, and that actually turned its face down and started going negative. Like Phoenix is one of those markets. Right. How did you navigate this challenge? And that's again, the expertise of the syndication team, the kind of the demeanor that I'm sure it was very stressful, but kind of coming back to that demeanor and kind of taking those right decisions for your investors.

Yeah, great question. Great question, Rob. Yeah. I mean, you had multiple challenges the last, really two and a half years now. It's almost been, you know, 30 months now since the Fed started increasing rates. So, yeah, you had interest rates skyrocket. You had all this new supply of apartments that came online in end of 22 and throughout 2023 and all the Sunbelt markets, Right. Because there are people were building from 2019 to 2021, and then all that new supply flooded the market. At the same time, in 2023, you had a lot of those Covid stimulus checks. People don't realize that a lot of these residents and tenants were getting Covid stimulus checks, and they all stopped in 2023. Okay. So. And then you had inflation catch up to these residents, where their groceries, their gas expenses are just so expensive, people can't afford the rents. And so in all these major Sunbelt markets, you had really strong organic rent growth go negative. Right. So in Phoenix, you know, it was 10 to 20% each year, the last, the few years prior to 2022. And it goes to negative 4% in 2023. Dallas was negative 1% in 2023, you know, trailing 12. And so basically, if you were not renovating units and pushing your rents, your rents are going backwards. Right. We renovated over 1,900 units in 2023. Our average rental increase was $453 per unit, and that was $20 above our initial projections. And to be honest, we were not assuming in our initial projections that we'd have negative 4% rent growth in 2023. Nobody saw that coming. Right. And so the ability to force the appreciation by renovating units and having the infrastructure to actually execute that plan, it allowed us to kind of weather the storm because we weren't vulnerable to just relying on organic rent growth or organic appreciation. The reality is, is that the five years or so prior to 2022, anybody could buy a deal, call it, quote, unquote, value add, do nothing, and organic rent growth takes off. Cap rates compress, you sell it, you look like a genius. Right? And we benefited from that, too. It helped to juice our returns. But we also had created infrastructure to actually renovate units, actually increase net operating income. And that's kind of been, you know, the saving grace for us to not have to do a capital call, you know, to preserve investor capital. And it's put us in a position where most people have been on defense the last couple of years. You know, we've been. We've been on defense as far as making sure that our. Our portfolio was in a good spot and renovating. But we also been on offense because investors see that, and we have investors that invest. They're sophisticated people. They invest with a lot of different operators. So they kind of see the difference of which operators are performing, what decisions are they making versus the ones that are not doing so well. And so Since September of 22, we've purchased 18 deals, thousand units. We've continued to grow. We've added two new markets. And it's kind of because of that approach, I think, is investors see that.

Yeah, that's a really important distinction, Zach, because we have seen that the whole distress has kind of come to the market. Investors are getting capital Calls in worst case, they are also losing some of the capital too. Right. We have seen those kind of articles as well coming in. So that's why it's really important, you know, the team, I always say when it comes to due diligence, the team is the most important aspect of it. Where you're putting your hard earned money and what is the capability of that team when something happens. Right. I mean, having deep pockets is also important that you know, you're able to kind of put some money in there so that you know that capital call is not necessary or it's not happening or just navigate these challenges in as many ways, different ways as possible and continuous to re renovate these units, continue to, you know, have that rent bump. Because it's not like the residents are going anywhere. It's not that they don't have jobs, they have jobs, they're paying it. So the fundamentals of this properties are good. So if you are able to, you know, push that with the renovation, you are able to sustain. So kudos, Great strategy. So with that, you know, I'm just going to circle back to our original questions for our listeners and you know, before we go to our the last two segments. And again, this conversation has lasted longer than I thought. Truly appreciate you being here, but we will have two more segments and we'll try to do it quickly as well. But I'm gonna wrap this, you know, thread around our original question that, you know, should I invest in the market around me or if I do not have control, should I be going into multifamily syndication or should I just purchase a multifamily unit and start operating with four or five of my friends assigning different responsibilities. Just go back and look at this episode. Just listen to what Zach has said. You know, you kind of have to think about getting off market deals. Those relationship. We talked about underwriting in our previous episode with Bikram. We talked about market selection, we talked about the operational challenges, the construction management, the property management, the vertical integration, the scalability of that. And above and beyond all that, the managing the challenges with something, you know, throws your curveball that can only come from the experience and how you can, you know, approach these challenges very well. So Zach, great insight into it. With that, you know, sadly we will go into. Towards the end of our today's episode, my next question is going to be for you and your personal kind of financial strategy. Are you ready for that?

Yeah, let's do it absolutely our way.

Yeah. So you know, when it comes to your personal Strategy. Right. One of the important aspect of think outside the stocks is we don't just like to talk about investment, but we'd like to kind of step back and talk about, you know, how to grow, preserve, protect and pass your generational weight. Right. You are a new father. You have started, I mean, just before even becoming a father, you have been this, you know, massive, massive portfolio and massive achievement, which is really inspirational. First of all, inspire us by sharing with, you know, telling us how do you, Zach, think outside the stocks? How do you manage your financial structure, make it safe, secure so that it becomes kind of, you know, protected estate planning, etc. How do you manage that?

Yeah, that's a great question, Mavi. And I'll give context that, you know, I don't come from money. So I was just, I grew up in like a local lower middle class family. You know, my, my dad was initially in construction, my mom was in like an HR person for a company. And then my dad became like a financial advisor, you know, so just kind of like a mid level financial advisor, nothing crazy. So I remember when I was in college and right after college, you know, he encouraged me to get like a brokerage account so I could have money invested in mutual funds. So I did that. And I was reading all these finance books and trying to learn about different stuff and I was just watching it and I didn't like the fact that I had absolutely no control. I had a financial advisor just charging me fees. I had no visibility, transparency into all this stuff. Right. And so I was, I was like, what is the point of this? You know, I just didn't feel like this is how I'm supposed to get rich because I wanted to get rich. You know, for lack of a better term, I wanted to become very wealthy, unlike my, my family. Like that's what I wanted to do. My goal was, my goal is still is to become a billionaire. Billionaire, right. And so I'm not going to become a billionaire or even become financially free doing this. When I started learning about real estate, I pulled all my money out of the stock market, shut down the brokerage accounts and my dad's still a financial advisor. I have no money in, in the stock market. I have the majority of my net worth in our portfolio and, and my cash in our portfolio because I believe in it that much. And then I have, I have money that's in like high yield savings account and money market, right? So it's just like a liquid, you know, it's effectively just a money market account or like a high Yield savings account. So, so that it's liquid as well. But yeah, I mean, you know, in the future I'm sure I'll diversify a little bit more. But from my perspective, you know, I consider myself very risk averse and I just feel like, hey, I understand and believe in what we're doing with real estate and multifamily and I think in the long run, you know, it always ends up making sense. So that's where most of my money in net worth is. And then I have liquid cash. Obviously we've to, we have to meet liquidity requirements for these lenders, things like that. I have not invested in crypto or anything like that. I think fundamentally I like the concept of bitcoin, that it's decentralized. I just haven't really been able to wrap my head around investing in it. So yeah, I'm sure pretty, pretty simple. It's pretty much, you know, cash, high yield savings accounts and then, and then real estate, hard assets.

Yeah, yeah, very risk averse. Thank you for sharing that. That helps a lot to know, you know, even person like you, how you're managing it. So with that we have our last segment which is going to be quick segment, it's called Rapid Fire. I just asked three fun questions because we talked, oh my God, so much serious stuff stuff and which is very, very important to our listeners too. But the rapid fire just helps us alone kind of end on, on a fun note, you know, kind of a lighter note. Are you ready for the Rapid Fire? All right, so my first question is going to be, I mean you come from your, your background as a football player, you got, you know, in a scholarship to go to school as well. Right. So when it comes to, you know, the games it is, do you still play? Do you still, you know, have time now is that you're a parent now, you have this big huge business or, you know, just share with us one of the most memorable moment when. In your playing days.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so, yeah, I've always been, I've always been, you know, big into sports and you know, an athlete. And so I played high school football, college football. I wasn't good enough or big enough to go to the NFL, you know, so it sucked.

It could be.

Yeah, I know, I know. But yeah, so I mean, yeah, I mean, honestly, I mean, so I don't still play, but we still watch football. You know, I've definitely watched less the last few years just because I can't like sit on the couch for like three or four hours. I'M a big Denver Broncos fan and so. And my dad raised me as a Broncos fan. And so when the Broncos went to their last two Super Bowls, actually, the. This is before we started the real estate company. So I spent all the money I had and I took my dad to those two Super Bowls.

Oh, my God.

Yeah, it was like I got like the nosebleed seats. It was like $2,500 each. I spent like five grand on tickets and I took him to those. So those are really memorable. I mean, the most memorable moment was the Broncos beat the Panthers was Peyton Manning. That game. That was pretty cool. So that. Yeah, still a huge sports fan. Just not as able to spend as much time on it.

Love that. Thank you so much for sharing that. Wow. You thank the nose blade. Still seeds. Did you get nosebleed? Just kidding.

The whole time. I'm just kidding.

I love that. You know, just. And then my second question is going to be just understanding as a person, right? I mean, I'm sure that you love to travel and you know, you and your wife and now, you know, your child. I'm not sure if you three of you travel together, but what is your favorite destination to travel so far or what both of you, you know, especially.

Yeah, Good question.

Question.

You know, the funny thing is, Monty, I actually do not like to travel.

You do not?

Oh, I'm super, like routine oriented and disciplined and I don't like to travel because I. Oh my gosh, can't work out at my gym. I can't eat. I eat the same thing every day, every meal. I drink the same stuff every day. So it like gets me out of my routine. So I don't really like to travel, honestly. My, my wife loves Hawaii and I tell her, I don't want to sound negative, but I think, I think Hawaii is like the most overrated place place in the world. Six hour flight from Phoenix and it's like, I don't, I don't get it. But yeah, so. But we did. So I do travel a lot for work. Right. Because we have an office in a house in Dallas. We have a second house in Dallas and now we have an office in, in North Carolina. So literally just last week, I was traveling all week. I went to Charlotte for a few days and I went to Dallas for a few days and my wife did bring the baby to Dallas, so I saw them. Second half of the trip went to. They went to Dallas. So yeah, we travel a lot for that. You know, I travel fairly amount, a good amount for conferences and stuff. But I mean, I even went to Europe six, seven years ago. Didn't really like it, honestly. So I'm not very exciting when it comes to that stuff. I just like to stay in my element.

That is interesting and actually that, that's good to know. This kind of, you know, segment served its purpose. We started with fun facts and actually, you know, ending with the fun fact that you don't drag one of the few people that don't like to travel. And I can imagine, I drink, I.

Don'T smoke, I just drink water, coffee.

I love that. Love that, love that. Thank you for sharing that. And my last question actually is going to be about you being a parent. Right. So when you saw your, you know, your son for the first time, you know, just take us to that moment and share that joy. What I mean, I know it's. You cannot word it. Absolutely not. It's not fair to ask even for that question. But you know, some moment, take us back into that moment and share with us.

Absolutely. Yeah. No, it was, it was super emotional for me. So we basically. It was like 10 o' clock on a Sunday night. Her water broke. And you don't know if the water broke or not, but you think it did. So you go to the hospital and then we were there all Sunday night, all through Monday. And it wasn't until Monday at 9pm that finally she starts to push and have him delivered. And then he comes out and it was probably like an hour and a half labor. And then he comes out and I just started tearing up. He just gets so emotional because you can't explain it. You know what I mean? It just feels like a miracle. And it's a super cool feeling and you're exhausted and all the emotions, you just slept a night in a, in a hospital. And then, then yes, we to stay a second night. And you wake up and when I woke up, I heard him crying. And you just realize because he was born at 9pm on a Monday, so you wake up, right? And she's with him all night. But I was sleeping like in the hospital room and you wake up like that Tuesday morning and it, and it kind of hit me. I'm like, we have a, we have a baby now.

Oh my God. It's good. It goes bumps.

Yeah. And it's like this is like, like that's something that just happened yesterday and then now today's a new day. Like you always will have that kid, you always have that child. It's just a cool thing, right? Because it's like your Whole life does change that once he's born. Because, like, during the. During the pregnancy, you're like, anticipating. Yeah. When it comes, it comes great. But when he's born, it's like, okay, this. Yeah. I joked with my wife, Grace. I was like, okay, we were able to have him birthed. Now we got to keep. Keep him alive. Right? Gotta keep alive, make sure we do the right thing, so.

Oh, wow. Great. No, that's incredible. It's kind of, you know, brings back my memories of seeing my child for the first time. Wow. I was getting goosebumps as you're saying. So. Yeah, it is. It is one of the most memorable, memorable moment. And you have it fresh. That's. That's just beautiful. Yeah. The baby is not gonna go back in the tummy. It's just once there. That's not dream.

That's right.

I love that. I'm sure you're great parents and can't see him, you know, growing up as well, so can't just wait for that. But again, thank you so much for this, you know, beautiful, golden tidbits and sharing the joys and sharing the stress. And, you know, we kind of had like a whole journey in itself in this episode. I truly appreciate you being here and we have, you know, hope to continue to work together as well. And I love that you are here. So grateful. Thank you so much for being here and helping us, our listeners, understand that it's not easy to be an operator even at this massive portfolio. So thanks for sharing that.

Yeah, thanks so much. I really appreciate having me on. Thank you.

Thank you so much. And for listeners, and, you know, you got such a great kind of a wraparound of this strategy. And, you know, if you want to learn more about the passive investments in real estate syndications, we have a webinar that's either coming up or already happened by the time this episode gets relayed to you. But we are going to put the link to that Passive Power Hour. Sign up for Passive Power Hour and join our syndicated one on, you know, 101. Kind of a learning way to even get started with syndication team. And very, very frequently we have really highly vetted investments coming through. That's what we are passionate about. If you want to participate on this investment, there's going to be a form invest with us to join our insider club as well. I look forward to see you there. And thank you so much. We are grateful to listeners like you to listen to this episode and when we have such great conversation with great guests like Zach. Zach, thank you so much.

Again, thanks Mavi.

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