Why Patience Beats Optimism in Real Estate with Ryan Cadwell

Before we get into this episode, if you're a real estate investor listening to these conversations thinking my follow-up and deal intake is kind of a mess, that's literally what I spend my time fixing. I'll mention it again later. Now let's get into the show.

I think there's a lot of people being optimistic out of fear. I know there's a lot of unsettled, a lot of unsettled thought around, uh, what is '26 going to have.

I remember around this time in '24 when we were talking about '25, and I know where I was wrong. And the fact that the interest rate decreases did not do anything to loan— to, to, to cost of capital. And I think if that continues, I think the inability for some of these deals to just keep getting the can kicked down the road.

I think there's—

I'm opportunistic on the fact that I think there's gonna be more deals in '26. I think people are starting to actually start to feel a little bit of the drag and the realization that interest rates are not gonna change that quickly based on how cash is moving around on the backside. And tariffs and overall how tariffs are gonna affect the overall economy.

Ryan Cadwell joins me here today. You can learn what his team can help you with by going to resoluterdm.com. That's gonna be a clickable link in the show notes. Really appreciate your time here today.

Thank you, Jack.

Glad to, glad to be here.

Well, let's start things off. You've got a lot going on at Resolute Realty. What does a typical week look like for you right now?

Typical week, reviewing deals, meeting with staff, staff meets on Tuesdays, reviewing and processing a lot of deals. Um, that's a, that, that's actually been a bigger thing that we spend a lot of time doing is reviewing deals just because they're a little bit overpriced in a lot of cases. A lot of sellers haven't fully adjusted yet. And then, you know, helping manage the projects we do have in the hopper, getting those to market and And then negotiating, trying not to negotiate with AI.

I'm sorry about that. I don't know if you looked into what I do, but I help investors adopt AI and automation in their real estate.

That's fine. We're actually in the middle of, we're in the middle of a lease negotiation on a commercial property. And instead of hiring counsel to negotiate the lease terms, he's trying to negotiate them using an AI review and he wants us to interject what AI told him should be changed.

And so yeah, that's all I meant.

Yeah, no, and I was just being silly, you know, apologizing for it. So what's, what's one habit or tool you can't live without right now in your day, day to day?

I mean, the, the, the habit or tool would be, I mean, The Investment Journal that I created, I use that a lot for deal analysis and even setting goals. It, you know, it has a habit tracker in there. So you go through your habits, you go through your financial situation, and then you review all your deals for the year. And then it's something you can, you know, you can come back to. I use it, the pen and paper method. I do the pen and paper method along with, you know, the standard tools online, you know, the financial modeling and everything within Excel. But I have a little bit of an old school mentality when it comes to using pen and paper, actually getting to know the deal, getting to know the story of the deal, understanding the numbers at a little bit more of a granular level, just to make sure they sit right with what I've experienced and what our expectations are.

Have you had any recent small wins that kind of made you smile?

Recent small wins that made me smile? Going through the the current economic climate. Well, yeah, we've rolled out a, one of our, one of our better, you know, one of our better flips is coming to market right now. And then a deal that we've had on the market for a bit, that's, that was a struggle.

It was never intended to really be a rental. It was intended to go straight to market and we had to put a tenant in it. And then, uh, we, you know, we waited about 15 months and then took it back to market. So we're under contract on that. Um, should close this month. So yeah, those two things are definitely wins. Mm-hmm.

So let's fill everybody in on like what's your core business and what you're doing right now.

Our core business is real estate development and then like consulting and advising on, it's a different, different take on brokerage. So not just about transactions, it's more about getting to know the people, setting up their, their actual goals and aligning us to the target. And then, and then we execute on those goals, whether it's acquiring, operating, You know, finding land for whether it's a single tenant user. We've got some, we've got some deals that we're working with some businesses and they're looking for land to do a single tenant user right now. So a lot of what we do is we get in front of the client, we dig through their wants and their needs, and we establish kind of the direction that they want to go, making sure we reveal things they think they want, they may not need, things they haven't thought of that, that are actually needs and not just wants. And then moving in that direction with our, either our recommendations to buy something or, um, making sure that we're, that we're helping them align appropriately, especially with the changes in interest rates and the financial costs that have really kind of blown up the market.

Well, let's touch briefly on your origin story here. How did you find your way into this?

So 18 years ago, um, had planned on just doing investment. Just, I grew up, my dad owned apartments and he owned an auto repair shop and he ran them, ran them side by side. And I grew up since the time I was 4, he had owned that. My, my grandfather was in the automotive world. He had, he had owned his own him and his brothers had owned their own bigger automotive business. And my dad went out on his own, got that, got that place with those apartments.

I grew up just from the time I was 12, I was, I was, you know, mowing grass for money and, um, and then eventually got a job in the shop along with the, you know, the tenants and toilets and then cars. I liked the tenants and toilets better than the cars. Learned a lot about the cars, but the tenants and toilets experience really took hold. So when we started investing in '06, right before the '08 collapse, that's what pulled us into it. And then when we were property management back then for SFR was kind of like the Wild West. And I was interviewing some property managers.

Hey everyone, it's Jack and it's time for a quick pause and fulfill my promise of interrupting this episode Most investors don't actually have a deal problem, they have an operations problem. Leads come in, follow-up inconsistent, speed to lead slips, and deals die quietly. That's exactly what Real Deal Crew does. We act as a fractional deal operations team. We build and run the systems that handle intake, follow-up, routing, and visibility so you can focus on negotiating and closing. We're not a CRM, not an acquisitions team, and not a marketing agency. This is fit-based and it's not for beginners. If this episode sounds like your world, you can book a fit call at realedealcrew.com. No pitch, just a conversation to see if it makes sense. All right, let's get back into the episode.

Managers, and I felt like we actually had more experience than they did. So that's what drew us into actually building the full-on investment company that has brokerage and then operational services with it.

Well, could you remember like what was that turning point there? You mentioned that you preferred the termites and toilets, but usually that seems to scare people away and then they kind of find their way back to it eventually. But you, you kind of just kind of gravitated towards that.

Yeah.

Between, between the choice of cars, doing the automotive work and running the, that business versus, you know, investing in real estate. Yeah, I can't argue with that. Over 18 years of doing that, there are some instances where that gets old, you know, the termites and toilets and stuff. In that particular case, it was more of a, I enjoyed, I enjoyed the flipping part. I'd done, I'd done some remodels. I'd, I hand shingled all of the buildings on the apartments when I was like 20, I think. And I mean, it was a brutal experience. Good learning, good learning, definitely hot in the middle of the summer. There's a lot of things that probably were telling me, why are you doing this? And I was just a little hardheaded. For me though, I really love real estate. I love being able to create. And now it's more about problem solving, being in front of people, finding struggles and hurdles. And a lot of times having been, having been in that situation before, being able to offer some solutions and create some creativity in negotiations, that kind of stuff.

Huh.

Well, do you recall like that first deal that kind of made you realize like, okay, this is it. This is what I'm going to pursue. Yeah.

I had a friend from a networking group that brought me a, we had a couple of them. I had a friend from a networking group, brought me a condo. Didn't know much about those. And we were able to acquire it and then operated it for a long time. And It didn't have much. It had a very, it was kind of like, it was a two-story townhouse and the upside, looking at it now, the upside potential of it was not that great. However, we were early. It was, you know, it was a fairly simple deal. The math worked because everything wasn't as popular back then. So the acquisition price to what we could lease it for was, was great. So we weren't, we weren't in a negative leverage or paying out of pocket to operate that thing annually. So that one was really good.

And then some of the, we had, we had another one that kind of came up like that. And a lot of it was probably just from the relationships we were able to build, being able to work with people, you know, in instances to where you're solving their problem, but at the same time you're solving their problem, you're also, you're also able to enter into the deal in a good way. Not really buying the 8-ball, not negative leveraged and all those kinds of things. And several of those, you know, I look back now, I know what all that means.

Back then I had no idea what that meant. I did know that, I mean, the simple math, I knew that I wasn't going to be paying money every month, but I didn't realize why that was important at the time.

Yeah.

Condos can be a little tricky, especially with the condo associations and stuff. It's like dealing with an HOA or something.

Yeah. And that was before, that was before we actually sold it, before all the Airbnb things came up. And then we've even got a local municipality here that's trying to limit Airbnb-style operations to less than 10%. Actually, That's not, that's not totally true. They're trying to limit all rentals in their, in the single-family neighborhoods to less, 10% or less.

So, you know, everybody has kind of struggles during the 18 years. What's been your biggest hiccup in business and how did you overcome it?

Biggest hiccup in business, my patience. And what I mean by that is it doesn't matter what the hurdle, a lot of times it's people related. It was usually always about my, me growing up in some way, me having to learn a different way to address people, me have to learn a better way to problem solve in a collaborative manner. A lot of those kinds of things, I would say if, if I had been a little better at that early on, I think, I think there would have been a little bit less overall resistance. And leaning into things. I really, I really try to embrace the fact that Every obstacle is actually an opportunity. It's usually gonna present a solution if you lean into it. My initial reactions were usually to resist, get frustrated. I still do it. I was frustrated this morning over something that has a solution. You just gotta, you know, put in some work. But yeah, that's probably the biggest thing is keeping—

don't try to quick solve something that may solve itself just by you being engaged and applying a little bit of patience. That's easy. That's easy for me to say. It's very hard for me to do.

Yeah, probably kind of leads into my next question. Is there any past mistake that you're oddly grateful for today?

Well, I thought of them as mistakes. It was during the 2022— there were some deals I was trying to get my hands on, '22, '21 to '23. We got into some stuff. That we were, we were being successful. We were, you know, we were churning and burning. We, there, there were a few things I thought were mistakes. I thought we had missed the opportunity that we had in front of us because of either the way I handled the deal or whatever. And when I look back on some of those numbers now, I'm very grateful that, that we didn't get them. I think I would've been way more stressed than I am right now. Right now I'm in a position of just trying to figure out where to implement capital instead of how to raise capital to not lose my shirt.

So I think in a lot of ways, I think when we get into '26, '27, I think, I think there's going to be a lot more people either with, you know, with that same mentality or wishing that, that some of those deals hadn't actually come through. I mean, even though I put my, I tried to just put my head down and grind it. There were several deals that, that fell apart that, that were good that they fell apart.

So you primarily, let me just correct me if I'm wrong, then you primarily offer turnkey properties and then provide property management for those.

We have the ability to do everything from ground-up construction to offer turnkey solutions. To be the advisor if somebody wants to do the full flip. And then we have the crews to do all the construction as well. So, I mean, there's not really anything within that investment world that we're not either experienced in or able to offer the services to do. I would say, you know, one of our things in that, in that world is we're going to be a partner and a collaborator with you. It's not really, you know, we're not just trying to do transactions. Transactions are part of each step, but if we're planning on being in the operations of it, we don't want to put you in a situation where you're negative leveraged, you're stressed out, we need money to do stuff and there isn't any money because all the money's going to debt.

Yeah.

I mean, we're, we're capable of doing that whole thing. And then we, and then we come at it from a perspective of a long-term collaborative partner.

Hmm. And what markets do you typically focus on?

Right now it's Central Indiana, Indianapolis MSA, and then we have a 242-unit development in Missouri, just outside of Springfield, Missouri, that we've, we've got some collaborative partners we're working with out there. We are looking at other markets. Like I said, a lot of it's, a lot of it just has to do with the numbers, penciling.

Sure.

You know, I have had some experience in Indianapolis and it wasn't a positive one, to be honest. I would imagine that you've seen some fly-by-nights coming through with a lot of situations. Have you had to pick up the pieces on some failed ventures like that?

Actually, that's a, that is exactly how we got started.

When we got started, it was a lot of picking up the pieces from the financial crisis, the '08 financial crisis, but I'm guessing what you're leading into is you had maybe a bad experience with either an operator, a turnkey guy or something like that. And we've actually, yes, we've actually helped in some cases save some deals, in other cases rip the band-aids off bad deals. Yes, we do continue to do that. We have some clients that Despite us asking them to involve us early in the transaction so we can, you know, offer them some feedback as to what we, how we expect this to actually operate. We've even had some people in the last few years that are clients just buy things without telling us and then be like, here, lease it for this. And we're like, uh, those numbers don't work. So yeah, I mean, I've, we went through the turnkey thing from, for us, for the Indianapolis market, turnkeys got big. And '15 and '16 is when it ramped up. I think it was at its peak about 2018. We got a bunch of clients from that, but we weren't part of the acquisition side. So we only showed up and we were like operating these for some of the turnkey providers. So we were already operating them. We put tenants in them and then we didn't have any idea what the you know, technically our client at the time, what they were, what they were telling to the buyers. And in some cases, in some cases, everything was great. The house worked out fine. In other cases, the buyers that turned out to be our clients later thought that the previous owner flipper wasn't completely transparent. And so then that, you know, what that usually means is they put lipstick on it. They left a bunch of defects and it was a buyer beware thing where the buyer thought it was a brand new house, which is what they've been told in the turnkey situation. Some of them blamed us and without realizing, like, we can't, we can't tell you anything until technically you own it. And then what we know, we can convey to you. Other than that, the, the seller has to give us permission to talk to you. So, and in some cases we didn't know. You know, there was some stuff we had no idea, but yes, I mean, that's a long answer to the question of have we helped put the pieces back together? Yeah. And that's actually what got us into new construction.

Pre-20, pre-COVID, new construction was easier than flips and rehabs because you didn't, you weren't as worried about what was behind the walls because you It was on the drawings.

So we started doing new construction pre-COVID. When COVID hit, then you had all the, the supply chain delays and, you know, 4x8 pieces of plywood that you need for decking jump 80% or sometimes 4 times as much. Yeah. I mean, we've been through a lot of different things in the last 18 years and helping a lot of kind of wade through those. That situation you've talked about.

Just to remind everybody, we're talking to Ryan Cadwell. You can learn more at resoluteRDM.com. That's going to be a clickable link in the show notes. If you found some value in what we're talking about so far, do us a quick favor, share this with one of your investor friends. If you're watching us on YouTube, a quick like and subscribe goes a long way. So Ryan, you then seem to be focusing on a lot of duplexes. Is that the, like, you're one of the hot ticket items right now in your, as a product?

There are a lot of duplexes that are hot ticket item. We had some land that we had pre— had set it up for some duplexes. The fundamentals and the math didn't work. So we actually just parted with that land. Duplexes have been a big thing in Indianapolis for a while. And then our development in Missouri is actually gonna be 242 duplex units. So 121 buildings with 242 units. So yes, it is a, it is a hot, you know, for the market. I should, you know, the mar— the, the market locally determines everything, but, but for the market, yeah, it is.

As you were scaling your business, it had to have been kind of a Sophie's Choice in a way, like you have your development, your fix and flipping, you added a property management. Like, what was that next step? What was the next thing or, or business that you added when you were scaling?

So our scaling, our scaling trajectory was more of, we were investor and then management operators. So that was our backbone. And from that came the flipping side. Because we had the crews doing all the, you know, the tenant turns and all that stuff. So that grew into a flipping component. Market related too. It, it was timing. So we, we were operating the management side, flipping became big in our MSA. And, and then we moved into flipping because we had the infrastructure to do that. And then that grew our portfolio. And then out of that, we, we got tired of all the surprises. So that moved us into, okay, let's start building ground up. And after we did a couple of those, we just ended up with some other partners that are able to do larger scale ground up. And then we're more of the operational financing side. So yeah, I mean, that was, that was the trajectory with brokers always being built in. Um, because you got to acquire, you got to, you know, dispossess and you still got to do all those different pieces. But that was, that was how, that was our business's journey.

What's your primary source sourcing these projects now? Like your acquisitions flow?

Most of it's relationship-based.

So it was getting to know people, them kind of knowing what we do. Hearing from, hearing from a lot of times the stuff that hits the market usually isn't that great of a deal. So you're going to have to ride, you have to ride it out a little bit and be in touch with the brokers and, and just find out if it's even, you know, if the seller's fairly realistic or if they start changing their, their tune, if it's not something that works on the first pass. A lot of, a lot of our success and a lot of the things we've been able to do has been from relationship building. Social capital has gone a long way.

For us.

I would imagine speed has a lot to do with that then. How do you keep, keep track and, and make sure that you turn these around as quickly as possible before you lose out?

Yeah.

Speed, getting it to market as quickly as possible is the hardest thing to do and the most important thing to do. Uh, so the first, I think the first part is make sure that your timelines are realistic. Yes, speed is, speed is important. I think one of our construction partners, I think we turned around and built a house. It was a 1,200 square foot house. I think we, we, we, we built one house in like 45 days. And now that wasn't realistic. That wasn't a model that we were gonna try to, try to do on repeat. We just, the stars kind of aligned and the partner that was managing that one He said, I'm going to try to do this as fast as I can and see how fast I can do it. And, and obviously when you, when you can do it that fast and, and by stars aligning, we hadn't, we hadn't gotten into 2020. We hadn't, we didn't have COVID. All of our numbers, all of our suppliers, everything supply chain was in line. So we were able to develop and build, you know, build a structure that quickly. And it was quality. I mean, it passed all inspections and stuff. That wasn't realistic.

I mean, we, I always say you probably need to account for, on a new construction, a day for every 1,000.

If you're, if it's, if it's just a single family pulling it out of the ground, it's a day for, for every 1,000 on your, on your timeline. If you can keep it to that or under, you should be good on your financials. There are ways to stack, to stack some, some people to speed that up, but that's usually the best thing to do. A lot of it's just, a lot of it's having the crews and then having the, again, social capital, having a relationship with them. I mean, I end up frustrated a lot until, until I have a conversation. And learn what's actually going on. And then actually do the math. Okay. How many days are we? Are we ahead of schedule, behind schedule, on schedule? We're usually never that far off whether we're ahead or behind. And sometimes you can speed it up. And then other times, I mean, in flips, you gotta, you need to have a contingency budget for both your money and your time when you're doing any of that stuff.

You've mentioned frustration a couple times. Like, is there a current bottleneck that you've identified that you're having a hard time working through?

A lot of it's just, I don't think it's, it's not overly, it's not overly frustrated just with, it's more of in general, just because any of those, anything, anytime you're doing that and going through COVID going, I mean, COVID was a very frustrating time. With our lead times, you know, rolled out in, in some cases, some of the development projects lost money because of our carrying costs.

So that's probably where that comes from is more of just remembering some of those experiences when we were, when we, you, you come out, you're gung-ho, you get, you know, you get your foundation up, you're all excited about all of it.

And when you get into some of the later phases, some of the finishing timelines and then running into, you know, running into some of the, the interactions with, with subs.

I mean, just being on subs, having good relationship with subs. I mean, that piece of it is, it is frustrating from time to time, mostly just because, you know, trying to keep people motivated that you may not have on your payroll, try to keep them coming in. So. Yeah, I mean, it's more or less thinking, thinking through the whole process and overall, overall making sure that what your expectation of delivery is, is A, something that's, that's attainable, not just pie in the sky, something that looks good on a spreadsheet, but is also able to go from the spreadsheet to the ground. Yeah.

Is there anything that you can point to that triggers whether you hold that property as a, as part of your portfolio versus selling it?

Yeah.

The biggest thing is really whatever goal we're in.

If we're in a cash accumulation, it might be strictly be flip, get that thing done, get it out the door, end up with cash in the bank. If it's, if it's a play because of appreciation, that's when we would put it on the balance sheet, the asset on the balance sheet in order to, to ride the appreciation up. So if like, if the numbers are good, And there's a way to maximize and operate it fairly stress-free. And stress-free for me is, is positive leverage. So typically a lower, a lower LTV. High debt stresses me out. Now, early on, high debt, you know, high debt's what everybody talked about. That's how you grew your portfolio was putting the least amount down. Problem with that is your cash flows get tight. So you gotta have cash flow from from other sources if you're running everything too high, too high on the debt side. So a lot of it has to do with the value, to answer your question, the value that we can add to it. So if we can go in with like an 80% construction loan, but by the time we're done, it's going to operate and we flip that construction loan to permanent. It's going to operate at like a 65, 60 or 65. That's ideal for a hold. Enable to have some cash flow roll-off, have some cash to go to reserves and operate that thing stably. That's kind of the ideal. If we get done and we're not gonna hit some of those stabilizing numbers, it, it's usually, it's usually something we, we just look at selling off to somebody that, um, that wants a Core or Plus product.

Well, it's time to look into your crystal ball and you mentioned market. A few times. What do you foresee or what are you experiencing right now regarding market conditions?

I think there's a lot of people being optimistic out of fear. I know there's a lot of unsettled, a lot of unsettled thought around what is '26 going to have.

I remember around this time in '24 when we were talking about '25, and I know where I was wrong and the fact that the interest rate decreases did not do anything to loan the cost of capital. And I think if that continues, I think the inability for some of these deals to just keep getting the can kicked down the road, I think there's, I'm opportunistic on the fact that I think there's gonna be more deals in '26. I think people are starting to actually start to feel a little bit of the drag and the realization that interest rates are not going to change that quickly based on how cash is moving around on the backside and tariffs and overall how tariffs are going to affect the overall economy. I'm not saying whether they're good or bad because there has been some good that has happened from the tariffs, but there is also a negative impact of tariffs too. So it starts to, you know, strap some businesses for cash and wages for us, wages and labor.

If that doesn't improve, your rental rates on residential is not going to improve because that's, that's the direct correlation. And those expense, the expenses on, on that, those are going to go up with inflation. And if your revenues can't go up with jobs and higher wages, there's a, there's going to be a struggle there and either it's going to have to recalculate and recalibrate, or you got to have enough cash to weather it. So if you don't have enough cash, that's where you're going to see opportunity. If you, if you have enough cash, which I've heard some, some gurus and some much bigger people than me talk about, the, the number one thing to always have is a lot of cash. Whenever you're developing, whenever you're doing— go ahead.

You were, you mentioned that unless we can get wages under control, I'm just seeing a lot more people leveraging tools and technology in ways in which to, to try to augment and try to increase productivity so that they don't have to add additional headcount. Are you leveraging any of that right now to try to minimize.

Absolutely.

What are you using today?

There's a lot of tools. Like our, our biggest thing is not, not getting too many tools that we're not using any of them. So there, a lot of our, you know, a lot of our operations software options, it's following, it's following our providers. It's being in communication with them and making sure things integrate together. So that you can create steps without having as much human interaction to get things done. Some of that's helping. Some of that includes reeducating, whether it's, you know, your on-the-ground people that aren't gonna go away. In our business, there are things that are still gonna happen.

I think some of the coordination, some of the communication, that is gonna speed up. As long as the customer also kind of realizes there's a positive aspect to, okay, the first part of this conversation, I don't have to talk to somebody. I just need the information to go into the system. As that starts to speed up, which we're starting to see more and more tenants and clients be okay with the first part. Once they experience, you know, you're not just talking to a machine, you will talk to us, but we want to make sure by the time the person you talk to is the right person, not just, you know, not just basically calling a receptionist and the receptionist says, well, I'm gonna transfer you to this department. It, we have systems and process to where they can text, they can email. Um, and then when they, when they do an action, it automatically starts moving 'em down, down the list to get them in front of the right person so we can, we can respond quicker with more with less physical touch and more, more accurate results.

Well, Ryan, this has just been a fantastic conversation. Before we dive into the rapid fire and close out this episode, is there anything else we should have hit on?

No, it's been a pleasure, Jack. I appreciate you having us on.

Well, if you're ready, we'll jump into the rapid fire and close out this episode. Before we do, remind everybody, check out Ryan's website. ResoluteRDM.com. I'm going to have that as a clickable link in the show notes, but if you're ready, Ryan, we'll close out the episode.

Sounds good.

What lie do real estate investors often tell themselves?

This'll work out and the numbers, the numbers will get better with time.

If you could go back in time and give your younger self a piece of advice, what would it be?

Be patient. Work on your ability to communicate above everything else and listen more. And make sure you hear what the person's saying before you respond.

Do you have a book recommendation or what are you reading right now?

Book recommendation. So from an investing standpoint, I'm reading Intelligent Investor and I would recommend Psychology of Money. And then I'm reading a book on Montaigne called How to Live from a personal philosophy standpoint.

And then finally, what single process or tool have you implemented that has had the biggest time-saving impact?

I use Trello for tracking and implementing implementing tasks and then, and developing projects and task lists that integrate. And then I can put all my tools into one place and then I can duplicate that and share that with, with our team and our staff.

Well, Ryan, thank you so much. It was great to meet you. And, and again, it is resolutrdm.com, clickable link in the show notes, but hope you'll consider coming back again sometime.

Thanks, Jack.

It's been a pleasure. Have a good one.