# Take Control of Your Future Through Multifamily Investing with John Casmon

> Episode 220 of The REI Agent podcast
>
> Hosted by Mattias Clymer, a Realtor with Funkhouser Real Estate Group who leads Valley Homes Team in Harrisonburg, Virginia (https://valleyhomesva.com/about/mattias-clymer/), and Erica Clymer, a licensed therapist and real estate investor.

- **Published:** 2026-09-03
- **Duration:** 00:46:00

## Summary

John Casmon is a multifamily syndicator who has built a portfolio of more than 2,000 units while working a full-time marketing job. He invests mainly in value-add apartment buildings in Midwest markets like Cincinnati, Columbus, and Louisville. The episode teaches listeners to treat an apartment building as a business, to buy deals that already make money, and to vet local operators.

## Description

John Casmon reveals how a corporate wake-up call, house hacking, multifamily syndication, mentorship, cash flow discipline, and aligned family goals helped him build financial control while growing from a duplex into thousands of apartment units. (00:00) - Introduction to John Casmon and Building We

## Questions This Episode Answers

**How did John Casmon start investing in real estate while working a full-time job?**

He bought a two-unit building in Chicago with an FHA loan at 3.5% down, lived in one unit, and rented the other. Renovation work created enough equity within a year to qualify for a six-figure line of credit and remove his mortgage insurance.

**What is value-add multifamily syndication according to John Casmon?**

John Casmon describes it as buying an apartment building based on its current income, then improving operations to raise net operating income and value. Passive investors are limited partners who typically receive a preferred return from cash flow, and profits are shared when the property is refinanced or sold.

**Why does John Casmon recommend buying cash-flowing deals first?**

He says a deal should make money from the start, so the investor is not racing the clock to create a profit. He points to deals in his own past that failed because they were not generating income, and he now prefers to buy properties that already make money and then improve them.

**What cautions does John Casmon give about buying apartments out of state?**

He warns that a below-market price usually has a reason behind it, and that out-of-state investors can be taken advantage of by local operators who run older systems. He recommends working with people who are local to the market, and he cites a 22-unit property near Dayton where an out-of-state investor struggled after a manager did not deliver.

**Which book does John Casmon recommend, and what does it teach about habits?**

John Casmon recommends Atomic Habits, which he calls the first self-help book he read that was immediately actionable. His takeaway is to act like the investor you want to become, such as analyzing deals and talking to investors, instead of waiting until you already own real estate.

## Chapters

- 00:00 -- - Introduction to John Casmon and Building Wealth While Working Full Time
- 05:00 -- - From Corporate Uncertainty to Taking Control of Your Financial Future
- 10:00 -- - Choosing the Right Investment Strategy for Your Goals and Lifestyle
- 15:00 -- - House Hacking, Building Equity, and Discovering the Power of Partnerships
- 20:00 -- - How Multifamily Syndication Works as a Business Investment
- 25:00 -- - Why Multifamily Housing Can Offer Stability Through Changing Markets
- 30:00 -- - Midwest Investing, Local Knowledge, and the Hidden Risks of Cheap Properties
- 35:00 -- - Balancing Family, Career, and Investing Through a Shared Vision
- 40:00 -- - Mentorship, Personal Growth, and Three Principles for Successful Investing
- 45:00 -- - Atomic Habits, Multifamily Insights, John Casmon’s Resources, and Closing Thoughts
- 46:00 -- - Final Sign-Off and Investment Disclaimer

## Show Notes

John Casmon reveals how a corporate wake-up call, house hacking, multifamily syndication, mentorship, cash flow discipline, and aligned family goals helped him build financial control while growing from a duplex into thousands of apartment units.
(00:00) - Introduction to John Casmon and Building Wealth While Working Full Time
(05:00) - From Corporate Uncertainty to Taking Control of Your Financial Future
(10:00) - Choosing the Right Investment Strategy for Your Goals and Lifestyle
(15:00) - House Hacking, Building Equity, and Discovering the Power of Partnerships
(20:00) - How Multifamily Syndication Works as a Business Investment
(25:00) - Why Multifamily Housing Can Offer Stability Through Changing Markets
(30:00) - Midwest Investing, Local Knowledge, and the Hidden Risks of Cheap Properties
(35:00) - Balancing Family, Career, and Investing Through a Shared Vision
(40:00) - Mentorship, Personal Growth, and Three Principles for Successful Investing
(45:00) - Atomic Habits, Multifamily Insights, John Casmon’s Resources, and Closing Thoughts
(46:00) - Final Sign-Off and Investment Disclaimer
Contact John Casmon
https://casmoncapital.com/
https://www.facebook.com/p/John-Casmon-100028409780377/
https://www.instagram.com/jcasmon/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/multifamily-apartments-john-casmon/
https://www.youtube.com/@JohnCasmonMultifamily
https://x.com/Casmon_Capital
John Casmon's journey is proof that financial freedom doesn't begin when everything is perfect. It begins when someone decides to take ownership of their future, build the right habits, find the right people, and keep moving forward. Start where you are, focus on cash flow, learn from every mistake, and build a life where you have more choices tomorrow than you have today. For more inspiring conversations about investing, wealth, and creating a life on your terms, visit https://reiagent.com
Is success destroying your peace? Most pros grind until they break. Download The Investor’s Life Balance Sheet: A Holistic Wealth Audit to see if you are building a legacy or heading for burnout. Presented by The REI Agent Podcast & United States Real Estate Investor® https://sendfox.com/lp/m4

## Transcript

**[0:00]** Welcome back to the REI Agent. My guest today is John Kasman, founder of Kasman Capital Group and a multifamily syndicator who has built a portfolio of more than 2,000 units while working a full-time job in marketing, raising a family and doing it nights and weekends before he ever went full-time. John's story is one of the most relatable and instructives in real estate investing, a corporate professional who figured out how to build serious wealth and the margins of a busy life. He is also the host of the Multifamily Insights podcast and co-creator of Midwest Real Estate Networking Summit. John, welcome to the REI Agent podcast. Oh, thank you for having me. Excited to be here today and I appreciate that warm introduction.

**[0:42]** Yeah, absolutely, man. You clearly are not afraid of working hard and grinding and that's clearly worked out for you. We have this sub-theme of a holistic approach to life through real estate, so I'm definitely curious about how that looked for you throughout that journey, but let's just kind of get started to like how, what your career was and kind of how you started getting into real estate and what made you want to go there. Yeah, so real estate is one of those things that I was always interested in, but never enough to do anything about it. So like many listeners, I worked at W2, worked in advertising and marketing and really enjoyed what I was doing. Unfortunately for me, I worked at a company that ended up going into bankruptcy and read the headlines. I saw it on the news. I was at General Motors during the last recession. So we saw it coming, but nonetheless, when it hits, it's still tough and difficult. And I remember there was a day where they were announcing layoffs and I was told I was safe. That's what my higher-ups told me. Nonetheless, I came into the office a little late the next day because I knew that was the D-Day and they were

**[1:48]** going to be doing layoffs. And I just didn't want to be involved in watching people pack up their desk and things like that. So by the time I got to the office, I saw a little red dot on my phone. It was lighting up for a voicemail and my heart sunk. I was like, man, they told me I was good. And here I am with this because I never got voicemails. Right. So it's like, what? So I listened to it. It was actually a guy who sat kind of kitty corner from me and he was, you know, venting. He had got let go. He was a company for 22 years. He was a diabetic, so he needed the health benefits and he didn't know what he was going to do. And two things happened to me that day. One, I felt a great sense of empathy for him and other folks like that in that situation. But I also realized I never wanted to be in a situation where I didn't control my financial future. So that loose interest in real estate turned into a more intentional game plan to say, how do I become a real estate investor?

**[2:42]** And I kind of set out on that journey. So started, you know, took me a while to figure out how to actually invest in real estate, but moved to Chicago, got married. My wife and I bought our first piece of property, which was a two unit building. We house hacked, lived in one unit, rented out the other. And from there, we slowly started to build that portfolio while working a full time job and while raising a family until I was able to get to the point where I transitioned and went full time in real estate. You know, I think that I have a lot to say on this because there's a number of things you've touched on that are really powerful. I think it sounds very clear that that day you kind of defined your why. It was like kind of ironed into your soul, if you will. Like this, like I want to have, I want to take the control into my own life and into my own hands. And that's definitely something that I talk about a lot. You know, when people talk about getting in or thinking about, you know, becoming a real estate agent or kind of just being, you know, in the world of being self-employed or, you know, owning a business, that kind of stuff, it feels scary.

**[3:41]** It feels like, you know, you have to go out and like, you know, you're going to, you're only going to eat what you catch. Right. And there's something intimidating about it when you're on that other side. But, but once you get into it, once you actually see the success, once you put in the work and you see the success from it, would you say that you feel a lot more secure in your, in your position in life from a financial standpoint after having, you know, taken kind of, yeah, that, that income, that stuff is now kind of all on you, right? It's, it's no longer can be taken away, like from, you know, being laid off from a, yeah, my company. You know, it's a great question. I don't know if secure is the word I would use, but I definitely feel more empowered. Right. And what you're getting at is, um, and part, and to be clear, it's easy in, in retrospect to say, Hey, in that day is the day I decided to become a real estate investor. Right. It didn't happen. I decided it, but nothing transpired after that. Cause I was in Detroit. This is 2008 and anybody who owned real estate in Detroit in 2008 was trying to sell it. So anybody I talked to, they're like, Oh, you want to get real estate?

**[4:48]** Sure. Buy this, man. This is a piece of crap. I want to get rid of it. So something was telling me like, all right, if everybody's trying to give away the real estate they own, it's probably not the right time to be investing or I'm missing something. Right. And again, I didn't have the hindsight or the, the understanding that this was a global economic downturn to me, this was my company. It was my company that was frontline news up until the banking institutions took over those headlines. It was general motor. So for me, it was like, I need a plan B for this job. And then I started to understand the, the larger economic impact that was being had. And I say that because there were people at that company and we're all taught, you know, similar things, right? Go to college, get a great job, work, great career, retire. And that's what my father did. He's a blue collar guy.

**[5:31]** You know, he's worked two jobs in his life, you know, for two companies. And he probably would have stayed at the one company if he wasn't pushed to go to the second company. Right. And for me being at this company, I was there with lifers, people who had been there 15, 20, 25, 30, 35 years. There was no plan B for these people. This was it. Like, why would you have a plan B when you're making great six figures? You got a lot of corporate perks that come with working at a company like that. You're at headquarters, you've got expense budgets. Like there was no reason to have a plan B. So when those folks got hit with the, you know, the, the carpet being pulled from under them or the rug from being pulled from under them, not only was there not a plan B, but you got to see how drastically different everyone approached it. I saw, you know, VPs go to go from, you know, being a, you know, just underneath a C-suite executive, right. So the vice president of a large company like this to deciding they're going to open up like a ice cream shop in a small town in Michigan. And I'm like, what? There's like no transition play in here that they were thinking

**[6:35]** about. They're, they're literally trying to figure out their life. So what, as I was watching that, that's what I was like, you know what, at any moment, somebody else can just decide I'm not their guy because you had to play the corporate politics games. You had to be aligned with this guy, but not too closely aligned with this guy where, you know, the next guy feels like he can't trust you. So it was all of that, that really led me to the path to say, you know what, I'm going to be better off just building my own thing. And at some point if I can build this, where this is more valuable, there's more to be gained by doing this full time than the stage job, then we'll make the transition. So I don't know if it's security because at any moment things can happen. I mean, we're in an environment right now where multifamily is struggling and lots of deals are not working as people initially anticipated, but I feel in control. I know that there's always levers that I can pull that I didn't have before. When you only have a job in a resume, man, that's, that's scary to me because you're relying on someone else to either a hire you or be, you know, retain you because they

**[7:35]** feel like you add value and you don't control that. And you got to kiss a lot of ass and play the corporate game and, you know, you get tired of that. So for me, it's just, I'd rather have control of my future. I can take a look at my assets in my portfolio. I can pull different triggers. I can make different moves. I can work a little bit harder. I can negotiate different deals. I can, you know, learn, lean on different skillsets. So I feel way more empowered doing that. If not. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's, that's a, that's a good reframe. I like that. And, you know, I think, you know, that's kind of what I thought too, in the sense that, you know, at that moment you kind of had a reason to, not that you were like immediately buying, you know, like a Apex when you left the, the, the, you know, after listening to that voicemail, but you had a strong reason to, to put in that grind because you were working, you said that you had a family as well. I'm curious how many kids you had, but you were working another job and, and, and building this portfolio up. And that's not something that I think you kind of have to have a strong why you have to

**[8:31]** kind of have a future vision to go after, to really put in the work. Now I did the same thing to start my real estate sales career. Like I, I, I was working another job and a lot of people will say like, if you want to become a successful agent, you really can't work another job. You really have to go in and feel the fire, like feel that like, you know, you need to make this work. So it's gonna, you know, you have to get out there and grind. But for me, I was very, very dedicated to becoming an agent. And I, you know, at the time we were wanting to pay off our student loans. We were just wanting to get that monkey off our back and you know, start our, our, you know, newly married life together without having to worry about paying off over a hundred thousand dollars in debt. And we were only making like $60,000 combined. So, so that was kind of our why that's why I put in the grind to get there. But I think that's a, one, one thing that's really important for people, right? Is I feel like to have that, that motivation to really put in the long nights, to put in the extra effort to get somewhere. And then to your point as well, like, you know, sure, there's, there's never

**[9:34]** guarantees and, and, you know, markets go up and down like real estate, you know, just cause you have, you know, X, you know, net worth because of your, your real estate, that can go down too. There can be a lot, a lot of challenges in the space as well. But like you said, like you have now proven to yourself that you can go out and achieve, you know, something just comes from you, right? That's not like reliant on somebody else. We have tenants, we have other factors. It's not that simple, but you, you know what I mean? Like you, you built a business, you built something up that, that is now yours. And like, if you had to start over in something brand new, you'd never want to really bright, but you probably could figure it out. You've done it before. You've proven that to yourself. And so you have maybe that extra empowerment, that extra security, knowing that that's within you because you've proven it to yourself. Yeah, no. And I think it's important, right? Because I mean, at the end of the day, we all have to look within and our own belief system is what's going to drive us. If you don't have the belief that you can go out there and build this,

**[10:38]** then that security that you alluded to earlier is going to come from a W2 job. And there's a lot to like about it, right? When you know you get paid every two weeks or twice a month and that, you know, direct deposit is going to hit. That's awesome, man. Like you can live your life, you can plan, you can budget, you can plan vacations and say, Hey, I'm taking off the, you know, June, whatever. When you don't have that and your income fluctuates based on how successful you were that month or that week. Uh, and then you got to actually collect the money. Uh, it's just a different world. You know, it's harder to take vacations. It's harder to feel like, you know, you've done enough or whatever the case may be because you recognize that this is another thing. It's an entity. It's a, it's a independent, you know, business that you have to maintain and it needs your attention, just like your children need your attention. So that is challenging for a lot of people and not everyone has that mindset. There's nothing wrong with it. And I would tell people the beauty of real estate is you don't have to be a landlord to be successful in real estate. There are lots of ways to invest.

**[11:37]** You can wholesale, you can fix and flip. You can be a real estate agent. Uh, you can invest with, uh, you know, passively through, you know, syndication deals like a lot of our investors do investing alongside us. You can do private lending where you're just putting your money out there. So real estate is a wonderful vehicle because you don't actually have to quit your day job to become a real estate investor to make money in it. You know, you just have to figure out what strategy makes sense for you based on your goals, your risk tolerance and understanding your network and the opportunities that are presented to you. Yeah, no, that's very true. Uh, one of the reasons, you know, we started this podcast was to help teach agents about, uh, you know, a lot of agents don't invest in real estate. Right. And I think that's partly because they may have seen a lot of, um, you know, landlord situations gone bad or, you know, like, you know, tenant destroyed the property.

**[12:26]** Don't want to have to deal with that. Don't want to be getting calls about, you know, fixing, uh, toilets and that kind of stuff in the middle of the night. Um, but, but yeah, like you said, there, there's so many different paths and teaching agents about syndications. You may not have heard of it is, is definitely one as well, because there's tons, tons of benefits there. Uh, not only can you invest passively, but you can get, you know, accelerate depreciation, uh, you know, you're a risk designated professional. So you can get, um, you know, your, if you're, you know, producing a lot, uh, don't have time to invest. It's kind of the, the win-win you can, you know, depreciate your taxes a good amount. Um, I mean, take off your taxes right off the bunch for your, for your taxes through depreciation, um, that you're not having to manage. So there's definitely some wins there. Um, I, I do want to hear more about kind of like, yeah, your journey, but what that kind of properties you started picking up, you said that the house hacking, and then from there, where'd you go? Yeah. So the house hack was really the test,

**[13:18]** right? This was taking all that theory and all that research that I've done and all right, man, you gotta, you gotta see if it's real. And it was, we bought a two unit building, lived in one unit where we rented out the other side of it or the other, uh, unit and it went really well, you know, better than I could have imagined. First of all, at the time when we put together this plan, I didn't know about an FHA loan. Um, so we were able to save a significant amount of capital. We only put three and a half percent down for the down payment and we had money left over. So that money that we thought we would need for the down payment, we actually invested into the property. So we fixed up the first floor unit. We fixed up the exterior, the doors, the yard, and we created a lot of value. And, uh, I remember we were saving our money to get ready to buy another property in the agent that we had brought on board. She started asking us questions about that, the two unit. And she's like, I think you got a lot of equity in this place. And we're like, no, we just moved in last year. I don't think so. And she's like, no, I think you do. Market's

**[14:13]** really gone up. And I think you've created a lot of value. And we were getting, we're like, okay, we hear you, but no, maybe what we put in, maybe we got that back, but we know real estate only appreciates 3% a year and we put in 50,000. So maybe it went up close to that, but it's highly unlikely. Well, we got an appraisal done and we had created over six figures worth of equity into this property to the point where we were able to get a six figure line of credit. We were able to wipe out our complete PMI. So again, we only put three and a half percent down. We were able to get a line of credit and wipe out our, our, uh, property mortgage insurance, um, just with the amount of equity that we created in one year. So that was really the sign to me that not only was this real and doable, but I mean, I've pretty much made more on that deal in one year than I made in a year and we didn't do that much work, right? I mean, it was work, but we bought stuff, we invested in it, but you know, we hired general contractors. It's not like I did everything. So that was really this, the signal that this can absolutely work if done properly. Um, so the next property, we bought a

**[15:15]** three unit building. Uh, we bought an eight unit building two years after that. And right around that time is when I realized, okay, not only does this work, um, but this can be the thing, right? I don't have like, this is the transition point. I can do this real estate investing full time, but I had a couple of issues, um, a couple of issues. And one was big and one of no, every investor runs into, I kept running out of money. Right. So we would save our money to buy our property. And then I would be right back flat broke again, you know, both making six figures, but we would save and save and save. And now as the family is growing, I got more expenses, right? I got to take care of the kids.

**[15:49]** So when we bought the eight unit building, I remember feeling deflated, you know, because I was just thinking about this mountain. I was going to have to climb before I could make the next investment. And it was like, man, how long is it going to take me to save up this kind of money again? And, um, I started warming up to the idea of like, man, if I could partner with somebody or somebody else could bring some of this money, that would make my life so much easier. And as fate would have it, I, um, ran into a friend of mine, a person who became a friend of mine was also a real estate investor. She ran a meetup and we're just chatting like normal. And she mentioned that she was up to 90 units. Now, when I met her, she only had one three unit building. And then about maybe nine months after that, she had bought two more properties and she was up to nine units total.

**[16:32]** And this is like maybe a year after that. And she was up to 90 units. And I'm like, whoa, wait a minute. Huh? Like, how did that happen? How does someone go from nine to 90 units? And I just remember not being able to shake that question. And I, I asked her flat out and said, Hey, I'd love to buy you breakfast. I just, I want to hear how you were able to scale. And she said, sure, let's sit down with breakfast. What's up? And I asked her directly. I said, how'd you do it? And she said, she had these investors who were online, they're on bigger pockets and they were out in California. They had been following her and they had been reaching out to her about investing with her and partnering with her.

**[17:07]** She was apprehensive at first, but ultimately decided to partner. Um, she went out, found the property, they put up the capital and they, you know, had a partnership. And that was the first time I had come across somebody in real life who had raised money for deals. Now this was not necessarily what she set out to do, but it ended up working out that way. And that was the first time I actually thought maybe I could raise money for deals. Not a whole bunch of limiting beliefs, right? I didn't think anybody would want to invest with me. I, you know, I was having some successful real estate, but I wasn't really a guru or an expert or anything like that. Right. Um, but that conversation really opened up my mindset. And from there, I mean, literally within the next 60 days, I met the guy, became my mentor. Um, I went to a conference where I was talking to a bunch of other folks who've raised capital for deals. We started talking about deal structures and how to make it work.

**[17:56]** And I think within the next year I had done my first syndication as a general partner. Wow. That's amazing. That's a, that's a, that's a big jump. And I, I think I should just maybe take a moment to kind of help people who maybe not aren't, maybe not familiar with syndications kind of like understand, um, it, it, you know, there, there are the beauty of this kind of thing is it can be such a great win-win, um, when executed properly. Um, so like it's, it's, it may be a little bit hard to understand how like somebody could just passively invest and it'd be worth their time energy and then how somebody who's leading this kind of thing might actually benefit from it as well. And how it's, you know, really no, nobody's it's all transparent. You know, there's all agreements, uh, to, to all this stuff and it's all kind of, you know, above board. But once you understand like kind of how the cap rate kind of game works and, uh, are you doing mainly, so it has been mainly the multifamily kind of like a value add strategy value add multifamily. Yes. So, so, so basically if you can think about it like being a flip or if you're familiar with a bur,

**[19:00]** um, but like at a much larger scale, that's, that's kind of the most simple way to understand it. And so you, you are going to take on an apartment building that the value isn't based on other apartment buildings and what they're selling for. It's based on the cap rate, which is based off the, um, NOI, the net operating income. So you have a property that is maybe not performing as it could. And so you're going to go through and fix up the property. It might be that you fix up the property to be able to demand higher rent. It might be that you're cutting expenses by managing it better. It might be that you are, you know, kicking people out there or not paying rent. I mean, there's a lot of different ways that it can happen. And I'd love for you to share some of these, um, strategies or what you've done. Um, but basically increasing the profitability of the business, which then increases the value of the business. And when you really understand how that multiplies with a cap rate, like if you have a cap rate and you, you increase, uh, a hundred dollars a door, um, and it's a hundred unit property, that can be a huge difference in the,

**[20:02]** in the overall value. And so all that to say is, is, um, if you get other people to invest the cashflow that's coming in from the property is paying them. Um, you're, they're getting a preferred, uh, payment typically, uh, to, to, you know, give them a similar return that they might be getting in, you know, a stock market or whatever. It just depends on the deal. Uh, and then once the plan is executed by like, you know, basically making it more profitable and being able to realize more equity, they can do an exit strategy, which will be a refinance of the property or, or a sale of the property. Um, and so taking that extra equity created, uh, again, by making the value go up through the, um, business income, the NOI, um, you are then able to pay off the investors in full, or they might earn a profit from a shared profit from the whole deal. Is that a pretty accurate description of, of what, what, how you're operating? Yeah. I mean, that, that's it. You know, if I, you know, for folks who understand stocks, um, another way of saying it is we're, we're buying a business. And I love the fact that you talked about, you know, the, the business. Cause I think that

**[21:08]** the biggest challenge, the biggest difference is people think about like buying a single family house or rental. And they, they try to translate that into buying apartments and, and running it that way. And they really are different. The easiest differentiator I can tell you is you're buying a business, forget that it's apartments, forget that it's real estate at all. You're buying a business based on its current operations. You want to have a business plan to improve the operations to make that business worth more money. And then you want to sell that business at some point in the not so distant future. That's all we're doing. Uh, so I'm buying a bar, an apartment building. Let's say it's a hundred unit apartment building. I'm going to pull out the income statement. I'm going to see how much money it's making. Now I want to have a very clear vision of how I can make this apartment building, make more money. I'm going to go out and execute that business plan. And once we're done, we're going to distribute those proceeds to our investors.

**[21:56]** So coming back to the stocks, when we buy this business, we are going to issue stocks or shares of the business, right? We're going to buy it. And you know, you might get 10 shares. I got 10 shares, whatever it is, we're going to go out there. We're all going to have shares of the business that we're buying. So as we increase the value, our share value increases. So once we sell, we're going to sell at this point, once we paid off all of our debt and our expenses, now the less is profits, which goes to our shareholders and we get to partake in the proceeds. The biggest thing here, just like in stocks, you know, you and I can own shares of Starbucks. It doesn't mean that we're weighing in on what the fall, you know, offerings are going to be, right? There's a, there's a team that makes those decisions, not us. And it's the same thing here.

**[22:40]** We're limited partners. When you invest in a syndication deal, you're not making those decisions, right? You're going to vet the team. You're going to vet the business plan. You're going to say, all right, Hey, I'm going to put my money up. Trust you guys to go out there and do your thing and go create value. So there is some, you know, some, some trust that's needed because you are going to be handing over control to that general partnership team. That's going to go out there and oversee the day-to-day operations. They're going to be the ones making all the hiring and firing decisions, implementing the business plan, making any alterations to the business plan. So you want to make sure that you select the right team to invest with, but just like in shares and stocks, you're going to go out there. You're going to try to take in, take in all the information that's available to you and find the right options that you believe in moving forward.

**[23:22]** Yeah. That's a, I love that analogy. And that was really well said. And one of the points I often make too, is if you're, if you're in real estate, if you're already, if you're a real estate agent, it is a lot more easy to understand that business that you're talking about departments than it would be to understand how Starlink is going to work or, you know, how a SpaceX, what the valuation of SpaceX is. That's, that's a lot nebulous. That's a lot more hard to grasp because it's not your business. And so I think there is, you know, you need to be careful, but like, if you're, if you're comparing it to, you know, and that I kind of think of it a little bit like the realtors 401k, right? Like, I mean, you can just, you get the tax benefits by investing in it. You know, you can get, you know, say for retirement, you might get the money back early and you're going to get money you can actually use along the way instead of having to wait. But, but, you know, it's, it can be a really good win-win for a real estate professional in general.

**[24:17]** But, but yeah, like, like I said, you can, you can more easily understand how the economics, how everything works with this kind of deal than some other random business. If I can elaborate on that point, right? Because there's so many variables when it comes to, you know, stocks or other companies, right? You have the, the corporate team themselves, right? And you don't know, you know, what's going on with those individuals on a day-to-day basis. You have vendors, you have supply chain, you have competitors, you have economic changes, you have technology and AI changes. So there are so many threats or things that can derail or impact the performance of a business. The thing with real estate and real estate-centric businesses is it still comes down to basically rents, right? You know, your expenses are there in rental income.

**[25:04]** So if you can get a reputable management company that has a proven track record, they have the resources to manage a property, you know, accordingly, yes, you're still susceptible to other economic pressures, but at the end of the day, people are always going to need a place to live, right? And if this building or this business has demonstrated a track record of being 90, 95% occupied over the last three to five years, it's generated rents at a thousand dollars. Like you have a proven documented track record of what that property has been able to perform. It is more likely if you take a look at the data, you know, you look at population trends, you look at rent growth and rent demand drivers, you look at these things, you can make some fairly decent assumptions as far as what's going to happen. That's not going to be a hundred percent accurate, right? Because it could go down. We're seeing some of that in different markets, but it's usually not going to drop to zero. It's not going to drop to 20% occupancy if it's at 90%, right? So yeah, can it drop down to 80, 85? Of course. Can rents go from a thousand dollars

**[26:01]** down to say $950? Of course. But you're not going to see this like massive drop-off where it's worth nothing, you know? And some of those businesses, they can, right? You can have a lawsuit wipe out big earnings, big winnings. So there's definitely things you need to pay attention to, to protect your investment. But on the same note, we love the fact that it's a brick and mortar, that it is, you know, an essential service. It's something that everyone needs. It's housing, particularly I'm talking about multifamily, not just all commercial real estate. When it comes to multifamily, we know there's an affordable crisis that's going on. We know with interest rates being higher, some folks are kind of waiting now for rates to drop before they want to buy a home.

**[26:40]** All of those factors tend to work well when it comes to apartment investing. And if one wanted to, they could also diversify what type and locations they're investing in across different syndications. They could, you know, mobile home parks, they could do, you know, park, parking garages, they could do self-storage. There's a lot of different avenues that you could get into there. But, but like your point, I think, you know, investing in things that people can't do without is certainly helpful. And being in, you know, I would rather be in the lower cost tier of housing than like in the luxury investing space. You know, I think that's just, it's more challenging to, to, to be confident long-term. I'm sure there's lots of people being very successful in it though.

**[27:34]** Can you, yeah, can you, can you describe, are you, are you mainly in the Chicago area then investing, or have you expanded where you are investing? Yeah. So I'm in Cincinnati now. I used to live in Chicago. I was there for eight years. So we invest primarily in Cincinnati and surrounding markets. So we go about a two hour radius up to Columbus, down to Louisville. We love Indianapolis, even though we've never bought anything in Indianapolis. But we do like that market a lot. And we, so we invest in mostly the Midwest markets. We do like the Southeast region as well. Typically we'll partner with other operators in those markets if we do deals there. But we felt so strong about the Midwest in particular, again, Cincinnati, Louisville, Columbus over the last year or two, that that's really been our primary focus. So we think there's a lot of opportunity there. And that really comes down to supply and demand, just looking at some of the trends that are coming with supply, meaning how much, how many new apartments have come online over the last couple of years. And the thing about the Midwest is it's, it's stable in a sense that the people who

**[28:33]** live here choose to live here, they live here because they grew up here, they have family here. They're not chasing jobs necessarily. They're not chasing a lifestyle. They didn't leave for promotion and, you know, tech Silicon Valley or something like that. The people want to be here. So it's a bit more stable, doesn't grow quite as fast because of that, but it's a little more predictable when it comes to what you can expect when you're running your projections. Yeah. And I think typically or historically the, like the rent to purchase ratios are more favorable. I, I have family in the Columbus area. And so I've even gone to look at a couple of duplexes while I've been over there. I just said to kind of check it out. I'm just like, are you kidding me?

**[29:16]** Both of them for what? And where are you based? I'm out of Virginia. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But then the you know, the, then, then also I know that there was a lot of growth happening as well around the Columbus area. We are actually just near Cincinnati a couple, a couple of weeks ago, but yeah. Here's what I'll say about that too, Matias is that every market has desirable and undesirable sub markets. So what ends up happening with investors, particularly my, my New York and California investors is they, they just light up when they see some of the prices in the Midwest. And what I would caution all investors to do just because you're not going to live there, doesn't mean you get to get the most value, the cheapest thing that you see.

**[30:03]** Understand if you see something that's below that market's value, it's below that market's value for a reason. So you have to have that same business plan as far as what do you actually want to invest in? What kind of residents do you want to serve? What's the business plan and make sure it makes sense because I can't tell you how many times. And I was, you know, I was very close to being a victim of this myself. When I lived in Chicago, I would come down to Cincinnati and, you know, they would light up like, Oh, look at this big Chicago investor. Cause they love out of towners. Right. They just, they think we're all suckers. And I, quite frankly, I'm like, I'm about to run circles around these guys. Right. I'm about to come in here. They don't even know how good they got it. Like, this is, this is a discount. I'm about to buy this to 30,000 a door. Listen, man, it was a reason it was 30,000 a door, you know, and it's, it's not as easy as we may think. And there are factors in play that are really hard to comprehend until you get into a market.

**[30:59]** You know, like the things I was able to do in Chicago, I just couldn't do in Cincinnati. Uh, the market's different. The way people operate is different. Um, I remember when I first, the first property we bought here, the, and this was not that long ago, this was like 2018, uh, the property manager I hired, they still had a paper and pen ledger, right? Like they, they were writing rents and expenses. And I would ask them to send it to me. And this guy would have to go and scan this thing and send me a PDF. And I'm like, you don't have like anything digitally. You don't use Excel. You don't have like any of the programs that people are using podium, anything like that. No, this dude literally just wrote down the leisure unit 17 to pay rent of 800.

**[31:44]** I'm like, Oh, and again, I'm not local. Right. So I got to trust this guy's notes. And I'm like, this ain't gonna work. And that, but that was the first time I really started to understand, like, I got to change the way I think about how to operate in this market, because these guys can absolutely take advantage of you when you're not local. And you, you may think that your level of sophistication, I'm not, and I'm trying, I hope I'm not coming across as talking down. That's not my intention. What I'm saying is people have an old school way of doing things here. And if it works for them, that's how they do it. And if you don't know how to navigate that market, you may think you're going to be the one taking advantage of the situation, but these guys are super savvy.

**[32:22]** They will absolutely take advantage of you. So it's really important to work with people who are local in those markets, because they're going to know things you can never even imagine. And when you're looking at these ledgers, you're looking at the notes, like people just do business in a different way. And you got to learn kind of the ways of the land. And I've seen a lot of people, you know, who thought they had a good deal come. I met at a conversation with a very successful investor out in Texas. They bought a property up here, actually closer to Dayton and a 22 unit property. And they're getting their tail handed to them on it. And it's the same thing, right? They bought it, thought they had a good plan. I'm going to hire this manager. Manager did not deliver for them.

**[33:02]** And they just, they missed some things in that process. And now they're upside down in there. You know, I ran the numbers and they're like, I don't think you're ever going to get to the point where this thing is worth what you pay for ever. Like after five years, after you do everything you can do, I don't think you're going to get it back to where you paid for it. And that's the caution I would give people is, you know, don't get so caught up with, oh, well, this is cheaper than what I see in my market. It's got to be a deal. Not so fast, my friend. Yeah, that's good. Definitely good. A reminder. And I think, you know, buying out of state definitely is something out of your market that is a skill in itself. And I think that, you know, there are a lot of many people who do it. A lot of people who, and you can think about it this way too. You know, if you're wanting to establish, you know, you know, the cashflow is your base, you know, if you really want to have like replace your income or cover your expenses or something, and you really want to focus on cashflow. So you try to seek out the best markets, which may not be the one you're living in. You know, there's,

**[34:01]** there's definitely some cautionary tales there. And I think there's definitely a lot of strategies that can help with that. But yeah, that's probably for another episode. I am curious about how you were able to try to balance, you know, the job, the family and, and building this new business along the way. I mean, what I'm, I'm, I say the word balance, but I don't think it really is a thing. So how, how is, how did that go? And any lessons that you learned from that process when you really had to, you know, really burn the candle on both ends? I definitely was burning the candle on both ends. I can't tell you how many 2am, you know, emails that I, so we used to work in Gmail, my, the day job I had with an advertising, I went to an agency in Chicago and they had a feature that I think it just came out around that time where you can schedule emails to send. I can't tell you how many emails I wrote at 2am that I scheduled to go out at regular business hours to look like, you know, that's all I did.

**[35:00]** When I didn't, I, in truth, I didn't have time to touch some of that stuff till 2am. Um, a lot of work, but I will tell you this, the biggest lesson I have is be really clear on the vision that you want to have for yourself and for your family. So my wife and I were completely aligned with what we were trying to build. So there was never a question about why I was doing something or why, you know, I missed something and she worked with me in the business. So she would, you know, do some stuff too. And we just had to understand it like, Hey, here's what needs to happen for the business. Here's what needs to happen for, you know, my kid or for my work, uh, or for us. And we just managed through it. And I think that alignment is key. I meet a lot of couples where one wants to get into real estate or one wants to start investing and the other's not so sure. And they typically never end up doing anything if that's where they're at. And I push everyone to say, take it away from the investing and start to understand the kind of life you want to live together. What are your goals? What are your priorities? What do you envision five,

**[35:57]** 10 years from now, 15 years from now? And how do you get there? And if real estate is a vehicle to help you get there, that's when you can now align on real estate investing. But if you all don't see the same future together, you can never really have this conversation because one person is only going to see risk and what could go wrong. They're not going to see the vision of what you're trying to do. And we have failed as investors. You know, we've had deals that didn't pan out in our personal portfolio and it was very frustrating when it happened. I can't imagine if I had to then look at my partner and have her question why we even did this in the first place. You know what I mean? So like when it happened, we both were frustrated, but we know why we did it. We know what we're trying to do.

**[36:38]** We can sit and have a strategic conversation about, okay, well, what happened here? Okay. We partnered with the wrong person. Okay. Well, how did we miss this? This is why we missed this. Okay. We need to vet for this in the future. We need to ask these questions in the future. We need to check these references moving forward. Like we could get a solution, but it didn't change our objective. And I think so many people, when you're talking about balance or, you know, trying to make, trying to get over the hump, right. To the point where it's more manageable. It's tough because if you don't have that support and you guys are not aligned on where you're trying to go, you feel like you're really fighting two battles. And now you've got the pressure of, you know, not even being able to be fully honest and transparent because you run into those hardships. You don't want to share with the person who's going to be like, I told you this was a bad idea, right? Like you're like, you're like, you got to eat all of that yourself. You got to carry that burden. You got to put on a happy face.

**[37:27]** You got to pretend like you're not, you know, losing your ass over here on this deal. And that's, that's tough, man. That's tough for any, that's tough for investors when things are going great. It's, it's almost impossible when you've got someone who's supposed to be on your team and they don't see your vision. So I think the biggest thing is get that alignment and stay focused on your why, stay focused on the goal and the life you want to create together, be honest, have the conversations. And then to get a little tactical, keep invested in yourself. I mean, one of the, one of the biggest things I was able to do is I got a mentor and I know a lot of folks will say, you know, oh, well, you know, you can learn a lot on the internet and YouTube. Sure. But dude, it's, it's way different when you can just call it real person and you can call them and ask them directly and get some direct feedback on your unique situation or your unique challenges, because there's not going to be a perfect YouTube video explaining how to do everything that you're facing. The conversation I just had, right? What were you getting that from to talk with your spouse when you think she really doesn't

**[38:25]** believe in you and you don't even know if you really believe in you. And now she's created this doubt. You know what I mean? Like they're not talking about that. They're going to tell you the good stuff. Oh man, just, you just go out there and do it. Look, bro. It's hard when you've got self doubt that you haven't verbalized. You got a partner who doesn't really believe in you because maybe you tried something else a couple of years ago and that failed and, or her mom invested in real estate and that failed, or she watched her parents, you know, have to foreclose their home. Dude, when you got that kind of baggage you're dealing with, it's real tough to put on a happy face and just say, Oh, let's just go do it. So having a mentor, having somebody who's done it, who's in your corner, who can talk you off the ledge. You can tell you that's completely normal, but ignore the noise and lock in on the specific steps. Just keep doing this, right?

**[39:09]** To know when you can pull the trigger, to know when to do certain things. That's key. And listen to podcasts. I mean, every day when I was, I took the train, when I lived in Chicago, I took the train to work. I listened to a podcast to work, from work every day. Every day I was listening to a podcast and that just got me into mindset. You know, I was going to real estate meetups every, every month. I probably went to two or three real estate meetups a month or events a month plus the podcast. So I'm saying all that to say, I was conditioning myself to be a real estate investor, even before I really started investing in real estate. So then once I actually invested, now these are peers. That person I talked to you about went from nine to 90 units. She was on one of the early episodes of BiggerPockets. And I'm like, well, that's my friend. I know her for real, like for real, I can call her, I can text her. So when you start to change your network and these are your peers now, it just, it kind of forces you to, to elevate. And I think that was, it forces you to, right? Because you're going to, you're running in a different circle. So I think that's the biggest

**[40:09]** thing you can do. It's not really balanced. It's really pushing yourself to just play the game a little bit differently. I love it. So like you're, you're, you're setting the clear vision and you're aligning your vision with your, your partner. And then, and then you're brainwashing yourself more or less. Right. I mean, like you're, you're putting yourself in the position that you're going to be like, you're not just on doom scrolling. You're listening to things that are going to get you into that mindset and you're surrounding yourself with people that aren't negative dances that are, that aren't like, you know, just scared and trapped in the scarcity mindset. They are, they're out there winning big and not always winning big, but like have experience as well to, to help you avoid those. So those are great. I mean, I like, I feel like I just asked you for your three nuggets and you just gave them, but do you have other nuggets for us?

**[40:52]** I wrote, I wrote down a couple. Yeah. So I would say these are, I think really important. So first of all, cashflow first, you know the deals I mentioned that didn't work out for me. Well, they asked what they were flip projects and they didn't work out because it wasn't making money. Like real estate investing is simple, but we make it so complicated, make money. If the deal doesn't make money, you're going to struggle and it's going to be hard. And yes, you can have a vision of how to make it make money, but I would just say cashflow first. So for us, one of our guiding principles does the deal make money out of the gate. Right. And I want to buy stuff that's already making money and I can make it make more money. I don't want to do deals where it's losing money or it's not making any money. And I got to go and race the clock to generate a profit versus what exists already.

**[41:33]** So cashflow first. Second thing is leverage others. You know, it is really difficult to do this solo. And yes, you can buy a single family house and manage everything yourself. But if you want to scale a portfolio, you're going to need to leverage others, whether that is a property manager, whether that's investors, lenders, um, um, partners, um, you know, brokers, real estate agents, you're going to need to leverage other people to help you scale this portfolio. So do that. And then third is own everything. And what I mean by own, I mean, take ownership. So not literally by everything you see, but take ownership. When I lost money on those deals, I had to own it. Right. Well, why do we lose money? I picked the bad partner. We picked the developer who did not have the system. He had a great system. He didn't have the mindset to understand how to grow and scale a business. And that was on me. I could blame him all day long, but at the end of the day, I'm the one that decided to partner with him. So I need to look at what I can control, which is my vetting process vendors that I partner with,

**[42:30]** um, how we disperse funds, how we do our draws. Um, you know, what kind of licenses, insurance bonds that we require from people that we work with. Those are the things I can control, right? You're going to have a bad hire, a bad vendor from time to time, but if you can always improve your systems, then you're taking ownership and you can control and you can minimize those mistakes moving forward. So own everything. I love it. I agree completely. Um, what about a favorite book? When you think that's fundamental, uh, that everybody should read or just one that you're currently really enjoying? Uh, one I've, I've loved for a while, man. Um, it's atomic habits and it gets into, um, I mean, there's a lot to love in a book. The reason I love that book so much though, is to first you call them self-help or development book, whatever you want to call it. But it's the first one I read that was immediately actionable. Every other book I read was like, Oh, this is really good.

**[43:18]** We should do this. Or I'm going to start doing this. That book was all like, Oh, I can do this now. This is not a weight situation. This is something I can implement immediately. Um, and I'll give you a little quick example. Like, um, I have these marbles on my desk and I use them as a moniker just to help me with, uh, like phone calls. You know, I realized, Hey, this is something we're struggling with. So do a phone call, take one marble, put it in the other bucket. And the point of it is the book helps you learn how to become the person you want to be, not to just achieve a goal. It's to become a different person. And you know, when you talk about real estate investing, well, real estate investors do what they, they analyze deals.

**[43:58]** They hang out with other real estate investors. They're touring properties. They're putting in offers, right? So you just change how you measure who you are, what you do. It's not about whether you actually own real estate yet. It's about, are you doing what real estate investors do? And when you change your mentality and you change your habits to be those kinds of things, you're ultimately going to become a real estate investor. If you want to raise capital, you have to do what people who raise capital do, right? You got to talk to investors. You got to share deals. You got to do those things right now, whether you've actually raised money before or you're raising money now, it doesn't matter if you're doing the things that people raise money do. So it's just starting to shift how you act and how you behave. And it's really an immediate thing. It's not this future version of yourself that many people strive to. It's changing who you are today to start acting like the future version of yourself.

**[44:45]** Wow. That's fantastic. And, and, you know, very true. I've read that book, but that is a really good perspective on it as well. John, if people want to listen to your podcast, if people want to follow you for more, want to learn about future deals, what, what can, where can they find you social media websites, et cetera? Yeah. Uh, best places go to our website, chasm capital.com. We have a download of seven questions you must ask before investing in apartments. Uh, that is what, uh, chasm capital.com slash seven questions. And then our podcast, anywhere you listen to podcasts, uh, it's called multifamily insights. It's the number one rated multifamily podcast. We've done over 800 episodes. So lots of great content that you can, uh, sift through there to find, uh, some, some ideas and some things that can help you along your investing journey.

**[45:33]** Well, John, Hey, thank you so much for being on the show. This has been a lot of fun talking to you and really informative for our audience. Absolutely. Hey, thank you for having me. Great time today. Thanks for listening to the REI agent. If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe to catch new shows every week, visit REI agent.com for more content until next time. Keep building the life you want. All content in the show is not investment advice or mental health therapy. It is intended for entertainment purposes only.

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