How Zach Haptonstall Built a $2.5B Multifamily Empire From Scratch

Zach Haptonstall (00:00)
The people that tell me I’m not gonna do it or I shouldn’t do it, they’re not the one that has to put the work in to achieve my goal. I’m the one that has to put the work in to achieve my goal. So who are you to tell me if I’m one that has to put all the work in, right? So people need to stop listening to other people and with social media and all this stuff, it’s easy to get caught up in it and it can really impact your confidence and your determination. And so you gotta be locked in.

Cody Crabb (00:07)
Hmm.

Hello and welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m Cody Crabb with Investor Fuel. Today I’m joined by Zach Haptonstall CEO and co-founder of Rise 48 Equity, a vertically integrated multifamily investment firm. He’s got over 11,000 units across Phoenix, Dallas, and North Carolina. We are going to talk about building a multifamily investment company, what experience people are seeing in the current market cycle.

and just his tips for getting started. So Zach, thank you so much for joining us today.

Zach Haptonstall (02:25)
Yeah, thanks so much, Cody. Really appreciate you having me on, man. Looking forward to hopefully providing some value for the listeners here and diving into all types of different topics.

Cody Crabb (02:32)
Yeah, let’s get into it. ⁓ So I love starting out with kind of the origin, the origin story. How did you first get into multifamily real estate?

Zach Haptonstall (02:39)
Yeah, so quick background. mean, I was born and raised here in Phoenix, Arizona, which is where I live now. It’s where our corporate headquarters are. So I just grew up in like a lower middle class family. My dad was in construction. My mom was like an HR ⁓ employee for a company. And so just traditional, you know, I was taught go to school, get good grades, get a degree, you know, all that. so.

I played high school in football. played football in high school and then I went and played division two ⁓ college football and I really wanted to be an NFL player and I realized, okay, this isn’t going to happen. You know, I’m not big enough or good enough to do that. And so my next, my next best option was like, yeah, I want to be a sports reporter. And so I went to journalism school. I was a live news anchor, sports reporter for Arizona PBS. I hosted a show on Fox Sports Network for a bit, which was cool experience, you know, being on live TV and

The idea was cooler than the reality is what happened, Cody. And I was like, wow, this isn’t really what I wanted to do. You can’t make me money doing this. And I was working.

you know, full time nights and weekends while I was going to school, going to college to pay for my school. I had to take out a bunch of student loans. And so I was really focused. I didn’t get a penny from anybody, you know, ever. And so I was I had to focus on, how do I eat? How do I, you know, provide housing, et cetera? So I got the degree and I realized, OK, I don’t want to go into journalism. I need to make money. OK. And so I I got into health care marketing when I was 21 years old, just from like, you know, somebody I had known.

Cody Crabb (03:43)
you

Zach Haptonstall (04:06)
from my previous job while I was in college. And so I had heard you make good money in healthcare marketing. I needed to pay off my student debt. My car was always breaking down, so I needed to get a new car. I needed to pay my rent. And so I went into healthcare marketing, working for a hospice organization, of all things. And my job was wake up in the morning, drive all around Phoenix and just walk in cold to hospitals, doctors offices, assisted livings, et cetera, and build relationships with physicians, social workers, nurses. When they had somebody who needed a hospice care, they call me.

family, educate them, get them signed up. So it sounds weird Cody, it’s a very hospice is a very competitive and lucrative private business industry. It’s all regulated, know, and reimbursed by Medicare. Phoenix is the number one market in the country. And so long story short,

Cody Crabb (04:44)
No, yeah.

Zach Haptonstall (04:51)
You know, I was doing that and I was doing really well. I was probably the top marketer in the market. And by the time I’m 23, I’m making 150K a year. I bought a house when I was 23. So I’m making more money than both my parents combined had ever made by the time I’m 23 doing this marketing job.

Cody Crabb (05:07)
See,

and this right here is where I would be like, done. Goal achieved. I have money, I’m good now. So I’m interested in what happens next.

Zach Haptonstall (05:12)
Yeah.

Yeah, no, you’re right, Cody, because that was my goal. When I was 18, I remember I read one of Dave Ramsey’s books, okay, all about saving your money, being frugal, killing debt. And so I was like, I need to kill this student debt. That was my number one target. And then I bought a car and I was like, I need to kill this car loan. So I was grinding and grinding. I did that for about four or five years or so. And by the time I’m 26, I’m making like over 200K a year. I got my MBA.

I went to night school to get my MBA, pay that off cash, paid off all my student debt, had no debt besides my house, and I was the director of marketing and earned a little bit of sweat equity in this company. And I was completely miserable because I’m just grinding in this industry that I don’t really care about anymore. I’m not passionate about it. I was dominating the space, frankly. And so I just felt like I hit a ceiling and I wasn’t happy. I didn’t know what to do.

Cody Crabb (06:52)
Yeah.

Zach Haptonstall (06:52)
but I was like, I don’t even have any time to figure out what I wanna do. And this is not fulfilling, just chasing a commission check every single month. So end of 2017, was December of 2017.

I’m like, you know what, I’m probably gonna need to quit so that I can figure this out. And so I quit that next month in January of 18, I quit my job. I sold a little bit of equity I had in that company. And so I had between relentlessly following the Dave Ramsey program for about five years and getting a little bump of equity in that company, I had about $300,000 of cash.

which I felt was like a ton of money and I had to just save that money every month for so long. was like, you that was like my treasure. And I was like, okay, I want to create passive income somehow through real estate. And I did not know anybody in real estate. Okay, I’m not exaggerating. I don’t have any, I have no family money. I have no connections whatsoever. I was just like, you know, I want to learn about real estate. want to, and I started listening to podcasts and things like that. So at first I was going to flip houses. So I create a little LLC and I’m looking into flipping houses. And then I realized that’s very

transactional, that’s kind what I was just doing with the hospice marketing. It’s like you only make money if you make a transaction. So then I started listening to podcasts, reading books, going to meetups and going to conferences and learning about the concept of investing. And at first, Cody, I was thinking about

Cody Crabb (07:55)
Hmm.

Zach Haptonstall (08:07)
How do I make my 300k stretch as far as possible? I was only thinking of buying my own property and I was really getting interested in mobile home parks. And so I actually cold called over 90 mobile home park owners in the Phoenix area to try to buy their little park on a seller carry loan using my cash. And most of them didn’t answer. A few did answer, didn’t weren’t interested. But I started doing the math and I was like, wait, what if I do spend all my three hundred thousand dollars of cash and buy this mobile home park and make two or three thousand

$1,000 a month maybe of cash flow, then what do I do? I’m broke and I’m not really making a ton of cash flow. It was enough to cover my expenses at that time because I was just a single young guy. But I was like, there’s got to be more to this. So yeah, then what? So this was like three or four months in.

Cody Crabb (08:47)
Yeah, then what? Yeah.

Zach Haptonstall (08:51)
And I’m like, man, this sucks. Like, I’m just waking up every morning, going from making fat paychecks to not knowing what you’re supposed to do. You kind of start losing your confidence and your identity. And I really learned about the whole concept of syndication and how I can leverage my time and energy and leverage other people’s money to create like a mutually beneficial partnership. And so I was like, OK, I’m going to raise money and and I’ll earn sweat equity doing that. And then I just need to figure out my asset class. So I looked at mobile home parks, self-storage, other things, and ultimately decided on multifamily.

Just from again listening to podcasts, you know, kind of like yours, reading books, going to meet up, stuff like that. Because I just felt like I could scale multifamilies. At this point, I was like, you know what, if I’m going to do something, I’m going to go all in. I’m going to make this huge and I want to be enormous. I’m going to build a massive company. I’m going to basically take my cash and I’m to think of it as like a missile. I’m going to launch this missile to make the biggest impact. And so I set out on multifamily. Long story short, I grinded, you know, it took

10 months to find the first deal. It a 36 unit, $3.5 million deal. I needed to raise $1.4 million.

I put all I had 165 K left of cash. put 160 into that deal. So I literally all my money had $5,000 left. I met a couple of my partners now, Bickron and Robert, you know, all on that journey. And we just bootstrapped that thing together and put it together. And so it took 14 months to close on the first deal from when I quit the job. And the first three years, that was 2018. So we bought the first deal in February of 19.

Twenty eighteen twenty nineteen twenty twenty I made zero dollars by the end of twenty twenty we owned six deals about sixty million we had to just frickin scratch and claw to get that. ⁓ I actually had to go I ended up going back into hospice marketing. ⁓

Cody Crabb (10:31)
Yeah, no kidding.

Zach Haptonstall (10:37)
About 18 months into that journey, I was dead broke and I was, you know, paying the minimum payment on my credit card to not go into default. My now wife, then girlfriend, was paying our bills. And so it was September of 2019. I had to go back and get a job as the president of a hospice company. So I was working full time, working in a real estate company at night. My partner Bikram was working full time as an accountant. So we were running everything on at night on Zoom.

Cody Crabb (11:01)
Wow.

Zach Haptonstall (11:35)
But by the end of 2020, we started selling our first deals. OK, so no money.

the first three years, and then we started selling these deals, we getting flush with liquidity. And we took all those proceeds and we reinvested it into the company to start the property management company, the construction company, and we became vertically integrated in 2021. Then we started really taking off. Okay, so in 2021 alone, we bought 16 deals, $560 million. 2022, we bought another 16 deals, $860 million. So literally in the first three years, we bought six deals, $60 million, made no money. And then the next 24 months, we bought

About 1.3 billion dollars worth of real estate, right? So it just kind of really took off and we were building out infrastructure You know and building out this company along the way building out all the departments things like that, which was really cool That was all in Phoenix at the end of 22 We decided to expand to Dallas so we could give our investors more diversification We were the number one buyer in the country in 2023 in in Dallas Fort Worth So we were buying a lot of off-market distress deals

And then in 2024, we expanded to North Carolina. And so right now we own and manage 6,000 units in Phoenix, 3,500 units in Dallas, Fort Worth, and 1,500 units in North Carolina. We ended up selling the first 11 deals. Today we have about 350 full-time W-2 employees. We’ve raised about 1.2 billion of cash equity from investors. And we have about $2.5 billion worth of real estate that we’re

we currently own and manage. ⁓ And so that’s kind how we got to where we are today. So it’s been about eight years now. It feels like it’s been like 20 years, but it’s been a fun journey.

Cody Crabb (13:13)
Yeah, well, and man,

what a graph. That chart must look like a vertical line at some points, because that’s just wild. That growth is just unbelievable. ⁓ And I think it’s great that you kind of saw the point where you were like, I need to do something else for a minute. need to make sure, like you were taking risks, but at a point where you are, you you’re actually, you’re doing it in a smart way. I think that’s.

Not every risk has to be all in and I think that it’s important to highlight that because people think risk and they think risk everything when I don’t think you always need to do that.

Zach Haptonstall (13:47)
Yeah, you have some way to, my whole philosophy during that time was I just need to stay above water. Right? I always knew I could go back and get a job at any point. Right? So it’s like you do feel the stress and anxiety of running out of money, but it’s like, I like during that time, I got a consulting job, I got a part-time job, I was doing different things, then I had to go back and get a full-time salary.

big boy job running a company of 50 employees as the president just to keep this, you know, quote unquote dream alive. So yeah, I mean, it’s really just staying above water and continuing to push forward and develop your business or your goal. And you will pop at some point as long as you don’t quit. ⁓

Cody Crabb (14:23)
Yeah,

I love that. ⁓ So when you say vertically integrated, ⁓ what does that actually mean in practice for how you operate new deals and things?

Zach Haptonstall (14:32)
Yeah, good question. So.

Most of our peers or competitors in our space, you know, they’ll basically raise money from investors and they’ll buy an apartment building and then they’ll use a third party company to manage that property, like a third party property management. And they’ll use a third party company to do the construction management. And we did that ourselves, Cody, the first few years. We were using third party property management and third party construction management because we listened to all the podcasts and we heard you just raise the money, buy the deal and you sit back and collect the

cash flow, the manager coming in, everything else. And from the very beginning, we quickly realized that’s not the case, okay? They’re not staying on schedule or on budget with renovations. I’m at the first property we bought, the 3060, and I’m out there chewing out vendors, constantly having to oversee everything. ⁓ And we realized after a couple years…

Okay, this is not going to work. ⁓ In order for us to achieve our goals and achieve the results that we’re trying to get for our investors, we need to have full control over everything. For example, one of the problems of having third party management is like staffing. If you’ve got a property and you don’t like the property manager or the leasing agent or the maintenance guy is not keeping the curb appeal or the deferred maintenance in check and you want to fire them, you can’t fire them because you don’t own that company. So you have to

to talk to to complain to your third party manager company that you want some new staff and they’ll just give you the runaround. And so we want to be able to replace people and terminate them if they’re not performing. We want to be able to align incentives and bonuses with the goals of that property and get the right people in the right seat at those assets and have full control so that ⁓ we don’t be making excuses to our investors blaming on third parties. So that’s why in 2020 we started our own property management company, which is what it means to be vertically integrated, which means that every single employee

side of every property is our full-time W-2 employee from the maintenance technician to the leasing agent to the property manager. We also start our own construction management company which means that we are the general contractor and we are basically overseeing all the construction management.

So we are basically sourcing and managing third-party subcontractors. So we’ll use third-party labor to do the in-unit work and the renovations but our W-2 employees at RISE 48 Construction are overseeing

and managing these people every day. In addition to that, we realized we need to take control of our supply chain. We needed to control costs from a supply perspective and from a labor perspective. Because when we were using third parties, they’ll give us a budget. ⁓

or a bid and we’re creating an entire pro forma business plan around that budget and then they come over that, they come in over that. Guys, what are you doing? They screwed up our entire business plan because you came over on labor materials and so we said we have to have full control over that. So what we did is we started to source all of our own materials directly wholesale from overseas manufacturers. So we’re purchasing all of our flooring countertops, appliances, cabinets.

everything directly wholesale at fixed pricing. So we have contracts with our suppliers that we’re paying them a flat price per unit. If you have a 200 unit apartment building, we’re paying them a flat price per unit.

Cody Crabb (18:15)
Mm-hmm.

Zach Haptonstall (18:22)
Doesn’t matter if it’s a one bedroom, two bedroom, three bedroom for the lifetime of the project. And for our labor, our third party construction companies, we’re paying them a flat price per unit for labor. So our all in costs per unit for labor and materials to the renovations is fixed and it cannot change. So that was very important for us to gain full control over property management and construction so that we can really get better results, which allows us to grow faster and get the benefits of economies of scale. Once we get the benefits of economies of scale,

It all kind of feeds the flywheel Cody basically allows us to raise more money buy more deals get better performance and once we have

Cody Crabb (18:55)
Yeah.

Zach Haptonstall (18:59)
bigger economies of scale, I can negotiate better pricing with my labor and materials and really just benefit everything overall. that’s kind of the vertical integration component was key for us, especially what would happen. And I don’t know if we’ll go into this on this podcast, but especially what would happen in 2022 and 2023 when interest rates would skyrocket, the market crushed with new supply of housing the last few years. And most of our competitors, I shouldn’t say most, but I would say a lot of them.

Cody Crabb (19:20)
Yeah.

Zach Haptonstall (19:28)
that are using third party management are just gone. They’re just bankrupt because they don’t have the control and the alignment with that management and the day to day operations. So anyways, long winded answer, but that’s what vertical integration means.

Cody Crabb (19:40)
Gotcha, well

and see this leads me perfectly into my next question which is, so what mistakes do you see investors making when they’re relying too much on third party management? Because it sounds like you’re avoiding a lot of headaches by doing this yourself.

Zach Haptonstall (19:55)
Yeah, no, it’s a good question. so, I mean, I am trying to weigh this myself still, right? There is a balance between taking everything in-house and outsourcing certain things, right? In any business, right? There’s different components. And so, for example, we started an HVAC company in the beginning of 2025. We had all our own HVAC.

And this company did over three and half million of revenue in the first 12 months, 35 % profit margin, very profitable company. made over a million bucks in our first 12 months. But it was distracting a couple of our key employees who needed to oversee our property management and our operations. And so in the beginning of 2026, January 1st, I said, you know what? We need to be laser focused on our core business. And I collapsed the HVAC company. And I said, just lay off all the people. not doing HVAC. And they’re like, why? We’re making a ton of money.

It’s distracting from our core business use third party. Okay, so it depends on which component it is of the business ⁓ For multifamily apartments and property management in my opinion It is critical to have that vertical integration that full control and it’s it’s not easy It’s a pain in the ass to have your own property manager company, right? It’s a lot I tell people like a lot of like groups that raise money and they’re like investment companies say you haven’t really started a real business and multifamily till you start your own property manager company because that’s when it gets very

and there’s a lot going into it with staffing and everything that you have to navigate, but it has made all the difference for us. ⁓ And so I think that from a, you want to be a general partner, like you want to do what we do.

Cody Crabb (21:20)
Yeah.

Zach Haptonstall (21:32)
you’re not going to be able to start out right out of the gates with your own property management company because you’re not going to have the scale to support that you know or the revenue. So you’re going to probably need to use third party initially. But I think it all depends on what your goals are right. Like you have concrete goals. Our goals were to be massive and be one of the biggest most dominant real estate companies the world has ever seen. And we realize that we’re not going to be able to achieve that scale using third parties. If your goal is to just you know manage five you want to have five hundred or thousand units. Well you should probably use third party because

It’s not really until you get to about 2,000 units, Cody, that it makes sense to have your own management company. We burned through about $800,000 the first 10 months before we broke even. We got over that 2,000 unit point. So it really just depends. And then if you’re a passive investor, when you are evaluating…

Cody Crabb (22:17)
Hmm.

Zach Haptonstall (22:22)
somebody a sponsor to invest with, I’m not saying that you necessarily need to rule them out because they don’t have their own property management company. You just need to understand what is their infrastructure? Like what markets are they in? Who are the local people in that market? Do they have staff there or the principals there? Who is the management company that they’re using if it’s not their own? And what is the I mean, the reality is, that for a lot of companies, it might be better if they use a third party because they’re not good at starting their own management company and they can’t execute, right? So we hired a bunch of smart, experienced people who have run management companies. And that’s how

Cody Crabb (22:47)
Right.

Zach Haptonstall (22:52)
we did ours, you know what I mean? so, but so I think it just depends. But overall, if you can execute, I think it makes a big difference to have control.

Cody Crabb (23:01)
Absolutely, and like I think you answered it perfectly. I think it very much depends on your specific situation what your goals are I mean like you said the HVAC system with the HVAC business was making you guys a lot of money But you were like, but it’s not what we want to do. So let’s let’s focus elsewhere. I love that ⁓ So you mentioned earlier that? Investors really need to like understand where we are in the market

cycle right now, how would you explain the current multifamily market environment from what you’re seeing? it’s interesting, especially interesting because you’re in different locations here. So you could maybe get a wider perspective than some people.

Zach Haptonstall (23:38)
Yeah, it’s a great question, Cody. mean, you and I are recording this right now in March of 2026 and a lot there’s been a lot of friction and challenges in multifamily the last few years. So as many people know, it was exactly just about four years ago now that the Fed started the most aggressive interest rate hikes.

ever, really since the 1980s. It was unprecedented. They started aggressively increasing interest rates in March of 2022 through 2023. That was a big challenge for multifamily. There’s been a lot of distress. And then the bigger challenge has been all the new supply of apartments that have hit the market. And so what happened, Cody, is that really from like 2018 through the first half of 2022, you had a lot of people leaving these more

you know, politically progressive states like Washington State, California, New York, New Jersey, you know, Illinois, Chicago, they’re moving, they’re leaving these places and they’re migrating to sun-belt states, right? Like Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Florida, the Carolinas.

Cody Crabb (24:43)
Trust me, I’m from Utah,

I live in Salt Lake City, am very much aware. This is very much something I’ve seen. Yeah. Yeah.

Zach Haptonstall (24:47)
Yeah, you’ve seen the extra traffic, right? You know, and same here

in Phoenix. And so we all know that there’s this, especially post COVID, right? Especially post COVID, even more people are leaving those places and they’re moving to these Sunbelt markets. And so what happened is you have all these new people coming here, you have all these new jobs coming to these Sunbelt markets. So it creates a huge need for additional housing. So apartment developers…

And we’re not developers, buy existing deals. But developers start building and developing new apartments in these growth markets like crazy, okay, to meet this need. ⁓

You gotta remember it takes about three years for these apartments to actually get what’s called delivered, meaning that they have been built, all the zoning and everything and entitlements are done and now they can start leasing those up and people moving in. So what happened is, especially in 23, 24, really 24, 25 and 26 is when these growth Sunbelt states are just getting hammered with new supply. All these new apartments are coming online. And what people have to realize Cody is that

The cost to build those new apartments is extremely high. It’s been very expensive to build new apartments. So the only way that you can justify building new apartments is you have to command extremely high rents for the math to work on those projects. That means that they’re building class A luxury apartments. They’re not building B class affordable housing type apartments. They’re building class A luxury housing where your average rent is anywhere between at least $3,000 $5,000 a month.

The demographic that can afford that is very small. And when interest rates were low and inflation was low, it wasn’t really a problem. But what happened is you had these two things happen in parallel. People remember, you know, 23 through 22, 23, 24. At one point, inflation hits eight or nine percent.

Right? And then it comes down to like, you know, 3 % a year, whatever, but it didn’t actually go down. You went up 8 9 % and then the next year you kept going up 3%. Okay, so the last four or five years, it’s probably gone up 12 to 15 % inflation. So groceries, gas, et cetera, all these things got a lot more expensive, interest rates are much higher, and now you have more housing.

Cody Crabb (26:44)
Yeah.

Zach Haptonstall (26:56)
then you have more supply of housing than you have demand. So this is economics 101 in these growth markets. And so what’s happened is that these class A luxury apartments are having to give at least two to three months free rent to lease these things up. And there’s been a trickle down effect. We only own what’s called B class housing. Okay, so we own and manage 11,000 units right now. And our average rent is between $12 to $1300 a month.

Cody Crabb (27:20)
Mm-hmm.

Zach Haptonstall (27:20)
This is where the majority of the population lives. This is where the bulk of the demographic lives. It’s more affordable. But even our class of housing has had to give a month free on several of these assets the last couple of years. And you went from growth markets like Phoenix, Dallas, Florida, the Carolinas, you know, had at least five to 10 percent plus positive organic rent growth for several years in a row. Well, Phoenix and Dallas have had negative organic rent growth now for three consecutive years because of all this oversupply of housing.

Cody Crabb (27:30)
Wow.

Zach Haptonstall (27:49)
Okay, and so that’s really, so the combination of oversupply and elevated interest rates have drastically compressed values the last two to three years especially. That’s created a good buying opportunity. You know, we’ve been buying several distressed deals. So we’ve been buying deals at literally 30 to 50 % discounted basis on a price per unit perspective.

just straight purchase price from where they were at peak pricing in 2022. Okay, so there are good deals out there still to buy. And we believe that we are truly at the bottom of the market right now as far as pricing goes. And here’s the reason why Cody is that I mentioned interest rates skyrocket in 2022. Well, what happened is since the second half of 22, there has been little to no new development, no new building of apartments.

in these growth markets because those elevated interest rates blew up lot of these construction loans, right? And people didn’t start new ones because there was too much supply, the interest rates didn’t make sense. So what you’ve had now is the last few years you’ve had little to no new development of apartments. And the good thing about these growth markets like Phoenix, Dallas, the North Carolina markets like Charlotte, Raleigh, Greensboro, people have not stopped moving to these markets. These are still top five, top 10 markets in the country for population growth.

Cody Crabb (29:03)
Hmm.

Zach Haptonstall (29:06)
and what we call in-migration, meaning people are moving from one state to these places. I saw data, was 2020, it was 2025 U-Haul data showed that the top three markets for people moving, taking a U-Haul to move were Dallas, Phoenix, and Charlotte. You know what I mean, which is crazy. And so anyways, my point is people are still moving to these markets, there’s still companies moving here creating new jobs. And what the data is showing is that because we haven’t been building apartments the last few years,

Cody Crabb (29:23)
⁓ interesting. Yeah.

Zach Haptonstall (29:33)
the next three to four years, we’re actually gonna have a shortage of housing. So that economics 101 dynamic supply and demand is gonna flip. There’s gonna be more demand than there is supply. And as real estate investors, that will actually benefit us. So that the data is showing that the bulk of this new supply of housing should get absorbed, meaning that they can lease it up by the end of 2026. And they’re projecting positive organic rent growth and…

Cody Crabb (29:47)
Yeah.

Zach Haptonstall (29:59)
you know, burning off of these significant concessions, which will help increase the values of these assets in 27, 28, 29. So, you know, we’re telling investors that, you know, where we’re at in the market cycle right now is we think now is the best time to buy. And we probably have another, you know, maybe eight to 12 month window here where once that once that supply gets absorbed, values will go up. Here’s the other thing, Cody, supply is a big driver of value. The other thing is interest rates, right?

So when interest rates go up, the values of these apartment buildings go down. And the inverse is true. When interest rates go down, values go up. Well, it’s widely expected that there should be significant interest rate cuts the next 24 to 36 months. They’ve already started cutting those rates. You’ve seen inflation come down. You know, obviously now we have this this war with Iran, which creates a lot of volatility. But when you look at the next 36 months, overall rates should be coming down over that period. And as rates come down, values will go up. So if we can buy deals right now,

Cody Crabb (30:45)
Yeah.

Zach Haptonstall (30:56)
at massive discounts from the peak of the pricing, and then we should have tailwinds of supply getting absorbed, positive rent growth, interest rates going down. That should drive up the values where we can make really strong investments. And so we’re looking for deals. It’s hard to find them right now because nobody is selling unless they have to because they’ll be selling at low values. We haven’t sold a deal since 2022 because it hasn’t made sense to do so. We’ve been buying a lot of deals at significantly discounted pricing.

Cody Crabb (31:13)
Yeah.

Wow.

Zach Haptonstall (31:23)
But that’s kind of where at right now on the market side, and I think it’s important for people to understand those dynamics.

Cody Crabb (31:27)
Yeah, wow, that is an extremely clear explanation. And to the point where it’s like spooky that you’re literally describing exactly the situation I’m seeing around me and you weren’t even talking about where I live, like it’s exactly right. think ⁓ that’s very clear. I think a lot of people are gonna really benefit from that explanation there. ⁓ So, I mean, you said one of the opportunities that people have right now is to kind of use that window that’s starting to open up. I think that’s great. Thank you for calling that out. ⁓

So people on the ground, know, obviously you’re operating in a much different scale than a lot of these, like just starting out real investor, real estate investors are, but I do like, would do want to highlight that, like that your story is completely shows that it’s possible for someone to kind of start and from, from like square one and go all the way, all the way to where you’re at. ⁓ so I’d love to, ⁓ I’d love to ask you like, what mistakes do you see?

investors making right now in the market, in this environment rather.

Zach Haptonstall (32:28)
Yeah,

no, it’s a great question, Cody. And I’m I’m I am no I am not perfect by any means. mean, a ton of mistakes and, know, I’ve kind of followed the true quote unquote entrepreneurial journey. You know, I’ve been broke and had to grind through so much adversity. And so.

I think one of the biggest keys is you need to stay laser focused on your core business. And I’ve been guilty of this myself, right? Where you get shiny object syndrome or you start to face adversity and you pivot to something else. And I’m seeing a lot of people do that right now. People that started when I started that I know.

⁓ And they’ve gone through the adversity and the challenges of multifamily. some of them have lost investor money or they’ve been foreclosed on, which is tough. That’s never fun. ⁓ And then they’ll rebrand and they’ll start something new. And even if you haven’t lost any investor money, when I first started, Cody, my natural development, to be honest with you, is like I heard that mobile home parks are cash cows. Mobile home parks are just print cash.

go by mobile home parks. I was like, man, nobody knows about these mobile home parks. heard they’re cash cows. I started looking at them and the cap rates are just as compressed on mobile home parks as multifamily. Everybody’s known about mobile home parks for a long time. And I was like, I got all the scourge. like, man, I missed the boat. It’s saturated. Then I learned about self storage. I was like, okay, self storage. That’s what I gotta get into. That’s where the competition’s not at. I started looking at all the pricing and the numbers. was like, this is extremely competitive and saturated too. And I started realizing, I was like, you know what? You can’t try to just avoid the competition.

because if something is very competitive, there’s a reason for that. It’s because you can make money doing it and you can be successful. And so you had to shift my mindset to where they have to compete with me.

Cody Crabb (34:07)
Yeah.

Zach Haptonstall (34:09)
Okay, they have compete

Cody Crabb (34:09)
I love that.

Zach Haptonstall (34:10)
with me. I’m not competing with them. You got to compete with me. I’m entering the market. I’m the disruptor and I’m going to make it happen. And I don’t care what you say or what any of the haters say. You block out all the noise and I’ve got this goal and I’m going to stick to it. I think when you start getting that shiny object syndrome where you just start hopping around because you’re not seeing that tangible evidence of your progress on your main core thing that you wanted to do. And again, maybe you have a good reason to shift. Okay, that’s fine. But don’t keep shifting because you’re not finding success.

You have to go deep, not wide. I just gave you the example earlier of how I created the HVAC company because I was like, we need to have diversified income and revenue. This is easy money for us to make. And it was very profitable. We made over a million bucks net profit in the first 12 months. But at what cost? What’s the opportunity cost? Are we now getting distracted from our core business where we could be growing and scaling that and be making more money in the long run doing that? ⁓

I think it’s just very important to stay laser focused, lock in on a goal, and just keep grinding. And then one other thing I tell people too, Cody, is that when you are pursuing a goal, and it’s a big goal, you’re gonna have naysayers, okay? And these could be people who are your family, you your significant other. They could, maybe they’re trying to protect you, maybe they’re secretly jealous, maybe you’re making them feel bad about themselves because you’re pursuing a big goal.

that they don’t have the guts to pursue. And so they’re gonna try to discourage you. Maybe they’re your competitor and you’re making faster progress than them. You make them feel bad about themselves so they’re gonna start talking crap. And so my biggest advice is do not listen to people who don’t have your best interests in mind, okay? And also don’t take advice from people who haven’t done what you’re trying to do.

Cody Crabb (35:57)
Yeah.

Zach Haptonstall (35:57)
Because

I made that mistake early on I would try to take on these quote-unquote mentors Who I tell them what I want to do and they haven’t achieved as big of goals as I have and they start Trying to distribute. no, Zach. You shouldn’t do that. You need to start small You need to start doing this and that because that’s what they did, right? And so if I achieve my goal, it makes them look bad and feel bad We’ll screw those people. You don’t need to listen to them. Okay, because they’re the philosophy I’ve had coding this will my last point on this question is

Cody Crabb (36:16)
Yeah. ⁓

Zach Haptonstall (36:22)
The people that tell me I’m not gonna do it or I shouldn’t do it, they’re not the one that has to put the work in to achieve my goal. I’m the one that has to put the work in to achieve my goal. So who are you to tell me if I’m one that has to put all the work in, right? So people need to stop listening to other people and with social media and all this stuff, it’s easy to get caught up in it and it can really impact your confidence and your determination. And so you gotta be locked in.

Cody Crabb (36:30)
Hmm.

Zach Haptonstall (36:45)
block out the noise and stay laser focused and just focus on the results. Don’t focus on the talk because I think so many people talk these days with social media and everything and all the haters and anonymous blogs. Just be locked in.

Cody Crabb (36:53)
Yeah.

Yeah,

love that. It’s the same principle as like if you see someone selling a course on how to do something and they’re like, you can make millions of dollars, why aren’t you doing that instead of selling this course then, right? Yeah, exactly.

Zach Haptonstall (37:07)
Exactly. Exactly. And if they

actually have achieved it, great. But if they haven’t, it’s because they tried it and they couldn’t do it and now they’re trying to sell. I know a ton of people like that. Like I know actual individuals like a name that do that right now. So I get it.

Cody Crabb (37:14)
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So I think, I think that’s so true. We need to focus on like what, who’s it, who has actually achieved our goals and how did they get there? Not like just how theoretically do people do it? You know? ⁓ I think that’s, that’s so great. That’s that little snippet right there. ⁓ man, that’s, that’s worth this whole episode of worth it just for that. ⁓ so Zach, this has really been great. I really appreciate you kind of breaking down your business and also kind of the

Zach Haptonstall (37:30)
Yeah, 100%.

Cody Crabb (37:43)
how the market’s working. think that was a really great explanation. If people wanna learn more about Rise 48 and what you’re doing, ⁓ where can they do that online?

Zach Haptonstall (37:51)
Yeah, thanks so much, Cody. Really appreciate having me, man. You can go to rise48equity.com, R-I-S-E-4-8-equity.com, and you can set up a call with our team if you want to learn more about how can partner with us. You can email me, Zach, Z-A-C-H, at rise48equity.com as well if you ever want to talk about partnering or anything like that. And love to chat with anybody.

Cody Crabb (38:16)
Thanks so much, Zach. This has been a real pleasure. You’ve given us a lot to think about. And thank you to all you listeners that have joined us for this episode. If you liked it, please make sure to share it and subscribe to our channel. And we will see you on the next episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast.