Building Wealth Through Real Estate: Chase Calhoun’s Expert Advice

Christian (01:31)
everybody, welcome back to the show. I’m excited to sit down with my guest here, Chase Calhoun. He’s a real estate investor, a developer and a GC who is making a major impact in his market in Little Rock, Arkansas. Chase is the founder of Apex Real Estate Investments and Apex Professional Construction, where he specializes in built to rent developments and heavy rehab projects. So beyond the numbers and deals, he’s super passionate about creating high quality housing, building strong teams and helping others grow.

their real estate. So Chase, without further ado, my friend, welcome to the show. You and I just spent some time together before we started recording and I’m very excited to speak with you today about everything you have going on. So why don’t you just introduce yourself to the audience, know, talk about maybe your journey, how you got here and maybe share some of your background.

Chase Calhoun (02:21)
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. Again, my name is Chase Calhoun. I’m based out of Little Rock, Arkansas.

I’ve lived here for the last, coming up on eight years with my wife and two kids. We actually relocated here from the San Francisco area in California originally. So we moved out here kind of specifically to start investing in real estate and build a company. I think when we initially started, it was like kind of just wanting to get a couple rentals and get some passive income. And over time, those kind of goals have shifted and moved a little bit farther. And so now we operate a real estate investment company

about seven units own and under management and a full service general construction company. In the past we’ve done a lot of heavy rehab projects, right now we’re focused more on new construction and specifically a lot of new construction build to rent both for customers we’re doing and then we’re doing a lot of internally to build and hold.

Christian (03:17)
Very cool, very cool. So, what first got you interested in real estate investing in general and development and how did that kind of all lead to, you found your company, Apex Real Estate Investments and then also now your construction company. What gave you maybe some inspiration or drive? Is there family behind this or how did you start?

Chase Calhoun (03:40)
Yeah, no, no, not really. So I think like a lot of people, I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad when I was like 15 years old and he swears that that’s not a real estate book, but that’s what I took away from it. And I think a lot of other people decided I wanted to buy some rental properties. At the time, and this was years ago, I was living in the San Francisco Bay Area and had wanted to start getting into real estate investing in like in the Bay Area in 2008, 2009, 2010, when you could buy houses for a reasonable amount of money. And it actually made sense then. And unfortunately,

Christian (03:46)
There you go.

Chase Calhoun (04:10)
people talked me out of it, the family specifically. So they weren’t pro me getting into it, they were actually talking me out of getting into it when I should have been buying every house I could get my hands on back then because the people that did, you know, it’s done fairly well for them. And then fast forward several years later, I decided I was ready to do it. But it didn’t make sense where I lived anymore because I wanted to buy long term rental properties, buy in holds. The out of state real estate investment has been around forever, I think. It wasn’t mainstream, like I’d never heard of Bigger Pockets.

back then or maybe just barely. And so I actually made the decision to move. And so we picked up and moved to Little Rock specifically to start investing. And it was just kind of one property at a time, slowly, and then over time that kind of morphed into, like I said, it started as, the intention was to be a passive, own a couple of rental properties thing. And then over time it morphed into an actual company and a business on both sides, the real estate investing and the construction.

Christian (05:08)
That’s incredible. you I’m curious. I mean, you’re you’re managing, you know, multiple different hats and, different, you know, verticals inside of your business. You know, how did you learn to really, you know, build, you know, solid operations, maybe some systems, you know, around your businesses? Because right now, you know, you obviously see that, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs, they’re wearing multiple hats, you know, they might not have those systems and operations put into place. So I think getting your input on that could be very, very valuable to the audience.

and just sharing, know, how are you making all that happen?

Chase Calhoun (06:27)
Yeah, I learned the hard way. There’s a lot better ways to do it. And so at first, it was just me trying to do everything until like literally the wheels were falling off. And then it’s like slowly starting to learn about how to systematize things and then bringing people. It’s really been about people the last couple of years, bringing people in to help. And then, I mean, kind of even going into this year, it’s something that’s been top of mind. One of the biggest things I’ve been focusing on this year is I’m still investing.

Christian (06:30)
Yeah, as we do,

Mm.

Chase Calhoun (06:57)
I’m still doing construction, but I’m much more focused on trying to systems and people and actual businesses to help everything run. Early on though, was slow and steady. was like bringing people on just to help with some of the running around in the field work. And then eventually it was bringing on somebody in-house to handle the property management. Like that was a big, big jump. was the first, I would say, the first full-time hire was a field person and the second was a property manager. then slowly over time we’ve been

building that team to where I can spend more time kind of working on the business and finding deals and less time actually managing projects and definitely less time managing tenants because that’s the hard one. It’s super important but it’s also the kind of hard part of it.

Christian (07:42)
Yeah.

The biggest migraine, right? That we call it. Yep. The one that keeps you up at night. Yeah.

Chase Calhoun (07:48)
stuff. And it’s

still, mean, the stuff happens now. It’s just I get a little bit of a buffer between it now. It doesn’t stress me out as much as it probably used to a few years ago when I was the direct contact for the problems.

Christian (08:05)
That’s good, man. As long as you’re not getting any gray hairs on that, right? Then you’re in the right place. So that’s good. Yeah, for sure. You definitely put your reps in. Well, cool. mean, so I know you’re doing some heavy rehabbing too, right? I mean, that’s a big thing you focus on. You and I were talking about that. I mean, you handle some, you know, full gut projects, you know, firehouse properties. I mean, a lot of stuff like you were saying, people that just overlook and they just, they don’t want to mess with it.

Chase Calhoun (08:09)
I got plenty of those. I I earned them all early on.

Christian (08:34)
So I mean, what key factors do you consider before, you know, is this project worth taking on? You know, how did you learn to maneuver through, you know, some of these, you heavy projects?

Chase Calhoun (08:45)
Yeah.

So I think I got into them early on just because it was like I had no other choice. Like I was hungry to do deals, but I didn’t have enough money or ability to finance or any of that stuff in place. So was like my only choice was like the only place I could find really good deals at the time was like the kind of the leftovers that nobody else wanted. And so there were properties that were too bad a shape for like somebody that’s just flipping properties or somebody that wants to be a little bit more passive and do a burr or something like that. And so I think that’s how I got started in those.

Over time, I came to kind of like them because especially holding rental properties and probably for the same reason I like the new constructions now, if it was in such bad condition that I had no choice but to gut the whole thing and basically rebuild the house, when I was finished, I had basically a brand new house. There was new everything, electrical, plumbing, HVAC, everything had been touched. And so they were kind of lower maintenance, nicer properties.

And it made sense financially to go in there and spend all that money because they were in such bad shape. I bought them so, so cheap. It worked well. Now, I will say it was a lot of headache. It was a lot of extra stress. And it was a lot of learning by mistake along the way. But it definitely made sense. And even today, I would say today we’re really not buying renovation projects. And I say that, the only thing that we’d probably look at buying

Christian (10:15)
Mm.

Chase Calhoun (10:17)
If it was something that was like a super heavy rehab or it was like that, we could buy it cheap enough that it makes sense to basically completely rebuild it and end up with a brand new house and usually a lot of upside on those heavy rehab projects.

Christian (10:32)
Right, so

what are some of the biggest challenge that you face in doing these heavy rehabs? I know you mentioned new construction as well. There’s always a challenge with that. So I’m curious, what have you ran into as far as that goes?

Chase Calhoun (11:25)
early on.

It was a lot of, and again this is where the GC thing came into play at some point because early on it was a lot of learning how to deal with the municipalities because once you go, you can kind of do some of small rehab renovation projects without pulling permits and hope nobody complains type thing and you can get away with that for quite a while depending on where you’re at. But with these huge rehab ones you had no choice but to pull permits and do it fully permitted and up to code. And I would say one of the biggest challenges was

because I didn’t have that heavy construction background is learning that stuff kind of the hard way. So getting in there and trying to figure out what the rules were and the codes were to take on projects that size. And then pretty early on, you know, one of the early projects that we did, we actually just sold last week, which is kind of funny, but it was a, it was a burnout fourplex townhome building. And it was stuff like when I did the initial budget and asked for funding, like I had no idea that the city was going to require fire sprinkler system because

the

amount of rehab that’s being done. And so like learning that stuff kind of the hard way ended up serving me really well down the road a couple years ago when we ended up buying.

We ended up buying like four four unit town hall buildings that had been destroyed by a tornado on the same street, knowing exactly what was going to be required of it. And so being able to underwrite them properly on the front end and not get in trouble on them. And so I think just getting in there and learning, it was a lot of learning the rules and the regulations from the municipalities and code and everything like that. A lot of it was kind of learning the hard way, messing something up and having to redo it or getting, know, scolded by the city, that kind of thing.

Christian (13:06)
Yeah, yeah, the best teacher is action, right? I mean, you can’t, can’t, they don’t teach it in school, that’s for sure. But also, you know, it’s one of those things, you gotta get your hands dirty, hands on to really learn, right? And a lot of it’s not pretty, right? But you know, a lot of them are hard lessons, but you know, they’re all necessary, right? Because I mean, you have to go through that, right? I mean, even, you know, I know you work with contractors as well, you know, I’m curious to get your input on that because…

Chase Calhoun (13:13)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Christian (13:31)
There are a lot of people that struggle with either managing their contractors, maybe the expectations as far as that goes, the communication. How do you, in your experience, manage your budgets? How do you manage timelines with your contractors? And overall, how do you effectively find good contractors and build relationships with those guys?

Chase Calhoun (13:55)
Yeah, it’s changed a lot over time, right? And I look back early on, maybe kind of more helpful lens to look at it through.

Christian (14:04)
Mm.

Chase Calhoun (14:05)
One unique thing where I’m at is there wasn’t the availability, in my opinion, of good general contractors, good general contractors who were reasonably priced, that were willing to take on these kind real estate investor type projects. And it’s just like not a lot of talent here as far as construction. And so it’s like anybody who’s really good at what they did had one nothing to do with these little smaller rehabs, right? They’re either building new construction or doing commercial work or whatever. And so the pool of like contractors to choose

Christian (14:14)
Mm-hmm.

Chase Calhoun (14:35)
from

was pretty bad. And so that’s why I very, very early on, even without the experience, I had no choice but to basically GCing the projects and go and direct to subs because I couldn’t really find that one contractor that could manage everything well. And then lot of stuff that I think is helpful, like getting it early on is like when I, and today this is something that we still, we struggled with this on a couple projects last year and it’s like going back to the basics, but when we do budgets on stuff, we try to do line-on on budgets for everything.

We’re at like everything or every person that’s going to need to get paid on a project. That should be its online item on the budget before we move forward on it or send it to the bank or whatever. And even if we get subcontractors, maybe we got a handyman that can do 10 of those things. So he’s going to bid on multiple things. We still try to break it down. That way is we’re paying guys, we’re paying it for completion of actual work. One thing you don’t want to do is kind of pay too much early on because it gets tough to get stuff finished and get people back out there onto the jobs.

And I think just breaking it out like that, really separating it and always looking at it through the lens. And one thing I talk to my guys about that are managing the projects now is, if so and so just doesn’t show up or with what we haven’t paid yet or we will bring somebody else on to finish off that task or that job. And so you always need to be aware of that, I think especially with budgeting and paying subcontractors. And then finding them is a whole other, that’s more of a little bit of luck and some,

more of an art than a science, but a lot of referrals, a lot of just asking around. get a good, know, it’s funny, like one of the first, probably the first subcontractor I ever hired was on that first project and he was a tree guy that came out and just spending some extra time to like, I remember we were a new, kind of camping out in this first house that we were renovating and I spent a couple hours talking to this guy or maybe an hour talking to this guy after he was done with the job and I remember my wife asking me why. I you should never know how that’s gonna come back and I, you know, I probably

Christian (16:07)
Yeah.

Chase Calhoun (16:34)
referrals to 20 different subcontractors over the years from that one guy. Just spending time to, you people that are good at what they do usually know other people that are good at what they do and spending the time to talk to them and then relying on people like that for referrals. As you get a little bit bigger and a little bit busier, like we’re busy enough now that people are maybe more proactive in reaching out, wanting to do work for us. So it’s just, we have more work that we can provide and it’s a little bit easier for us to find good, more professional subcontractors.

It gets easier, which is kind of weird. Maybe we don’t even pay as much as we did on some of the stuff, because of the volume we’re doing, it gets lot easier to attract more professional subcontractors for sure.

Christian (17:57)
No,

absolutely, man. That’s such valuable information, you know, just because, you know, this isn’t really talked about enough, right? I mean, you just kind of laying out the foundation as far as that goes. It really is. And I know you emphasize a lot of referrals, referrals is, it’s, it’s the best, right? As far as that. So, you know, another thing too, that, you know, with you is I know you emphasize a lot on the importance of building a strong team, right? That’s it is literally the lifeline of the business, right? I mean, what do you look for?

specifically when you’re looking to hire a team member or maybe just partnering with other people in real estate just in general. What type of core values, if any? What do you look for, exactly?

Chase Calhoun (18:44)
Yeah, I mean it changes over time, And so the more we learn, think the better we get at picking that stuff out. One of the biggest things right now, especially with somebody that’s been on our core team, and this may be a little bit different with subcontractors, but I think it’s all kind of important whether it’s a subcontractor or an actual employee, team member, is just like attitude, like having a good attitude and like a willingness to learn is so, so important. And even as we look to like hire another project manager.

Christian (18:47)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Chase Calhoun (19:14)
I would almost rather have somebody with zero experience, but they’ve got like an amazing attitude and they’re hungry to learn and they’re just you know They’re really passionate about wanting to be better Over somebody that’s like this like horrible attitude but a ton of experience like I take the person with a good attitude no experience all day long because we can teach them how to You know manage construction project for if they’ve got a bad attitude and they don’t want to learn or they think they know everything or they’re always the best way and they’re constantly gonna be button heads with everybody it’s almost not worth it

So I think attitude is super important. And then just other stuff that to me it’s almost like a, we were setting core values a while ago in a meeting and was, there’s some stuff that should just be like, it shouldn’t be something that we have to state. Like if they don’t have integrity, like it’s not even something we should have to state. Like they better have integrity and they better have a hard work ethic. Like that stuff’s just a, it’s kind of like a non-negotiable for team members. But definitely that attitude, that willingness to learn, I would say urgency, especially in

construction that’s something we’re in the south and so and I’m not from here but you know a lot of the people here maybe a little bit slower to get things done and stuff and so like it’s bad enough when it’s a subcontracted company or something but like the people that are working for us they’ve to they’ve got to have a willingness to like want to get stuff done through the bunch of construction projects going on you can’t be lax, lax at day school about it you got to you know have some urgency so

Christian (20:37)
Right, is of the essence, right? Absolutely. Yeah, that’s why it’s crucial, you know, to know who you’re, you know, you’re going to date, right? Especially who’s in your company and who you’re working with because, you know, it can make or break you, right? So you got to be very particular and who, know, you want to bring on, right? And also do these people share the same values as I do, right? Did they share the same vision, share the same mindset?

Chase Calhoun (20:39)
done.

Christian (20:59)
It’s so important to really just get that out front and really just iron those things out and like you just said I mean, they don’t have to necessarily always have that experience, know that could be taught but work ethic is just something that’s in a person right and Looking for those looking for that That can always be built built onto right? So I want to pivot here, you know in to maybe some advice for you know, some of our audience

you someone looking to get into, know, what you’re doing, whether that’s, know, I you’re doing new construction, new development, or, you know, built to rent investing or just fixing flips, but they don’t know where to start. I mean, it’s, it’s fair to say that, you know, there’s information overload all out there right now. And you could go through a rabbit hole for days or weeks or months or years, honestly, with a lot of stuff. And I mean, what advice would you give to just anybody that’s just wanting to start from ground zero.

Chase Calhoun (21:55)
I think with real estate investing specifically, there’s a million different ways and things you can do and be successful and make money and have it be a good thing to do. I think the most important thing is to just pick one and get started and go all in on it. And it’s probably not going to be, if you continue to do it, it’s probably not going to be the same thing you continue to do your entire career in it, right? But just doing that first deal, whatever it is.

don’t care if it’s like you want to do long term holds, you want to flip, or you want to wholesale, or want to do short term rentals, or co-living, or whatever. There’s a million things, just pick one. whichever one you think is going to be the best for you, pick that and go on and just try to figure out how to do that first deal. That’s the hardest one. I think it gets better from there. And there’s going be challenges along the way, and it’s going to change. What we’re doing today is totally different than the game plan seven years ago when I started.

And seven years from now, I’m 100 % confident that we’ll probably be doing something completely different.

Christian (23:00)
I love that man, I love that.

Well, guys, I hope you enjoyed today’s show as much as I did. Hope you got nothing but value as I know you already did. As always, my friends, we will see you on the next episode. See you on the inside. Take care.