Co-Living and Group Home Investing: Aaron Lambert’s New Construction Strategy

Aaron Lambert (00:00)
Nobody’s just gonna live in a house with somebody they don’t know for any other reason outside of they can’t afford anything else, right? So like these houses, we furnish them and they we got the bills paid for. So that all they have to do is come in with their monthly or weekly, whatever it is, to satisfy and that’s all they have to worry about. They can buy their own food and stuff. The affordability problem in America right now is real, right? It’s super real.

Freddie Steen (01:59)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Investor Fuel Podcast. I’m your host, Freddie. And today I’m joined by someone I’ve been looking forward to chatting with. Aaron Lambert, who’s been making serious moves in the real estate space around new constructions. RKL Investments is in the house today, folks. Aaron, I’m glad to have you here. I think that our listeners, our Real Estate Pros audience, are really going to get something out of how you’re approaching new constructions in a space in real estate that is white hot. We’re talking assisted living facilities. We’re talking memory care. You know why it’s hot. We all know why. The elderly population is living longer. Aaron, let’s dive in. So, first off, for people who may not be familiar with your world, give us the short version.

What’s your main focus these days? And my research team says you’re operating in more than one market.

Aaron Lambert (03:02)
That’s correct, Freddie, and thank you for having me. I appreciate the intro. Our main goals right now, our main focus is new construction, as you stated, in Florida and our operations here in Las Vegas, which curtail to the elderly community and the assisted living community by way of group homes and co-living facilities.

Freddie Steen (03:24)
Well, Aaron, we’re here to pick your brain. So for the next fifteen to eighteen minutes, is it okay to say what happens in Vegas? You’ll let us know on the new construction side.

Aaron Lambert (03:34)
Yeah, that’s true.

Freddie Steen (03:36)
Okay, also

I have to start with what’s clamoring for those of you who are seeing this in this podcast on YouTube. Behind you, let me describe it for our Apple and Spotify listeners. There is a weathered, beautiful depiction of what we call Old Glory in the 250th year of the founding of our nation. Can you tell us the story of that flag that’s behind you?

And I think it’s gonna give a hint to our Real Estate Pros about your resolve, your passion, and maybe a hint to the career that would follow you in founding a real estate investment company. Tell us about that Old Glory flag that hangs behind.

Aaron Lambert (04:23)
Yeah, that flag’s been through it, been through the been tattered and torn if you would call it. But when I got it, it was like broken in half, because it’s wood. It’s like all this driftwood. Thing was like broken and not just in halves, like three other pieces too. I’m like, God, so had to put it back together. And we hung it on the wall. And then I failed to mention this earlier, but it actually fell off the wall and broke again because of how I had it fastened, so I had to refasten it. And then a few years later

It—we had a huge flood in Louisiana is where I was living at the time. Yeah, I went through a flood because it was in a storage at the time. So and it broke again. And then here in Vegas, it’s—it just, I don’t know, every time it breaks I just put it back together. You could see how it’s like a little crooked right here.

Yeah, no, it still looks good though. Yeah, this flag’s been around for like fifteen years, so I love it.

Freddie Steen (06:02)
Well, it’s the very epitome of what Francis Scott Key penned in our national anthem now and I love it. What caught my attention about you, Aaron, is similar to what you just described. I mean, RKL Investments was something that you birthed out of a moment of solitude in your life. So every project that you see has remnants of what you see that’s sitting behind you, that Old Glory flag. You’re going in.

You’re developing spaces, you’re ideating, and you’ve done this in multiple markets while still keeping margins strong. Now that’s not easy, especially in this climate. What’s been the key to keeping the RKL Investments machine running smoothly?

Aaron Lambert (06:49)
Say taking action and not afraid to move on stuff. And then just the, you know, pure determination of me and not ever giving up. Like I can’t let anything go. Like I’m not a guy to lay down, like I’m gonna just keep going. Sometimes it hurts me, but I know the people that work with me have always been happy at the end of the day, so we’ve gone—I’ve gone through

several partners and several you know, you go through like many contractors like those guys are they’re great and then they’re not. So you got all the ups and downs of real estate, but one thing’s for sure is we don’t give up and we keep pushing forward and we take mad action.

Freddie Steen (07:28)
Aaron, help our listeners out here, our Real Estate Pros, what did you see in new construction, the trend that was happening several years ago in assisted living and also building memory care centers?

Aaron Lambert (07:44)
So well to clarify, I haven’t built any memory care centers. The new construction that we’re building in Florida, although it would be great to build memory care facilities there because it’s probably needed, the homes that we are building are semi-luxury-build single-family homes. So, you know, we started in St. Pete, Florida.

Doing a couple flips and then we realized, well, these new construction builds are it’s a it’s just a better product, right? So we started buying houses, scraping and building. And we have four projects going right now down there.

Freddie Steen (08:20)
Every operator I know has a moment where things got real. I mean, maybe a deal that went sideways or a time they had to pivot fast. You mind sharing one of those moments for you?

Aaron Lambert (08:34)
Yeah, just recently, I say recently, about three months ago, two months ago. My one of my partners, she said, Hey, I got this memory care out here. I said, Okay. And she said, But they won’t give me the financials. So I said, Okay, well give me the contact information. So I get on the phone with the agent and ended up putting the property under contract to get the financials and looked at it and was like, Okay, this looks pretty good. So my partner, she didn’t want to move on it.

‘Cause she just has so much going on with the fifty-five plus independent living. But so I called I called some partners out in on the East Coast because they had been we had been talking about something similar and they wanted to move in into Vegas. Like, all right. So we got got moving on it about a month in, month and a half. We’re going back and forth with the seller, doing this, going back and forth with contract, and I negotiated a killer deal. I’m like a hundred and fifty thousand under market.

value on the home and then I’m buying the business zero percent down zero percent interest for 18 months on a performance base. So negotiated a killer deal there. So my—but my partners, they don’t know anything about memory care. They’re not in the medical field and they’re of the they they’re of the thought process that if somebody dies in their medic—memory care facility, they’re gonna go to prison. So which is not the case.

So anyways, they long story short, they backed out. Like two months in, they backed and said, Aaron, we’re not gonna do this. Or it was like a month and a half. I’m like, all right. So at that moment, I’m like, okay, well, I don’t have—I have to find, bring some partners in to facilitate this transaction for multiple reasons, right? One, I don’t like to do anything on my own. And two, I need, you know, more capital backing me and more heads. And fortunately for them, they had like a

crazy operating system that they had built out or, man, property management platform that they built out that they use internally and they have like 250 doors so I was real confident in that. And we’re moving on some other stuff just not memory care. But so they called me, told me that. I’m like, okay. And I was kind of like, dang, all right. I said, you know what, don’t worry, I got somebody else. And I didn’t have anybody else at the moment. But then I thought and I remembered

I actually do have somebody. So I work—there’s a lender out here. She lends to me often. She’ll lend on like short term, like two to three month terms. you know, two to actually two to six months. And a month ago, she called two months ago, she called me. No, this is like six months ago, she called me, she’s like, Hey, I’m looking to get some properties that are zoned for memory care, not memory care, group homes. she said, I’m—we’re—me and my partners are buying group homes.

Anyways, I remembered this. So I called her immediately. I said, Hey, I said, I got this memory care group home. She’s like, cool. Let me check it out. And I told her the term. She’s like, wow. She’s like, those are great. And then I told her the price and the amount that it’s making. And she was like super excited. So now we’re closing on it together. And then we—that’s—and now, what I was talking about earlier is, like, we got three more opportunities for group homes that came because of that one.

And because I didn’t just say, ‘Give up,’ and, ‘Okay, cancel the contract. We’re not moving on it because of my partners.’ So

Freddie Steen (12:30)
Relationships are everything in this space, Aaron. You spoke about something that I want to lift out for our Real Estate Pros audience.

How did you move to being an operator that could build a team, knowing which partner you needed for which project? How did you make that shift from ideation to actual action?

Aaron Lambert (12:50)
Well, I think it was a lot of trial and error. One of my mentors, he told me one time, he said, dude, he said, if you get a if you need a you need an operator in your company, like a COO, he said, or somebody that’s of a higher caliber, you know, like a CFO or CEO, somebody in or COO in your company said, but you’re gonna go through ten of them to find one good one. And then you’re gonna go through one good one.

Three times. So you’re gonna go through like thirty-three people. Now, fortunately it didn’t happen that way with like I would say contractors. I’ve been through the ringer with contractors, but now in Florida I have what I like to call an angel sent from heaven, Miss Adeline Vieira. She’s my project manager down there and she handles everything like she’s phenomenal. Like phenomenal. She doesn’t know this yet, but she’s gonna be getting a good bonus whenever these projects sell.

And for over here, you know, even with partners, it’s trial and error with partners because you gotta date somebody before you marry, you know. So a lot of times I move, you know, I trust people, right? I’m I like I’m of the notion, like, okay, I’m telling you the truth, I’m just assuming you’re telling me the truth, right? Or you’re being, you know.

And with your abilities to perform what you’re saying, like this is all like above board, like and you know, I’ll look and check a few things, but if those few things check out, I usually I’m not, you know, going digging around in your life or nothing, but you know, so but whenever it comes down to it and we’re in the midst of a project or whatever it is, and you start backpedaling, you start not communicating, you start, you know, faulting on what you said you were gonna do, or now you’re telling me a different story, it’s like, you know, so through that.

I can’t say that I have a knack for finding those people for the good people. It’s just the course of time and meeting just people, you know. You know, meet meeting people down the road, just networking and you know, the same way that I meet anybody, it’s how I meet new partners or new contractors or so it’s been a lot of trial and error. I don’t have any secret sauce for that one.

Freddie Steen (15:41)
Sometimes, Aaron, people that are great cooks don’t know how good their cooking is. I do believe that part of your secret sauce is your ability to pivot, as you’ve done. And now with the legacy of your son coming on board with you, how exciting has that been in this part of your journey?

Aaron Lambert (16:01)
Well, that’s great. You know, I take him to properties with me here and there. He’s only five. So but I’m trying to get him primed for the real estate or at least business in general, right? My go—my goal is to for him, you know, I want him to see what I’m doing and be a part of what I’m doing, but I also want him more importantly, I’d rather him like focus on like technology and like, uh, go the route of like learning as much as you can in AI.

To be able to utilize AI to then build businesses. So that’s kind of my focus for him. But in the but while I’m here in real estate, I mean a lot of this stuff is gonna trickle down to him unless the Lord comes back before then. It’s nice and I look forward to the day that we he could actually like start doing more stuff, right? Like being hands on with me.

Freddie Steen (16:50)
Well, our Real Estate Pros and, as the podcast host, I want to say to the future RKL that your father is very proud of you and we love legacies here on the Investor Fuel Podcast. And honestly, it’s what separates the folks who just dabble from the ones who stay in the game long term like you. Aaron, let me ask you this. What are you most focused on solving or scaling next?

At RKL Investments.

Aaron Lambert (17:21)
Yeah, right now we’re solely focused on the real estate side of things, it’s twofold, right? In in in Florida, we’re doing the new construction, but in order for us to continue new construction, we need to continue raising capital. So we’re focused on bringing in new partners, capital partners, long term partners, partners that want to eat with us, not just make a debt, you know, not just make a an interest, right?

Want to actually eat in the profit side. That’s how we do most of our deals anyways. A lot of our capital that comes in, they’ll get a preferred plus a profit share. So you know a challenge with us is not being able to raise enough capital at fast enough. We always end up raising it at the end of the day, right? Some way, somehow, Lord makes it, somebody comes through and we do it and we the projects move forward. And I always say like this,

If I can’t raise the capital for the project then there’s a reason. And the Lord didn’t want me to do it.

Freddie Steen (18:18)
So you’re focused on solving for capital. What’s the next real goal for RKL Investments?

Aaron Lambert (18:20)
So

Yeah, the goal is to make sure this—to have our new construction right now it’s becoming something like very solidified in the sense of with my project manager more processes and systems in place to now, move everything along smoothly on future projects. I mean, these projects that we have right now are going smooth, but how we purchase

projects and how we prepare before. So that that’s good. So that the goal is to continue on that to get that where it’s like just kind of operating as needed. And then over here in in Vegas is my main I think my main goal is to continue to acquire these independent livings in these group homes. I’d say, you know, I want to max out at like I would say like five or ten of the group homes.

Would be good. And then, you know, once I get those, I’m probably gonna start selling off my community living, the my co-living, the single family homes. Just ’cause it’s more of a business rather than a single family home. You know how single family homes are. But

Freddie Steen (19:42)
Well, Aaron, you gotta give us a quick quick peek behind the curtain on your views on the co-living niche and asset class going into 2027.

Aaron Lambert (19:56)
Yeah, I think it’s great. The co-living model has become very popular over the past couple of years for many reasons. And it’s nothing new, right? Sharing a house with somebody is nothing new. Renting a room to somebody that doesn’t, you know, that that you don’t know is nothing new. But the model in itself has blown up over the past few years in my opinion. Kind of, one main reason is because of the affordability, right?

Nobody’s just gonna live in a house with somebody they don’t know for any other reason outside of they can’t afford anything else, right? So like these houses, we furnish them and they we got the bills paid for. So that all they have to do is come in with their monthly or weekly, whatever it is, to satisfy and that’s all they have to worry about. They can buy their own food and stuff. The affordability problem in America right now is real, right? It’s super real.

You know, even just to go rent an apartment, you know, you’re looking at anywhere from twelve to you know, it could be three thousand dollars. You gotta buy your furniture, you gotta do all this stuff. Now, for like people that are that don’t have a lot of money, that’s a huge expense. It’s huge, right? So the co-living is a—it’s a model that works for way more people than we probably think. And on the elderly side of things, it that that’s becoming a real ’cause the people are

seem to be living a little longer. So they’re getting elderly and you know they don’t their family’s not there, whatever the case may be. And they just need some place to be around other people rather than being alone. And maybe they could afford their own apartment, but then they’d be sitting there by themselves. Right. So some of them choose to rent these houses because they want to be in a community like, uh, be able to, you know, talk to other people during the day, like hang out, you know. So

Freddie Steen (21:49)
Well, you being in that space, that’s big. I mean, especially when you’ve already got a killer project manager in place in Florida. That next move can either compound things or create chaos, depending on how you play it. Aaron, I know a lot of people listening are either earlier in their journey or looking to level up like you and RKL Investments. And I think they benefit from hearing this.

When it comes to building relationships and growing your network, what’s made the biggest difference for you in real estate?

Aaron Lambert (22:32)
Well, relationships in my opinion are one of the most important things that you have in any business. Real estate is a relationship business. I think all businesses are, but you know, real estate if you go and screw somebody over, like especially in Vegas, like if you do there’s gonna be a lot of people that hear about it. The real estate space is kind of small in a sense that, you know, Vegas is surrounded. But I think that could be for any market, right?

Freddie Steen (22:38)
Yes.

Aaron Lambert (22:59)
If you’re working with realtors and contractors and whatnot, but relationships are my main focus, maintaining relationships that I have, making them better, stronger, and then what stands between a good relationship, bad relationship, in my opinion, is one integrity, but also communication, right? Communication is huge, especially when you’re in a deal with somebody. Now if it’s just

just building relationship. But yeah, communication is one strong suit of mine. And it’s one thing that I don’t that I do not appreciate other people not doing. You know, especially when you’re in the midst of—you got, you got, you know, money at stake, you got things going on. You got to communicate with people, your lenders, your contractors, whoever, and you need to give good communication, right? Cause I don’t know if you’ve had any dealings in like

rehabbing houses, but if you tell a contractor something and he doesn’t really fully understand and he goes and does what he thinks he’s hearing, you know, and you come over there and it’s like, yeah, that’s not right. And he’s like, well, that’s what you told me. It’s like, you know, you have to be able to communicate solidly to anybody and everybody you’re working with. So relationships is 100% my main thing in anything I do with whoever I work with is to build a solid relationship with them.

Freddie Steen (24:21)
Yeah, Aaron, you can’t fake that. I mean, relationships are everything in this space. All right, before we wrap, if someone wanted to reach out, connect with you, maybe collaborate with RKL Investments or learn more about what you’re doing, what’s the best way for them to reach you?

Aaron Lambert (24:44)
I would say Facebook Aaron Lambert or Instagram’s @aaronlambert83. There’s not a lot on that Instagram ’cause it just got hacked and so I had to start a whole new one.

Freddie Steen (24:55)
Yeah.

Aaron Lambert (24:56)
Yeah, that’s fun. They deleted everything. They went on there and just deleted everything. Like, five years of Instagram gone. But anyways, yeah, Instagram or YouTube. I have a YouTube channel, Aaron Lambert. And those are those are probably the best. Facebook being the best. Easiest route.

Freddie Steen (25:16)
Perfect. Aaron, is there anything else you would like our real estate audience to know about RKL Investments?

Aaron Lambert (25:24)
Yeah, if you’re looking to grow your capital, this is a good place to do it. We give our investors handsome returns and good projects and they—we let them be more than just a lender, we let them be a part of the project, part of the family.

Freddie Steen (25:40)
Well, listen, I appreciate your time, your story, and your perspective. I mean, we need more people in this space who are doing it the right way, like RKL Investments. Aaron, thanks again for being here.

Aaron Lambert (25:56)
Absolutely. Thank you, Freddie, for having me. Appreciate it.

Freddie Steen (26:00)
For those of you tuning in, if you got value from this, make sure you’re subscribed. We’ve got more conversations coming with operators just like Aaron Lambert, who are out there building real businesses.

Aaron Lambert (26:18)
Yeah. Thank you. And also on my YouTube, if you want to subscribe there, I’m doing a thirty-day live going through all the good, the bad, and the ugly within the business, going on to active deals. I just go on there and talk about all the stuff we’re doing currently. So it’s beneficial to those that don’t know anything about real estate, want to learn some things to do and not do, and then other folks that just wanna see what I’m doing.

Freddie Steen (26:41)
There it is, folks, an extra tag. Make sure if you like that information, we’ve got more coming. Thank you, Aaron, and we’ll see you on the next episode.