How Construction Skills Built a Multifamily Empire

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In this episode of the Real Estate Pros Podcast, Anthony Crane, co-founder of Triumph Properties, shares his journey in real estate, from his early experiences on construction sites to his transition into flipping houses and managing multifamily properties. He emphasizes the importance of having a construction background, understanding the current market challenges, and the necessity of capital for success in real estate investing. Anthony also provides valuable advice for aspiring investors, highlighting the significance of personal development and learning from experiences.

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Anthony Crane (00:00)
Well, it was essentially the same as

flipping, it was, ⁓ cause I bought a distress property. Typically you can’t, you can’t just start into property. That’s just a turnkey unless you have a lot, a lot of capital. And, that’s where a lot of people get in trouble. And that’s where the construction background helped me is that I looked at the place. I knew what needed to be done. That didn’t worry me because of.

If you can buy it within the price that that deserves because of what is wrong with it, then you can kind of make it work.

Kristen Knapp (02:06)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros Podcast. I’m Kristen and I’m here with Anthony Crane, who’s the co-founder of Triumph Properties. based out of Troy, Ohio. Thank you for being here, Anthony. Amazing. Well, you guys are doing a lot with Triumph. It seems like you have a lot of properties under your belt and you have a lot of experience, 25 years. Tell me about the beginning. How did you get involved in real estate? How did you fall in love with it?

Anthony Crane (02:14)
Thank you. It’s great to be here.

Well, it kind of started early ⁓ from my dad who was a builder, essentially grew up on the job sites, ⁓ learned about every trade from the time I was probably six or seven. At that time, you could bring your kids to the job site and work constantly. And honestly, I think that was invaluable for me because I learned so many things that you have to be able to do within the construction phase of

real estate, I think is one of the most overlooked pieces of successful real estate, ⁓ is being able to manage, communicate with subs to be able to know what actually needs to be done. So I started with taking that. I ⁓ went to college, ⁓ played sports in college, and then I went on to ⁓ teach. So then I taught.

Kristen Knapp (03:05)
Mm-hmm.

Anthony Crane (03:26)
for a while, but while I was teaching from day one, I basically started doing things. My first project actually was building a home to where I would start living. And then I started to live there and be able to almost flip that. And then ⁓ from there, I started getting into flipping when building was not as affordable. was kind of, that was when the houses started to become

Banks were taking back houses. So a lot of the real estate you could buy really cheap and since I was able to fix them it it was actually a perfect time for me and I Started getting into flipping. I never really lived in the same house very long about a year ⁓ so That’s essentially how I got started in it is is rotating homes ⁓ Making them better and and selling them

Kristen Knapp (04:22)
Amazing. And you have this great construction background and you were talking about how important that was. Can you kind of expand on that a little bit? What things that people often overlook when they kind of get into the flipping industry?

Anthony Crane (04:35)
Well, flipping it’s essential. mean, you try to hire somebody right now. ⁓ The construction talent out there, think is basically ⁓ overused and not enough out there, honestly, that know what they’re doing. So when somebody tries to come and have something, if they have no knowledge of it and they’re like hiring people out, they get incredibly frustrated.

They typically don’t get to

Get the project completed, not on time, cost them more money. Purchasing, they normally purchase incorrectly because they don’t know that there’s structural issues, they don’t know that the windows are bad, the HVAC is bad, the roof is bad. So you really need to know what, when you go into a property, it’s helpful to be able to walk through it know within 10 minutes whether you’re gonna buy the place or not. And essentially I got to where I could.

could walk into a place and I could tell the realtor or whoever I was buying it from that I’m ready to purchase it at this price and I really didn’t need much more than that. ⁓ Now that can’t be done with anybody but everybody but it definitely is essential to have some background so that ⁓ the construction trades hard deal with I mean the contractors and subs are great but they

They are not the easiest of professions to control and do, especially if you’re lacking knowledge. So even when you get into multifamily, mean, every day you’re getting calls about something that needs repaired. And typically ⁓ it’s not always what the people think it is. So when they give me the symptoms, I can kind of know like, actually it’s this, it’s not that, and then I know who to call or…

Kristen Knapp (06:56)
Yeah.

Anthony Crane (07:17)
I can go do it myself. So I think you have to almost, if you’re not the one that’s on your team that has you, you almost need to have somebody on your team to be successful or you just have to have more money. I mean, that’s really the, you either have to have money to pay it and get the guys there on time and, or you do it yourself.

Kristen Knapp (07:27)
Ready?

Amen.

Yeah, I think that’s a really good thing to call out that if you don’t have the experience yourself, find someone who does and get them on your team and have them. Because it’s going to save you a lot of money and headaches in the long run. So you started flipping and all that. When did you start doing this full time and when did you found Triumph?

Anthony Crane (08:00)
Triumph, I got with a business partner in 2016, Mark Francis, and we started to, I actually got proposed by somebody that was like, would you like to buy a multifamily unit? And at that point, I’d never really done multifamily, so I was kind of interested, not, I would always, my bread and butter was flipping and just kind of working on houses and maybe even building a few here and there.

And they kind of convinced me I’d had two investors that were interested in me. It’s kind of neat in this profession. I think people find people that they think have potential and they’ll try to encourage them honestly. And ⁓ I was fortunate to have a couple of those in my life even after my dad had passed. People that were more in the multifamily world that they were able to almost encourage me like you need you have to do this because of you know just

they saw what I had done or what I was doing. And I ended up purchasing a place from there and that’s kind of how I stepped my foot into multifamily. was actually a 35 unit, which is kind of jumping in with both feet. Originally they had presented an eight unit and he was like, you know what, I don’t want to sell that one. How about this 35 unit? I was like, whoa, okay, hold on. So.

Kristen Knapp (09:16)
Yeah.

Anthony Crane (09:25)
I, but that’s kind of the way I’ve always approached life. think I just, generally it’s not just, I don’t just put my foot in. I generally just dive in. If I’m going to go for it, I go for it. But so

Kristen Knapp (09:37)
Yeah, so

starting with that 35 unit property, what kind of, like, how did you apply your skills to something so new? What mindset were you in? You know, what are some tricks that you’ve learned along the way to help you

Anthony Crane (09:54)
Well, it was essentially the same as

flipping, it was, ⁓ cause I bought a distress property. Typically you can’t, you can’t just start into property. That’s just a turnkey unless you have a lot, a lot of capital. And, that’s where a lot of people get in trouble. And that’s where the construction background helped me is that I looked at the place. I knew what needed to be done. That didn’t worry me because of.

If you can buy it within the price that that deserves because of what is wrong with it, then you can kind of make it work.

So that’s how I initially got into it. think because of my background of distressed properties, fixing those, that’s how I got into this one where I knew what needed to be done and I wasn’t really afraid of it. The only thing that was a little bit.

Unusual was the managing of the tenants. I hadn’t really done that piece of it. That’s a whole nother podcast. mean, managing and dealing with that is a separate entity in itself. But ⁓ what’s that?

Kristen Knapp (11:34)
Did you do that yourself?

You did the property management yourself?

Anthony Crane (11:39)
we do all the property management ourselves. We have all the property management. do all of it. So we are kind of a one size fits all kind of property management company and owners. and so I have a lot of background in that, but that’s a, that’s a whole nother conversation. Honestly, that’s, there’s a lot to talk about with, property management from the construction side. That’s one piece. Tenant side. That’s the other piece.

Kristen Knapp (11:41)
Wow.

Right.

Anthony Crane (12:09)
and then just learning how to buy and learning how to do that. That’s a whole nother piece. They’re not really just quick intros. think people like to simplify. I think the internet has done that with the flipping as well. think flipping is more complicated than people want to give it credit to because everybody says you can just do it, but it’s really not that easy. But it’s not to make people not

do it, it’s just realizing that this isn’t, it’s not really for everybody. There is certain things you need to have and intangibles and I think most people just want more clicks and more likes so they don’t really say that but honestly it’s no different than telling somebody that you should be a pitcher. It’s like well can you throw the ball, can you do this, maybe you shouldn’t be a pitcher, you know? But there is certain things that I think certain people

can develop and do and if it’s a goal of theirs, absolutely go for it. It’s a great profession, but it doesn’t come without hard work and hard knocks and experience and talent in a lot of ways.

Kristen Knapp (13:21)
Definitely, and what are some of those skill sets that you think people should have or develop?

Anthony Crane (13:27)
Well, one that’s not a skill set is capital. Somehow you got to have capital. I the way that I was able to do it, I had my my income and my wife’s income. So I had borrowing power. So you have to have borrowing power or some type of capital available. If you don’t have that, you’re kind of stuck. I mean, you can start smaller and work your way up if you happen to be lucky and have some wealthy.

Parents or whatever and somebody gives you money then that’s great, too I didn’t have that so I had to do it more from using my head and using my what I learned and Hard work. I mean and that’s you kind of have to work two jobs ⁓ and get yourself ahead of of Ahead of the income and then you can roll that

⁓ I do believe it’s smart to have another income when you’re starting out unless you do have capital. So capital’s the number one. And then the most overlooked is the construction background. think knowing certain things about it, ⁓ understanding location is key. Understanding how to evaluate the value of a property is essential.

So you don’t over buy and buy something stupid. I think so many people get into it and their first purchase is a mistake and they never get into it again. That’s a very, very common thing I hear people like, ⁓ I did that once and or than dealing with tenants is the other thing that kind of kicks people out. ⁓ so understanding that and then learning, knowing how to fix something or at least having a skill set to

manage to get that done appropriately and effectively. I think without knowledge, that’s really tough, but some people are really good people skills and they can kind of make up for that by getting to know the right people and connect it and then, I don’t know, but I think that’s a harder path.

Kristen Knapp (16:22)
Definitely. Yeah, in your journey, how important has networking and community groups and all that, how important has that been in your growth?

Anthony Crane (16:32)
Honestly in mine it hasn’t been that big of a deal ⁓ I’m more of an internal introverted kind of person. I’m It’s weird. Every role I’ve ever been is an extroverted role, but I’m actually preference or introvert but ⁓ I’ve been able to develop my skills enough to use that but I depend much more on my own knowledge and understanding ⁓ I sometimes have felt that

people almost use other people’s too much to where they it almost gets them to second guess because there’s many projects if I would have told people that I was doing it they would be like no you shouldn’t do that like that I you’re you know whatever so for me I’ve learned to trust myself and trust my gut and trust my intelligence and do it whereas if I think I would ask people I would have been discouraged I wouldn’t have done it probably

So there is a balance of that because you can’t obviously just go and not, you have to know yourself well enough and you have to know what you know well enough to be like, okay, where do I need to get advice? ⁓ so that’s kind of where I was. I didn’t, I’d say I depended more on my own research, my own study and my own balance and just kind of tried to find places. And then once I started growing,

people would kind of come to me and come to me with offers of different places.

Kristen Knapp (18:06)
Yeah,

it definitely is a double edged sword there. It definitely can kind of hurt you a little bit to get too much outside opinion. I agree that there’s definitely something there with going with your gut. ⁓ You’ve been in this game a long time and you’ve seen shifts in the market. I’m just curious to hear kind of your perception on the market currently and where you’ve seen it go and where you see it going in the future.

Anthony Crane (18:33)
Well, just to quickly highlight how I’ve seen it go over last 25, you kind of had early on, you could borrow money pretty easily in the early 2000s. It was a great time to build if you knew how to build. Then it kind of went into trouble where the banks had lent too much. That was why they were in trouble. They basically gave money away for free and people that didn’t do it wisely fell into trouble. So then there was, it was a huge amount of real estate on

Market that was you couldn’t even build it for the price that it was being sold. So that’s when it was more the flipping world Now I think it’s kind of gotten into where Real estate’s almost Too expensive to flip in some cases. This is not I mean region obviously every place You know speaking to a large group. This would be not for every area, but in a general basis. I feel like

It’s harder or harder earned money now to flip in most areas. And so you have to be really smart and really good about how you repair and fix things and buy materials and things. So now I think multifamily’s hard too because the interest rates are at what, seven, seven and a half percent. So now your cap rate for anybody makes it

Buying the properties really haven’t decreased in price that much, they still want to, you have the interest rate. So buying multifamily is tough to make the money work for the price of it currently and the interest rates that you would have to borrow. So right now is, I mean, the best thing is that you’ve already bought, honestly. If you haven’t bought, it’s kind of a tough market. ⁓ And I think the people don’t.

that don’t say that aren’t really speaking realistically. Now there’s certain things that could possibly work if you can find something that actually is a very good purchase. it’s right now, it’s kind of really difficult time to do all those things. So what to do right now, I’m kind of holding tight. There’s some kind of…

There’s some theories of which I don’t necessarily disagree with you have a lot of capital. It’s not a bad time probably to buy a little bit because the prices of the properties have come down a little bit and then later you can work on the interest rates, but you’ve got to have the capital and have it enough to be able to kind of float that for whatever that timeframe is. I wish I knew exactly when that was going to break, but I don’t. ⁓ But I think that’s

That’s the current market. ⁓ But most people just have excess capital floating around in this current market. So that’s where I see it currently. ⁓ Rental rates are great. So if you had bought before, it’s a good time to rent. But taxes are going up. Everything to fix is also going up. So that’s kind of eating into even the amount that’s raising your rents.

I think the tenants are actually pretty understandable that because we actually probably aren’t making even more money than we were even though rents are half gone up because it’s just so expensive currently everywhere.

Kristen Knapp (22:10)
Yeah,

it’s definitely tricky. Definitely a tricky market. But you’re right. mean, if you already have property, it’s actually, rentals are great right now. And you’ve given a lot of insight on the market itself and kind of tips on how to scale your business and how to effectively flip something. What would be a piece of advice that you wish you learned earlier in your career that you can share with us?

Anthony Crane (22:41)
⁓ You know, I don’t know I think

I think I was lucky because I had a lot of stuff and I don’t even know if there’s anything a lot of you learn as you go. ⁓ I mean, I guess multifamily, but really. That was is all about timing too. So if I would have those opportunities earlier, I wouldn’t have been able to do it and probably wouldn’t even have done it. So I think a lot of I think a lot of what.

Kristen Knapp (23:11)
Yeah.

Anthony Crane (23:17)
what is important is to make sure you’re learning and teaching yourself. I get out there and learn without making those big mistakes and develop your skill set. I mean, that’s what any young entrepreneur needs to learn. ⁓ I mean, I had some young guys that talked to me just recently about getting into it.

And I said, keep doing what you’re doing. Learn, learn the trades that you’re doing, make some money, try to save some back. You know, there are people that don’t have, you know, any money available for them. So they’re going to have to kind of earn it and, and be able to save and then develop your skill set so that when you do have a time to purchase, then you can save on other things and then roll that and begin to start your, your

your amount of money that you can continue to use as leverage to buy more. That I think I was taught early and I guess I was fortunate in that way just from that was where I would I didn’t have a capital but I was given knowledge and actually work ethic and those two things I think you can develop is your work ethic and your knowledge and skill set and then the capital has to come somewhere and you can

you can be the driver of that. And then as you get more talented, there’s people that aren’t as talented that will sometimes partner up with you and then be able to provide some of that capital too. So I guess that’s how I would answer that question.

Kristen Knapp (25:03)
Yeah, mean there’s stuff within your control. You can work on your personal development, can work on your networking, and you can make stuff happen. It’s not, you know, the market is always up and down, out of our control, but there are things in your control. I think that’s really good advice. ⁓ So thank you so much for being here. So tell everybody where to find you in Triumph.

Anthony Crane (25:20)
Yeah.

Triumph property, Troy, Ohio. It’s ⁓ My I’m at I have a website triumph properties dot com Also, so I can be contacted through that as well. I don’t really have a lot of social media stuff I don’t do a whole lot of that myself yet I’ve I’ve considered doing that because I I do feel like I do a lot of things that I could help

people but I feel like I’m so busy it’s just another piece I haven’t been able to develop. guess that would be one that maybe a future thing that I wouldn’t mind to do is kind of do that but that’s something I haven’t totally done. I’ve been working too hard on the business side of it honestly than developing the online version of myself but so that’s it.

Kristen Knapp (26:18)
Amazing. Well, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it. Thank you. And thank you everybody for listening. And I hope you learned a lot and we will see you back next time. Bye.

Anthony Crane (26:22)
All right, thank you.

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How Construction Skills Built a Multifamily Empire | Anthony Crane

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