Invest in Apartment Buildings Without Being a Landlord|Adam W. Explain Passive Multifamily Investing

Adam Williams (00:00)
At some point they want to stop being an active investor, which you are with a single family rental, you’re an active investor, and they want to move over into being a passive investor where it’s like, give you my money and I don’t do anything. The checks just show up. If a tenant moves out, I don’t even know about it, right? If an air conditioning goes out, I don’t get the bill and I don’t hear about it, right? I just want my check.

Cody Crabb (01:51)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m Cody Crabb with Investor Fuel. Today I’m joined by Adam Williams of Elevest Capital, a private equity multifamily real estate investment firm that helps everyday people invest in apartment buildings. Adam’s team has been involved in more than 12,000 units across markets like Arizona, Texas, and North Carolina, and they partner with operators by bringing equity and syndicating deals. Adam, thanks so much for joining us today.

Adam Williams (02:17)
Thank you, Cody. I appreciate you having me on.

Cody Crabb (02:19)
Of course. So for people that are hearing private equity multifamily real estate investment firm, and it sounds a little bit like real estate mad libs, could you maybe give me like, what does that practically mean? I mean, you said we help people invest in apartment buildings. Just what is it that you do exactly?

Adam Williams (02:38)
Yeah, absolutely. And really it sounds much more complex than it is, right? In its simplest format, we help average everyday people that are working their job or running their business.

take some of that income that they’re earning and move it over into multifamily real estate investments. So we handle everything from A to Z so they don’t have to do any of the work. They don’t have to worry about tenants and toilets and all the nonsense. They don’t have to be landlords. They don’t have to sign on the debt. They don’t have to do any of that. They don’t even have to find the deal. So we just help average everyday people so they can focus on what they’re doing in their job or their business. Take a little bit of that and whatever they want to put into this investment vehicle and then they just get their monthly distributions every month and participate in the upside.

of the investment.

Cody Crabb (03:21)
Awesome, okay, so ⁓ let’s get a little bit of background. How did you start in this industry? As I always say, it’s not typically when you see on the kids’ career day board, firefighter, astronaut, real estate investment. It’s not really when you see. I’d be curious, what sparked your interest and how did you get involved in real estate?

Adam Williams (03:32)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, I kind of grew up in it. My father was a landlord and owned some, nothing nice, but he owned some smaller four and five unit apartment buildings when I were little multifamily deals when I was a kid. I remember at three, four years old, going with him to pick up rents and things like that. And he owned some single family homes and stuff. So he always kind of drilled it into my head. And then ⁓ I kind of let it go by the wayside until I was in my mid twenties and I met a gentleman that was doing it.

very successfully, not in multifamily. He was actually acquiring single-family homes as rentals. And I partnered with him and we did a bunch. We did 252 single families between 2004 and 2007 together. And then about halfway through that journey, about 150 deals in, I realized I did not want to be a single-family landlord. It was a complete nightmare. So I started studying the apartment game and how to actually invest in these large, you know, 200 unit, 300 unit apartment buildings.

started investing myself. I started out as an investor. I was just stroking the limited partner checks to the syndications and to the operators and getting my monthly or quarterly distributions and ⁓

when COVID hit actually, I was running a business. ran a marketing and events company. This was not my business. I was just an investor.

But when COVID hit, my marketing and events company kind of shut down, right? Nobody was throwing giant events in Las Vegas when COVID hit. So my wife looked at me and she said, you know, why don’t we start our own firm? Everybody wants to invest in these apartment deals. Everybody would always ask me about them. You know, what are you doing over there? And I said, that’s a genius idea. So that’s how Elevest was born in 2022. We started Elevest capital and

We

have about four or 500 investors in our group now and it’s been a real simple deal. Last year in 2025, we completed eight acquisitions, about 1300 units, a little over 212 million in real estate. And it’s very rinse and repeat now. We’re working on our third deal of the year. And so we built some really good systems. We have a small team here in Scottsdale, Arizona. It’s 12 of us on the team and we just love what we do. And so I just kept on going, you know.

Cody Crabb (06:37)
Wow, yeah, that’s a pretty, it’s a little bit by accident, which I love because that’s pretty much everyone that I ever talk to. But I also love that there’s this little element of, ⁓ you know, your parents tell you something a million times and then you hear it from somebody else and then you’re like, dad, you’ll never believe what I heard today. And they’re just kind of like, yeah, I know.

Adam Williams (06:51)
you

Yeah, no, he does that to me now, because my dad’s

significantly older now, obviously, and him and I chat probably once a week, and he’s always like, good for you, I’ve been telling you that forever. And then finally, and I didn’t do it because of everything he told me, right? I did it, like you said, because I saw somebody else doing it way later in life, but yeah.

Cody Crabb (07:11)
Right. Yeah.

Yeah, sometimes

that’s all it takes. But okay, so I’d be curious. A couple things jump out of me right away. You said single family being a landlord in single family is a nightmare. What do you mean by that?

Adam Williams (07:27)
Yeah, so you know, the challenge, there’s a few challenges with single family. And I see this all the time, we have clients that come to us all the time that do what I did. Where when you’re working your job or running your business and you finally wanna get into investing in real estate, the natural kind of thought is, well, I’ll just go buy a rental, right? And then maybe I’ll buy two and then maybe I’ll buy three and then maybe I’ll get to 10 or 20.

And the challenge is that when you buy a rental or two or 10 or 20, for the most part, you’re in charge of everything, right? You’re the landlord, you’re collecting the rent, you’re doing the maintenance, you’re doing all these things. And so that in itself becomes quite a bit of a challenge as you try to grow and scale that business because I’m busy, I’m running, I’m working my job, I’m hanging out with my kids and family and so forth. So I don’t have time to manage that stuff. Yeah, and the single family houses.

Cody Crabb (08:11)
That’s true. Five single family houses as a like, yeah, that starts to really

add up.

Adam Williams (08:17)
But on top of that, what I found and what most people find when they do that is that with a single family rental, if the tenant moves out, guess who’s stuck paying that mortgage, those taxes, that insurance? If you have an air conditioning that goes out, right? That $10,000 bill falls on you or a roof repair, et cetera. And so even if you’re making two, three, four, $500 a month as passive income on a single family rental,

one thing can go wrong and wipe out two, three years of cash flow, right, in a month or one repair. And so I found that quickly as that was happening, and we were like 150 single families in before I kind of came to that conclusion, because we were moving very fast, I said, there’s no way I can scale this the way that I want. And I actually paid a gentleman that I knew that was only doing apartment buildings. That’s all he did. I paid him $20,000 to let me follow him around for a year and teach me everything he knew and introduce me to everybody he knew in the space, his attorney.

Cody Crabb (08:46)
Yeah. Yeah.

Adam Williams (09:12)
his tax strategist, his lenders, all the things. And I did, and I just studied for a year, and then I started making my own investments slowly. But I think everybody at some point, Cody, you know, either everybody that starts off with single-family rentals, at some point in their life, it could take 10, 20, 30 years, could take two deals, it could take 20 deals, 200 deals.

At some point they want to stop being an active investor, which you are with a single family rental, you’re an active investor, and they want to move over into being a passive investor where it’s like, give you my money and I don’t do anything. The checks just show up. If a tenant moves out, I don’t even know about it, right? If an air conditioning goes out, I don’t get the bill and I don’t hear about it, right? I just want my check.

So that’s kind of the natural progression, yeah.

Cody Crabb (09:57)
Yeah, I mean that makes a lot of sense. it kind of sounds like

like you’re taking all of the headaches that you would have in single family. You bundle them all together into one giant building and then you have a team that helps you. So it’s all just kind of, so that makes a lot of sense. So because I was like, it seems like the problems would be such a smaller scale. But like you said, I mean, a broken air conditioner is a broken air conditioner, whether it affects one family or 50. So.

Adam Williams (10:52)
Yeah.

Yeah,

mean, yeah. And the thing about it, Cody, is when you’re a passive investor, which all of our investors are on these deals, you don’t deal with any of that. You don’t deal with property management. You don’t deal with broken stuff. You don’t deal with tenants moving out. You deal with nothing. You don’t deal with the tax stuff, the collections, nothing. You get literally a monthly distribution in your bank account. You get a monthly report that tells you everything that’s going along on the property. You can call into the office, of course, and get any questions answered at any time. But you’re completely hands off and quote unquote passive, which is

Cody Crabb (11:09)
Exactly.

Yeah.

Adam Williams (11:31)
beautiful right?

Cody Crabb (11:33)
Yeah, so I think ⁓ when people think of passive income, they think of real estate, but this actually is like, by definition, passive income in the way people mean it when they say it. ⁓ Well, that’s pretty neat. So ⁓ a question I would have

Adam Williams (11:41)
truly passive.

Cody Crabb (11:50)
for people who think that kind of owning multiple rentals and they think they have built passive income, what are they missing that maybe you would

you would see in one of your investors that’s really doing well.

Adam Williams (12:03)
Yeah, I think in the beginning, and I’ll give you a couple of examples, but in the beginning, they don’t know what they don’t know, right? So they acquire their first rental and they’re like, cool, I made $200 cashflow this month, right? After all the bills were paid and then $200 the next month, $200 the next month. then…

They have a great tenant and then a year and a half down the line that tenant moves out and it sits vacant for a couple of months and they’re like, ⁓ crap, I just lost $2,400. Well, I just lost all that 200 a month that I earned the last 18 months has gone, right?

I had, ⁓ and I have a lot of clients that come to us like this, but I had a gal that I met at an event ⁓ summer of last year, and I just met her in the hallway. We were walking from like one part of the event to another. It was a real estate conference. And you start talking, you what are you doing here? And she owns a real estate company, ⁓ like a brokerage, right? She’s a realtor and she has like a brokerage firm in Chicago. And she said, yeah, she goes, you know, I’ve been collecting with my daughter over the past 20 years, we’ve collected 27 doors, single.

family.

rentals and we’ve just been buying them right my daughter and I and I run my company my daughter kind of manages the units and and I said that’s wonderful I said are you making some cash flow and she goes yeah we’re doing phenomenal because we’ve owned them so long that you know we’re making like $25,000 a month passive I said well that’s wonderful she said yeah but the reason that I’m here at this event is because and it was a multi-family apartment event she said I’m we’re we’re pulling each other’s hair out we have we have no we don’t know how to manage these things it’s becoming a complete nightmare and she goes I

Cody Crabb (13:06)
my gosh.

Adam Williams (13:35)
to sell them all and just move them over into apartments and let somebody else deal with it. And this is just repetitive to what we see happen. for her, it took her to get to like 25 or 27 units. Some people, they get two units in and they’re like, my gosh, I don’t want to do this anymore. Right. So ⁓ that’s really what it comes down to. You know, everybody gets there at some point. Everybody gets there at some point.

Cody Crabb (13:51)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I guess if your plan is to scale past a certain point, that model just starts to break down the bigger that it gets, I suppose. ⁓ So ⁓ for somebody that’s hearing this and says, yeah, well, I like to own my own rentals. Like, I like to be involved. what is it that they’re missing out on? Obviously, it’s a lot less work. There’s no argument that it’s less work. ⁓ But what would you say to someone like that?

Adam Williams (14:23)
Yeah, I would tell them, and I do meet people like this quite a bit.

If you’re truly what I call an operator, you want to be an active operator, whether that be single family or, you know, Airbnbs or apartment buildings, doesn’t matter. There are people that they’re, they’re built for that. Right. And that’s, they love it. They like control. They like to do all that. What I would advise them is to, if you, let’s say you own 10 single families, cause you’ve been kind of stacking these things up for a while and you want to move to the next level and you’re an operator, you don’t want to be passive. You want control. That’s awesome. I think that’s wonderful.

find a way to move into large scale multifamily because the benefits, the cash flow, ⁓ it all becomes

At scale when you’re buying 150 a 200 unit building now, you’re not going and writing a 40 million dollar check yourself Right. A lot of people think well, I don’t have 40 million dollars How am I gonna do that? You don’t have to do any of that you can go into these deals with very little of your own capital and Still be the general partner the operator on the deal maintain control, right? We syndicate these deals So if maybe I’m maybe I’m that person that I’m I own 10 rentals and I want to move to the next level and I’m thinking I’m gonna go start looking at 200 unit apartment

I would look to put together some sort of a fund structure and syndication where I’m gonna take some of my own equity and my own capital that I have, maybe I have two, three, four, $500,000 of my own capital. I wanna acquire this $40 million building. I’m gonna go pull together several investors. We’re gonna put together a legal entity structure around it and we’re gonna go acquire that deal and I’m gonna be in charge of the operation. I’m gonna be the one that makes the decisions. I’m gonna be the one that handles the property management. I’m gonna be the one executing the business plan

guess what I can guarantee you you’re probably the only one in that group that wants to do any of that stuff and so you’re very valuable to that group right 99.9 percent of our investors don’t want to do any of that they don’t even want to read a PPM they just want here’s my money I trust you send me my checks they don’t want any of it so that’s what I would advise right if you want to scale

Cody Crabb (16:54)
That’s a good point.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, and I think, I mean, maybe it’s just certain kinds of investors that this is maybe not, like not everyone wants to be as passive as that, which is okay, but they have to accept that it’s going to be an extra amount of headache and risk and work to get there. ⁓ So when someone is ⁓ changing into, well, hang on, let me ask this a different.

Okay, yeah, I got a better idea. Okay. Is there a certain number of doors where you see this start to be like the headaches kind of start? Like I would imagine there’s a kind of breaking point where someone, necessarily that someone’s in single family, but like a number of doors where they are starting to think maybe I shouldn’t do it this way. Maybe I should go into more of a investing into a fund or working with someone like you.

Adam Williams (18:06)
Do you mean when somebody’s actually acquiring like Reynolds as an example, like one at a time?

Cody Crabb (18:09)
Yeah, yeah,

like let’s say I’m doing that strategy, the typical way that probably a lot of our listeners are ⁓ trying to build their portfolio. Let’s say ⁓ I’m like three, three doors in, ⁓ let’s just say single family. Like at what point do you think it’s going to start being like yikes? Cause I guess it depends on how big your team is and things, but I just be curious to know, like, is there, do you see kind of a rough number where this starts to be more of a headache than it’s worth?

Adam Williams (18:25)
Hmm.

Yeah, it’s all over the board depending on the person and the situation. I’ve had people come to me and they’re only on their second rental and they say, I’m never doing this again. And I had a gentleman introduced to me about a month and a half ago that he’s a physician. He’s a full-time, very, very busy doctor, owns a practice. So he’s got several physicians underneath him in his practice. And he had a tax issue and his tax advisor told him, well, you and your wife should start collecting some real estate to help you with your tax issues. And in four years, they acquired 184,

single-family residence and he’s losing $40,000 a month and had to create his own property management company and he’s just like get me out. it’s very you know it depends on the situation. ⁓

Cody Crabb (19:16)
I

Yeah.

Adam Williams (19:20)
And

what happens, some people will go acquire 10, 20, 30, know, single family residents and really love the model and enjoy it. And that’s just what they like doing. It’s not bad for everybody, right? They can make some good money. They can acquire some equity. doesn’t give them too much headaches. And then other people will get too. And they’re like, I’m just, you know, a tenant will destroy their place and move out and cost them 20 grand. And they’ll be like, I’m never doing it again. What I tell you that I really is really sad to see Cody is when you’re, when you’re busy in your career,

working your regular job, right? And you decide at some point, I need to start acquiring some real estate. So you go get a rental property, a single family home as an example. And.

it does become a headache and you maybe lose some money or whatever. What makes me sad is when people completely give up on real estate altogether and they say, I lost money there, I had a bad experience, I’m never investing in real estate again. Because real estate is the one investment vehicle that absolutely can and will set you free when done right and get you off to that retirement at some point that everybody, you know, hopes for at some point in their life. And so it’s really sad to me when people completely give up on it because of a bad experience they had earlier.

on and it’s just because they just didn’t know you know and that’s why it’s really important and I’m so grateful for people like you helping to educate people on on what’s out there right all the different things you don’t have to invest in apartment buildings there are land deals there’s fix and flips there’s you know there’s all kind of stuff you can do ⁓ so yeah I just would my advice to people would be like

educate yourself and don’t give up on it if you have one or two bad experiences like keep educating yourself and keep pushing forward because Everybody needs to be invested in real estate in some form or fashion in my opinion

Cody Crabb (21:04)
Yeah, think you’re right. I mean, in the lowest forms, maybe just where you live, but also that starts to extend to your business and what else you’re doing too. So one question I’d have, let’s kind of move on to, you mentioned you’re kind of operating in multiple markets. And I’d be curious to kind of ask you, you said you were in Arizona, you kind of were working the market, and then you started to realize the volume you were shooting for was not.

kind of possible where you were. And so how did you make a decision on where to move ⁓ next to invest and what would you advise to other people that are kind of trying to do the same thing?

Adam Williams (21:43)
Yeah, so early on when I paid that gentleman to teach me everything he knew and I was in my late twenties then mid to late twenties. I had one goal, right? We put this big lofty goal out there and it was 10,000 units in 10 years and then I’m I’m off. And I knew I couldn’t do that in single family so I moved over to multifamily and I was like, okay, I see a vision and now we’re over 12,000 units. when you’re looking to grow at that scale and it’s not just me, right? I didn’t do this on my own. I have a full team and we have a lot of investors involved and operators in different

things. I have amazing partners. But when you’re looking to grow to that scale, we have a very clear

Clearly defined by box that we do not step out of line at all I tell people every time I step out of the line I get a toe blown off So I stopped stepping out of line a long time ago and we’re laser focused on one thing We acquire 80s 90s and 2000s vintage class B garden style apartment buildings 100 to 400 units in Sunbelt areas Sunbelt markets that have extremely high population in migration and extremely high job growth and we’re just critical on what we

we acquire, you class B and B plus and A value add that we can acquire the asset, execute our business plan and exit or sell the asset to an institution for profit. And so what happened was is when we started here in Arizona and we in where I live, I’m here in Scottsdale now in my office, we started here and we did a bunch of deals here with our operating partners. But, you know, when there’s opportunity, a lot of other people come to start getting into, you know, taking that opportunity as well, which they should.

And so if you’re very clearly defined on your buy box, you get this narrow window where you’re not going to deviate from that, right? We’re not going to go out and buy stuff that we don’t buy just to buy stuff. ⁓ But you run out of inventory to buy, right? The deals aren’t as plentiful. So we said, OK, well, the Phoenix market was really good to us. We’re going to still continue to underwrite and acquire deals here, which we do. Our last deal was here. ⁓ But we’re going to go start looking at maybe Dallas next, right, as an example, because that meets our

Cody Crabb (23:36)
Yeah.

Adam Williams (23:52)
buy

box criteria for what we’re looking for and so then we did that and then we moved over to some markets in North Carolina and we’re currently evaluating some markets in Tennessee and some other areas so it’s strictly out of necessity to continue to grow and scale for us.

Cody Crabb (24:06)
Hmm. Yeah, I mean, it seems perfectly logical because it’s just math at some point. Like, need to move. So let’s look. So if someone’s thinking about, I mean, you partially answered this with how you did it, but I just would be curious what you would say ⁓ if someone specifically wants advice on like, where would make sense for them to move? What factors would you take into account? Because ⁓ obviously location is important and that’s,

Adam Williams (24:13)
It is.

Cody Crabb (24:35)
That’s the cliche, location, location, location. But you’re nowhere near them. So I’d be curious to know what is it that you would recommend people look for depending on their situation.

Adam Williams (24:49)
You mean if somebody’s looking to get into investing in multi-family or operating apartment buildings?

Cody Crabb (24:54)
Well, I mostly mean like in a new market, like let’s say they’re in the same situation as you. They’re starting to do some deals and maybe they aren’t finding what they need in the exact location they are.

Adam Williams (25:04)
Yeah, yeah, I talk to people about this all the time actually that are looking to be operators and do their own deals. ⁓

I always say start in the market where you’re at, where you live, where you know, right? And understand everything about the real estate that you’re looking to acquire in that market. You should know everything. Every property that’s listed within your buy box, who the top broker is in your area, like all of it, right? Study that first. Unless you live in an area that’s depressed and wouldn’t make sense as an investment, right? And there are several of those throughout the United States. Then find the one nearest to you probably

that would fit what you’re looking to do. And then let’s say you start acquiring assets in that area like we did and you kind of run out of inventory to buy, I always say take it and duplicate that exact same plan that worked for you and move it to that next area. What I see people doing is…

you know, they call it shiny object syndrome or whatever. But what I see people doing is they go, well, I’m not finding exactly what I want. And they get antsy and it’s been working for them maybe for five, 10 years and they get antsy and they’re like, well, let me go try and buy some RV parks now. Or let me go buy self storage now. Or my buddy’s doing Airbnb and that makes a bunch of sense. Like in my opinion, and it works for some, but I stick with what I know. I do one thing. I want to get better and better and better at it every single year. ⁓ Look, we make mistakes.

I’ll make mistakes, I’ve made a tremendous amount of them. Learn from those mistakes, jot down those notes. Continue to build on your relationships in that niche because those relationships are absolutely everything. And just stick with what you know. That’s really my biggest thing.

Cody Crabb (26:48)
Yeah, I mean, what great advice, because I think, like you said, the shiny object syndrome takes over. Like you watch someone doing something in a different way than you and they’re successful and you go, it’s just it’s their way of doing it that’s successful and not necessarily that they happen to just be really good at what they’re doing in that particular area. So, ⁓ wow. Well, this has all been really great. ⁓ Adam, so let’s say someone is listening to this and they’re starting to get very excited about the idea of not having to do too much or, or,

have the checks come in the mailbox and that’s it and you don’t know anything about what’s going on other than just that it’s working. ⁓ How can someone work with you? Where do they need to live if they want to? Give us some more info on that.

Adam Williams (27:31)
Yeah, so we work with investors in all 50 states. ⁓ And just to be clear, ⁓ we work with investors who want to be passive. These are people that are working their job or running their business. And they’re like, I want you guys to handle everything. I don’t want the phone calls. I don’t want to do the work. I want to be completely passive as an investor with you. And so if you’re looking for that, we just created. mean, my company is Elevest Capital, elevestcapital.com. my team just created. And I’m super excited. You’re actually, Cody, you’re the first one here in this. Nobody even knows about

it. ⁓

My team just created adamwilliams.ai, adamwilliams.ai, and it has everything on there. I just wrote a book. They can buy my book, Maximizing Opportunities in Real Estate. They can go to Elevest Capital through there. They can go to Time for More in there. They can talk to me. There’s even a chat bot where they can call me. They can chat with me. They can have a full-on conversation with me and ask all the questions they want to ask. It’s a really cool site. So if anybody wants to just go learn more about myself, my businesses, what I do, how I do it, jump on adamwilliams.ai and you

and follow me on everything there.

Cody Crabb (28:34)
Wow, fabulous. ⁓ That’s pretty neat actually. I’m probably gonna check that out. So they can chat with like, is it like a virtual version of yourself?

Adam Williams (28:41)
Yeah, there’s a button up in the top right of the screen, of the website, of the homepage of the website, and they click on there and you literally can call me, just click to call, or you can chat with me on just chat, you know, and it’s me. I had to go in, I had to do a bunch of voice recording, I had to upload a bunch of the podcasts I’ve done. They had me upload all this stuff, and here’s what’s crazy about it. So when I first was testing it about two weeks ago, I was speaking at an event in Napa, and my wife was with me, and we’re in the hotel room on a break, and I said,

will you test this thing out for me? And she jumps in and she calls it and I’m in the bathroom like, I don’t know what I was doing, brushing my teeth or something. And I hear it and I’m like, my gosh, she’s literally talking to me. It was creepy. So it’s really cool.

Cody Crabb (29:23)
Well, that’s it. That’s a

I was gonna say that’s a good sign because then it just kind of shows it’s a little it’s pretty accurate. ⁓ Well, well, that’s awesome. Yeah, I’ll be I’ll be checking that out and maybe see what I can get away with asking you on there ⁓ so Thanks so much for joining us today Adam and thank you listeners for joining us as well if you liked what you heard today go ahead and ⁓ If you liked what you heard today, go ahead and like subscribe follow comment do all the things and make sure you

Adam Williams (29:31)
Yeah, yeah, it’s good.

There you go.

Cody Crabb (29:53)
Don’t miss another episode so you can make sure to make sure, just make sure, make sure, make sure of a lot of things. And then also get all the conversations with great people like Adam. It’s been a pleasure. Thanks so much for joining me today.