Multifamily Investing in 2026: Distressed Deals, Refinancing & Buying Opportunitie

Jeremy Yost (00:00)
And I spent eighteen months every single day for eight hours a day making phone calls to investment firms all over the world. You name the country, I probably talked to somebody. but I emptied my bank account.

to nothing. I double mortgaged everything that I owned. and on that three hundred and third phone call got very blessed with a yes. And so it was incredible.

Joseph Crooms (01:58)
Hey everyone, welcome to Investor Fuel Real Estate Pros Podcast. I’m your host, Joseph Crooms. Today I’m joined by two special people, Reine and Jeremy. They’re gonna like sound like a good pair like that. they’re working well together. They talked about some things about bottlenecking, but I’m gonna let them introduce.

their concerns and their expertise. so they’re making some serious moves in the real estate industry. So hey Jeremy, Reine, say hello to our audience.

Reine Becker (02:29)
Hello, great to be here. Thanks for the chat.

Joseph Crooms (02:32)
All right, great. So let’s just dive into this. So first of all, and this is a question for both of you, for people who may not be familiar with your world or your niche, give us the short version. What’s your main focus today and what markets are you operating in?

Reine Becker (02:49)
Our main focus today, we’ve got several arms. So we are Ironhold, and we’ve got multiple arms of the company. We have Ironhold Asset Management where we are aggressively seeking third-party contracts from hospitality to student housing, multifamily. We have Ironhold Development. currently have 70 million dollars of projects in Minnesota that we are tackling. And we also have our Ironhold fund, it’s a multifamily focused fund, specific markets.

for all three of those things are in the Midwest as well as Texas, a lot of opportunities. If you’re familiar with commercial real estate, you’re aware a lot of opportunities coming due in Texas that we plan to capitalize on from every angle. And then lastly, we have an Ironhold not for profit where we’re committed to giving back to all of the communities. And I’d say all three of those things are our main thing, right? Or all four of those things are our main thing right now.

Joseph Crooms (03:43)
Hey, Jeremy, you got anything to add to that?

Jeremy Yost (03:45)
Absolutely. the not-for-profit side. That’s all of us can be takers, but not a lot of people in life really give back. And when you have an opportunity and are blessed by developing a new asset and a new community, the right thing to do is to be able to give back to that community. So we take care of veterans, we donate to food pantries, homeless shelters, we want to give back.

because we don’t want to just be people that take all the time. and it’s so good to be able to get back. Like I said, the joy in life is giving and that’s so incredibly important to us.

Joseph Crooms (04:19)
Amen. And I said thank you to both you guys for having the nonprofit piece to give back. And thank you both Reine and Jeremy for and thank you your company as a whole. So guys, what is your primary focus right now? Sounds like a lot of movement in residential, but we’ll go into commercial of the what’s available. But let’s talk about the residential end. What do you see happening in the market now?

Jeremy Yost (04:43)
So I think the market right now is absolutely crazy. And in our eyes, the way that Reine and I see it, there is so many opportunities out there. A lot of investors or property owners during COVID took some low interest short-term loans. All those are now coming due. Rates are much higher. Those deals aren’t penciling for them. And they’re having all these flash sales where banks are taking those loans back. And we see it as an opportunity.

is we’ve been patient look looking for the right deals and the multifamily market is a great buy right now because it’s something that’s safe. If you can get it at the right opportunity, I can use a great example. Reine and I a few months ago purchased a 52 unit multifamily in Houston, Texas for 50% of the replacement cost. Hell of a deal for us. good opportunity and we’re going to continue looking for more deals like that.

Joseph Crooms (05:36)
What are you gonna say, man?

Reine Becker (05:37)
just gonna add that that’s exactly what really pushed us to launch our fund is because of the market. We see the opportunity with the market. We knew that how do we capitalize on it as much as possible. And that’s why we’re launching our fund is to do exactly that.

Joseph Crooms (05:51)
What about the student market? Cause I you mentioned that and I’ve heard it a few times on from doing podcasts. What do y’all see happening with the student market? What are you gonna do that’s innovative and creative?

Jeremy Yost (06:01)
It’s right now it all depends upon what states that you’re in and what schools that you’re going to be either owning or managing in. for example, in Illinois where all of our student rentals are right now, it’s tough. the specific university that we’re managing at enrollment has been down for the last several years. fortunately the properties that we have are class A and they lease up very quickly.

but all the other student housing properties in that town are very much struggling, and landlords are really losing out with extremely high vacancy rates, some between 20 and 30 percent. And so we all know that number does not cash flow. so you have to really take one foot in front of the other very carefully because deals can go extremely south just by the nature of the educational market in Illinois right now.

Joseph Crooms (06:53)
Reine, what do you have to say?

Reine Becker (06:54)
I would just touché to everything that Jeremy said. it’s you’ve gotta make sure if you’re interested in getting into the student sector, you’ve gotta make sure you’re vetting it out from top to bottom. And also I would say another consideration to make is what schools are moving towards more online classes versus students on the ground, because that is gonna absolutely impact your ability to fill those units.

Joseph Crooms (08:03)
Understood. and so what other real estate options are you flipping any helping people flip any homes or and what size home are you looking to invest in?

Reine Becker (08:14)
I was going to say, so we’re not doing any res single family housing. Our portfolio is all multifamily. but we are looking at specific sizing would be a hundred units or pl or more. we look at it from the from the vertical integration perspective. So we want to either build it or buy it, but we then we know we’re gonna be managing it. So it has to make sense geographically and from a how it pencils perspective that we are the in-house management. So if that all lines up then

that’s what we’re after.

Joseph Crooms (08:43)
Jeremy?

Jeremy Yost (08:43)
Yeah, and piggyback off of that with the multifamily background, we’re also right now growing on our hospitality side. So we’ve developed hotels, we operate hotels, whether it’s full service, select service, it doesn’t matter. We can we can do it all. but we’re in the process of making an acquisition right now and in the process of adding two more hotels to our portfolio. So it’s one of those things right now where

some people are just multifamily, but we’re diverse and it’s extremely important to be diverse because you never know what’s gonna happen in any markets. And if you’re well equipped with multiple assets that you’re operating, you’re gonna last outlast anybody else.

Joseph Crooms (09:22)
Let’s talk about the machinery of your development in. How complex or or how integral is that machinery that you’re doing? Are you looking to do you have a construction team or a renovation team? And you did mention management, but let’s talk, let’s go there. What does your development team look like?

Jeremy Yost (09:38)
So the development team is Reine and I. We are the development team. We are Ironhold Development. And as Reine mentioned, our asset management arm property management side is Ironhold Asset Management, which is led by our other partner, Amber Hendrickson. And she oversees the day-to-day operations on that side. And then along Ironhold, we also have our hospitality side with Lucas Combs, our director of hospitality. So he

Tag teams with Reine and I on acquisitions of hotel and we’ll handle the process in terms of if we have to do a property improvement plan, depending on what franchise of hotel it is, whether it’s Hilton, IHG, Wyndham, we have to understand what’s left in that franchise agreement, or if we were going to keep that flag, what requirements we would need to upgrade to keep the flag, or we bring in a different franchise and make those updates and

To piggyback into your question for the construction side, C Howell Construction out of Cobden, Illinois, has been our general contractor for over thirty five years. We’ve got a wonderful family partnership with them and build over thirty five apartment complexes for us throughout the state of Illinois.

Joseph Crooms (10:48)
thank you, Jeremy. Reine, let me ask you this question and then you can flip on it. What’s been the key to keeping your machine running smoothly?

Reine Becker (10:55)
So we are very pride ourselves on utilizing technology to keep us stay organized with real-time data and tracking and not only not only what’s actually happening, but also what we’re gonna do about it. So that is something that we’ve really spent a lot of time. We’ve actually partnered with Outcome AI to help us develop an in-house system to keep it all organized, with so many moving parts, because there are and there’s no way to sugarcoat that.

Instead of having, three different finance softwares and our CRM and our internal storage of where we keep our documentation and SOPs and where we communicate on WhatsApp and Slack and we are building, we’re in the process of building one in-house platform that is specifically designed around all the different facets of our business and the way that we work and who we work with to have everything in-house and internal.

So it keeps us very organized. It keeps us the main thing, the main thing in front of us every day. We’re not squirreling out all the time. so I would say that is how we stay very, focused and organized and can keep this train rolling and do an excellent job at it.

Joseph Crooms (12:06)
Thank you for sharing that. So Jeremy, let me put this question to you then. A little different twist. Every operator that I’ve encountered, maybe a deal that went sideways or a time that you guys had to pivot fast. Do you mind sharing one of those moments with us?

Jeremy Yost (12:21)
Yeah. if I get emotional, I’m very sorry. but it’s about having grit and not quitting. When COVID started, I had just began building a hundred and two key Hilton Garden Inn with an 8,500 square foot convention center. We all know what happened during COVID to the hospitality world. It tanked, everybody thought hospitality was dead. the bank was using our equity first. So

They pulled their loan after we had started construction and we were probably like five months in. And so we had to fund the first six million dollars out of pocket. And I spent eighteen months every single day for eight hours a day making phone calls to investment firms all over the world. You name the country, I probably talked to somebody. but I emptied my bank account.

to nothing. I double mortgaged everything that I owned. and on that three hundred and third phone call got very blessed with a yes. And so it was incredible.

Joseph Crooms (13:17)
that’s the kind of stuff people don’t talk about enough on who are the s who are the people that not just dabble with the business but stay in the in the game for the long term. Reine, what’s been what do you plan on focusing or solving next? And what’s been it for you to say, what, we’re digging in. I like what you both said in the beginning, how your

And I can use it for a better term, scaling your association network. So but what do you plan on focusing on next Reine and what’s your next real big goal?

Reine Becker (14:32)
So what we are focusing on, of course, is just growth overall in every sector of our business. we have a goal of by 30, wait, 30, 2030 to have over 10,000 units in our portfolio. I feel very confident about that goal. And in order to do that, we are ensuring, and that’s kind of what you were touching on, is ensuring that our network of people is great, people who are

Not only hard workers, but are just good people. Like good people. so high quality folks who are working their butts off just as hard as we have as we are, that have grit, so are able to live through things and have lived through things, like Jeremy’s example. So they’ve got the experience and know how important it is to keep driving things and never quitting. those are the people that we want to surround ourselves with. So there’s the portfolio goals, but also just the network of who we want to be around.

Joseph Crooms (15:24)
What is it that they could say? And this is a question for both of you, when you now you’re vetting people, but what is it that they may say or do? and how do you vet those and say, what, this is a go. This may be something we need to look at, and this is a no.

Reine Becker (15:40)
So easiest for me is people who don’t follow up. So if you tell me you’re all excited about something and you want in or you’re presenting a deal, but then I you I say, okay, show me what you have. Show me what the work that you’ve done or the work that you plan on doing. What’s the plan? If you have no plan of action and it’s very evident that if you did do work, it was all sloppy and not real, like it really wasn’t your work. And if you’re not responsive quickly, then

I don’t take you seriously. Like to me, that’s noise. We can cross that project off and just keep moving on because there’s a lot of others out there. There’s no lack of opportunity right now. and so we want to take on as many real opportunities as are out there. I don’t know, Jeremy, what else you would add?

Jeremy Yost (16:19)
Yeah, that and listen to your gut. If you don’t like somebody, don’t go into business with them. You have any instance of any type of negativity about it, don’t do business with them because it’s gonna end up being a really bad investment. It’ll be a bad just environment to be around. And Joseph, you want to surround yourself with people that you want to be around. So you are you are what you’re around. And if

you’ve got negativity around, you’re gonna have that chaos. And we do not thrive on that as a team. So we wanna be with like minded individuals like ourselves.

Reine Becker (16:53)
Yeah. And I know when I first started in real estate, I was told pick your partners carefully, even more carefully than you would choose your spouse. Because you are married to these people for years. And that is, I have learned so true. It’s so true. So it’s important.

Joseph Crooms (17:08)
Yeah, we’re coming to the end, but I have to ask this question. Your philosophy is not generally the philosophy of many business owners. They say, hey, show me the money. And but what you guys have talked about is the human nature. Can you elaborate on that just a little more? Jeremy, what did you take from that experience that you went through?

Jeremy Yost (17:28)
perseverance pays off. I have this quote I live by vision is not seeing things as they are, but as they will be. And so you have your vision and you follow through and you see something and it’s going to be real and it’s gonna do well. You put everything and you have into it and you don’t quit. You just keep going and don’t quit. You never stop working.

And you will get what you want. And when that product comes, then you put the good people in it. Because at the end of the day, when you strip a property down, it doesn’t matter what it is. But if you have good quality people that are there, that’s going to help your development succeed, whether it’s hospitality, property management, it’s all about the people. And if you’re just good, things are going to flow so much better because too many people in business can be jerks and think about it’s all about the money.

We’re in the business to make money. We’re not gonna lose it, but we’re gonna do it with the right people.

Joseph Crooms (18:22)
Reine, what do you have to add to that?

Reine Becker (18:23)
just say that we’ve had deals presented to us with some people who we didn’t feel like were folks that we wanted to work with. We’re my point is that we’re not afraid to say no to the money if we don’t think the quality of people is there. Like that’s how serious about this we are. And that has I think helped us immensely as we’re in this growth phase.

Joseph Crooms (18:46)
All right, guys, we’re getting to the end. I know a lot of people listening this are either early in their journey or looking to level up and I think they’re gonna benefit from hearing this. When it comes to building relationships and growing your network, what’s made the biggest difference to both of you?

Jeremy Yost (19:00)
Reine, you want me to go first?

Reine Becker (19:02)
Yeah, go for it. Let me think about

Jeremy Yost (19:04)
My game changer this last year was finding Reine and having a solid business partner that had the same mission and values and goals as that I’ve had. And I would not be where I’m at today and doing the projects with her, without her, because she helped relight a fire under me to get things going. And she’s been nothing but a blessing in this partnership and helping us on this growth phase.

So without her, we wouldn’t be with where we’re at today.

Joseph Crooms (19:33)
Hey Jeremy, let me pause you for a second. what you said hit me in my chest. I felt the sincerity from with your message. Reine, what do you got?

Reine Becker (19:41)
I don’t know how you follow that. So very much the reverse, too. I’m the same thing with Jeremy. Certainly would not be in this position if it weren’t for Jeremy and the foundation that he’d already established in real estate. And then giving me the opportunity to come in and be a part of it. But I would say also is you the mastermind groups that I’ve been a part of.

It really taught me how to network and how to get in the right rooms with the right people because when I first started looking at masterminds and what groups I wanted to be in, it was okay, I was in this mastermind and you get into it and you’re like, but that’s not really the right level of people. These people are still you at the same phase I’m at. And I want to be three phases above this. So I need to get in the rooms with those people and really learning how to find the right mastermind groups to get yourself in front of the right people that.

like Jeremy, you could potentially partner with or other partnerships that happen in those groups and they do all the time. So I’d say being in masterminds and just networking my tail off substantially impacted the trajectory of my real estate career.

Joseph Crooms (20:43)
Wow, I appreciate both of you. So you can’t fake relationships and thank God you both found each other. And like I said, I can feel the sincerity and I can see why your plan is working. All right, before we wrap up, and you can also give a plug for all three of your businesses and then tell people how to get in touch with your over overall. So if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, maybe collaborate and learn more about what you’re doing, what’s the best way to reach out to you guys?

Jeremy Yost (21:11)
Reine, go ahead.

Reine Becker (21:12)
Yeah, I was okay, so me personally, reine.becker on all platforms. So that’s at reine.becker on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. And just shoot me a message. I would love to hear from you. from an Ironhold perspective, our main website is ironholdam.com and it’s spelled just like it sounds. but and then specifically for our fund, we have a testing the waters page if you want to follow along. It launches November 1st.

And that fund website is invest.ironholdam.com.

Joseph Crooms (21:44)
Hey Jeremy, give it to him one more time. Either way, you want to give it. Somebody’s

Jeremy Yost (21:48)
Right.

Joseph Crooms (21:49)
looking for a pen. They’re looking for a pen.

Jeremy Yost (21:52)
Hit me up at jeremyryost on Instagram or jeremyryost007 on LinkedIn. Follow us there. We post frequently. We give plenty of investment tips. Also give some development perspectives. We go live on sites and share exactly what we’re doing. And we want to be able to help others grow for themselves and grow their businesses and just being able to help others. And then again, check out that fund page, invest.

dot ironholdam dot com. Follow us on the journey. Come be a part of our team.

Joseph Crooms (22:25)
Thank you both, guys. Thank you to Jeremy and Reine. I appreciate your time, your story, your perspective, your philosophy, and that you’re living within. We need more people in spaces who are doing it the right way. Thank you both for being here.

Reine Becker (22:39)
Thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

Joseph Crooms (22:41)
And for those of you tuning in, I know you got some value for this. Make sure you subscribe and make sure you we got more conversations coming from operators just like Jeremy and Reine, or Reine and Jeremy, either way you want to put it, who out there building real businesses, helping communities, helping people, people get involved in the business and do what they want to do. So we’re gonna see you on the next episode. But I’m gonna give Jeremy and Reine

Opportunity to say, We’ll talk to you guys later.

Reine Becker (23:11)
All right, really appreciate it. Reach out.

Jeremy Yost (23:13)
Appreciate it, guys. Let’s go. Reach out. Team Ironhold right here. Jeremy and Reine. Let’s go. Come hit us up.

Joseph Crooms (23:19)
All right, we got it. We got that. So we’ll see you at the next episode of Investor Fuel Real Estate Pros Podcast. Joseph Crooms, I’m signing out. Talk to y’all later. Bye.