Multifamily Investing in 2026: How Brian Sutton Finds Distressed Apartment Deals

Brian Sutton (00:00)
Unfortunately for the existing owner, know, mean, they’re going to take a huge loss, but for our investors, there’s a huge opportunity right there. And literally we’re buying this property. We bought a property down the street, less than five miles away in 2018. And we’re buying this property today in 2026 for almost the exact amount per door.

as we did this other property in 2028. So that’s showing you how much the pricing has adjusted back.

Quentin (02:00)
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host Q Edmonds and I am excited to be here today. I have another fantastic guest and listen, this gentleman has been around for 25 years and investing. So definitely knows what he’s doing. I love how he really wants to help people. He want to really give investors.

a clear opportunity, especially when it comes to like rental options and different spaces like that. And so he’s really here to really help people. And I love that. You know how I feel about people that serve other people. And so I’m so excited for us to get to know and learn from Mr. Brian Sutton. Mr. Brian, how you doing today, sir?

Brian Sutton (02:47)
Man, I’m wonderful. I’m wonderful. Thank you so much for having me on. It’s very nice getting to know you and I’m excited for the podcast.

Quentin (02:56)
Absolutely. Well, same here, my friend. And Mr. Brian, I am the type. I like to dive right in. Right. So I would love for you to tell the people what’s your main focus these days. If you don’t mind, give us a little bit of an origin story, kind of how you got into the space that you’re in. And then, tell them what part of the world you’re in. People love to know what people are geographically. so, Mr. Brian, sir, you have the floor, my friend. Yes, sir.

Brian Sutton (03:02)
Sure.

Hey, I appreciate it.

Yeah, I’ve been investing in real estate for 25 years. ⁓ I’ve started out actually born and raised in Hawaii. So started out when I was in high school helping my dad with his real estate properties. And then ⁓ famously, after I got out of college, I was living in apartment complex and my dad was up there visiting me and said,

Quentin (03:32)
Okay, bye.

Brian Sutton (03:48)
hey, what are you doing with your extra money? And I said, you I don’t know, you’re looking at it. And he said, well, you can’t spend all your money on.

beer and chasing girls. It’s time to start investing in your own real estate. And so at the age of 22, my father and I went out and we purchased my first property and ended up renting out the rooms to my friends. early on, as early as 22 years old, started getting in the real estate game, got the real estate bug and…

Quentin (04:11)
Yeah.

Brian Sutton (04:21)
You know, just as I’ve loved it ever since. Fast forward, made a huge move, which is a whole nother story for another podcast. You’ll have to have me back on, but made the huge move from Hawaii to Atlanta, Georgia. And that’s where we are today. And that happened about 10 years ago. And for, for multiple reasons, my wife and I moved our two children out here. You know, I think for a lot of people that are moving out to Atlanta and parts of the Southeast where they’re moving for very similar reasons.

Quentin (04:27)
Right,

Brian Sutton (04:49)
We wanted to come out for cost of living. We were both working full-time jobs, grinding and had two young kids, felt like we weren’t spending enough family time together. And so because of the transition and the real estate opportunities in the Southeast, my wife was able to stay home with the two kids and I was able to kind of pursue my real estate dreams by relocating off to the Southeast and finding, you know.

a little flipping the economics a little bit for us, our internally, for our family. So that’s when we started Two Waters Capital. And so what Two Waters Capital is, is a vertically integrated multifamily.

property firm in which we manage large apartment complexes across the southeast. And we’ve been really blessed over the past 10 years, we’ve been able to purchase about a half a billion dollars in assets. I’ll purchase, I’m sorry, and sell about a half a billion dollars in assets. We’ve raised over $80 million from our investor partners. And what I’m really most proud of is that we’ve been able to distribute about $127 million back to our investor partners over that

time period as well. So what we do is we find ⁓ well-located apartment complexes across the southeast. We buy them, we reposition them, we create clean safe housing for the residents there, and then we try to produce an outsized return for our investors through that process.

Quentin (07:06)
Yeah.

Mr. Brian, sir, thank you, man. Thank you for the journey, walking us through the journey, letting us know your origin story, where you are now. And I’m going to, I was actively listening as you was talking, I was writing some things down and I’m just kind of just do a quick summary because I want to make a statement to ask you a question. All right. So born in Hawaii, started out helping dad.

Brian Sutton (07:28)
Thank

Quentin (07:33)
Dad said, hey, what are you doing with your money? We can’t just drink beer and chase girls. So what are we doing, right? And so 20, 22 years old, started investing, hit by the bug of real estate, rented out rooms to your friend, and then moved from Hawaii to Georgia. You and your wife agreed that it would be a better cost of living.

Brian Sutton (07:37)
We can’t blow it all. We blow it all. Yeah.

Quentin (07:55)
Wife stayed at home with the kids, you know, and that allowed you to go out and build for the family. And then Two Waters, Capital was erected and, you know, so this is some of the summary, right? And so again, thank you for the journey. And Mr. Brian, I often say destiny has no wasted moments, right? Meaning no matter what we go through in life, we are borrowing from those moments. We are building momentum.

Brian Sutton (08:08)
Yeah.

Quentin (08:22)
The people that we are today is because of the journey. It’s the acclamation and the augmentation of just the different parts of the journey, right? And so I would love to know from you, Mr. Brian, what have you learned along the journey? What has these moments, what has the journey revealed to you as a reveal? Discipline, resilience, what’s some of the things that it’s revealed to you?

Brian Sutton (08:47)
Yeah, well, mean, well said. God willing, this journey’s not over. So, you know, if he allows me to stay here another day, I think that this is a blessing, it’s a gift. And, you know, we were talking about this earlier. Life is great. And it’s so, I’m so grateful for those moments of joy and success, right? Because there’s been a lot, there’s been a ton.

But we really learn more from our struggles, right? ⁓ And, you know, kind of the rise of the Phoenix moment, the moments where you’re tested, right? Your will is tested. Your faith is tested. How do we get ourselves out of those moments of adversity and push through? I think just along the way, what I’ve learned is that

You know, when you go through this process and you hit bumps in the road, it’s really, really important to be self-reflective and to think about, hey, I’m going through this pain. Why am I going through this pain? What can I do with this to make this positive, a positive, and what can we do differently? If there is anything to do differently, right? To get you to not have this happen again.

so yeah, I mean, I think, I think there’s, you know, this is a very, very interesting time in real estate because I think we’ve had some very, very high highs, back, would say probably in 20, actually it went on for a while. I think we had a lot of highs, you know, and the market was just blowing and going. think, you know, money.

was easily found and a lot of money was being poured into assets like real estate. And so when that happens ⁓ and money is freely given out and it’s pouring into these assets, that causes inflation. It’s inflationary. And so the prices of everything goes up.

And inevitably if the like what has happened where the federal government, you know over the course of about 11 months Increased our our fed funds rate from about zero to four and quarter or whatever it got to at the peak that is a a deflationary there on purpose deflating the money supply and so when that happens You’re at risk for these assets the asset prices to come back down and come back to earth

And that’s really what’s happened over the course of the last couple of years. So I think there’s a lot of pain out there. There’s a lot of people that are running into depreciating values of the assets that they’re holding. so there’s a lot of lessons to be learned from that.

Quentin (12:08)
Yeah, You when we was talking backstage, you actually said a word that I say quite often. And I normally ask people this question this way. I normally say, you know, adversity always shows its head within our journey. And so I ask people, how did they overcome adversity? How does adversity look in their world? How do they overcome it? But I want to ask you this a different way. When you hear the words lessons the hard way.

What rings true to you?

Brian Sutton (12:37)
Mm-hmm.

Well, it’s funny because we have a podcast called Lessons the Hard Way. Lessons the Hard Way podcast, there he is. yeah, what it means to me is just a great opportunity to be humble, like to know that not everything’s gonna go your way, that, you know, God laughs at our best late plans.

Quentin (12:43)
Did you now? ⁓ really? ⁓

Brian Sutton (13:08)
And there’s been so many blessings in my life. mean, so many that I’m grateful for that have come out of struggle and adversity. I mean, just to give you one example, my wife…

was not a big fan of me in the beginning. I had to ask her multiple times to go out on a date. And if I had stopped doing that, if I had stopped being persistent, I had stopped trying to fight through the adversity, I would have never married the love of my life, the person I’m supposed to be with, and had two beautiful children. So that’s just one example. But yeah, there’s millions of examples, I think, out there of people that have been massively successful.

You know, this is a real estate podcast. So we can say if we’re thinking about that, in a real estate terms, there’s many, many real estate investors that have become, you know, multi billionaires or millionaires from their, their advert, going through the adversity and the ups and downs of real estate and sticking it out, right. And learning from those mistakes, not just packing it up and saying, Hey, I give up right into my first roadblock. quit.

⁓ I’m going to sit on the sidelines or do something else, right? Like the

And to me, Q, it’s like the whole juice of life when you really get down to it. think when you’re younger, you really, we can get into, I go on a tangent sometimes, but we can go on about your kids, because I’ve got teenagers, right? So sometimes my biggest thing with my wife and I is like, man, these kids don’t have enough adversity. They don’t have enough grit, right? They need to get their hands dirty and understand that things aren’t just handed to you, right?

Quentin (14:29)
Yo, you good, man. You are good, son. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Brian Sutton (14:47)
And as you get older, you start to realize that man, the things that you’re handed to you, as easily as they come, it’s almost as easily you are to discard them. When you really earn and grind and get through adversity and get through and problem solve and get through some of these tough times, you really start to look back and you’re like, man, I cherish.

Quentin (15:00)
Yeah, that’s so true.

Brian Sutton (15:13)
this, I cherish what God has given me, I cherish what he’s gotten me to, you to this point, because you got through, because you had that friction, because you had that and made that sacrifice, and because you went through some of that adversity. And so I think that’s what brings me, I know it brings me massive joy and puts me at peace to just to know that, hey, these adversities and these opportunities,

really a blessing right? They’re really a blessing to sharpen us as human beings and to just test our resolve a little bit but I think testing your resolve and testing your faith strengthens it when you come out the other end.

Quentin (15:39)
Yeah. Yeah.

Man, you are so true. It’s so many things that’s ringing true in my head. So one of my favorite things that I say on here, a Bible verse that I say, and it’s different translation, but my favorite translation is, says, you make your plans, but the Lord determines the outcome. Or another translation, you make the plan, but he orders your steps, right? So I love the fact that he allows you to make the plan, but man, he may turn that thing on his heel. But like you said,

Brian Sutton (16:58)
Yes.

Quentin (17:00)
It’s another verse, I’ve never said it here, but as you was talking, came to mind. It literally says, count it all joy when you go through divers temptations or when you go through divers trials. Meaning like this is the opportunity to have joy. And that sounds crazy, but like you just said, if you don’t go through the trial, you will never experience what the true joy feels like. So when it comes, count it joy because when you get past this and listen,

Brian Sutton (17:15)
.

Quentin (17:30)
You will get past it. Let that sink, people. You will get past it. And when you get past it, I promise you the joy you will feel when you look back. And some of you right now, even thinking about some of the things you’ve been through, it’s like, you know what? He got it right. I do feel pretty good now that I got past it. So just as you said, different things, different alarm bells started going through my head. And anybody that you face in trial,

Brian Sutton (17:32)
You will. Yes.

Yeah.

Quentin (18:00)
Just know you will get past it. Another thing I say, Mr. Brian, now I thought I was originally the person that thought of this. And so I was about to get in on the t-shirt and everything. But as I started researching, I realized other people say this, but it still rings true to me. I often say failure is fertilizer, right? And anything you know, anything about fertilizer, sometimes it’s it’s dung. It’s like literally, it’s manure. And so it can be messy, it can be smelly.

Brian Sutton (18:02)
Yeah, see?

Quentin (18:28)
But man, if you let the nutrients get inside your roots, you will grow. And before you know it, there’s plush greenery. The scents start to change, and there’s this aroma. And so if you allow yourself to go through the hard times, it’s just fertilizer to grow you. And so man, when you say lessons the hard way, man, that just rung true in my ears. so.

I appreciate you, man. I would love to know what’s next for two orders. Like, what are you looking to solve with scale next, Mr. Brian?

Brian Sutton (19:03)
Yeah, so we went through the trials and tribulations, I think, with a lot of people in our industry, right? As we were talking about before, we’ve seen this roller coaster of rise in asset prices and apartment complex pricing was at an all-time high back in, like I said, around 23-ish, that timeframe, right? And we’ve seen asset prices coming down rapidly.

And so our next iteration is that we see a great opportunity there, right? For example, we were talking about earlier, we’re closing on a property right now that actually we’ve been negotiating with the bank. So we had a bank that came back to us that we’ve done a couple of deals with and we did really well in this area prior of Atlanta.

and the bank said, hey, you guys have done a good job before. We have an owner that’s absolutely in trouble. They’re going to lose 100 % of their equity, unfortunately, but we’re looking for somebody to take this property over and hopefully you’d like you’d want to work with us as the bank to take this over in a short sale. And so we said, great. That’s, know,

Unfortunately for the existing owner, know, mean, they’re going to take a huge loss, but for our investors, there’s a huge opportunity right there. And literally we’re buying this property. We bought a property down the street, less than five miles away in 2018. And we’re buying this property today in 2026 for almost the exact amount per door.

as we did this other property in 2028. So that’s showing you how much the pricing has adjusted back.

Like eight years, we’re turning the black, the clock eight years in pricing. And we’re picking up this property for that same exact price that we would have paid for it in 2018. So huge, huge opportunities, I think on both sides of the coin.

As you were talking before, was just thinking I want to add one last comment to that about the fertilizer and about going through these rough times and these hard times and the lessons learned the hard way, right? ⁓ It’s interesting because if you think about it, how boring would your life be if you had no adversity, if you had no real learning?

and stories to tell and scars to show, you know what I mean? Like I think about my grandfather and that generation of having to go through, you know, the World War II and the Korean Wars and, you know, even some of the, you know, my dad’s generation that went through Vietnam. And sometimes it’s like the battle scars are what you learn the most from and that would make…

give your life the juice and the energy that it really needs. And so I would just say that for people that maybe have battle scars out there and maybe going through some trouble, start enjoying the other side of it. Because we’ve gotten through the battle scars. I think part of the reason some people get stuck in reminiscing about the pain and wanting to get stuck in the pain too long

when they should start realizing that, hey, the pain just focuses in us on learning the lessons, right? What are the lessons? What are the ways that we can get ourselves out of this pain and back into the seas or the waters that are pushing and are giving us tailwinds instead of wind in our face? And so…

Quentin (22:25)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Brian Sutton (22:39)
I think we’re at that. I’m just trying to encourage people that’s saying, we are, you know, we’re at a point in our real estate economy where it’s time to be bullish. It’s time to, you know, it’s time to learn from our scars, but to now take advantage of the opportunity in front of us.

Quentin (22:59)
So well said, sir. So well said. There’s a part of our brain that doesn’t even grow unless it is strengthened through adversity and challenges. Like that’s the part. It literally grows when it goes through challenges and adversity and dislike. And so I love the fact that you’re talking about embracing it, embracing the challenges.

because you’re going to grow. It’s literally physiologically going to change you. It’s going to grow your capacity. And a lot of us, if we want bigger, we have to grow our capacity to handle bigger. And so literally our brains will rewire when we embrace the adversity and go through it. And again, you will get through it. I know you’re like, Quentin, you don’t even know what I’m going through. Listen, I’ve interviewed too many people. I’ve been through too many things.

Brian Sutton (23:30)
It you.

Yeah.

Quentin (23:55)
I know you will get through it. so, man, I appreciate you so much, sir. Listen, if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, collaborate with you, learn more about what you’re doing, how can they get in contact with you,

Brian Sutton (24:08)
Yeah, absolutely. So you can call our office or you can text us DEAL, D-E-A-L, and that’s to 404-500-6876. So 404-500-6876. You can text us DEAL or give us a call. We’ll send you our seven point DEAL filter. It’ll help you from getting into some lessons learned that we’ve had.

in the past and how to not get yourself in a bad deal moving forward in this iteration. Love to give that away for free to you there. If you’re an email person, just email us at [email protected]. That’s the number 2 and then Waters Capital is spelled out. You can also visit us, you know, our website’s Two Waters Capital as well, the number 2, Waters Capital. And then the last way too, we’d love, if you’d love to connect or just listen to what we’re,

we’re up to, we’ve got the Lessons the Hard Way podcast. That can be found in any of your podcast outlets, iTunes, et cetera, and also on YouTube. So we’d love for you guys to follow us there as well. yeah, we’d just love to connect, love meeting people like yourself, and just love to help in any way we possibly can.

Quentin (25:27)
Yeah, yeah. I don’t know, man. I feel very compelled. I just want to ask you, is there any last words you want the viewers to know, to have? Is there anything on your heart that you feel like people may need to know? I know we talk about a lot, and I’m not trying to put you on the spot. I just feel compelled, because I love the way you think. I love the way you know you talk. So is there any other thing that you feel like our viewers may need to know?

Brian Sutton (25:44)
Yeah.

Yeah, I think that, you know, we’ve talked a lot about it today and I don’t want to re-harp on it, but it’s time to grow, you know? It’s time to take what you’ve been through and grow, you know, in a positive manner. I think God wants us to affect the world by

Continuing to touch other people and touch other people’s lives in a positive manner You know, there’s there’s a point where some of the and you could hear some of this in the podcast obviously we were out of time but our podcast but There’s a point, you know Just recently that I was like wanting to shell up wanting to clam up, right? Wanted to just go back to my shell and be like man. I don’t ever I don’t want to do this, you know anymore But then I started to realize that I came out of that fog. I’m like

No, that’s selfish of me. That’s totally selfish of me. That’s not who I am. That’s not who I’m striving to be. What I think we all are at our best is when we want to, contribute, we connect and we, you know, we touch other people’s lives. I mean, that’s really what the human, I believe is the human condition. And I think that

clamming up and you know it’s I don’t blame people for that it’s a thing of safety right you know sometimes you feel like when you want to be safe you want to clam up and just you know bunker hunker down but I’m just here I hope that I can even inspire one person

to if they’re in that spot to just get out of that spot. Right. And I think you’ve done a great job too. I mean, I think I feel that in your spirit that you, you, like if, if you and I, and just this one podcast could get one person that’s feeling down and hitting the punch to the mouth to be like, you know what, this is my day. This is the, day I take control back and say, look, I’m, I’m not a, a victim of this challenge or this bump in the road.

I’m going to take that, I want to grow from it like we were talking about all this podcast. I’m going to do great with it, do good, get myself back out there and start living.

Quentin (28:10)
Sir, let me say three things to you sincerely. One, definitely thank you for your time, right? I believe time is our most precious commodity. So, I mean, yeah, we know how to podcast things work. You you come home, we spend time with each other, but you didn’t have to do this. So definitely thank you for your time. I want to let you know I value your time. Thank you for being here. Secondly, thank you for your story. Thank you for your narrative. Thank you for your authenticity. Thank you for your honesty. Thank you for the gift of your transparency and vulnerability.

I believe stories have a way of planting seeds in people. We may never see the growth, but that growth can happen tomorrow, two months from now, five years from now. We may never see the growth, but the seeds are there. So man, thank you for coming and planting seeds in people’s heart and people’s souls. Lastly, man, thank you for the way you think. Thank you for your mindset and bringing that mindset to this platform. I greatly appreciate you being here today, sir.

Brian Sutton (29:07)
Hey man, appreciate a cube. Let’s do it again.

Quentin (29:08)
Absolutely.

⁓ man, you ain’t saying nothing but a word. Don’t, don’t talk to me with a good time. ⁓ Absolutely. Well, listen, y’all heard Mr. Brian. His information is in the show notes. He got some things he’s giving away to you. Please get in contact with him, get into the show notes, connect with him. Definitely make sure you are subscribed here because I’m promising you, I’m promising you, we’re going to continue to bring up amazing people just like Mr. Brian. So sir, thank you again for being here and everyone else. Listen.

Brian Sutton (29:13)
Hahaha

Quentin (29:38)
Y’all have a fantastic day.