Multifamily Investing in 2026: Operations Make or Break Deals | Collin Schwartz

Collin Schwartz (00:00)
And really, one of the most simple things to do is develop a system where somebody is on the other end answering the phone call. You don’t know how many times I have heard my property manager didn’t answer. The maintenance order wasn’t fulfilled. Boy, you can.

You can destroy 90 to 95% of your competition by just answering the phone. You don’t even need to have the answer. The answer is something we have to figure out, but just showing that individual that you care.

Dylan Silver (02:00)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today we’re joined by Collin Schwartz, multifamily value add investor, lender, and co founder of the Titan Mastermind. He’s talking to us today from Nebraska. Collin , thanks for taking the time today.

Collin Schwartz (02:14)
Dylan, thanks for having me on. Appreciate you having me.

Dylan Silver (02:16)
Great to have you. You know, we were talking in the green room about ⁓ multifamily as well as some other segments of real estate, and we’ve had a lot of guests recently who are scaling businesses in this value add space, as well as folks who may be transitioning from single family into multifamily value add. What do folks ⁓ absolutely have to get right when they’re scaling or starting a business in this space?

Collin Schwartz (02:41)
Yeah, I I I think you have to start at the fundamentals of any sort of business. And I’m glad that you used the word business. Running a multifamily asset is absolutely a business. It’s based off valuations, which is a cap rate. And you have to determine what your role is going to be in the business. Myself, I chose to be an operator. So I started with small multifamily. I started with a threeplex and a duplex and a sevenplex, twelve, twenty-four units, and continue to scale. But the

The thing that I focused on primarily was operations of it. Operations will make or break you. And I know we were talking before this about you being down in Texas. Texas right now, it is July 27th of 2026, and it is an absolute bloodbath down there. And the reason it is a bloodbath down there is during 2021, when interest rates were at their absolute rock bottom, everybody became a real estate syndicator.

That means they knew a rich uncle, they had some friends, they were ⁓ able to raise capital because real estate was all the hype. It was just soaring in valuation. Cap rates, you know, were going down, down, down. They were going from sevens to fives to threes. And what I have found that has happened for most individuals is that they focus solely on getting the deal done, but not even the operations of it. So real estate is really simple.

Really simple. It’s not easy, but it’s really simple. Your job in real estate, no matter what, is to buy right. You are to rehab the properties, you’re to rent those units, you’re to take care of the tenants, and you’re to repeat that process over and over and over again. Now, in between each of those areas, there’s a lot of details, but you must become either a master at operations or partner with a master of operations. I have seen

So many people. They they even get it right on the buy side. They have beautiful pit they have beautiful pitch decks. They have their LLCs, they have their websites, they have all the glitz and glamour. But you get them on a bad month when you have, you know, say a 50, 60 unit property, 10 vacancies come up, and they have no real plan of getting contractors in there, turning those units quickly, and having retention programs to keep those residents around.

You have to remember that what we do is we provide a service first and foremost to our residents. ⁓ and I know lots of investors and people that are in this space will focus on the investor first. Now, investors are incredibly important, and you know, anytime somebody provides us capital, I still remember as a kid, you know, I grew up with no means, very minimal. And, you know, my mom worked multiple jobs.

And I I think about how long it would take her to save $50,000. And that could take upwards of a decade. And I I I think that has become lost on so many people that when people are giving you capital, you are truly a steward of that capital because that is time. They are in essence replacing the time that they have worked incredibly hard for to provide you that capital. So you need to be the steward of it. And being a good steward of that.

Is investing into both the property and making sure that your residents are taken care of.

personally, for me, I managed property from day one. I scaled that to 1700 units ⁓ of my own property management company. Today, it was Bricktown Management at the time. I ended up merging that company with another operator who was a couple levels ahead of me so that we could continue providing better service and scale. ⁓ but ⁓ operations, if you’re not going to be the operator.

You need to have somebody on your team that is an absolute operator. And yeah, that that that that’s really it. I I think whether it’s partnering with another property management group, because what often happens, and you know, I saw this all the time in Texas and people getting into deals, they would have third party groups such as Asset Living, and they’re bringing on 200, 500 units. Well, asset living, you they may have 60,000, 100,000 units.

You you are no longer that important on their list. And their job as a property manager is top line revenue. So that they’re making money first. Now you’re secondary. Now, if you can find yourself with either a smaller property management group or be the property management company yourself, you will be able to survive way better. And we as I said, we were talking about this before. People are

People are hurting down there. People are buying at three caps and things are trading at eight, nine, ten caps now at massive discounts and not able to move. So having a really good understanding of operations. Also, and this might be controversial, and I and I think you know, Grant Cardone was always said, you know, it’s stupid to buy. Why would you buy a 12 plex? You should buy 120,000 plex. Here is the problem with that statement. If you have a 12 unit and you have

10% vacancy, you basically have one unit vacant. That means you need to find one contracting group, ⁓ one leasing, one lease to fill that. If you get to 200 units, that’s 20 units that are vacant. That’s 20 units worth of capital that either you’re gonna have to draw from your construction loan, you’re gonna have to find to fund those rehabs. And then you’re gonna have to find 20 residents to fill that. All of those are very possible with the proper systems.

And the proper scaling techniques. But for a newer investor, somebody that’s new getting into it, things can go downhill really, really quickly. And it it can be almost inverse the upside ratio to the downside ratio because everybody’s utilizing leverage in this. So if you’re taking a 20%, everybody’s looking at the upside. Wow, if I get it to go up 20% in value, increase rents 20%, 25%, 30%.

You know, I can ⁓ institute the burn methodology and then I own the property for no money out of pocket, recoup all my capital and the investors’ capital. Well, the inverse is true, where if you are not doing your job or the market takes a harsh turn, you lose 20% of that value. That is a hundred percent of your equity wiped out. So I think people need to be really cautious and conservative when looking at those things. They need to get the base fundamentals going. ⁓

w a a good friend of mine, Logan Rankin, which nobody’s really heard of, but probably pound for pound, the best investor in the country, if not one of, owns over a billion dollars of real estate, brought in, he has no investors. ⁓ but he started off incredibly slow and he focused on operations first and systems, taking care of his staff, which takes care of his residents. And we’ve opted ⁓ implemented the same methodologies for us. I mean, obviously there’s hiccups along the way, but yeah, but

That’s a long winded answer of operations. Operations. Operations. Absolutely.

Dylan Silver (10:28)
Now there’s a lot of folks on on I’ve had on this show, but I’ve heard this sentiment generally, just in various different real estate rooms, that, you know, being vertically integrated, having your own property management is not a profitable endeavor. That property management is challenging and you’re gonna lose money in it. What what do you say to that?

Collin Schwartz (11:20)
Yeah, that’s probably correct. So when I was operating a Bricktown, we got 1700 units, we were maybe squeezing out fifty to a hundred K a year on our net, but our assets themselves were benefiting greatly from that. And reminder, real estate is valued on a cap rate. So for every dollar that you increase on your NOI, you’re getting a 10 to 15 X gain on the valuation on the back end. So

Rather than looking at it of man, how can I make as much money for my property management? What you need to be looking at is what is the value that this is going to create into my real estate? And once you can see that correlation, you’re never going to go back. I mean, sure, you could operate your property management company and say, all right, I’m going to treat it as a third party and I’m going to charge X percent and you make a million dollars from your property management company. Sure, that goes to the bottom line.

If that million dollars were to hit NOI on your real estate, that’s over 10 million dollars of equity valuation increased in the real estate. So you know, I’m I’m trying to think of an analogy here, and I’m sure I will. There’s got to be something correlated to, you know, taking care of your body, et cetera. But it it is just the long-term benefit. So here’s another great example. when I first started, I was buying smaller multifamily, and the people I would buy it from.

Or older landlords, and they would tell me how much cash they’re making from it every month. Cash, cash, cash. You know, they’d show 28% expense ratios because they managed it, they mowed their own lawns, they duct taped the piping whenever something broke down. What they weren’t doing was optimizing the actual business, which is the real estate itself. They weren’t providing the service to actually move their rents.

From say a $500 a month rent to $900 a month rent because they didn’t want anybody moving out, or they didn’t want to put the five to $10,000 to fix up the unit. When in actuality, if they would have looked at it as a business owner and they would have put that five to 10 grand in it, they would have seen a 50 to 100 grand jump in valuation on what the actual asset was worth. So they were looking for short-term gains. So understand that if you’re gonna be in real estate, it it’s a it’s a slow burn for long-term wealth.

Creation. if you’re looking at getting in to flip a quick buck, that’s why people wholesale, that’s why people flip. I also think that’s why people ⁓ were syndicating a lot because they would see these big fees. ⁓ and that that’s one of my biggest problems with syndication. I’ve syndicated a bunch of deals. I’ve syndicated maybe 30 is, you know, we get paid healthy fees. We can get paid a six-figure fee. Well, now we have, you know, a million dollars a year in payroll that we’re paying. So most of those fees.

just go to cover our back end systems, our payroll, et cetera. But if you can just focus on the asset itself and taking care of and nurturing that asset, remember that the valuation is is based solely off that NOI. So the more that you optimize that through operations, through systems, through smart thinking, through thinking like a business owner, the better you’re going to be off in the long term. But if you’re just trying to make a quick buck, sure, syndicate, add your fees.

Strip all that equity up front, but you’re likely gonna be paying for it on the back end, especially if you’re in an environment with fluctuating interest rates.

Dylan Silver (14:47)
You know, when you talked about ⁓ the property management being a component of the value add, this gets pretty much overlooked universally. People are looking at ⁓ you know physical characteristics of a property is often the first thing. And there might be sometimes distress from the owner side, and there could be distress from the property management side as well, but then taking that to the next level and in be have having the ability to increase you know tenant satisfaction and and tenant

stay rates year to year and lease to lease. These are some of ⁓ not intangible but but harder to quantify ways where you can do value add, right?

Collin Schwartz (15:26)
Yeah, I agree. I agree.

Dylan Silver (16:09)
When we when we talk about property management, it’s very easy to say, okay, I’m gonna go hire out a third party mi property manager that has worked for me in the past. This property manager isn’t working out here. But I have heard from other investors, you know, that changeover can be challenging because you have an existing set of contacts. These people know how the property works, even if it’s managed inefficiently. You bring someone else over who may not be familiar with, you know, this property or this area, that can be challenging. And so

Being able to vertically integrate and having your own people come in place who understand the things that will increase overall tenant satisfaction, that can be can be huge even if it’s not gonna show up immediately on the bottom line, right?

Collin Schwartz (16:54)
Correct. I mean, it y you really have to take a step back. And I try to bring myself to when I just owned ⁓ up till about a hundred rentals, I was running it solo while working a full time job, while being a father. And, you know, every Christmas I would go around and I’d pass out cookies to all my residents. I would I would hand deliver them. I’d give them a little Christmas card, and I would pick a resident or two and give them a free month of rent. And the impact that that you can have.

with those individuals and the tenure that they will stay at your property far outweighs the the dollars you’re going to be tripping over that you’re trying to save. I’ll give a great example during COVID. ⁓ and this was the year that we exploded as a company. I think I was at about 400 units at the time, end of the year at 1200. And you know, Warren Buffett’s quote, ⁓ be greedy when oth others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy. And

Everybody was worried residents aren’t going to pay. They have all they have to do is fill out this piece of paperwork and they no longer have to pay rent. So instead, I tried to double down on that and I started giving out $50 gift cards for the first couple months for anybody that paid rent on time. and we had one person submit paperwork for the COVID ⁓ to to defer their rent. Just one individual.

We increased our focus on tenant satisfaction. You have to think ⁓ it it’s about a third of an individual’s wages that it’s going to their home, ⁓ to where they live. That means a third of their working lives is to pay you as the landlord for the property. And you and I both know that third ain’t going to my pocket. Right. Very, very tiny portions of it.

But in the eye of the individual, they have a certain expectation, rightfully so. And if you can just do the little things, that’s why when we take over the properties, we’re looking at the common areas, the exterior, what’s the landscaping like? Do they feel safe? Is lighting okay? It doesn’t matter what class of asset, because I mean, I’ve owned ⁓ assets that are arguably D plus all the way to A minus properties.

It doesn’t matter. Everybody still has the same expectation of wanting a clean, safe, respectable home that is taken care of. And if you can prove those things, the value add is shown.

And really, one of the most simple things to do is develop a system where somebody is on the other end answering the phone call. You don’t know how many times I have heard my property manager didn’t answer. The maintenance order wasn’t fulfilled. Boy, you can.

You can destroy 90 to 95% of your competition by just answering the phone. You don’t even need to have the answer. The answer is something we have to figure out, but just showing that individual that you care. and again, we utilize third party on a couple of our assets that are in certain areas where we don’t have ⁓ our management team set up. But it’s with a very clear understanding with that management group of our expectations. We have asset managers that oversee it.

But we’ve also made it a point to be positioned with that property management group that we are important to them as well, just as they are important to us. It is a partnership when you’re working with a property manager. It is not, I see all too often ⁓ people own assets and create and treat the property management group as subservient. ⁓ they think it’s subservient, they think it’s blue-collar, they think that’s a bad thing. ⁓ they are your partner in the success of this.

You need to treat them with respect. And it’s so many base level thinking. It’s, you know, Dale Carnegie’s book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. I mean, people just want to be seen, heard, known, liked, trusted, and honestly felt. And if you can do that at every phase, you will be so much better off. So you don’t necessarily have to manage your own assets, even though I do think that it is a massive advantage, massive advantage.

⁓ especially for individuals that do have certain skill sets. ⁓ but yeah, ver vertical integration, I I I think that it if it’s not done directly, it should be done conceptually with your third party manager, if that’s the route that you’re going.

Dylan Silver (21:18)
No, yeah, and and you mentioned, you know, this being applicable to multiple different grades of asset classes. I was just gonna ask that. You know, does the same ⁓ approach apply to, you know, a C class as a B plus or an A? And you answered that. But you also mentioned, right, this idea that your property manager is somehow subservient to you and that you’re almost gonna throw them out like a human shield to to deflect

you know, the the frustration of tenants so that you have some distance between yourself and your your tenants, you you you just can’t do that, right? People can see right through that. And then the property managers themselves become tired. The property managers do. And then they they stop answering the phones, right? And w why would that happen? Why would someone that you’re paying, right, stop answering the phone when that’s their their job? It’s because they you you inevitably feel that pressure. You’re like, I’m literally out here like a human shield for these tenants.

Collin Schwartz (22:11)
It i exactly. I mean, they are doing one of the hardest jobs. And again, I I did it for five years. I was in the daily grind of the business. ⁓ three years incredibly intensely. I was answering phone calls. I was carrying around a wireless printer with me so I could print off leases as a meeting resonance. I had locks and keys in my car, a snow shovel for when it snowed, any of those things. ⁓

So I’ve I’ve gone through that, you know, I’ve remediated bed bugs from ⁓ new acquisitions, done it all. And at the end of the day, the the the time in which you take to communicate heartfelt and authentic communication with whatever individuals you’re working with, no matter where they sit in the totem pole of what we call, you know, the capitalistic life of whether they’re wealthy, not wealthy, ⁓ whatever it is, ⁓ people just want to be respected at the end of the day.

And it’s our job if we are gonna be leaders to lead by providing respect for every area in this business.

Dylan Silver (23:14)
No question. No question. You know, as a Texas licensed agent

It’s often said that when people get their real estate license, they become secret agents. They stop answering the phone. And then what what use are you at that point? So we have to present prevent ourselves from becoming tired landlords, but we also have to prevent our team from becoming tired property managers and then our tenants end up becoming tired tenants. They want to look elsewhere. We don’t want that, right? ⁓ we we are actually coming up on time here, Collin . Any new projects or activities that you’re working on? And then also anything you’d like to mention directly to our audience.

Collin Schwartz (23:47)
Yeah. so something that I’m incredibly proud of. So I had started Nebraska’s largest real estate meetup. I actually retired it about two years ago. It was great, grew it to about 6,500 members. We had regular attendance of 200 people. And the sole purpose of it was for individuals to come into the group and be able to share their knowledge, but also actually do deals and do it in a space where they felt felt heard and with other people that were just looking to better themselves.

⁓ well, I’ve now taken that to the next level with a partner who is in Texas, Vince Gettings, and created Titan Mastermind. So Titanmastermind.org, we help ⁓ real estate investors, entrepreneurs, business owners. So it’s focused around business. You do not need to necessarily just be in real estate or have any real estate, focusing on eight different pillars, including health, family, business, real estate, mastery, branding, etc. ⁓ scale from seven to eight figures or eight to nine figures.

And you know, I’ve been involved in tons of different masterminds, different groups like Vistage and all the other big masterminds that probably your ⁓ listeners have heard of. And I never found anything that was practical and really action-based. And I’ll give you one example is we require, and you don’t have to do it, but it’s highly suggested and we pay for it as part of the mastermind.

Is that you do blood work because as soon as you get your health right, you have different levels of energy. Well, that affects your work life. Then we start focusing on the business. Okay, what are these small wins? So we bring in an EOS implementer to do a blueprint call to go over your entire business and find quick wins. We had one individual running an eight-figure exterior ⁓ siding and roofing company. They were doing about $15 million a year, top line.

Within 21 days, they reformulated their business. Now they have capacity to do 45 million. They got a contract that they weren’t going to be able to take four million dollars that netted them a million. And just because of that one blueprint call, they were able to accomplish that. That same individual’s also lost 30 pounds, doesn’t need to drink caffeine, and is in the best shape of their life. ⁓ so I I I say that is that that is a huge passion of mine. ⁓

How can I help people with the pitfalls that I have gone through and to to see what is it, see the pores through the trees? To be able to actually we we get to this point when we’ve reached business success and we’re like, man, is this what it was supposed to be like? Like, sure, we’re making, you know, probably 10 times as much, but we’re 10 times more stress. And we all started off, almost everybody synonymously, we wanted freedom and now we have less of it than we ever ever dreamed of.

And we’re stuck in just a higher paying rat race. So Titan Mastermind’s a huge one. Another one which we started because I was a big utilizer of it is hard money. 100% financing. It’s called Liquid Lending Solutions. And we lend to single family home flippers, but we also lend to apartment investors. You find a great deal. We had an individual recently who had a 48-unit great deal, $2.4 million. We lent them all 2.4 million.

We got the deal done in less than seven days. Well, within 90 days of that, they were able to refinance. I think they had an evaluation at 3.8 million. They were able to pay us off, brought no money out of pocket. Now they own the building going forward without having to bring a single dollar of their own. ⁓ so really it’s a it’s a hard money lending option. ⁓ it’s by investors for investors. And we are happy to tell people no because their deal sucks. And we do that often.

We’ll say, hey, our first lens when we’re going through a deal is would we buy it ourselves? we have we also accept investors into that, which we pay up to 10% monthly distributions. ⁓ we’ve never missed an investor payment. The the company’s healthy. I even have all of us that are owners in it. There’s three other owners. All of us have family members that have put money into it because of how much we believe in it. ⁓ but it’s a really, really good option.

For people that are finding too many deals that are running low on liquidity. And you know as well as I do that liquidity, I don’t care how much you have, you run out of it in this business. It is really easy to do. There is never enough money. And so that’s why we started Liquid Lending Solutions. So really, you know, some of my life’s purpose is how can I make these entrepreneurs, these high drive individuals, how can I help them become more focused? And how can I give them their the tools, such as the capital, to be able to

you know, take take advantage and really flourish off of the deals that they’re finding.

Dylan Silver (28:32)
Collin , thank you so much for your time today. Thanks for joining us.

Collin Schwartz (28:35)
Dylan, I appreciate it, man. Thank you.