Real Estate Success: Charisse Walker’s Investor Journey

Dylan Silver (01:31)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest is a Utah based realtor, lender and investor who went from being in a tough spot to creating passive income real estate business and now covers mortgage and more. Please welcome Charisse Walker. Charisse, welcome to the show.

Charisse Walker (01:51)
Hello, thanks for having me.

Dylan Silver (01:54)
I always like to start off at the top by asking folks how they got into the real estate space and your journey and your story is particularly interesting because you’ve seen all sides, the good and the bad and the ugly and then the upside, right? But how did you get into the real estate space?

Charisse Walker (02:09)
So I…

My grandma was a realtor and my mom was the youngest in California to get licensed, but she never did anything with it. so after I was the college director, I had opened up a college, I taught college for a while. I had gotten to be a stay home mom for the first time. I’d always wanted to be. And we were in a very, very tough spot. I’m not one to just sit home and be the stay home mom. So I wanted to get sidekicks. I learned real estate investing for about a year and a half, just lots of YouTube videos, lots of other things.

And finally, ⁓ I went and signed up and got my license. then I remember one day I went to a local REIA meeting, Real Estate Investor Association Group, and they said, just stop learning, just go out and do it. So I did. I left that meeting. I looked up all these homes at the time, tons of, there’s a lot of competition right now, but there wasn’t back then. And so I drove up to this house. I looked at it, made an offer, and that was my first opportunity to have a flip.

That was like the first time and then I started getting more clients with real estate and thought I could make a lot more Just being their agent versus doing all the flips and doing like tons of stuff and time So started to pursue that while still doing the investment side So I actually seven different ways to invest in real estate actually there’s eight and I’ve done all ⁓ of them and so it’s fun. I love it. Can’t get enough of it

Dylan Silver (03:40)
Me too, I’m in the same spot and particularly since you’ve had some tough losses and you’ve emerged from them, can say someone who’s done that has to really have a love for the game to not just say I’m done with this, right?

Charisse Walker (03:54)
I will tell you right now if you ask me, I’m done with being a landlord. It’s been a tough road the last couple months.

Dylan Silver (03:59)
Maybe no

landlord. you ever though do ⁓ passive investing and do property managers, like outsource it to property managers, that type of thing? Are you just done with it entirely?

Charisse Walker (04:11)
No,

I’m done. And the reason why like all the homes and you know, I could do a better job managing and every six months going in and just charge them like I told them I just have this bleeding heart, right? And so I like, hey, you need to fix this. You need to fix this. But I should have just fixed it and then charged them for it because they’re still in the house and either they move out to stop destroying it or they pay for the repair. So it doesn’t leave us high and dry.

Dylan Silver (04:18)
Sure.

Charisse Walker (05:24)
But really, the focus I’m going to more now would be property management, not property management.

⁓ multi-family so you have your property manager they take care of it and I don’t have to worry about it anymore.

Dylan Silver (05:31)
Yeah.

multifamily. That’s the way to go.

mean, I know so many people who’ve made that ⁓ transition and ⁓ actually newer investors too, because I was shocked to hear this and you’re involved in the lending space. So you may know a little bit more about this than me. But for younger specifically, like college graduates who may not have really established credit, but they might have good credit, right? They paid all their small credit cards, they might not have a car loan, but they have good credit.

I’ve spoken with a couple lenders who said that there’s a way for them to get like duplexes and basically house hack. Specifically if they have someone else who may be in on it with them and they could both be on the note. And so I was like, really? Because to me, I’m thinking, well, duplex, that’s got to be in a different price point, right? It’s more expensive. But actually, there’s ways to go there. So I think it may actually not just be a way for folks to transition from, you know, single family to multi, but also

Charisse Walker (06:17)
you

Dylan Silver (06:32)
to even get in, specifically younger people.

Charisse Walker (06:35)
Yeah, one to four units when Biden was still in play, he created this law, but it existed before that too, where you could, yes, you can move in. And the thing is with duplexes or triplex or fourplex is you actually can qualify for more if there’s an actual functioning kitchen and laundry room and stuff. And so if you were to have,

like they can take 75 % of the potential rental income and that actually helps you qualify for more money. So if you imagine if you have four, that’s through more rental income properties. So you can qualify for a little more. And it’s nice if you do multifamily, it’s more of an LLC. So you’re not even qualifying based upon yourself, you’re qualifying based upon the company.

In the words of Grant Cardone, he used to say you can start with a 16, but now he’s like 32 is the minimum now. And just because of your economies of scale. So there’s so many different ways. There’s a lot there that you can unpack.

Dylan Silver (07:42)
really passionate about affordable housing and ⁓ modular homes offsite stick built modular homes is something that I’m looking into any type of land play ⁓ RV parks. I’m in Texas, you know, so we’ve got a lot of land. think Utah may be similar. I haven’t really been out there very much at all. I’ve been there once in my life to Salt Lake for vacation. But a lot of land out there in Utah too. So some of these plays have to be pretty common out there too.

Charisse Walker (08:10)
Not as much in Utah, southern Utah next to Moab, you’re starting to see a little more in St. George. There’s a few more RV parks popping up, the cities, ⁓ it’s a little more difficult. I know in Texas, I have a lot of real estate investor friends because again, every Wednesday I’m on this podcast or on a meeting with them, but there is a ton of RV parks in Texas and very lucrative.

Dylan Silver (08:34)
a lot.

It’s like

the red car theory. Like you see one red car, then you see a bunch of red cars. So I had a guest tell me, you know, there’s a bunch of RV parks in Texas. Like if you’re not in, and I, I’m a, before I got my real estate license, I was a distressed property guy. So wholesaling, working with people that were, you know, potentially in difficult financial or maybe an airship or a probate, right? And I always was in that space. never.

put one second of thought to RV parks and I never really saw them, especially in the city that I was living in. I’m in Dallas now, but I was in San Antonio. I was like, I’ve never really come across that. Sure enough, I leave the ranch that I’m renting, go halfway down the street and I look like half a mile on the left and there’s an RV park that I’ve never seen before. I’m like, what in the world? That’s been there this whole time? So then I’m driving a little bit further, not even that much further, maybe like 20 minutes, second RV park.

Charisse Walker (09:25)
Thank

Mm-hmm.

Dylan Silver (10:06)
So I’m like, okay, there’s RV parks all around me in these, I guess you would call them buffer zones, or like transition zones from the city to the country. And it’s really interesting. So I’ve had guests tell me, apparently, and I haven’t seen it, there’s even like luxury RV parks where ones are, you can go and live there, right, and maybe do a long-term stay, but there’s other ones where it’s just a getaway and they might even have attractions there or restaurants or, know.

Charisse Walker (10:10)
you

Dylan Silver (10:34)
water and I said what an interesting concept. So all these land plays that storage facilities are things that interest me and I think a lot of other investors.

Charisse Walker (10:40)
Yes.

Yeah, I have two really close friends that they are storage. They swear by storage. She actually owns two. She’s going on to her third and it’s a syndication and she works like that’s her full time job. And she’s making enough from those two that she replaced her C-suite job and storage. I know another girl was on my podcast. I’m actually both of have been, and she talks about RV. She only has two as well. And she even on that podcast walks you through how to do it. It was pretty cool.

Dylan Silver (11:02)
No kidding.

Charisse Walker (11:15)
She shared her screen and we did it.

Dylan Silver (11:17)
One

of the interesting things about ⁓ storage facilities is it’s considered an active business. So it qualifies for even like SBA loans. And ⁓ not, I would say a lot of real estate does not qualify for that. And so because it’s active, there’s more that I would say you can do, but also people don’t have the same kind of… ⁓

Charisse Walker (11:27)
Yeah, yeah, it does.

Dylan Silver (11:43)
issues that I would and maybe they do I could be a little bit out of touch with this but it’s not like People’s storage facility is their primary residence So they’re not exactly putting up the same kind of like fight when they’re getting behind like what is it to show like storage wars? There’s people who just like abandon their storage unit and then just like leave a bunch of stuff in there Even if they were paying on a previously and then they just never get it So after a certain point in time it like it’s auctioned off

Charisse Walker (11:52)
I’m

Dylan Silver (12:08)
That’s apparently common enough where I’ve had multiple people tell me like, yeah, that happens from time to time.

Charisse Walker (12:11)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it’s actually There’s no toilets, you know, and like I said for me staying up till super late this morning actually working on a house trying to get it ready and Yeah, there’s no toilets to fix. There’s no carpet to get the urine off of like the pet urine that they have ⁓ it’s just It’s very simple to get out and anything that’s in there if you end up you get to keep and sell it yourself So, I mean there’s so much bonus and great things with the storage

Dylan Silver (12:29)
Yeah.

Charisse Walker (12:43)
versus a buy and hold house.

Dylan Silver (12:46)
Are there any other ⁓ real estate plays that you find interesting or that you’ve had ⁓ people talk to you about?

Charisse Walker (12:53)
Yeah, so this was during the big boom of 2020 to 2022. But I had a client that she does land flipping. so she bought a plot of land and a month later, she bought it for like 280,000, a month later, multiple cash offers at 400,000 or higher and a month. She didn’t do anything.

Dylan Silver (13:13)
What did she do? Did

she do anything?

Charisse Walker (13:15)
She did nothing to it. And the crazy thing was they didn’t even have their loans set up with the company to be able to pay off and get a payoff amount. Like they had it. took an extra week, I think. So, yeah, so it was crazy. They did very, very well. And they’ve done that twice.

Dylan Silver (13:25)
I didn’t even start it, yeah.

That in the world?

good for her, i was gonna say that she improved it or rezoned or added utility or something, connection, turned it on that’s incredible, that is incredible well, good for her, i gotta look into how she’s doing that was that in utah?

Charisse Walker (13:50)
Yeah, it was.

Dylan Silver (13:51)
Wow, that’s impressive. That’s impressive. I got to look into that. But the land plays are interesting to me. mean, I’m a ⁓ runner as well, and I like to do basically any like cardio exercise. So I’ve seen this is funny. I’ve seen pickleball courts pop up as if it’s like a harbinger for a commercial residential property. Like if I see pickleball courts, I’m thinking there’s going to be a apartment complex sprouting up or maybe like multiple of them right around there.

Charisse Walker (14:08)
Yes.

Yeah.

Dylan Silver (14:20)
And so I’ve seen this particularly in areas that I’ve lived in Texas enough times where I’m like the pickleball facilities are in cahoots with the real estate developers. Like somehow they know or they’ve had it’s been approved or something. So I think like if you could put in like a pickleball court or you know storage facility ⁓ RV park, I’m new to this land flipping concept. That sounds incredible. These are kind of some alternative investment ways where

Charisse Walker (14:30)
Mm-hmm.

Dylan Silver (14:50)
people can get involved and ⁓ you don’t have to do the plumbing issues and deep cleaning issues and ⁓ issues with tenants and so on and so forth. I think it’s interesting because most people don’t even consider that to be real estate plays for the average person. They’re not thinking about storage facilities or land when they’re thinking about.

Charisse Walker (15:03)
Thank

Thank you.

Dylan Silver (15:14)
⁓ real estate investors but it is very common. I want to pivot a bit here, Charisse, and ask you about ⁓ the lending space. So I know you’ve been involved in the lending space and probably seen some ⁓ trends over time. And I think ⁓ specifically being a guy who’s involved in distressed property myself, there’s a lot of people who will get construction loans and hard money loans, but also being a residential realtor.

Charisse Walker (15:19)
you

Thank

Dylan Silver (15:41)
everyone pretty much in that space is going conventional mortgages and then in the multifamily space you’ve got like DSCR loans and so on and so forth. I’m curious, do you have any kind of affinity towards or maybe being a flipper yourself, hard money, towards a specific type of loan or something that you’ve used a lot of or you’ve had clients use quite a bit of?

Charisse Walker (15:49)
Yeah.

So a little asterisk, I’ve been new to the event, like the lending, so I’ve had my license, but I didn’t do a lot with it until this year, actually. ⁓ And so I got it to actually do more refinances for my clients, but those interest rates just are not going down.

So we’re going to put a pause on that. But yeah, I was with a company that we could have done all of those things, but it’s just a tough market right now. The interest rates are super high. So ⁓ mine would be more for just first time buyer. I mean, they’re purchasing a property. And so that’s what I focus on because the brokerage I’m at. But yes, the DSCR, the hard money lending, the flipping lending. ⁓

I was able to do that the last company that I left.

Dylan Silver (16:53)
What’s your perspective on people who are realtors that may also want to be lenders or maybe both? I don’t know how it is in Texas, which is where I’m at. And I certainly don’t know what it’s like in Utah. But is it common for realtors to also be lenders? And if you are a realtor, can you do the the lending side of the deal?

Charisse Walker (17:13)
No, so depends on who you’re with, like my broker now. ⁓ He, the guy, for whatever reason, his legal advisor said I cannot. So I was my last company as well. ⁓ They were not, they were gonna represent themselves as the buyer, so I wasn’t, and I was the listing agent. So I was able to do his loan as the buyer, but not that. ⁓ I could not.

sell him the like help him buy the home and be his other conflict of interest. And so right now I can’t do anything on the transaction which I’m not happy about but ⁓ with yeah it’s not common and I honestly think every single agent should go through it’s a 20-hour course to become a lender you just have to pass the test. ⁓ Did it my first time not very many people do it and with test anxiety I was really proud of myself but I learned so much

Dylan Silver (17:40)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Charisse Walker (18:08)
Because you know as an agent all clients want you to discount their commission right? So and I always say no but they want you to do that. As a lender no that you have to treat everybody equally and so I learned a lot because I had this niece and I’m like well why she wants me to discount my commission but why isn’t she discounting when I buy a property with her as the lender and so then I learned oh okay now I understand why she can’t do that and as a realtor I can give gifts as

Dylan Silver (18:13)
Yeah.

Charisse Walker (18:38)
a lender you can’t. There’s a lot of it’s called enticement and so there’s just so many things that I’ve learned that I never would have known and let’s be honest there’s so much red tape and legal mumbo jumbo and laws like I could serve a year in jail and a million dollar fine if I do something wrong ⁓ like specifically depending what it’s like as a realtor you don’t have that. So a lot of laws a lot of things that I

Dylan Silver (18:42)
Thanks.

There’s a lot of red tape.

Yeah.

Charisse Walker (19:08)
would never have known had I not done that. So highly recommend.

Dylan Silver (19:10)
Anytime anytime

I feel like that other people’s money gets involved in kind of the management or or Maybe that’s the wrong word, but the overseeing of it. It becomes tricky. I was speaking with a syndication attorney And I told them I’m looking at you know raising capital outside of here for you know maybe some land plays that I’m looking at and I said I might syndicate and he said well He said are you sure he said maybe you should just make an LLC and then have it up

partners in the LLC and divvied up that way. And I said, well, yeah, but the syndication, he’s like, well, what happens if you screw it up, you know, then it’s securities fraud. And I said, securities fraud. And he goes, yeah, like, have you heard of like, you know, the Wolf of Wall Street or like Bernie Madoff? I was like, yeah, what does that have to do with this? He’s like, well, syndications are securities, even if it’s informal. I was like, really? So he’s like, yeah, I’m a syndication attorney. So if it goes sideways, you know, how’s jail? And I was like, what?

Charisse Walker (20:01)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Dylan Silver (20:10)
And so I said, I

don’t know if I’m cut out for this indications world just yet. I got to do my homework. ⁓ I mean, it doesn’t shock me that there’s a lot more ⁓ safeguards in place in that space. I think a lot of people are probably surprised to hear that because there’s so many people who are involved in that space. Why would they accept that kind of liability? But they do and they have to pass the test, right?

Charisse Walker (20:24)
you

Yeah, and speaking ⁓ of land, do you have a lot of data or data centers in your area? Because that’s another thing I’ve heard is people are purchasing land and then they’re building these data centers because there’s so much information that needs to be stored everywhere and they don’t have enough space.

Dylan Silver (20:55)
Yeah, so that’s an interesting

play, right? Like, that’s another thing. I’m like, the people are in cahoots with the investors. How do they know? Right? Like, how does this, how do they know? Because where I’m at, funny story, so I’m in a town called Denton, which is DFW Metroplex, Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. But it’s really like on any given day, depending on traffic, like 40 minutes to an hour or more from Dallas. And we’re like probably 40 miles northwest.

And I’m originally from New Jersey, so that would not be considered like a metro. Like if you’re 40 minute to 60 minute drive outside, that’s not the metro. We still consider ourselves the metro. And in fact, we’re closer to Oklahoma than we are to Dallas, but we still consider it. So there’s all these, and I don’t know how true it is, but there’s all these rumors about data centers and…

the like that type of thing moving to the, we call it the 35 corridor between Dallas and Oklahoma to where eventually it’s just gonna be one big stretch, you know? And so when I hear about, you know, this idea of like buying up the land, I used to think, well, the only reason why you would do that is like land banking or mineral rights. But now it’s like, well, this could potentially become something. So I’m gonna gamble on this and say that in the next five years, they’re gonna say,

Charisse Walker (21:52)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

you

Dylan Silver (22:16)
Hey, we want to build a data center on your land. How much will you sell it for, right?

Charisse Walker (22:21)
Yeah, that’s actually your cuz I have two siblings to live right in your area and it is that whole stretch right there Even three years ago. I remembered I had gone out to Oklahoma because that’s where I was gonna start focusing on investing and flipping homes and things and I remember talking to a guy and he’s like he runs a flipping business now and in making millions of dollars and I remember having a conversation with him. He’s like, are you even looking at Oklahoma? That’s a weird one. And now it’s

It’s been discovered. crazy. Yep. Yeah, Oklahoma and Tulsa. Yep.

Dylan Silver (22:53)
It’s amazing, Which, what you looking at to Oklahoma City? What are we looking at? Yeah,

it’s incredible. And I think what’s interesting about it, there’s two things. First, the tornadoes are interesting. I’ve been through now, tornadoes in Denton. Terrifying. I said, this is crazy. Do you guys just live through this? This is just a normal occurrence. Like this happens annually and this is acceptable to you. This is insanity. This is craziness. Like,

Charisse Walker (23:18)
you

Dylan Silver (23:22)
This thing touches the ground, you can’t see anything, you’re thinking, well this is it, this is how I die. And then you wake up and there’s like an extra cow on your land and a shed missing and damage to your car. And you’re just like, we’ll file an insurance claim. And then you go to work, like that’s insanity, that’s just crazy. But that’s interesting. But then you also have what I would say is by greater standards, very much cost effective housing.

Charisse Walker (23:43)
you

Dylan Silver (23:52)
Right? Like, you could probably find, and I don’t know exactly where it is now, but you could probably find, you know, flipped homes for the mid hundred thousands, right? Versus in DFW, you’re looking at like 350 to $400,000. And I’m not sure what it is out there in Utah, but it’s probably higher than that. Yeah. And so you could go buy like two or three single family homes in some of these areas in Oklahoma.

Charisse Walker (23:53)
It is.

Like, oh yeah, way higher. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dylan Silver (24:18)
for the same thing. And because of that kind of extension of DFW and then Oklahoma just expanding on its own, it’s a great investing opportunity. ⁓ Charisse, are coming up on time here though. Where can folks go if they’d maybe like to learn more about your businesses or reach out to you, or if maybe they’re looking at homes or relocating out there to Utah?

Charisse Walker (24:41)
Thank

Yeah, so shockerhomes.com you can go to or if I teach about real estate investing so flyfreeretiree.com are the two places you can go.

Dylan Silver (24:59)
Charisse, thank you so much for coming on the show here today.

Charisse Walker (25:02)
Yeah, thanks for having me.