Why Smart Investors Are Buying Apartments While Everyone Else Waits

Anthony Chara (00:00)
the biggest opportunity right now is there’s a lot of people sitting on the sidelines afraid to get into apartment investing because they’ve seen what’s been happening over the last couple of years. Back in 2022, interest rates doubled from 4 % to 8%. A lot of deals started going in the toilet. There’s been a lot of properties has been foreclosed on over the last couple of years because the people that got into them either didn’t analyze

they didn’t see the warning signs.

Scott Bursey (02:00)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pro’s podcast powered by Investor Fuel. Today Pro’s we’re bringing in a true legend who has been crushing the multifamily game since 1993. That’s decades of wisdom. We’re talking about Anthony Chara from Apartment Mentors. Anthony’s incredible experience in scaling apartments is the fuel we need to supercharge our own portfolios and navigate today’s complex market.

Get ready to take notes because this episode is going to be pure gold. Anthony, welcome to the show.

Anthony Chara (02:34)
Hey, thanks for having me, Scott.

Scott Bursey (02:37)
It is wonderful having you here and for those of our listeners who may not be familiar with your journey, please tell us how did your career begin and what’s your main focus now?

Anthony Chara (02:47)
Well, as you mentioned, I started way back in 1993. My wife and I turned our very first house into a rental house. Unfortunately, for about 10 years, all we knew about real estate investing was to buy a house and turn it into a rental. And we didn’t know you could do wholesaling, fixing and flipping. We didn’t know you could do. Last thing we ever thought of was buying an apartment complex. So for 10 years, we just bought single family homes, turned them into rentals.

And then in the early 2000s met a couple of mentors. One of them was Robert Allen, which a lot of people that have been around for years and years have heard of Robert Allen’s name. My wife and I spent a bunch of money with him to become one of his protegees and learn a ton of stuff. went out, we did a couple of fix and flips. We did a couple of wholesale deals. To me, those were too much like a job and too much work. I then met another partner named George Anton. George and I started buying apartment complexes in about 2005, 2006.

And really fell in love with that because it was was the same work as buying a single family home, but the checks were bigger. And then of course, we held the properties for a long period of time, they had generated a lot bigger cash flow. We then went out and just continued to raise money from other people and buy more apartment deals. So over the last 20 ish years, we’ve

bought over 2100 units, not just apartment buildings, but we also own part of a hotel in Belize called Mahogany Bay Resort. We own agricultural investments in Paraguay, some short term rentals down in Memphis. And the main reason I got into it was because the job I had back then between 93 and about 97, it was the kind of towards the end of my career. And the reason I got out of it is because I was actually doing too much travel.

And the job was literally making me sick and tired. And I didn’t want to do it anymore. So my wife and I had a conversation about how to get around that. And one of the things that we did is we talked about where most people are. Like most people, your job, your life revolves around your job. And the job determines what

how long you work and when you go on vacation and everything else. And we thought, you know, that just, it’s not working for me. So what we did is we flipped the script and figured out what we wanted to do. And then we created business to revolve around our lifestyle. So the funny part is, even though I was doing too much travel and the job was killing me, I was again, literally making me sick and tired. I, we love to travel. We love to travel the world and view other cultures and, and food and destinations and history and that kind of stuff.

So we turned it around to where we’re traveling because we want to travel and not because somebody at a company, you know, our boss is making us travel. And so we fell in love with apartments and real estate because it’s everywhere. And now we travel the world, buying real estate and teaching other people how to buy real estate. so, so sorry. The big thing now of course is we got into apartments. So again, the big thing is I do apartments and I teach other people how to buy apartments all around the country.

Scott Bursey (06:26)
That is awesome.

Yes, that is just a great journey. And I understand you have a newly released book. Can you fill us in on that?

Anthony Chara (06:46)
I do, yeah. It’s a book I co-wrote with about 30 other authors. It’s called Becoming Your Best Self and my story’s in it. And it talks about a lot more detail about what I just shared with you about how I went from hating my job and literally being sick and tired all the time to now traveling actually more than I was then, but I’m enjoying what I’m doing because I enjoy teaching people how to buy apartments and be successful and meeting new people and again.

new food, new culture and that kind of stuff. But there’s a bunch of great authors in here. There’s Brian Tracy, which most people have heard of. There’s Phil Collin, who’s the lead guitarist for Def Leppard is one of my co-authors. Chris Gronkowski, a lot of people of course have heard of Rob Gronkowski, but Chris is his, I think his older brother. And he has a company called Ice Shaker. And again, there’s about 30 other people in here. Some people you’ve heard of, some people you haven’t. And we’re sharing our stories about how we…

literally weren’t happy and we went through this transformation to become our best selves. So ⁓ I’d love to share that with your audience if that’s okay. If they’d like an electronic copy, they can send me an email.

Scott Bursey (07:57)
absolutely.

That will be just perfect, yes, absolutely. And if someone’s listening to this and they’re thinking, hey, this is someone I’d want to partner with and learn from, what do want them to know first about your operation right now, Anthony?

Anthony Chara (08:19)
Well, I think one of things that they should know is I’m very detail oriented person. So I’ve been teaching classes on apartment investing anywhere from one day workshops to four day boot camps for 20 years now. Again, we’ve bought over 2100 units during that time period. We’ve owned over $52 million of property raised over $18 million of dollars from investors. I go

I do a very, very deep dive into all the different steps that you have to go through to buy any property, whether it’s an apartment, mobile home park, single family home, office building, self storage, even a hotel from ⁓ locating the right markets and then within the markets, locating the properties, doing an analysis of the deal to see whether or not you even want to put in an offer, how to put in the offer and negotiate through the offer process, due diligence, financing, all the way through the closing table.

very, very detailed and very, ⁓ it’s actually an outstanding value too for what you get from some other classes.

Scott Bursey (09:21)
That sounds tremendous. And Anthony, what do you feel is your biggest opportunity right now? This could be a market shift, a new offering, or just part of your business that you want to double down on.

Anthony Chara (09:32)
Well, the biggest opportunity right now is there’s a lot of people sitting on the sidelines afraid to get into apartment investing because they’ve seen what’s been happening over the last couple of years. Back in 2022, interest rates doubled from 4 % to 8%. A lot of deals started going in the toilet. There’s been a lot of properties has been foreclosed on over the last couple of years because the people that got into them either didn’t analyze them properly, they didn’t see the warning signs.

that inflation was going to rear its ugly head and interest rates were going to double because all the money that the Fed was printing during COVID and shortly after COVID. And so what they did is when they analyzed their properties, they analyzed if everything was going to be status quo instead of seeing the writing on the wall and knowing that there was going to be some ⁓ tumultuous times as far as what was happening with interest rates. And so a lot of people lost some properties.

And when that happens, and of course, it hits the news, then a lot of people get gun shy, they stop going to real estate group meetings, they want to sit on the sidelines and wait until the mainstream media starts talking about real estate’s going through the roof, real estate’s going through the roof, real estate’s going through the roof. And right now is actually the perfect time to be buying apartments because values have dropped. The values today in 2026 have now dropped back to the 2020 values.

And so what we’re seeing, me and the people that I hang around with, what we’re seeing is that we’re like way back here in 2012, actually 2012, when the market took off for 10 years. We don’t think it’s going to go another 10 years like this, like it did, but it’s still back in 2012. And we think at least the next three to four to five years, you’re going to see the market take off. So the opportunity is for people who get off the sideline and start taking action right now.

are actually going to be in a better position in three to four to five years from now than if they wait another year or two for the mainstream media to catch up and start reporting how values have gone back up again.

Scott Bursey (12:14)
and any challenges you’re watching closely like market risk, competition, access to deals or capital, you know, that sort of thing.

Anthony Chara (12:22)
Yeah, there’s actually several of them. So one of them is when it comes to market risk, you do have to make sure you’re buying in the right market. We are literally as a nation, we’re four million units behind where we need to be to house the people that are supposed to be housed, right? So there’s a lot of people that are doubling up, they’re living with their family, they might have moved home with their parents, and they want to get back out there and live someplace. But there’s some areas that because there’s a lack of supply and too much demand, the rental prices, of course, have gone through the roof.

And then there’s other areas where there’s too much supply. They’ve overbuilt. So you have to make sure you’re looking in the right market. One size doesn’t fit all. even though the apartment market right now is prime because we’re four million units behind, not every city needs more units. Some of them, like Phoenix and ⁓ Austin, they’ve overbuilt so much that there’s a lot of developers that are giving away two to three to four months of free rent.

to try to fill up their units. So I wouldn’t necessarily investing in those markets, but there’s other markets that are rebounding that need more stuff. So that’s one of the challenges is the market. The second part of it, as I mentioned earlier, there’s a lot of people, a lot of investors sitting on the sidelines because they’re waiting for the good news from the media instead of looking at the actual numbers in the economy to see what’s going on in a particular market.

They’re waiting to get their news from the media instead of the experts that do this on a regular basis. And so they’re just sitting there. And the challenges for me is not having enough money from the investors potentially to go out and start buying some of the opportunities that we’re seeing in some of the markets that have some very good opportunities.

Scott Bursey (14:08)
Excellent breakdown on that and building on that. Anthony, what’s one soft skill that is hidden strength that allows apartment operators to win more deals?

Anthony Chara (14:20)
Well, there’s two things really. think one of it is this is a people business. So if you have really, really good people skills and you get along well with people and you’re one of these people that you just, somebody just met you and five minutes later you think you’re like best friends because they have that type of personality, that is an ideal person to get into real estate investing because of that charisma that they carry. So that’s one of them. The other skill that they need to have

is you need to be good with numbers and be able to understand spreadsheets and be able to look at what’s happening in the market as far as occupancy levels and interest rates and what loan terms are going to be for your particular deal and be able to analyze all those numbers to make sure that the deal is going to work not just this year, but you’re also making some conservative projections out for the next three to five to 10 years depending on how long you’re going to hold the property.

to make sure it’s going to be profitable for you and or your investors.

Scott Bursey (16:01)
And what is some golden nugget perhaps or any sort of advice you would like to our listeners to know?

Anthony Chara (16:11)
⁓ I think the big thing, the golden nugget is probably something they’ve heard before. They need to take action. There’s a lot of people out there that go get educated or they sit on the sidelines and they talk a good game about, yeah, someday I’m going to invest, someday I’m going to do this, someday I’m going to do that. Anybody that’s successful will tell you the difference between us and you is that we took action while you just sat there. So you need to take action. Thinking about it or wanting to do it is one thing.

But start putting the steps in motion so that you actually go forward. Go get the education first. Then start putting in offers. And then start analyzing deals. And actually do whatever it is you want to do, whether it’s apartments or single family homes or fix and flips. It doesn’t matter. You have to take action.

Scott Bursey (17:01)
Absolutely, you have to put your boots on and apply yourself. What long-term strategy are you employing? If you could elaborate on that.

Anthony Chara (17:13)
Well, the long-term strategy for us is the fact that to us, good real estate investing is all a long-term strategy. True wealth is built over the long term. I know there’s a lot of people that want those quick hits, right? I tell people we live in a fast food society. Everybody wants to pull through, drive through, grab it and go, and just be done. Good wealth building, when you look at all of the benefits that you get from real estate investing, the appreciation, the depreciation, the equity buildup.

the cash flow, right? The cash flow is immediate, but all the other ones, they do develop over time and it’s exponential, right? So if you look at the value of a property, it starts a little bit slowly going up in value, but then all of a sudden, right, it hits, almost looks like a hockey stick and the value just starts trending upward. But a lot of people don’t want to wait that three or four or five year period or six year period. It’s like, no, no, I want it now, I want it now, I want it now.

This is about building generational wealth, not just for you, but for your kids and your grandkids.

Scott Bursey (18:17)
great advice and if you could take us back to your first deal what are some of the things that were highlights and maybe some things that were not so much of a highlight.

Anthony Chara (18:30)
Well, do you want my first single-family home deal or do want my first apartment deal?

Scott Bursey (18:36)
one would be fine.

Anthony Chara (18:39)
Okay, well since I mostly do apartments now, I guess I’ll start with apartments. So the big thing with our very first deal is we, my partner and I, George Anton, we started with having limited experience. We had some money and limited experience. So one of the things that we decided to do is in order to both gain experience and knowledge for doing all this stuff, well I guess.

technically knowledge and experience are the same thing, but to also, of course, grow more money and grow our rapport with other people as far as students and stuff like that is we wanted to join other people’s deals who already had deals in the pipeline. So we met a developer who had gone to Tucson, Arizona. He had bought three large apartment complexes totaling a little over a thousand units. Well, we basically rode his coattails.

We actually did this for probably the first three or four deals that we did with two different operators. So this was one operator and the first deal was 344 unit apartment building that he was converting to condominiums. So we helped raise $1.35 million from our friends and family and investors, the people that we knew, to join in this $5 million raise.

He had already bought the property. He had already done the legal paperwork to convert it from apartments to condominiums. We had all the condo dock association or condo association documents. And he wanted the extra 5 million to go in and do the some upgrades, put in stainless steel appliances, granite or Formica, not Formica, granite or quartz countertops, upgrade the flooring and that kind of stuff. So we partnered with him on that. Well, everything went great to start with.

It was going fantastic, so we were really excited about it. And then of course that happened when he finally started this process. It was early 2005. Well, a lot of people don’t realize this, but most people will tell you the great financial crisis, the GFC, great financial crisis started in 2007, 2008. Well, it started in 2005. Because again, if you look at the numbers, that’s when it started.

I talked earlier about the media. Well, when did the media catch up? The media didn’t catch up until 2007, 2008. But I actually saw it in late 2005 because I could see the market and everything started to do this. Well, we got in right as the market was doing this and ended up out of the 344 units, they sold 50 of them to existing residents that lived there. That was the first thing they had to do in Arizona was they had to offer the units to the people that already lived there as renters.

So 50 of the people bought and then they sold another 50 to investors or other people that came in once that time period was up for the renters. And then that was pretty much it. So they sold 100 out of 344 units. And so things pretty much stalled out and then the GFC really hit. So unfortunately about 2027, 2028, the developer who was holding on by his fingernails trying to get this stuff done,

He had gotten into a bad loan, which we’ve heard about that just a couple of years ago. now we’re seeing history repeat itself with some people. So I learned from that time when the condo conversion failed, because literally, because of the bad loan he got into, the lender foreclosed on him because they had some huge balloons that he had to overcome in order to keep the loan current, and he wasn’t able to overcome those large balloon payments. So the whole project ended up getting foreclosed upon.

So I learned from that and that’s one of the reasons I did not invest from about 2019-ish to, well, right now really. So we’ve kind of taken off, as far as apartments are concerned, we’ve kind of taken off about five or six years and now getting back into it and really looking at a lot of great stuff around the country.

Scott Bursey (22:48)
That was a great detailed explanation. Thank you for that. And it kind of shows that sometimes negatives can definitely turn into positives.

Anthony Chara (23:01)
Yes, they can. And a lot of times, your best lessons come from the deals that go poorly, not the deals that go well. Because sometimes if you have too many deals that go well, you get cocky, and then you start making mistakes because you think you’re made out of Teflon and nothing’s going to stick to you. And then the next thing you know, boom, reality smacks you upside the head. And that’s the biggest lesson that you get.

Scott Bursey (23:24)
Great breakdown. And before we sign off, for those of our listeners who want to follow your journey or collaborate with you, what’s the best way for them to reach you, Anthony?

Anthony Chara (23:34)
Yeah, great question. So there’s a couple different ways. Of course, they can go to our website is successclasses.com. And there we’ve got a bunch of information. There’s some free audio stuff. And one of the things I mentioned earlier about the book, if they send an email to [email protected], [email protected], I’ll be more than happy to send them a free electronic version that they can read up on. And again, there’s a lot of great stories in here, a lot of great motivation.

So if you’re looking for a book for yourself or one that you can share with somebody else that will really get them pumped up and show them that there is light at the end of the tunnel and you can change your life and become your best self, I’ll be more than happy to share it with anybody that wants it.

Scott Bursey (24:19)
Anthony, thank you for joining us today. This has been an absolute masterclass.

Anthony Chara (24:25)
Well, thanks for having me, Scott. I appreciate it. And go investor fuel.

Scott Bursey (24:31)
And to our listeners, we appreciate each and every one of you. If you got value from today’s episode, please subscribe. We’ve got a lineup of exceptional guests, just like Anthony, who are making huge moves in the market. Until next time, keep your standards high and your vision clear. We’ll see you on the next episode, everyone.