Aileen: [00:00:00]

Thank you, everyone for joining another episode of the, How Did They Do It? Real Estate podcast. We are your hosts, Seyla and Aileen and today’s guests. We have Zach Haptonstall. He is a founder and president of ZH multifamily and co founder of Rise48 equity. He is also an experienced multifamily apartment investor currently residing in Scottsdale Arizona, and is also a lead sponsor and equity owner of 420 units across five properties in Phoenix and Scottsdale worth over $48 million. Zach is also the founder and president of the Phoenix multifamily association, a Phoenix based organization that holds monthly speaking and networking events focusing on apartment investing. He is a former live television news anchor and sports reporter for Arizona PBS and co-hosted a show on Fox sports network, Arizona.  He is also the former Co-Owner and Director of Business Development for Sage Hospice and Palliative Care in Scottsdale, Arizona.  Please welcome Zach Haptonstall.

How are you doing Zach?

Zach: [00:01:29] Hey, thanks so much, Aileen. Thanks, Seyla. I’m doing great. Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it. It’s an honor, and I’m sure we can provide some value for your listeners today. So thank you so much.

Aileen: [00:01:39] Yeah, definitely. If you can take a few minutes, can you please tell our listeners just a little bit more about your background and how you got started with real estate?

Zach: [00:01:46]

Yeah, so I was born and raised here in Phoenix on I pretty much lived here my entire life. I like to play sports growing up. I don’t really have a real estate background. I didn’t have any family in real estate. I was completely new to it just a couple of years ago. I wanted to be a professional football player initially.

And so I had a football scholarship out of high school to a small division, two school in Colorado. And I realized that for a couple of years, I wasn’t going to make it to the NFL. So I was like, you know what? I’m passionate about sports. I want to be a sports reporter and a journalist. So I went and got a journalism degree.

And I was alive news anchor for a short time on Arizona PBS and doing sports packages and things like that. So that was really cool at first, you know, being on live television and the adrenaline and the excitement, all that, but I just quickly realized it’s not what I wanted to do. You know, just all the hours that you work and the politics, and you really don’t make that much money.

People would be surprised. And so I was like, man, here I am. I just graduated college. I have all this school debt. I don’t want to pursue the industry that I just got the degree in. And I, I need to make money, you know, to pay off this debt and Joe at least established some type of financial base. And so I had gotten school loans for the last couple of years.

I had a bunch of student debt. I was working nights and weekends while I was going to school to pay for and like medical delivery. Like I was delivering medical equipment. And so through that job, after I graduated and after I realized I didn’t want to do journalism, I had an entry point into healthcare marketing through hospice care. So for those of those listeners who don’t understand what hospice is, it’s, it’s essentially like mobile nursing and caregiving for people who have like end of life illnesses, they’re living at their homes, assisted living, et cetera. And this is all free for them through their Medicare insurance.

So my job was just wake up in the morning, drive all around the Phoenix. And build relationships with physicians and assisted livings hospitals, walk in cold and build these relationships and educate people and get them signed up on hospice when they needed that. So it sounds really strange and completely different than real estate and completely different than journalism. I liked doing it at first and I was very blessed and fortunate to do well at it. And it’s actually a very lucrative and competitive private business industry. Okay. Hospice care. And Phoenix is the number one market in the country, as far as the demand, because there’s so many seniors here.

It’s sunny, the weather, things like that. So long story short, I had come up from lower middle class income family, and all of a sudden I’m 22, 23. He making 150 K a year. You know, I’m making more money than both my parents combined. So by the time I’m 24, I had paid off all my school that I got my MBA. I went to night school, got my MBA, paid all that cash, bought a house and now.

Fast forward. I did that for four years. Okay. So I did the healthcare sales for four years. So by the end of that, I was making over 200 K I had become a director of marketing and then I, and then I call owner in this hospice company. So I was very blessed and I had a good financial base. But I just got to the point where I was burnt out, you know, and I didn’t feel challenged.

And that’s why I had initially liked doing like sales because there’s really no ceiling. You can continue to escalate and escalate, but I just got burnt down. I wasn’t passionate about, I’m passionate about it and being on call. So I was like, I don’t want to do this. I want to create financial freedom somehow.

And I didn’t know much about real estate. I had gotten my real estate license. Two years prior to leaving my job, which I’ll get into here shortly, but I never used, it was just a backup plan. So long story short, I just finally got sick of it. And in January of 2018, I resigned and I sold on the equity that I had in the company.

And I said, screw it. I’m done. I’m going to figure out how to create passive income or financial freedom. Somehow through real estate. And I had no plan. I don’t know. I wasn’t even focused on apartments or multifamily. I didn’t even know what the word syndication meant. Never heard of it before. I was just like, I want to use real estate somehow.

I had enough savings to last me a little over a year, and I decided that I’ll live off savings this year and just figure it out. Okay. So I initially was looking at. I’m like flipping houses. And then I realized that that’s not going to be my goal. That’s transactional mindset, kind of like what I was doing anyway, before chasing commissions, you know, and having a salary.

And then I learned about mobile home parks and I really liked mobile home parks, but I realized if I wanted to buy or sell or carry, I would have put all my money into that. And I can’t scale. I’m done then. That’s it. And then I learned about syndication, you know, and leveraging other investor’s money and being a good steward of that money to invest in larger properties.

I learned about multi-families so long story short, I settled on multifamily and I decided I needed to do that. And I lived off savings for really a little over 14 months. And after 14 months finally closed the first apartment deal.

Aileen: [00:06:23] Wow, you really took a leap of faith.

Zach: [00:06:26] I know what a crazy guy, right?

Aileen: [00:06:28] No, but it seems like it all worked out for you in the end.

So congratulations.

Zach: [00:06:33] Yeah. No, thank you. Yeah. I was blessed in it and it’s tough. There’s a lot of adversity and you don’t have to do that to get into multifamily. It’s a radical example and it’s not absolutely necessary. But for me, I felt like I was able to collapse a timeframe and, and accelerate the path because I was all in and solely focused on that.

Seyla: [00:06:52] That was a really impressive background. Could you please let us know, how did you get the brokers and the property managers to take you seriously, especially on your very first deal?

Zach: [00:07:03] Yeah, that’s one of the things, so here I am like, and just in just to listeners know, cause I know a lot of listeners, they listen to these podcasts and they hear somebody who they think is an expert.

I’m not an expert, I’m a regular guy, like any of you. And they think I’m nervous. I’m not going to reach out to brokers or this or that. And they feel intimidated. I don’t want to read. No, I was extremely intimidated and it had a lot of anxiety and I, by nature, growing up, even through high school and in college was more of an introverted person.

And so doing the journalism thing really was extremely scary for me being on TV. And I pushed my comfort zone and then going into marketing, I was pushing my comfort zone. So if you feel like you’re not an outgoing person or you’re not good at building relationships, That’s all in your mind. Okay. And that’s your identity that you’ve created for yourself because you haven’t pushed your comfort zone to expand and take those actions.

And so to answer your question more directly Seyla I was terrified because I was like, I was the man, so to speak, I thought, I thought I was really prolific in healthcare, but now in a complete different industry with large buildings, large numbers, I don’t have any rich family. I don’t have any rich network really.

And I felt like I didn’t belong, you know? And I didn’t know any brokers, I didn’t know any lenders. So I initially just wanted to become familiar with all of the language and the industry related jargon, you know, of multifamily real estate. So I was reading the books, listen to podcasts like yours, trying to consume all this.

And then it gets to the point where you’re like, okay, I need to actually be meeting with people, building relationships, taking action. So what I did is I originally started out. I wrote a book by Ken McElroy. A lot of people have heard of it ABC’s of property management. And in that book, he recommends that when you’re trying to find a property management company, you go to  dot org and you can find.

Like what’s called an AMO or an accredited management organization, meaning that it’s been accredited. So it’s a legitimate property management company. So I went on that website and I saw, I need to find a property management company if I’m serious about doing this. So I went on the website, I found five local ones in Phoenix, and I reached out to the representatives, whether it was director of marketing the owner.

In some cases I set up five meetings. Okay. And after reading that book and a couple other property management books and podcasts, I created five pages of my own questions. On property management on accounting processes, operating all these different things, which was probably overkill at the time. But I made myself seem like I was smart.

So they helped me give me confidence. I go property management meetings and I wear a suit to check I’m young. I’m always insecure. I wasn’t secure about not being perceived as credible, you know, cause you’re young and it’s a, it’s an intimidating industry. So I go, I go into the meetings with my list of questions and I start to vet these companies and I say, Hey, I’m Zach.

I come from healthcare. I have a network of physicians, healthcare, business owners. And I don’t ever condone lying by any means, but you need to be confident and you need to make yourself sound credible. So if you have some type of network, if you’re an engineer or an attorney or a. Whatever, just try to flaunt that network and say, I’ve got this network of professionals who are interested in investing.

I’m going to raise this capital. And so asking the property manager companies and all these questions, they seem to take me serious. Yeah. I was really nervous, but each success of meeting, I get more and more confident starts to learn the language and feel more comfortable. And you realize these are just people, just like anybody else, you know?

And so at the end of that meeting, I asked them, I said, Hey, For somebody starting out like me, do you have any recommendations for brokers who are like, nice guys, we’re not going to just intimidate me or whatever. You know what I mean? Do you have any relationships for brokers, lenders, attorneys, insurance guys.

And I asked every single property management company that, and they all gave me recommendations. Okay. So then what do I do? I called the broker and I say, Hey, I got your, your name and number from that property management company. My name is Zach. This is what we’re looking for. Can we set up a meeting? And I started setting up meetings with brokers.

And the brokers were even scarier to me with. And the property managers, because the property managers essentially work for you. Whereas the brokers, it’s almost in a sellers market, like we’re in, it’s flipped. Like you’re trying to appeal the broker, prove that you’re credible and worth their time. And so the first couple of broker meetings, I was super nervous.

I probably sound like an idiot. I know what I was talking about. And the biggest thing to know is you need to go into these meetings, brokers, and you need to have just like general criteria of what you’re looking for, because that will create credibility in their mind. And so you need to sell them, I’m looking for value, add B and C class assets, one to $2 million.

Okay. With the value, add potential in these areas. You know what I mean? Say something like that. So they know, okay, this person is serious. They at least have a criteria because if you go in there and you never done a deal. And you’re like, I’m looking for one to $20 million. Okay. I’m looking for a 10 unit to a hundred units.

They’re less likely to take you seriously. And, and you’ll have, and you’ll start to understand that different brokers specialize in different sizes, different types of asset classes. So there’s several brokerages. They’ve got guys that do below 100 units and guys that do above them or units. And you need to know who you’re speaking to because I went into one broker meeting.

And, and I, at first I was trying to act like I’m going to do a 200 unit deal, my first deal. And they don’t really take you seriously, which they shouldn’t. And if you haven’t done it, but who knows, maybe you can take it down. But I went into it and I learned after a little bit, I need to focus on smaller deals.

So I went into one meeting and I said, I’m looking for 50 units and below. And the guy was immediately like, Oh, I only do a hundred units and up, you need to speak to in our organization. And that meeting was over. You know what I mean? Can you refer me to them? So you just need to, you need to, you just need to start cold calling these professionals.

And the other thing with brokers is that you don’t necessarily need to meet with them in their office or at a coffee shop. What you should do is you need to go to the websites, find the brokerage websites, CBRA Marcus, and Millichap, Arcadia, NorthMarq. There’s all these large national brokerages go to their website and subscribe to their listings.

And you’re going to start getting their listings just emailed to you. Okay. And then reach out to these brokers, call them or email them and say, Hey, so I saw your listing. I’d like to tour it. When I first started, I was terrified to tour these properties because I felt like I was wasting the broker’s time and bothering them.

And you can’t think like that you have to realize that the brokers, the majority of them want to tour the properties because it shows their sellers are getting a lot of activity. So, this is a good opportunity to meet brokers is just set up on these assets. I still, today they will set up tours on properties that I know I have no interest in buying just so I can meet the broker and I’ll go in there and take pictures and take notes.

And I’ll even ask hypothetical questions to the broker that I may already know the answer to about the property. Just to demonstrate that I understand how this works. So you’re just trying to demonstrate credibility and build a relationship, things like that, and then get back to them in a few days, if you’re not going to, if it doesn’t work and just say, Hey, thanks so much, this deal’s not going to work for us because of this and this.

And at least you give them feedback. So that’s the thing is just setting meetings. Set up tours and that’s the best way to start to cultivate these relationships and, and really people overthink it. You just need to start, you need to generate deal flow. And honestly, the easiest way to do it is sign up on all their websites and you’re going to get the deals automatically sent to you.

And then you click link, you sign up electronic confidentiality agreement. It’s a formality, it’s not a big deal. And they’ll send you the financials and the offering memorandum. So you can start to analyze the deal. That’s the biggest thing to start.

Seyla: [00:14:23] Wow. That’s really impressive. And a very great strategy that you share with all our listeners.

So fast forward as today as an owner of 420 units, that’s really impressive in such a short amount of time, how have you changed your strategy when managing your assets and investors relations during the COVID-19, especially now?

Zach: [00:14:42] Yeah, that’s a great question, Seyla. So we actually were closing a deal and that’s right when COVID-19 started.

We were scheduled to close, like the second or third week of March. And we had to extend to the end of March, just because COVID had shut down some of the offices that we were waiting on reports for, et cetera. But when COVID hit, we immediately told all of our investors that we are postponing all distributions, because if people can remember, I think here in Phoenix, the local economy shutdown on March 16th.

So by the end of March, it was like, Full-scale pandemonium right. On a national level. Everybody’s like freaking out from an economic perspective. So we told all of our investors, we’re going to postpone all distributions and we’re also gonna stop all renovations. Okay. So for March, April, may, and even really June, we didn’t do any renovations.

And we basically just, we told our investors, Hey, we’re focusing on maintaining our liquidity in the property. Okay. So the cares act went into effect at the end of March, which basically has a lot of different requirements for federally backed loans and all our five assets all here in Phoenix, Mesa and Scottsdale, respectively are all Freddie Mac loans.

So they’re federally backed. And so they’re required to adhere to this, these requirements within the cares act. And some of the big ones it was on that is that you cannot evict them tenant for nonpayment. Okay. And you gotta remember the cares act started the end of March through the end of July. So here we are, like the end of March.

Okay. We have these four assets already, which have all been performing really well. And now we just acquired a new one. Now we can’t evict a tenant. If they’re not paying you also cannot charge late fees, period. Okay. And you can deny a tenant, the right to renew a lease if they would like to. And so we, we were concerned and we weren’t sure.

How our tenants would, would be affected by their jobs, things like that. So we immediately renovations. We told investors, we’re postponing distributions. Obviously we stopped all property tours and we transitioned over to virtual tours. And then after a month or two, we transitioned into like a self tour, meaning that a prospective tenant could come and pick up the key and then they could just open the unit and go tour it themselves. So there was no exposure between our onsite managers. So we still, well, we really had to, we really micromanaged the management company. We were on top of them every day, harassing them really, because we want to make sure they stay on top of these assets because we have investor money.

So we told every single onsite manager, you need to send us a daily report on collections daily. So at the end of every day, They had to send out, even if it was like the second day of the month. And a lot of these rents come in by the mid, sometimes third or fourth week of the month, which is just part of C class tenants at that demographic.

We told them every day we want a collections report. So they have to maintain a spreadsheet with every single unit who paid, who didn’t pay. And the first week we’re pretty lenient. But after that first week, we’re like, okay, Why did this one not pay, why didn’t, this will not pay and we’re on top of our manager and they need to be communicating with that tenant to figure out why they haven’t paid.

And if it’s because they were affected by COVID. We were having our onsite manager, provide all of these tenants with local and federal resources. So if somebody had been laid off or for load, we would literally help them apply for unemployment. Cause if they didn’t know how to do it, you know, or if there was like local resources here in Phoenix and on top of it, and we really were emphasizing communication with tenants.

So we want to work with them. And if they’re communicating with us and saying, Hey, my rent is going to be a week or two late because of this, we’re totally found out. At least they’re communicating, it’s more the ones who are going silent on us that we’re concerned about, but are all of our onsite managers knew we were taking this extremely seriously.

And so we were on top of them. And then we had our normal weekly meeting with our management company, which we normally did. And we were always going over collections and follow up things like that. And so. Honestly out of 420 units, we only had probably 10, 10 or 15 or less tenants who were actually affected by COVID.

So we had very few tenants who were laid off for load or fired, and the ones that we, that were, we tried to help them with unemployment and things like that. So at that time, It was like everybody in Phoenix and across the nation, landlords were waiting like, when is this residual effect going to hit?

Because at first it was like, let’s see how April collections go. April was strong let’s while the real hits going to be in may, may was strong. And then people were like, the stimulus checks are coming out in may. And. And so June is going to be tough, June the strong, and then July is like, okay, by July the stimulus that has to have run out.

And this is where I see the effect. July was really strong, you know? So in Phoenix, anyway, I can’t speak from a national perspective, but I’ve seen data that has been strong. Phoenix has been extremely strong. So I think pre COVID are our average collections across five assets. And there’s one property that kind of brought this down.

More than the others, but our average collections pre COVID was like 97 to 99%. And during COVID, it’s been like 96 to 97%. So about one to 2% collections have gone down during COVID, which is not significant for us. And that’s even while we could not evict. For tenants who are not paying, we could not charge late fees.

So one thing we did say is, Hey tenant, we will, we will help you out. However we can with these resources, but you need to understand this rent is still due. Cause they’re still, they still have a lease in place and they have to do it. So. That was just the biggest thing was emphasizing that with our onsite management and letting the tenants know.

And unfortunately we had very strong performance during COVID I’m an investor relations perspective. We typically do one monthly report, which comes out at the end of the month and it’s for the previous month. Okay. So like at the end of August here, we’ll send out the July report. What we decided to do was start to send out two reports each month for the second week of the month.

Like the second week of August, for example, We send out, um, a collections update. And so we say, Hey, mr. Investor. So far, we have X amount collected for August this first two weeks. At this point last month we had X amount collected to compare so that investors can see. And then we ran stress tests on all of our assets.

Okay. So we assumed that when this first started, collections were going to drop significantly and we wanted to show investors that, Hey, we have enough capital cap, X reserves are enough reserves in place. To absorb the costs of operating expenses and debt service for X amount of months, assuming 50% of people pay 0% of people pay.

So we would just want to show our investors that we’re, we’re preparing and we’re trying to maintain the quiddity. Unfortunately, we actually did not miss any distributions. So by the time middle of end of June came and then July, we said, you know what, we’re going to do our distributions as we would have normally.

So we didn’t miss any distributions across all five assets, including the one that we had just closed a few months prior, we hit our post three month acquisition distribution on schedule. And so we’ve been lucky that in Phoenix, the fundamentals are really strong with the population growth and the job growth, but those are some of the things that we did a adjuster and COVID.

Aileen: [00:22:04] It seems like a lot of it had to do with the communications, the open communications that you had between your tenants and then also to your investors. And that just continued to build on that trust and relationship that you had between both sides.

Zach: [00:22:16] Yep. A hundred percent. That was really the key. And they appreciate it too.

I mean, it’s, it’s little things like showing you care, giving them the resources we bought. We purchased a bunch of masks, like surgical masks and gave them to all our tenants at every property we’ve purchased hand sanitizer and gave that to them. So it’s these little things to show them like, Hey, we’re here to support you, but also holding them accountable at the same time and saying the rent is still due and how can we help?

Aileen: [00:22:39] That’s great. Would you be able to share some more of the best practices that you’ve used to stay successful during this time?

Zach: [00:22:45] Yeah, I think you said it really well. I need you to just, the communication is huge communication with investors and in like end of March, April, I had several investors reaching out, like, Hey, what do you think?

Like, how how’s the deals going? How are the deals going to do? And we just tell them, like, we honestly don’t know, like we’re going to stop renovations and we’re going to try to weather the storm. And see how it goes. And then after April, we really didn’t hear from investors, you know? And then I think it’s because we did a good job with our email updates or we show them the numbers we show, we have like several paragraphs explaining what we’re doing and how things are going.

So I think communication with investors. With your staff and with the tenants is really important. And it’s just watching the assets closely, you know, and watching the market indicators, things like that.

Seyla: [00:23:31] What is your next focus from here?

Zach: [00:23:34] Good question. I mean, we, we really were not an acquisition.

We were not looking at new acquisitions. We actually had to back out of the deal. We had been awarded a deal, the middle of. March and then covert hit and our loan proceeds were crazy all over the place. And we’re like, we can not do a deal right now. So we had that. We didn’t go under contract. Fortunately, we were under an access agreement.

We were awarded it. So we I’d call the broker said, Hey, I’m so sorry. We have to back out, which we’ve never done. And then they understood because everything was going crazy. So like March. April may and probably the first part of June, we weren’t looking at new deals really, but probably middle of June or so.

We started to look at new deals and start underwriting because we were starting to see collections were strong in may. Leasing traffic really picked up on a new lease, which we’re picking up at our properties. And so we were back on the prowl. However, we’ve adjusted our underwriting where we’ve been assuming 0% rent growth in year one.

For all new acquisitions and the reason for that it’s because of COVID just to be super conservative. And so here in Phoenix, anyways, the last two years, it’s been over 8% year over year rent growth last two consecutive years. So pre COVID, we were underwriting year one, rent growth growth. That’s 4% of what it was actually at.

And then 3% every year thereafter for stabilized organic growth. Now we cut that down from 4%, since 0% to be extra conservative. We’ve also adjusted some of our. Our underwriting returns for investors. Whereas before we were doing a preferred cash on cash return and we’ve shifted to a preferred IRR return and an IRR can get complicated.

So I don’t want to confuse people, but essentially what it means is that we, the sponsors, we do not participate in any of the cash flow distributions during the whole of the property at all, because we have to, we don’t get our cut or our split. Until we achieved the IRR return of the investor in you cannot achieve that by definition will be IRR.

And so all of their initial capital. Is returned to them, which is only going to happen on like the capital event, like a refinance or a sale. So we did that so that our investors would be more insulated where they’re like, okay, the sponsors don’t get paid any cash flow during the whole of the property, we just get paid on the front end.

And then we get paid on the backend when it’s sold. So we have to perform, whereas with the preferred cash on cash, if the eight, if it goes over 8% in one year, everything over 8% goes to the sponsor. So. We’ve adjusted that underwriting criteria. And, um, we’re actually very bullish right now, as a, as of the time of this recording, you know, third week of August, 2020, we’re extremely bullish.

We have a deal under contract. Now it’s a little over a hundred units and, um, we’ve got that under contract probably four or five weeks ago, we’re closing next month. So we’re excited about that. That was an off market deal. We just, we barely lost the big deal yesterday. We lost it by a sliver. So we’ve been making offers or making an offer in a couple of weeks on a deal.

So right now we’re very bullish on the Phoenix market and that’s someplace we’re looking to do new acquisitions.

Seyla: [00:26:37] What a great strategy. It will be very, very conservative, especially doing the COVID-19 pandemic time right now, and congratulation on the new deal that you just got. And what is one thing that set those successful people are poet in the real estate business.

Zach: [00:26:48] Yeah. Good question. I mean, there’s, there’s so many things, pause. A lot of people say you can’t do everything on your own, you know? So I think that if you can. Identify one or two things that you do really well. And then you, you can have the courage to reach out to other people. I personally hate networking and I don’t like it.

And I don’t think most, I think most people don’t like it. I think it makes people feel uncomfortable, but these are the things you have to do, especially when you’re starting out, trying to find. Partners who have complimentary skill sets. So I think in order to be successful, there’s so many things, but you have to first learn the fundamentals, which is not extremely difficult, work on a high level, and then you need to identify, okay, what is my goal?

Because in real estate is so easy, you get distracted. And that’s what I was doing. Get distracted by like shiny object syndrome. I gonna do mobile home parks. I’m gonna do this. I’ll do that. Self storage, you know, focus on what you want to do. So if it’s multifamily. What type of multifamily, like new development, value add, what’s your price range?

What’s your number of units, which property management company is going to specialize in that size. You know what I mean? And how are you going to structure the deal? You just need to have more focus and you need a pound that focus. And so you get there and then it’s just, it’s like a catch 22. Cause you have to be relentless with relentlessly attacking and trying to achieve your goal, but you also have to be patient.

Then you can’t expect stuff to happen very quickly because it just doesn’t, it’s the nature of it. You know, like yesterday this deal we lost was like a dagger in my heart. It was like the one deal, like my entire journey, this deal, I was most disappointed that we lost. We had worked so hard and it was going to be the biggest thing we’ve ever done.

And we thought we won it. We thought we had it. And I don’t know where we didn’t get it installed. It’s just, there’s going to be days where you face a lot of adversity and you feel like I wasted all this time, but you have to realize that you’re growing. You know, throughout that process and you have to continue to learn and just keep pushing forward.

And it’s like a battle of attrition really. It’s like, whoever wants to not give up first, if you don’t quit and you keep pushing forward, you will eventually achieve success. No matter what you do compare yourself to other people you don’t need to say, Oh, this guy. Got X amount of units in this time. And this guy is this age and I’m older or younger than him or her.

You don’t need to do that. You just need to focus on what your goal is and continue to push forward. And, and you’ll start to get over some of these hurdles and then you’ll start to see exponential growth. So, I mean, that’s, that would be my advice.

Seyla: [00:29:08] Great advice. What has been the highlight of your real estate career?

Zach: [00:29:12] Yeah, I think, I think just getting the first deal probably was the most exciting. It was more of a relief for me than even excitement because it was like getting a monkey off my back. You know, cause it’s like you go through all the adversity and you tell people you’re a real estate investor, even though you don’t own any real estate.

And I had no other job, so I had no identity. So when I finally got a deal, it was more of, it wasn’t even, I was excited, but it was more of like relief. Okay. Finally, I achieved this and now let’s go, let’s start to scale up and actually get wrong because now I’m in the game. So to speak. Cause there’s a big difference between somebody who has a deal on somebody who doesn’t have a deal.

And after you get the first deal, It really does get easier. Like people say, because you’re getting the confidence, you gain some credibility and if you can keep going from there and ride that momentum.

Aileen: [00:29:55] Thank you so much. And if our listeners wanted to find out a little bit more about you, where can they go?

Zach: [00:30:00] Yeah. Thank you so much, Aileen. I appreciate the opportunity. If you can just go to our website, it’s a ZHmultifamily.com, no hyphens or anything, and there’s a contact us sheet. So just fill that out. Your info and we can set up a phone call. You can go to my LinkedIn, Zach Haptonstall I know it’s a long name and set up a call to my Calendly link. You can email me ZACH@zhmultifamily.com. And I’m happy to get on call with anybody just if it’s to help with like provide advice, anything that I can do, don’t hesitate to reach out.

Aileen: [00:30:32] Awesome. Thank you so much, Zach. I’m sure everybody will appreciate that.

Zach: [00:30:34] Of course. Thank you so much, Aileen and Seyla. I appreciate the opportunity to be on the show and we’ll talk soon.

Seyla: [00:30:41] Thank you. Thank you.