Episode: 100+ Unit Apartment Complex Syndication with Stephanie Walter
Guest: Stephanie Walter is the Founder & CEO of Erbe Wealth. Stephanie began investing in single family homes in Colorado while owning & operating her insurance agency business. She has since exited that business and sold all of her single family rentals to focus solely on larger commercial real estate syndication deals.
Big Idea: Recognizing the Opportunity to Sell Appreciated, Low Cash Flowing Deals and Transitioning to Larger Apartment Syndication Deals. Stephanie and I discuss her decisions to exit both single family rentals AND her insurance agency business to focus solely on larger, less active-truly passive commercial real estate deals.
Dan Breslin: Today’s guest Stephanie Walter is the founder and CEO of Erbe wealth, Stephanie began investing in single-family homes in Colorado while owning and operating her insurance agency. She has since exited that insurance agency business and sold off all of her single-family rentals to focus solely on larger commercial real estate syndication deals. Today we are going to dive deep into those decisions, her investment selection process, and a few big recent wins, and of course, an upcoming deal. So let’s get started. So I did a little research on you and your background, and I figured that we could begin with your sale of the insurance agency, what led up to that what your thoughts were, how you emotionally changed chapters, let’s say, and then got on to the next place that you currently are.
Stephanie: Yeah, well, I’ve had my agency since 2006, so about 16 years. And before that, I was actually an insurance adjuster for eight years. So my whole working life, I’ve been involved in insurance in some way. And I do love it. But I also love real estate. So I used to buy and hold single-family homes and really, really loved doing that and actually became more curious. In 2016 I joined a group of people that do some education, great education, about kind of how to buy larger commercial properties through syndications. And that was in 2016. And from there, there was really no looking back I found a partner and group of people I like to work with and found that I really liked raising money. And from that just ended up working with a lot of really wealthy people and learned a lot from watching the way that they handled their finances and started changing the way that I was viewing my finances and 2018 started selling off my single-family rentals and investing that money into these syndicated deals where we were getting double-digit returns and that allowed me to replace my income in the matter of a little over two years. I sold my agency and December 2020 and so now I’m retired but I am still raising money occasionally once or twice a year for a deal and I like to talk to people about kind of changing their views on money because it was life-changing for me. Because I’ve been able to retire and now I can spend a lot more time with my family.
Dan: Congratulations on the sale. That’s pretty cool. I imagine that must have been… I don’t know. I mean, was it a decision brewing for a year, six months? Did you just wake up one day and say, “Hi, we got to get going here.” This is too much weight. Was it the daily responsibility of you running and managing a team? What was it that led up to the sale, I guess?
Stephanie: I like to work a lot. I’m a nerd that way. But so I really like what I was doing. But as I continue to invest in these deals, and the money came in, and eventually it replaced what I was making in my insurance agency, all of a sudden, I was like, well, it would be nice not to be having to work every day and not having and being able to take a vacation. I hadn’t taken like, over a week’s vacation since 2006. So then, my eyes were opened a little bit more. And it was a little bit emotional to sell it. But, this is the direction that I’m going. And I really love helping people get into these syndicated real estate deals. And but yeah, it definitely was emotional. Because you get very close to your clients over 16 years. And just kind of that’s your identity.
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Resources mentioned in this episode:
Stephanie & I Discuss Commercial Real Estate Syndication:
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Owning, Operating, & Exiting 100 Unit+ Apartment Deals
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Luxury Single Family Home Development
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Exiting a Successful Insurance Business
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Exiting Single Family Rentals for Larger Deals
Relevant Episodes: (There are 190 Content Packed Interviews in Total)
- Mark Walker on Graduating from the Rat Race to Multi-Family Investment Deals
- Marketing, Meetups & $100 Million in Apartment Syndications with Adam Adams
- Andy Shamberg on Property Insurance Fundamentals
- From House Hacking to $300 Million in Commercial Real Estate with Ivan Barratt