#177: Full-Time Multifamily Investor & Active-Duty Military

Josh: Hey, welcome back to the Accelerated Investor podcast. In this episode, I am interviewing Noel Walton. Now, what’s interesting about Noel is he is not only an active, full time real estate investor in both residential and apartment syndications, but he’s also a full-time active military. Noel is an amazing this is an amazing interview. I can’t wait for you to hear it because he is actively managing his investments, fix and flips portfolio of rentals and his commercial apartment syndications while being an active-duty helicopter pilot. He’s a military leader. He’s in love with skydiving. We talk about his skydive over Hawaii. You’re going to love to hear that story. But what Neil really brings is strong operational management, his decision-making skills that he learned in the military and how those military skill sets are transitioning him into civilian life. 

Josh: He’s actually gonna transition into civilian life later on this year and focus full time on his real estate investments. You’re also going to hear a little bit more about when Noel jumped in to his very first Blackhawk helicopter and was flying this amazing military machine, this amazing military killing machine in a Blackhawk helicopter. We’ll talk about that experience as well. Soyou’re going to love this interview with the president of Eagles Capital and the founding member of the Joint Chiefs of Real Estate Partners, Noel Walton. Check it out. 

Josh:So Noel, hey, thank you so much for joining us today on Accelerated Investor, super happy to have you. 

Noel: Thanks, Josh. Thanks for having me. 

Josh: Yeah. You bet, man. So, listen, I love when I meet somebody new to talk about what they’re up to right now. I know you’ve been very successful buying owner operating, syndicating, managing apartments, but we’re kind of in a new year. Late last year was nuts. So I’m always curious to see what people are up to like today. They’re really excited about whether it’s a new book or whether it’s a new deal or raising money or something like that. So tell us, what’s what are you kind of working on, like literally this week or next week that you’re excited for? 

Noel: Right now, my team and I are working on closing one hundred- and seventy-two-unit deal and we are getting down last week and a half or so. So it’s getting close. And of course, everything gets hectic at that time. But at the same time, we are also putting the offers, the elsewise out on other multifamily properties. We got an LOI out in Cleveland right now. 

Josh: Stealing properties from me. 

Noel: We’ll have to talk about partnering up on something. Yeah. Yeah, that sounds good. And also the just started keeping that acquisition process going. We’ve got a goal to hit five hundred units this year and I think totally doable and we’re working hard at that as well. 

Josh: Oh, that’s fantastic stuff. So tell me a little bit about the, I know it’s about to close. I’ll make sure I publish this podcast after it closes because I know that’s a sensitive time. So just help me understand the deal structure there. Again, if you don’t want to go in too many details, I get it. But tell me what you’re comfortable telling us about how the structure is maybe or what are some things that you saw in that deal that you liked? 

Noel: Yeah, so really for us, our strategy is B and C class properties with a value-add potential. So that’s somewhere where we can we can go in, find the property like for instance, this one being very low on the management side. It’s really there’s a lot upside potential there on the management. So we are going in changing that out to a national institutional level, one of the top fifteen property managers in the country. They’re going to go in there. They’ve got a great plan in place. They ran due diligence alongside us and just outstanding people that they know their job very well and we’re very confident working alongside them. Nice. That’s going to be huge. Just turning units. We’ve got a good number of units to go through over a year, year and a half that we plan on. 

Josh: How many do you think you’ll do out of the one seventy-six over the next, let’s say, 12 to 18 months? Twenty-four months? How many will you guys try to knock out? 

Noel: Our plan is seventy-two over about a year and a half. It is highly occupied right now. So it’s going to be a slow turn. But we’re going to have certain strategies in place to help turn faster as we get one unit done, offer some concessions to get current tenants to move into those and free up to help turn as people move out and they decide, I want to move somewhere else, we’ll continue doing those renovations as well. So it’s a combination of that raising additional income through various sources, whether it be the covered parking eventually. That’s something we’re discussing on the reserve parking. There’s just multiple sources of other income you can put on these properties to raise that net operating income and the value of that property. So it attacks it from several sides. You get the benefit of the cash flow that that we obviously provide to our passive investors. But you also get that value-add potential. So by quickly raising that value as fast as you can get in that that cash out reify or that refinance type event, whether it be a supplemental loan or refinance, we can return that extra value in cash to our best investors. Nice. So more money back in their pockets so they can continue to put in the next deal and then double start scaling that that limited partnership. 

Josh: Yeah, no doubt. I mean, those passive investors, limited partners are true. It’s a true partnership, but it’s their true asset. You know, a lot of guys, companies are kind of valued off of their regular recurring income. And that’s certainly what we have with apartments. But I value my apartments also based on the ability for one investor, let’s say with one hundred grand, who could invest in maybe three to five deals over the next ten years or fifteen years, who can reinvest, reinvest, reinvest what they are truly an asset that we’ve got to take care of and make sure that they’re happy. They get investor updates, they get quarterly returns or whatever it is, because when one of those guys were to ever leave, it’s like dagger to the heart, you know, because you know what their potential is going forward. And to have somebody leave and go somewhere else, it’s not fun. So, so awesome stuff. So I’m curious. From your strategy with that one seventy-six, you have this national management company coming in, are they also going to be working on turning the units? And how extensive are your unit turns? Are they full hard turns like you’re spending seven, eight, nine, ten thousand dollars a turn? Or is it more of, like, lipstick? And are you guys going have a separate team, do the CapEx while you have this property management team do more of the management, maintenance and leasing? Tell me about that structure. 

Noel: OK, yeah. So this company is very in depth, very vertically integrated with marketing teams. They’ve got project managers, you name it. So they’re going to have a dedicated project manager that works with the contractors and those sort of things that they already have relationships with. So not only the contracting, but the sourcing of all of the renovation products, the flooring, the countertops. Yeah. And so, yeah, they’ve got great relationships for those as well as ordering at scale, putting that together, they’re able to get a great deal on those things, save us money on those. But however, it is not a deep value add. These are actually in really good shape. But a lot of these are just we want to go through and take classic units, turn them into new premium units, raise those rents up. So it’s just going to be flooring, some paint, some basic appliance change over. And overall we’re looking at thirty five hundred a unit, not too bad at all. Go through those for roughly seventy-two units like I mentioned, and we’ll probably push to do more over time. If we can do those within that year and a half or sooner, we’re going to aggressively try to pursue that. But we always keep our underwriting very conservative and assume it’s going to take us a lot longer than we think we can beat those those records. I mean, we will blow those returns out of the water. So that is the goal. 

Josh: Fantastic stuff. So. When you look at interesting stuff like carpet and paint, right, to think about, like residential investing, carpets, I love carpet and paint deals, right? 

Noel: Yeah, I have some background in that, too. 

Josh: Yeah. Yeah, same here. But carpet and paint deals are great because if you’ve got a relatively new, newer building even the last 20 years, but you’ve got decent cabinets, maybe just even swapping out the hardware. But the flooring can make a huge difference. I mean, now doing LVP flooring or luxury vinyl wood or whatever, versus the old carpet, so many of the buildings have old carpet, really kind of hard in the asset paint, modernize it, even paint the cabinets, paint the cabins from brown to white. Like all of that makes a big difference. I’m baffled that you can know a lot of buildings that we’re doing and we’re seeing what to charge. It could be one hundred bucks could in some cases could be upwards of two or three hundred dollars a unit when you look at that, because so many buildings, especially with us being in the Midwest and the Southeast, you just have a lot of older housing stock, a lot of older apartment stock, and that hasn’t been upgraded. So I love that kind of medium or light strategy. 

Josh: Yeah, for you to say it’s only thirty-five hundred times seventy units, only a two hundred two hundred fifty-thousand-dollarCapEx. That’s pretty light for one hundred- and seventy-six-unit building. So that’s, that’s just lipstick man. Those deals are fun. I like those ones. Yeah, sure. So tell me a little bit more about your structure. Like how well how do you like to structure deals with passive investors? Like what’s your time frame? What’s kind of not like maybe you have a typical offer. Again, guys, disclaimer we’re not soliciting a capital raise here. We’re not soliciting securities. We’re just talking about structures. So what’s your typical structure with limited partners and passive investors? 

Noel: Yeah, so we always want to align our interests with the investors interest. So we right off the bat, we always assume and deal dependent, but in general we want to put into place a preferred equity so that those passive investors have come into a deal with us, know that whether it be six, seven or eight percent, which is pretty standard, depending on the deal and what cash flow we think we will start with, we’ll kind of gauge it off of that. But we want to see it. We want to provide that preferred return of cash on cash to the investors. That is like the the floor that we want to achieve with them. We don’t get paid as GP until they get at least that. Whether it be eight percent with a 60/40, 70/30 or 80/20 split of the equity beyond that. And so, you know, just as for someone who might be new, any of the listeners that don’t know is we would assume a seven percent preferred return means passive investor gets seven percent on their money and anything above that is then split according to that equity split. So we have a say of 70 30 split, 70 percent goes to the passive investor, 30 percent goes to the general partners. And that’s how we ensure that incentivizes us as the GP to do everything we can to exceed that preferred return throughout the deal and allows you to get the splits. And those splits will apply at the refinance event, as well as the sale of the property as well. So we sell and we gain, say just take a number. Five-million-dollar profit, 70 percent goes to investors, 30 percent to the GP. 

Josh: Noel, I’m curious, you know, we are still in the middle of covid, there are still some supply chain issues getting materials and things like that. You know, contractors either seem in some cases they don’t want to work or they’re really busy. So what are just some of the challenges that you’ve seen in the last 12 months in your business? Some things that you’ve had to overcome and if you’ve been able to overcome them, how did you do it? 

Josh: Yeah, I mean, as far as the hands-on portion this past year, I haven’t hasn’t been as much of an issue there with during the covered period. That was really that was my building, my business building my network early on in the year that and that was when I transitioned from single family and multifamily and a whole different mindset shift. It’s a whole nother ball game now. It’s not just going to buy up the neighborhood one by one and do things myself. Now it’s how can I build my team? How can I, how can I work with the other investors? And we’re not competing anymore. We’re working together. And it’s a different mindset. Like you need to be a team. There’s so many people involved in a in a commercial multi family structure and acquisition. So. Yeah, but some of the things definitely the challenges that I noticed and have seen from other operators is obviously there was huge fluctuations in the unknowns with funding the interest rates, the huge demand on the on the systems. And actually we’ve been seeing that now to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac. They’ve got backlogs of these historically high demands for loans. And because of these low interest rates, everybody wants to refi, get a new loan and everybody’s out there wanting to buy. But these people, these processors are getting backed up with so many requests. And that can affect timelines for sure. And that’s a big one. We’ve seen contractors having had to deal with those personally in the last year and definitely dealt with them doing flips and things like that. Small town contractors, those that’s a whole another story for another day. 

Josh: Yeah. What I think is important about what Noel for our audience that’s listening is, you know, single family home flippers and especially the contractors that go with it. It’s very much a one off onesie, twosie type of situation. Tough to keep a contractor busy. Then all of a sudden you’re too busy and he doesn’t have the time for you, the contractors like you showing up on your job. But then he finds a more lucrative job. So he tries to fit that job in while he’s doing your job, it’s wild. The difference in commercial multifamily apartments is you’ve got commercial contractors or commercial property managers that they’re built for scale. They’re built to knock out one hundred units in a year. They’re built for larger projects. We have a building we’re buying now that’s actually had a fire on the fourth floor and water damage down through the third floor, second floor, first floor, plus ten smoke damaged and that contractor’s million-dollar budget slamming out that whole renovation in under a year. 

Josh: I mean, could you imagine if those were ten fire damaged houses and having ten separate contractors? It’s just the scale. This one of the reasons why I loved making the pivot into commercial multifamily and the benefits that we’ve seen of it over the last several years is is exactly that. You’re dealing with more professionals, bigger money people that typically operate in a more professional way, that understands scale, that understand. Like you said, it’s a team game. I like volleyball. I’m going to coach volleyball tonight after we do this interview of club volleyball, the six girls on the floor and all six of them have to all be good and play well together. That’s a lot like commercial real estate, property manager, owner, operator, syndicator, limited partner, property manager, leasing agent. Everybody’s got to do their part. So Noel, I’m curious to hear, like you’ve made this pivot now over the last two years or so and you’ve had to build the team. So who did you add to the team and how were you able to source those people? 

Noel: Oh, yeah. So I’ll be really networking is where it started for sourcing. And I was just getting started myself and learning, learning how to underwrite and learn how to talk to brokers, all the basics to start with. And I was on social media, Facebook groups, Zoom networking calls, you name it, just hours and hours of this and it started to pay off when I. I’m stationed at Fort Hood, Texas and got a I got a call from or contacted by another Air Force captain. I’m an Army captain and he said, Hey, let’s, let’s meet up. I’m over here at Fort Hood. 

Josh: You’re an active Army captain right now? 

Noel: I am now. Oh yeah. 

Josh: Well, thank you so much for being active military, man. I did not know that I read your bio. I didn’t realize you’re still active. That’s you’re doing that on top of these big multifamily deals. 

Noel: Definitely. Definitely a challenge. Thanks. Yeah. So we met up about February time frame right before the covid lockdowns and everything started, and we met for coffee and realized, hey, we have some similar experiences, shared the same values, vision, goals, let’s team up, start working on some properties. We did that for a couple of months, put a couple of LOIs out on some smaller units. And a little by little, we started got in touch with someone else that I met through my mentorship program with Rod Khleif and he’s actually overseas, but a former Marine who works in the foreign service there, and he originally from Dallas, Texas, in that area. So I saw you were in Texas. I like the Texas market. How much you think about these deals? Send me a couple of deals. We did some underwriting on them, got us some calls and like, hey, come on, come join us. Let’s start going through these together, you know? And yeah, he had already had some broker contacts then. So we added another one who’s just retired out of the Navy after twenty six years and he’s up in New York, joined our group. So we that’s when we after a few meetings and running through things, we decided to really buckle down as a team and branded ourselves as the Joint Chiefs of Real Estate, a representative from every branch of the military.

Josh:JCore. I like the Joint Chiefs of Real Estate Partners. I love it. 

Noel: Yeah. So we’ve been working this hard and, you know, the various mentors and coaches along the way and been awesome to help us develop together as a team. Know, I brought my strengths as an Army officer, you know, just the team leadership, decision making, risk management, all these types of things that I bring from that side being especially being a Blackhawk helicopter pilot as well. I’m very particular about how things like timelines and planning. And, you know, it’s I bring all of those skills to the table there. Then a buddy, Miles, the Air Force captain, he’s a computer engineering degree. I actually, he just transitioned into space force just recently. So that’s a pretty huge move there. Pretty historic, actually. Yeah. So he’s our lead underwriter. He brings some awesome skills to the underwriting table. It just keeps us on track as far as that goes. And yeah, we all bring great strengths in to this team and we’re just helping to use my strengths as far as look at the team as a whole. How do we who brings to the table? How do we plug everybody in to the right socket for their strengths? You know, so it’s been awesome. We’re still growing, still learning, but we all share a common vision, speak the same language. And it’s been a great matchup. 

Josh: So I’m curious to hear your thoughts with all of your military experience, Blackhawk helicopter pilots, skydiver, military leader, warning with teams being a CEO is a little bit different type of skill because ultimately. A lot of your other teammates have a specific, like, identifiable skill, like if you’re a volleyball analogy, if you’re a setter. You’re a setter at the net, you set everybody else up to Spike. If you’re a libero in the back, you play defense, you pass the ball, the other team spikes at you and you dig it out. My daughter plays outside hitter. So her job is to terminate the volleyball and score and the outside hit. Her spot is sort of the sexy like gets all the credit, but you got six people that all have to play together and. Same thing with as a coach of a volleyball team, your job is to put them in the right position to see them succeed. When you’re a helicopter pilot, when you’re a leader in the military, or whether you’re a CEO, your job is not necessarily to do do anything in the dirt. Your job is really to align everybody else. And it’s kind of a weird you probably saw it’s kind of weird to, like, not have a job, but to have your job be the organization and development and coaching of other people. 

Josh: And then you’ve also got to be kind of good at everything that everybody else does. You can’t you don’t have to be the expert. But I find for me as a CEO, like raising money and underwriting because that’s where we’ve got to have passive investors. You got to sell them the deal so they’ll invest and you don’t want to screw it up. So you’ve got to make sure you underwrite it real good, real conservative. So that’s where I spend my time. But just your comments, especially coming from a military application, military background, how is some of the things or situations you’ve been in the military and being a leader, their transition to civilian life and specifically multifamily real estate? 

Noel: Yeah, let’s see. So, I mean, there’s a lot of skills that obviously the the planning processes are huge. As an officer, that’s been my bread and butter is understanding everything that’s involved. And there’s so much as involved with the between the legal side, the financing side, the just so many pieces of the puzzle that that even people outside our team handle that I need to understand how they work. So I know if we’re getting short on time, I can I know who to call, where is the process at hand? Who do they need to be talking to next to to make the handoff or whatever it is? So I’d skills like that. Just knowing the process is key, keeping the process moving, driving that, keeping the team motivated. And these guys are all with their experience. And I don’t want to do too much motivating, but so they motivate me some days. So it’s yeah, it’s a good team. So, you know, it’s but it’s keeping the communication, you know, how do we implement processes and systems so that it cuts down on time and makes everything more efficient. That makes communication flow. Everybody’s on the same page or especially, you know, there’s going to be certain pieces of information that are going to be vital. 

Noel: And everybody’s got to know what’s going on at certain points. And so that when a question is asked from outside, no matter who gets asked it, they know, OK, yeah, this is what needs to be done here, whatever the answer is to that question. So that’s all things that I try to bring over from my experiences and into the real estate side and just which I plan to move into civilian life actually this year in retirement. And it’s going to be great to focus one hundred percent full time on the syndications. Yeah, that’s the plan. And continue that. And as well as just to have more time to spend with family, traveled the country. 

Josh: Good for you. You know your why is to take care of homeless and struggling veterans as well as assisting kids. And I’m sure you have a lot of affinity for people that have put in time in the military, especially people who now transition to civilian life and struggle. So is there anything in particular, like any type of organization that you want to support within? That is, do you have your eye on a certain organization or do you plan on using some of the proceeds, profits from your multifamily investments to do that kind of stuff? It’s really important to have that right, to have a wide a reason to get up and get moving and build, because, again, there’s always going to be something that kind of chops your knees off, takes away your motivation. You have a tough day and you’ve got to get back up to think like, OK, I want to keep going till I hit this goal. Seems like almost everybody that gets on my podcast talks about the reasons for investing or reasons why they do what they do or they’re why. So tell me a little bit more about yours. 

Noel: Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I mean, for me, my family ultimately is the you say the immediate target, so to speak. You know, they’re the ones that that are my ultimate why and be able to provide time, freedom and options to spend more time with them and make more memories with them. And not as much as I’ve enjoyed my time in the military and my service, that, you know, they don’t allow you a lot of that and they govern your life and they tell you where to be when. I’ve had done my fair share for sure, but now it’s time to have more of that. Make those calls for myself and my family. But also, like I said, we definitely as a team are dedicated to from each deal that we close is bringing some of our portion of our proceeds toward these causes that that will assist either homeless or struggling veterans with preventing suicide and things like that. 

Josh: Yeah, it’s amazing how much people talk about the need and love the military and thank military for their independence. But it’s also amazing how many people that were in the military that served really struggle when they get out of that because it’s just such a different world. Oh, actually, my senior rehab project manager that’s currently turning a bunch of units at one of our buildings today, served in Fallujah, served in Iraq. And, you know, show me some pretty wild pictures of him on patrol there. It literally looks like hell and it’s tough for him to transfer here. It’s got to be he’s done really well. Obviously, he’s transitioned well, but can imagine what a wicked ask that is to send somebody into some of those locations and then come back and be like, hey, you know, get back to life as usual. How does somebody do that? Pretty wild. So normal as we wrap up here and wind down the podcast. I’m curious, with all of your experience in the military, I do want to ask you a question about skydiving. That will be my last question. 

Josh: But with all of the successes that you’re having in multifamily space and building your portfolio, transitioning to civilian life, but all of like you said, the very structured way that your life has been for the past twenty one years, what kind of advice would you pass along to your younger former self or some of our audience that maybe has kind of a structured day life right now, but that’s also looking to make the leap into multifamily or somebody that maybe has left behind a past and some things that they were very comfortable in, in real estate might feel uncomfortable to them. And maybe they’re having some success at it, but they’re still having some self-doubt. These are all probably things that have crept into your head. How do you deal with that? What kind of advice would you give those folks? 

Noel: OK? Yes, several parts of that one. So the advice that I’d give, especially to my younger self and to and I’ve done a lot of this is I’ve been in positions where I’ve helped teach and mentor young lieutenants as they’re coming up, brand new aviation lieutenants and flight school and had almost a year there of that position. And being a coach, mentor and instructor there, which was awesome. I love that job. And to me, it was not only am I helping mentor them to be an officer, but how to take care of their own financial situation to those guys I knew, I know at the age of twenty-two, twenty-three, I had no idea I was doing my finances. And sure, I wish that I wish somebody would have mentored me and taught me that and I tried to do the same. And I’ll tell them your military first off, you’ve got a good steady paycheck as a lieutenant now manage it will use your VA loan is one thing I would say definitely. But don’t buy too high buy. Right. But if you can house hack, by all means, try to find a duplex, try plex or a four plex. You can buy with that VA loan and live in one side. Rent the others out. You will save tons of money. You will live essentially free, if not profit. That’s as one thing I tell them. Take advantage of it at all costs, especially if they’re single. Families, it’s a little bit tougher. 

Noel: Obviously a smaller space, but you’ve got a little more freedom to do those type of things or make those sacrifices as a single lieutenant. But I tell them start with that, that’s the basics of get start saving half your paycheck. Living off the other half might be a little tight, but it’s doable and yeah. Just great advice. Yeah. And then as your baby grows, you’ll get a little bit more. But just keep that 50 50 split for a bit, invest wisely, start investing wisely. And now I tell them about passive investing and what that opportunity is. And that’s how it’s a great option for them, especially being new. They’re going to be their time is going to be scarce. As a platoon leader, they’re probably their first deployment. They’re not going to be able to do hands on manager property and things like that. So investing passively is just the perfect investment for those military that are going to be gone for. Equally, it’s still going to come right back to the paycheck, right to their mailbox, whatever, and they don’t have to lift a finger for it. So, yeah, money, money works for them no matter if they’re sleeping, deployed or whatever. So that and those are all things I try to do to get them and get them thinking about. Have your money work for you. Yeah. So that’s the first part of that. I have to jog my memory on, on the set. 

Josh: So let me let me jump into the final question, which is tell me what it’s like to climb in to a Black Hawk helicopter for the first time and have that machine under your control. 

Noel: It’s pretty amazing. It’s quite an experience in flight school, they started out with the small little bell helicopter and that’s pretty awesome. And you get good with that. And then it’s like you graduate, you’re your first stage, go to your advanced aircraft and then you meet your instructor and you walk out to the black and it’s like. Wow, you’re jumping into a roughly fourteen-thousand-pound twin engine twin turbine engine helicopter, and when that thing fires up, it’s pretty wild and it’s a lot of fun, really. 

Josh: Yeah. Wow. And skydiving. I don’t want to jump in too much to your active military life, but has there been in one place you sky dove into or one exercise or one place that sticks out? 

Noel: So, yes, for the sky diving has just been a recreational thing, me, actually. Oh, OK. I went to airborne school while I was in the army during my early part of my time in the army and got my jump wings, but it was five static line jumps. I’m done, you know, and I’m an aviator. And I was like, well, I’m not going to do any more of that. But the recreational skydiving and that’s an amazing experience. I had done a couple of tandem’s and fell in love with it, got addicted. And by far my favorite place to jump has been Hawaii. OK, right on the beach down there from a helicopter onto the beach, which was amazing. 

Josh: Wow. Fantastic stuff. That is great. Well Noel, I know you’re still continuing to build your network. And a lot of my audience is doing and wanting to do whether they’re active passive investments, just like you’re doing. The website where you can meet Noel and his team is J. Core Investments dot com. So the letter J Core C-O-R-E Investments dot com. So when they go to that site, Noel, what are they going to find? What do you want them to do? 

Noel: Yeah. So when you go to that site, you’ll find our passive investing guide that that should pop up first. And it’s completely free. Just name, email address, great little guide there pdf document. And you can read on the ins and outs of passive investing and how it benefits you as well as that. We do have a blog we’re keeping up on there with some great topics and also free access to a master class that we have put together an interview that has been done with each one of our team members each roughly an hour long. And we cover each of us covers a different topic from the underwriting to market research, you name it, syndication structures and all of that. So some great info there. If you really want to get a better understanding of how syndications work, great resource, encourage you to check it out. And you can also get on there and get on a calendar. Events connect with us, set up it on the calendar, and one of us will get on the call with you. 

Josh: Fantastic stuff. Noel listen, it’s been a blast having you on Accelerated Investor. I appreciate you hopping on. I enjoyed it. Thanks so much. 

Josh: So there you have it. I hope you enjoyed that interview with Noel Walton. I loved his story about managing his real estate business and his syndications while being a full-timeactive-duty leader in the military and helicopter pilot, as well as his story about kind of flying the Black Hawk for the very first time and sky diving over Hawaii and some of his reasons for investing now that he’s transitioning to civilian life. So especially for those of you that are active or retired military, I really hope you enjoyed that as well as just want to say thanks to all of you who are active or retired military, how much we appreciate your service. It’s really all of you that gives us the freedom that we have to pursue our dreams and goals. So if you’re excited about that interview, jump into iTunes or YouTube or wherever you check this interview out, leave us a rating review. Let us know how we did it. 

Josh: Again, I just want to say thanks to all of you who have engaged in the podcast who have shared this on social media, on Instagram, on Facebook and on LinkedIn, Twitter. Thank you so much for all of that. And if you have any comments, questions about who you’d like us to interview or information that you’d like to hear more about, just send us an email to support at SRECnow.com Let us know how we can help you on a go forward basis through this podcast and through this content as you go along your journey of creating your ideal lifestyle with real estate. We’ll see on the next episode. Take care.

Full-time real estate investor and active-duty helicopter pilot Noel Walton loves investing in Class B and Class C properties with value-add potential. Over the last year, he’s been pivoting out of single residentials and focusing completely on growing his portfolio with apartment complexes. And he’s leaning on his strengths as an Army officer to lead his new real estate team.

About a year ago, Noel partnered up with another active-duty officer and they formed Joint Chiefs of Real Estate Partners. When they moved into multifamily, they settled on a preferred return on cash on cash return to investors. They guarantee a percentage of return, and then they split anything above that as an equity split. This kind of structuring puts his investors first, and it incentivizes the GPs to do everything they can to exceed their preferred return so they get a bigger split too.

As he’s made the pivot from single family to multifamily over the last year, he’s had to learn how to underwrite and network with brokers. And as he prepares to retire from the military, he’s been able to zero in on his “why” for real estate. We talk about Noel’s passion for giving back to veterans, and he gives some financial advice for active-duty and military veterans, including:

  • Using the VA loan to buy a duplex
  • Living on half your paycheck
  • Investing wisely while in the service
  • Seeking out passive investing opportunities

You can check out Noel’s investing philosophy on his website by reading his blog or signing up for his masterclass. JCORE is still building out their network as they get ready to scale in a big way in the coming year, and they’d love to connect with you.

What’s Inside:

  • One of my favorite reasons for making the switch to multifamily is the ability it gives you to suddenly scale up your remodeling projects.
  • Noel’s growing pains as he builds out his team and moves away from fix and flips.
  • As an Army captain, Noel is able to directly translate his military experience into planning and growing his real estate business.

Mentioned in this episode​

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