CFD 537 – Chad Doty On Multifamily Real Estate Investing With 37th Parallel

May 16th, 2019

Chad Doty has 12 years of experience as a multifamily investor, but he wasn’t born with realestate in his blood. Originally, Chad was a management consultant for Arthur Andersen. Watching that company meltdown prior to him making partner made him realize that letting outside circumstances control his life wasn’t for him.

So Chad then founded his own consulting company, only to realize he was simply trading time for money. Determined to control his own destiny, Chad decided to leverage commercial multifamily real estate to develop recurring, passive income. He formed 37th Parallel Properties, a private real estate acquisitions and asset management firm.

Podcast Highlights

  • Who is Chad Doty?

Chad was very driven as a kid, mainly due to his military father. He had aspirations to get into the Navy but because of a variety of reasons he wasn’t able to join. He decided to go into school and try to find something that he was really going to enjoy, he ended up becoming a network engineer and being very disappointed. He went back to school to get his MBA, found himself working for Anderson as a consultant and moving up through the ranks there.

When you can answer the question of who you are a hero to, you will be playing an entirely different game from everyone else.

Based on his DISC profile, Chad is a defined D and that heavily determines how he works and how he interacts with people on his team.

  • What was it like to make such a drastic change?

Chad didn’t really get the entrepreneurial bug until his mid 30’s. Most people can imagine what their perfect day looks like, but most people can’t imagine what a perfect month looks like. When Chad’s wife became pregnant that lit a fire underneath to make sure that when his child was born that he wouldn’t be an absent father. He was in the position to shift to his own client base and consultancy and in the following months made the move.

When you go to do something different, a very powerful question you should ask yourself is “what is the worst that is going to happen?” You are 100% responsible for the results in your life, at least in how you respond to the events that occur.

  • The Right Business

Real estate wasn’t the first business that Chad attempted to get off the ground, he initially thought he didn’t like it. He started trading the market but felt that there were better ways to use the same engine and real estate fits the bill. People are always going to want a roof over their head so it passes the evergreen test.

You can determine all things the affect you as an owner and if you focus on the fundamentals you can find success in real estate. Multifamily is going to be here for the foreseeable future, demographics basically ensure it’s a solid investment.

  • What kind of market do you operate in?

Chad uses a concept called your MAC profile, it stands for Market, Approach, and Capability. There are a million ways to make money in real estate but for Chad, he knew the approach they wanted to go with being long term holders of cash producing assets. They will hold the asset for as long as it performs at or above the market and the market hasn’t changed.

When you get into real estate, you have to think about what kind of investor you want to be. The market has to match the approach and capability you bring to the table.

People don’t pick properties to live at, they pick where the best part of town they can live based on job, school, and entertainment. There is no secret market for Chad, the markets they operate in just have the fundamentals that make them attractive.

  • Syndication

Chad hears two things that he refers to as real estate mythology. The first one is that a building can be a deal at some price, which sounds true but when taken with the next piece it becomes false. People believe that if the deal is good enough, people will find you but the truth is money flows to people that know what they are doing.

Finding a deal does not mean you will find money. You have to be competent enough to take care of your investors money, that’s the barrier to entry and most people don’t want to put in the work to get the experience.

  • What do you think are threats to multifamily real estate?

Interest rates are important but Chad believes the US has achieved a soft landing for the most part. The days of the Federal Reserve just letting the market do whatever it wants are gone.

For every 1% drop in ownership rate that translates to 1 million new renters. Demographics are everything. There would have to be a world level event that would have to impact nearly everything for it to be a real threat. Understanding the demographics and interpreting the data opens up tremendous opportunities.

Multifamily real estate over the any period over three years has the greatest risk adjusted return of any direct ownership asset class. One of Chad’s principles is evidence based investing and that’s why multifamily is his asset of choice.

  • Chad’s Takeaway

Learning how to be a successful multifamily real estate investor is not like becoming a doctor. Commitment is the major difference. If you tried it before and didn’t succeed, chances are your commitment was less than 100%. If you get to that level of commitment, nothing will stop you. You will find the gaps you need to make progress. Find out what your gaps are, find out what the ecosystem is, and find out how you can learn it all and go from there.

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