Episode 43: Inside Experts: Multi Family Real Estate Investing W/Evan Curtis

Welcome to the 43rd episode of the Self-Employment Success Podcast. My guest on today’s podcast is Evan Curtis. Evan is the Executive Director of Investments at Vanamor Investments, a real estate investment company that acquires middle market multifamily properties that are in need of rehabilitation with a long term investment horizon to obtain consistent cash flow and strong annual returns for their investors. In this episode Curtis shares his story from working at PIMCO in their fixed income and real estate investment business, to transitioning to working in multi-family real estate investing in a large corporate environment, to eventually making the jump to start Vanamor with its founder when the real estate market began to cool down in late 2022/early 2023. Evan explains the stark difference moving from working in a large corporate environment into an entrepreneurial start up environment and how he has experienced an abundance of support from other entrepreneurs, along with the challenges that come from wearing new hats in the business as they grow their small team. In this episode we also talk in depth about the real estate market and how real estate investing can be an incredible opportunity for many people as both an investment and tax tool. Evan shares how now is a unique time when folks should be paying attention to real estate as it has become a great time for buyers and investors. And be sure to listen to the end as Evan explains how he defines success to include caring for his investors and providing them with an above average experience. So with that introduction I hope you enjoy this episode of the Self-Employment Success Podcast with Evan Curtis. 

Links:

PeaceLink Financial Planning LLC

Transcript:

Leland Gross (00:03)

All right, welcome Evan Curtis to the Self-Employment Success Podcast. We're excited to have you here today.

Evan Curtis (00:09)

Thanks Leland, appreciate you having me on.

Leland Gross (00:11)

Yeah. Evan, I'm excited for you to be here, to hear both your kind of story as well as to dive into your expertise in real estate and that as an awesome entrepreneurial opportunity and investment opportunity just in general. But let's start off, why don't you tell the listeners about yourself, who you are, where you're located and kind of your story of kind of where you've landed today and where you are today.

Evan Curtis (00:40)

Sure, happy to do that. So my story is based in Southern California where I am currently located and I have been in the finance and real estate space for roughly 19 years now. Started my career at a company called PIMCO out headquartered in Newport Beach. Did a couple roles across my 12 year experience there. So kind of in the fixed income multi-strat.

account management side for half the time and half the time on the product side, focusing on private equity and hedge fund real estate related products. So was really fortunate kind of somewhat early in my career to be able to be on teams that were raising multi-billion dollar funds and deploying it across a very diverse mandate, public private debt and equity, US and Europe.

That really helped set a foundation of understanding all the various pieces of real estate and how dislocations can happen in one space that impact other areas that may be unintended consequences. So I had a really good time at PIMCO and starting my career and worked with a ton of really smart people. Moved over to another company that was a diversified residential real estate company that...

and I had a few different areas. I was leading the investor relations function there where we were managing roughly 200 million in funds. But I was also part of the commercial multifamily value add team. We were acquiring assets in Dallas, Fort Worth. So we acquired roughly 2,500 units over about a five-year period there. And it was really interesting to be able to help kind of.

build that portfolio from the ground up on a very small team, but with strong support from other individuals across the firm. I was always making my way further and further in and towards the real estate space to ultimately do something on my own or join a much smaller firm and was waiting for the right market opportunity as well as personal circumstances to line up.

It's always the combination of those two lining up, which seems to make things difficult. But I felt the time was right at early 2023, late 2022 when we had seen kind of a clear inflection point as far as valuations in the real estate market. So the market opportunity section was lining up for me. And I think on the personal side, it's always just a leap of faith to go to a much more entrepreneurial space.