Welcome to the Purpose Driven Investor, where we build more than portfolios, we build communities. I'm your host, Robert Howell, a real estate investor and founder of Define Communities. Each week, we'll explore how purpose and profit connect through affordable housing, land home packages, and impact-driven investing. If you're a lender, land seller, or a partner who believes money should move with meaning, you're in the right place. All right, welcome to the Purpose Driven Investor Podcast. Today, we have Arn on the call and really excited to hear from Arn. He's a wealth of experience, 48 years plus in real estate, former Silicon Valley broker and investor, founder of Spark, 968 GP units at value of over $127 million. and LP in 500 units. He's a local expert in South Carolina and across the country really. So Arn, what I want to do today is first we'll start with kind of your origin story and kind of how you transitioned to Greenville, but Let's talk first, I read your bio and of course we know each other and we've talked a little bit in the past, but I'd love to learn a bit about how you grew up in the family business and real estate in California, and then we'll transition over Yeah, sure. Robert, always a pleasure. Thanks for having me on and looking forward to having a nice chat with you. Hopefully, your listeners will get some value out of it. I actually fell into real estate by accident. There was no grand plan. Like a lot of kids in America, parents stress the value of education, work hard in school, do well. I kind of did all that, ended up with a master's in chemistry from the University of Michigan. And my dad had remained in the Bay Area where I grew up. And at a certain point, I kind of figured out academia and research wasn't for me. I wanted to return to the Bay Area. So I called my dad. He said, well, come on out, get your license, and I'll put you to work. I really had very little idea about what the business was like, but that's how I got started as a real estate broker. And in Menlo Park, Palo Alto, California. And of course, it's turned out to be probably one of the best real estate markets in the world. And so I certainly benefited from watching Silicon Valley take off. When I was a kid, Libby Can Food Company was the biggest employer in Santa Clara County. So it was really an agricultural community, apricot orchards, things like that. And to see it transform to Silicon Valley was fairly amazing. That's awesome. I imagine that was some great experience. And so how many years did you work with your family business in Yeah. So I worked with my father from the age of 24 to 40. So that would have been about 16 years. And then I felt like I needed to go on my own. So, I went to Cornish and Gary and then Coldwell Banker and worked probably another 20 years under those brokerages. My dad eventually relocated to Charlottesville, Virginia, probably around the 2000 time period, maybe 1995. So, one of the things that we... He was a little different. I'm always surprised how few real estate agents and brokers actually invest in real estate. Seems like you know the market, you have leads on these properties, should be a natural transition to investing. And my father was unusual in that he was a very active single family home investor. And so I kind of followed in his footsteps. And when I first got in the business back 1978, you could actually buy a house in the San Francisco Bay Area that might make sense for rental. That's no longer the case now. I would say price is probably 10x to 15X in the 30 years I was in as a broker in Menlo Park. Was fortunate to get into Austin, Texas about 2000. And of course, I think most of us know the Austin market's been pretty well. So kind of followed in his footsteps, became a single family property investor. And that's what I own a few smattering single families, two to four unit properties in the Greenville market. So I no longer own anything in Texas or California. I'm a big believer in local real estate knowledge and being able to keep track of your properties. I think that's important. So at this point, I operate as a sponsor for syndicated multifamily deals. The smaller deals often we joint venture with five or six of my partners. And then I still have a smaller portfolio of individually owned properties. And I think there's place in anybody's portfolio for a variety of type investments. They all have their pluses and minuses. So, yes, I still enjoy my small rental properties. Happy to have them. That's great. All right. So lots of success in California and in Austin, it sounds like what It wasn't anything to do with real estate. My life partner, Laura, had a big tech career in Silicon Valley, worked for Intel, Visa, and Intuit. Not that she was a techie, but she worked for those companies, and that was a great experience for her. We were just ready for something different, and we kind of got on to the Carolinas. back in 2012, took about a two week trip here. We kind of thought we were going to move to Charlotte, but then on a chance meeting with somebody in Asheville, we found, we heard about Greenville. Took us about two years to get back. rolled in on Easter Sunday, I remember it, 2014, drove down Main Street and we started to cry because it was exactly what we kind of had in our vision of what we wanted. And six months later, we moved here November, 2014. And I think if I remember, we actually rolled into Greenville the first time on November 18th. So it's been 11 years and a day. All the energy and positive momentum we saw 10, 11 years ago in Greenville has continued, if not getting stronger. So I think it's hard for people to understand what a dynamic place this is, both as a place to live, but also a place to live, to start a career and things like that. So there's a lot to like about it. We've been really happy with That's awesome. Yeah, so what's your opinion on what's really driven Greenville and really the upstate region to become the number one emerging multifamily market Yeah, so one big distinction from coming from the San Francisco Bay Area where government tends to look at private for profit enterprise as the enemy, right? They're capitalists and they're bad. I think in Greenville, we've had political leadership where the government understands they have a role in shaping the overall vision of what they want Greenville City Greenville County to become, but there's also a recognition, you actually need private enterprise private for profit enterprise to drive it. And so I think that public public-private partnership has been very strong. We have a manufacturing base with BMW and Michelin GE. And I think clearly we're a model for maybe a lot of the rest of the country that dearly needs manufacturing to kind of provide good solid jobs for middle-income people. And then I would say proximity to Charlotte and Atlanta right on the I-35 corridor is big. We know logistics and transportation are huge. And then the other thing, it's a pretty nice place to live. The downtown's great, but you got the mountains and you got outdoor activity. So I think you put it all together, it's kind of a nice mix. And I think the trends that brought us here will continue to attract people from other areas of the country in business. So I think it will continue. And certainly with growth, There can be problems and difficulties. And so I understand some people who have maybe been here for a long, long time may have some problems with some of the growth. I guess my only response would be what I've seen is it's very hard to maintain equilibrium. Either an area is growing and prospering, or it's slowly declining. And if I had to choose between decline and prospering, I would choose prospering. So I like the trajectory Right. Right. Yeah. And, you know, you hear a lot of those, the people that have lived in a place for a long time, sometimes aren't happy with progress, but you know, the app, like you said, the opposite of progress is decline. Right. And I think, you know, if you put it in that perspective, I'd say a majority of people, if not a hundred percent of the people would want to live in a state of Yes. And I understand the feeling, trust me, the San Francisco Bay Area has undergone tremendous change in my lifetime. What it was when I was a little boy at 10 is not what it is today when I'm at the age of 70. So there's been progress there. So I understand the feelings that they wish things would remain the same. So it's not being critical of those folks. It's just recognition. I understand where they're coming from. And I've experienced myself Well, let's talk about next how you built Spark Investment Group and how you transitioned from single family to multifamily. So the way I understand it, you founded Spark in OK, and what drove you to move from single family to multifamily syndications? Yeah, like some Yeah, that's a great question. So. You know, the Greenville real estate community is fairly tight knit. And I think most of us understand, especially when you get to the commercial investment side of real estate. Unlike single family, where you can find everything on MLS, commercial, industrial office, multifamily, it's kind of more driven by networking, word of mouth, and the connections you build in the community. So when COVID hit, I remember it to the day, March 2020, middle of the month, and this was about the time we started to understand COVID was a big F deal. A local investor friend of mine who had started in multifamily called me and said, hey, Arn, what do you think is going to happen with rent collections? And I said, well, I don't know, Mario. I got my March rent. Call me April 5th, and I'll let you know if I got my April rent. And at the end of the call, he goes, I've got a podcast that I want you to listen to. And it was a podcast about multifamily. And I listened to it, and a light bulb went off in my head. And so I started educating myself. It wasn't until May of 2021 that I did my first deal. But I think the rationale behind multifamily is, one, most of us understand housing availability, housing affordability is a major issue in Greenville as it is through the rest of the country. And so what are some of the most affordable options for housing available for people, multifamily? And I know you do a lot in the mobile home space. So those are two areas where people can obtain affordable housing and there's a strong demand for it. There's lots of people that need affordable housing and they're not building any more affordable housing, right? The new apartments that go up in Greenville, they're 2,500, 3,000 a month rent for a two bedroom. So one, the affordability, the strong demand, and then the other part of it is Often, single family is kind of a solitary experience. Yes, maybe you have a broker, maybe you have a property manager. But with multifamily, the deals are big enough that you can partner with people. who have skills and ability you don't have or I don't have. And so I was fortunate enough to partner with Brian Walsh of Progressive Properties at Greenville and another California expat who lives up in Raleigh, Durham. Dan Raleigh. And Brian does a great job operating the assets. It's not necessarily my forte. I like to find the deals, talk to investors, raise the capital. But I needed a partner that could actually run the nuts and bolts, collecting the rents, managing the repairs. I mean, as you know, property management, is a full-time thing and you need to do it right. And then Dan was kind of the spreadsheet guru, great with numbers. He had a career as a CFO. So the team kind of came together and now we've got the skill sets we need. And so the partnership and the team aspect appeals to me. And I don't know about you, but I think it's more fun when you have friends along for the ride and you have some kind of teamwork and camaraderie and multifamily allows that. So those are a couple of reasons. And then I think the other is, it's really nice having, if you own a 30 unit building, It's great to have 30 little income producing units all in the same spot. You don't have to drive all over Greenville County. And one of the things that happens is typically in an apartment, you maybe only have one or two floor plans. And for all you guys out there that have flipped houses or done renovations, you always know the first time you go into a house, it's like you're starting from scratch. But with multifamily, since the units are often identical, kind of once you remodel one, you know what you need to do. It may take you four days the first time, but when you do that unit two, it's three days and you know how much countertop you need. You know what cabinets you need to order. So there's a real systemization of upgrading these units, rinse and repeat. The crews get faster, means less labor cost. You can buy in bulk. Like I think we use I think Brian works with Lowe's. There's kind of a volume discount. So you buy and discount. So there's lots of ways you can scale and save money and multifamily that might not Love that. Yeah, that's, that's, that's huge to have that scale. So talk to me a bit about the mind, uh, the mindset shift that you needed to scale. I mean, you've clearly had huge growth in the last four or five years. What kind of mindset shift did you have to take to say, okay, I'm going from the single family. And not only are you going from single family to multifamily, but you're going to a lot of multifamily and you have really scaled to quite a few complexes in a short period Yeah, that's a great question. Back when the multifamily market was hot, let's say 2019, 2020, the gurus would say, go big as fast as you can. I don't necessarily subscribe to that philosophy. I actually think kind of a systematic growth is the better way to do it. You build a more solid foundation. You buy six units. You buy 12 units. Make sure you know how to do that. You jump up to 30. You find the right teammates that handle the load. You can then do 40. And so the scaling was done systematically. as I gained confidence and kind of real world experience recognizing we could do this. And I would say my partners are a huge part of this. I do my thing, but without him, without them, the whole scaling wouldn't work. So find the right partners that helps you scale, but do it in a systematic way. I think the other thing I would say is, I've always been in residential, albeit single family, and now I've jumped to multifamily, but it's still residential. It's not like I'm developing shopping centers or office buildings. They're generally 30, 40, 50-unit buildings, one, two-story garden-style apartments. The construction's very similar to single-family. It wasn't like I had to jump to a whole new asset class. It was just more a variation on the theme. Slowly, we've built a portfolio. We haven't sold any of our assets we bought over the last four or five years, because one, we get fixed rate debt. They're all performing. They're all cash flowing. Not a great time to sell. But over the next couple of years, we'll be faced with decisions to either refinance or sell. And so I'm looking forward to that to see what the market does. Build slowly, find good partners who have skills that you don't have. but that have high character and look at investing big picture the same way. I can say Dan, Brian and I are all kind of fundamentally long-term buy and hold investors. So we have the same overall approach and I think that's important. A partnership where one guy's a long-term buy and hold and one is somebody who wants to turn their portfolio every two years, it's just not gonna work. Not saying one's better than the other. It's just kind of find your niche, find partners, and Love it. Give us a high level of overview Yeah, and I'll stay to the assets that Spark and Brian Walsh and Dan are lead sponsors. So of those 1,000 units, I would say 500 or 600 of them are where I have co-GP role, which basically means I don't have much day-to-day authority. I keep in touch. We communicate. But there's a lead sponsor that makes the decisions. So we are very strongly Greenville County focused. So about all of our assets, I'd say we own 8 to 10 properties. They're typically going to be 20 to 40 units. They're all in Greenville County, though we do own one in Lyman and one in Easley. So it's Greenville County, maybe a little outside. The big determinant is we don't want to have to get on 85 from downtown Greenville to People may laugh about that, but it's true. So the Easley stuff, which is out by the silos, we go down 123 Lyman, we go out 29. And that's primarily at the request of Brian because he's got a team and they're based in Greenville County. So that's what we do. Within that geographic thing, we own everything from 1970s product to brand new BTR duplex projects. For us, we're open to age. It's more just the geography that's the critical component. Again, as I say, most of them are 12, 16, 18, 28, 30, 43. We put together a portfolio of 96, but it was three different properties. And we're currently in contract for 28 units across two properties. So we like the smaller properties. We're happy to fix them up. But if we can find some new product where the numbers make sense, we're happy to That's great. I think that, I think the fact that majority and sounds like all except for two are in Greenville County is really powerful, not only from a management standpoint, but also future value to Yeah. And so, um, So I wouldn't recommend somebody buying 20 units in Charlotte, 30 in Winston-Salem, 40 in Atlanta. So if you're going to do the smaller stuff, it does have to be geographically concentrated. You can use the same vendors, HVAC, Landscape, electricians. Brian has an in-house crew that takes care of most of it. And the other thing is, you really know the market. So when we go in to look at a building, we don't have to go to CoStar to determine what the rents are. We own enough assets that from our own experience, we see something, we know the location, we understand it, we know what the rents are. We can quickly assess, are they under market? Is there room to bump them up? And or, well, if we fix them up, what can we bump them up to? So I think the local knowledge is big, and everybody understands Real estate is very much block by block by block, right? You could be in a certain area and it's really vibrant and growing. You could go a half mile down the road and it can be totally a different story. And I don't think you understand that unless you kind of really live here and you kind of understand it. So yes, we really believe strongly in the local knowledge. And for Spark, Greenville County is 500,000 people. I think there's maybe 100 unit or less apartments in the total county. So it's not a huge universe of properties that we may be interested in, but we're okay. We're okay buying two or three a year. We don't have any big goal to blow it up and 10x it and Grant Cardone it. We just want to do quality, buy good deals when we can find them, and slowly build the portfolio, and most importantly, do well for our investors. I know you work with investors too. When somebody is going to trust you with their money, That's an awesome responsibility. To me, they're putting their name, they're putting their money with me. I got to jump through hoops and go through walls to make sure it all works out. So when you're working with other people's money, you really got to know what you're doing. And I guess to investors out there, I would recommend find your niche. and really focus on that niche. Just don't jump from one thing to another. I think the way you really get ahead is find your lane, find something you're good at that fits your skill set, and then just keep working that over, and just rinse and repeat that. So I see people try to flip a house, and then they want to go buy a six unit, and then they're doing something else. I think if you find your niche, really work it hard, and Can you talk, you mentioned passive investing and time freedom. I think I read in one of your bio that you really like to help busy professionals break free. Can you talk about how you do that through your syndications and what type of people you've worked with to invest in some of your Yeah, so what I would say, first of all, most people understand real estate's a good thing. It's a good thing to own real estate. When we go to Thanksgiving parties and Christmas parties, I What did that house? Did you see that house that sold for a dollar? So people instinctively know real estate's a good thing, but they also understand it's time-consuming to manage, They may not have the expertise or experience of dealing with tenants and repairs. And that's a skill you develop over time. So what I find is there are a lot of people who want to invest in real estate, but they're a little afraid because they're not sure they know how to operate it. Or frankly, they just don't have the time to do it. They're working 50 hours a week. Then they've got kids soccer and the whole bit. What we offer people is the chance to invest in real estate without the headaches of the day-to-day responsibilities. In return for that, they get cash flow and the majority share in the profits. How did that all develop is, I think you just start letting people know what you're doing within your social and professional sphere. hey, I'm just starting to look at multifamily or mobile homes, whatever it happens to be. Or, hey, I just bought these six units here and this and that. And you just share with your social and professional sphere what you're doing. And in my experience, simply by sharing people will raise their hand and they'll go, hey, Robert, that sounds great. Next time you get a deal, let me know. So you start educating the people, let them know what it is. It's not about, hey, you got 25,000, you can invest with me. Just share what you're doing. They'll kind of self-identify. And then we send out monthly newsletters. When we get a deal, we do webinars and things like that. I'm active on social media. So I think it's kind of, all in above approach. And slowly, you'll build your network of people who have the capability to invest. And then what we found is once you prove yourself to somebody, One, they're probably going to be a repeat investor. And I would say in our deals, probably 50% to 60% of all investors are repeat investors. And they'll refer you to their friends. So it takes on a life of its own. You do well by one person, they're going to let their circle know about it. And A lot of our investors are local, though they're spread across the country. But for people local here to Greenville, they see for themselves what's going on. They know this area is going. And so it's just a matter of bring in the opportunity to them where they can invest, but not have the hassles of dealing with real estate. As we both know, occasionally stuff happens, and you got to deal with it, and it's no fun. But we take that load off people. And so I think most of them really That's great, love it. All right, listen, I have two rapid fire questions for you, maybe three here, and then we'll conclude. But tell me, what's the biggest lesson learned in the 48 years that you've been doing real I would say the biggest lesson learned is to trust your gut and intuition. It's that little voice in the back of your head that's maybe telling you something. Learn to trust that because usually what it's saying is correct. So learn to trust your gut and intuition. Yes, about people and You talk yourself into it, right? You're like, I shouldn't have talked myself Yeah. When we look at a property, Brian and I go in, this sounds stupid, but we get a tingle. We look at something and instinctually we just kind of go, hey, this is good. And so there's kind of a visceral reaction. So pay attention to that. It's not Love that. All right. Next question is, what's your number For me, it would be honesty and communication. So it's old school, but say what you mean. do what you say, because I built my business both as a broker and now as a syndication sponsor, people can trust me. They believe what I'm saying. So I think to the degree you can build that trust and you build trust by doing what you say, that will Love it. Love it. All right, last question for you. What excites you most about Greenville in the next 10 years, maybe 20 years? What Well, I just want to kind of continue on this ride. You know, when we first looked at Greenville, we could tell it was booming. And I think the booms even kind of accelerated. So it'll be interesting to see how the area develops over time. And kind of what I see is the growth is emanating out from Greenville, south to Warrens, out west to Easley. I think we all know the area between Greenville and Spartanburg around GSP is totally blowing up. So it'll be interesting to see how the development continues, but I think the growth of the region is going to continue, and That's great. Well, Arn, I really appreciate you joining us here on the Purpose Driven Investor Podcast. Can you Yeah, so I'm active on social media, either under Arn Cenedella or Spark Investment Group. Website is investwithspark.com and just reach out, happy to talk real estate. And if you need any help getting your investing career going, I'm happy to help too. I'm meeting somebody tomorrow down at the commons, a young guy who wants to get started. So we're always Thanks for listening to The Purpose Driven Investor. If today's episode sparked an idea or inspired you to make an impact, connect with me at howellandsons.com. Join our community of purpose-driven investors who are helping families find stable homes while building real returns. Because when