Today we’d like to introduce you to Lauren Belz.
Hi Lauren, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
It is amazing how one event can change the course of your life! It was the Fall of 2017 and Robert and I were recently engaged and planning for our upcoming wedding.
As a military family, we were new to the area and had lived in our Kaysville home for only a few months. A good friend invited us to spend Thanksgiving dinner with him and his family. He recently started investing in real estate and recommended we read “Rich Dad Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki. Not a week later, we both finished the book and were hooked! 90 days later, we purchased our first single-family home rental in the Avenues.
Since that first purchase, we have grown to 23 units in downtown Salt Lake City. Over the past five years, we have learned that quality, comfortable, affordable places to live are hard to find in the city.
Our strategy has been focused on buying older properties in need of hands-on ownership and bringing these buildings back to their former prime. It is quite rewarding to transform an old building and turn it into a community asset that any neighborhood can be proud of.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Of course not, but that is part of the adventure. Owning one single-family home is quite different from being the owner-operator of 23 apartment units in the Salt Lake area. The added complexity of syndications and joint ventures means that we are not just accountable to ourselves, but to the people that have entrusted us with growing their hard-earned money as well.
The difficulty comes with balancing this responsibility along with the commitments of my W-2 job, Robert’s active duty commitment, and most importantly, our three beautiful children. We have only recently begun to overcome this by relying on others for help. For example: as managing accounting books became a full-time job, we hired a bookkeeper. As lawn care grew to become a full-time job, we hired lawn care. As social media’s time commitment grew, we hired a social media content creator.
The question we continuously ask ourselves is, “Who can do this job better than I can so that I can focus on growing our business?”
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Belz Living?
Simply put, we are real estate syndicators in the Salt Lake City area. We look to provide industry-leading returns to our investors by purchasing value add properties and transforming them into places people want to live. I never expect people to live in a space I am not willing to live in. As such, we go to great lengths to diligently take care of all of our spaces.
I am most proud of creating and maintaining affordable and quality spaces with industry-leading property management. We treat both our investors and residents like family and go out of our way to accommodate them.
As far as roadblocks we encounter… we strive to keep pushing through. We recently started working hard to create and promote our brand. We want to teach people that anyone can start investing in real estate. There is a sense of pride that comes with ownership and we want to lead by example with our properties. I am proud of the spaces Belz Living has created and I want our residents to be proud to call our spaces their homes.
What would you say has been one of the most important lessons you’ve learned?
Get out of your comfort zone… it means you’re growing!
As my husband and I scraped our pennies together to come up with the 25% down payment for our first single-family home investment, I was terrified. Now I look at flipping single-family homes without a second thought. When we bought our first multifamily apartment (a triplex), again, we were both terrified. Discouraging thoughts almost kept us from closing on the building. In fact, after expressing our fears to our lender, he helped educate us on creative ways to close the deal by utilizing more than just the cash in our bank account.
This familiar fear crosses my mind every time we strive to elevate our business. Robert and I deliberately overcome this by going on a “date night” to speak about our concerns, ensuring we have a comprehensive plan to address and overcome each concern and keep forging ahead.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://belzliving.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/belz_living/
Image Credits
Colton Marsala and Urban Revival Staging
