For Adam and Jason Coatney-Schuler, home is where the history is. Although both hail from the Dayton, Ohio area, Jason traveled the world after graduating college, while Adam followed the path of the family profession, attending veterinary school at Ohio State University.
Today, Adam and his sister, both veterinarians, share their father’s practice, which they took over following his retirement in 2010. Meanwhile, Jason, a self-described homemaker, became deeply involved in the rehabilitation, maintenance, and upkeep of their restored historic home in the heart of Dayton — just one factor in the couple’s shared passion for real estate investing.
Adam and Jason Coatney-Schuler were introduced by a mutual friend after Jason’s return to Ohio. It was around the time of the 2008 housing market crash that the couple decided to merge their lives together.
Instead of trying to sell their respective properties during the downturn, they decided to rent them out. This was their first foray into active real estate investing.
“We only had two houses, but we managed everything ourselves,” Jason explained. “At the time, I was actively selling real estate and I was a choral director for a local chorus that was taking up a considerable amount of my time. So every time there was a problem with one of the houses — and they were aging houses — it was up to us to fix them. But then it came to a point where it was like, we don’t really want these on our books.”
As for the passive side of things, Adam and Jason Coatney-Schuler are still pretty new to exploring what the investment strategy can offer. However, unlike many real estate investors, their stint managing single-family properties is not what ultimately led them to real estate investing as a retirement plan.
In fact, it was a self-employment IRA held by the family veterinary clinic, which Adam and his sister have maxed out, Adam explained. The couple’s hands as investors were tied.
“That IRA, right now, is with a portfolio management that invests in the stock market and such, and that’s been fine,” Adam said. “But they didn’t really have a lot of other options of what we could invest in. So that led us to start thinking about other avenues for investing.”
Jason began to research passive income. First via YouTube, then continuing to grow with podcasts, their increasing interest in real estate just so happened to align with their eligibility for more exclusive investment opportunities.
“We found out that we had just become accredited investors,” Adam said. “Our salary got us there, but our net worth was getting close as well. It worked out that around the same time we started to develop an interest in real estate investing, we discovered we had just qualified the previous year.
“It’s interesting because it’s a relatively small percentage of people, in this country anyway, who even know about real estate investing. Everyone just kind of assumes that an IRA or a 401(k) is what you do and they just do it. And that’s what we had done for the past 18 years,” Adam reflected. “We’re fortunate that we found out about real estate investing and that we got to the point where we have the capital to start investing.”
Accredited and armed with capital, Adam and Jason Coatney-Schuler have been able to access new, passive investment opportunities, including their first multifamily investment fund.
“We only have one passive income investment, which we started this year,” Adam said. “But each year we’re going to have some capital to continue investing.”
“For us, the appeal of passive investing is that, while you do a lot of your work upfront when you’re vetting and trying to decide who to invest with, once you invest, you don’t have to do a lot after that. You just watch and see how the investment’s doing.”
Continuing on their path of diversification, the couple has not completely ruled out active real estate investing as a possibility.
“The thought has occurred of possibly getting back into the active side of real estate investing, but doing it very differently,” Adam added. “We would do it in a more passive way by having someone else do the day-to-day management — probably selecting something akin to a vacation home that we have a property management group handle, so it pays for itself.”
Whether they’re investing passively, actively, or a mix of both, the couple does so with early retirement in mind.
About the Author:
Leslie Chunta is a marketing consultant with nearly 15 years of experience in creating dynamic marketing programs and building brands for startups to enterprise organizations. She has worked agency- and client-side with high-growth companies that include Silicon Valley Bank, JPMorgan Chase, SailPoint, EMC, Spanning Cloud Apps, Ashcroft Capital, Netspend, and Universal Studios. www.thelabcollective.com
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this blog post are provided for informational purposes only, and should not be construed as an offer to buy or sell any securities or to make or consider any investment or course of action.