Caleb Harwell went from making $45K a year as a bank teller, watching clients collect that same amount every single month in rent, to building $3M+ luxury spec homes in Atlanta's most sought-after neighborhoods. In this episode, he breaks down how he and his brother went from fix-and-flips to high-end new construction, why he walked away from a custom home deal that could have made him an extra $200K, and how he's using spec builds as a capital engine to fund long-term commercial real estate wealth.
Episode 16: Opportunities, Spec Homes, and Thinking Bigger with Caleb Harwell
Most people see an opportunity and overthink it. Others take the shot and figure it out as they go. Save to Zero hosts Mike and Zach sit down with real estate investor Caleb Harwell to hear how he started his business with curiosity and connection. While working at a bank, he noticed investors making in a month what he was making in a year, and instead of ignoring it, he started asking questions.
That simple move opened the door to everything that came next.
Caleb shares how he went from buying single-family rentals to flipping houses, building new construction, and developing high-end spec homes in some of Atlanta’s most established neighborhoods. He talks openly about learning on the job, taking smart risks, and leaning on mentors, masterminds, and real-world experience to move faster.
You’ll also hear the difference between working with outside builders and bringing more of the process in-house, why “who not how” matters when you want to grow, and how Caleb thinks about the future.
“If I see a shot and an opening, I’m going for it. At the end of the day, we’re all gonna die. Go for it.”
“It’s not what I like. It’s what the market wants and what the market likes.”
“I want experiences, I want moments, different cultures, different foods. That’s way cooler to me than a Ferrari or a Rolex.”
“The ultimate success is being able to turn your phone off.”
Caleb Harwell is a real estate investor and developer. He started off in residential buy-and-hold rental properties and has grown into commercial investing and high-end spec home builds across Georgia.
Caleb is a small-town guy with worldwide dreams and goals. Faith, family, and freedom.
Find Caleb Harwell on Instagram
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[00:00.1]
There's always something. You know what I'm saying? And in construction, there's always problems and there's always solutions, and you gotta find workarounds and you gotta be okay with that and expect that, you know, if I didn't, I would be pulling my hair out all the time, every day.
[00:16.0]
But you kind of roll with the punches, man. You know, you start to kinda get used to that. But it has its challenging days. No doubt about it. Most people think saving money is the answer, but the truth is, saving only gets you to zero. Join As they flip the script from saving to earning, from zero to unlimited potential.
[00:38.8]
Welcome to Save to Zero. Hey, everybody. Welcome to episode number 16 of the Save to Zero podcast. I got my buddy Caleb Harwell here out of Georgia. I know Caleb is older than he looks.
[00:54.2]
I keep calling him a kid and he's not a kid. He corrected me one time. But to me, he's a kid. He's a great guy. You're going to enjoy this conversation. He is a real estate investor. Started out fixing and flipping and, holding.
[01:10.3]
And now he is into developing spec homes and commercial and they are doing some gorgeous stuff. I always watch his stuff in, on Facebook and I'm like, man, I wish I lived down there just to buy that house. That's a beautiful flipping house these guys are doing. They really are nice. Come on down.
[01:27.3]
Oh, thank you. Thank you. So, Caleb, tell us what you got going on. Just, tell us a little bit about your background. Yeah, yeah, that's a good. A good overlay there. Yeah. Started off buying and holding. Used to work at a bank.
[01:44.0]
Based in Georgia. Originally from small town, Dublin, Georgia. Shouts out to the hometown, but live in Atlanta now. But yeah, started out working in a bank and doing, start out as a teller, but then worked eventually to lending and, just saw people with rental portfolios and I was like, man, you know, I'm making $45,000 right here.
[02:08.4]
This guy's making 45,000 every 30 days. You know, I was like, I'm looking at the other guys there. I'm like, don't y'. All. Don't y' all want to know a little bit more about this? And they're just like, you know, just do the loan, clock out at 5 and go home. And, nah, I wanted to know more.
[02:24.7]
So I just kind of started picking those guys brains, taking them to lunch and dinner, and they were very kind, very. Some of my first mentors. And, yeah, that was like 2000 and probably 15. My brother got onto Grant Cardone.
[02:40.8]
We started looking at that. He was living in Atlanta and kept pushing me to get out of banking and lending and get more into real estate. So eventually bought a first house, $54,000 house, put $5,000 into it, was freaking out, you know, thinking oh man, what if this goes wrong? What's going to happen?
[02:59.5]
And it's so funny looking back now, you know, it's like a third of a cabinet bill that we'll have on a house. But yeah, rented that house for $650 and nice, you know, had a, had a low payment and just like barely making like 150 bucks a month.
[03:18.2]
Like you know, if a hinge fell off a door I was negative, you know, cash flow. But very young learning it all and kept buying more and, and riding that Good timing of real estate. You know timing is everything. And very blessed with that.
[03:34.9]
That was outside of my control there and just good timing. But built up a small portfolio, left there, moved to Atlanta, sold off a few to bridge that gap. Took a big leap of faith, left everything. I was comfortable and complacent and family and free place to stay and started renting and first couple years up here did a lot of door knocking work with my brother.
[03:59.4]
He was flipping houses at the time. I joined in with that with him. Got my real estate license to supplement that. Right. Also advantageous on the investment side and played Mr. Realtor for the last, the next four or five years which also helped on the vesting but still kept flipping houses.
[04:19.5]
And got went from flipping to new construction solely. It's just way easier, more lucrative and just kind of natural progression and but yeah we do, we've Man, it's kind of crazy. In some instances it feels like it's been 15 years and in some instances it feels like three, two or three years.
[04:38.7]
And but yeah we do, we do new construction, high end spec homes anywhere from. We got one coming up at 1.8 million to 3.7. 3.8 million. I like that two for here.
[04:54.2]
2, 2, 24 to 3.5 million dollar spec range and these are one off lots in very, very developed, insulated, higher end neighborhoods. These aren't like I'm going to build 15 homes out in some land outside of town and I hope it works.
[05:12.2]
These are you know, 85% of the neighborhoods already turned over and there's not much left and we get lots off market and that's how we mitigate a lot of the risk. I'd say, smart. Love it. Yeah. Learn a lot. Do, do some commercial stuff.
[05:27.4]
Roll, roll a lot of the funds from that into commercial stuff. We've got a climate controlled storage facility. Got an apartment deal. Talk with you, Mike, about. Got an apartment deal. We've got under contract right now. Really, really cool opportunity, student housing and, yeah, man, just all things real estate, you know, learning as we go.
[05:48.5]
A lot of great people. Let me, let me roll back a little bit. You said something that really got my attention. So you're at a bank, you're a teller. You notice that these people are making, a boatload of money with, rentals, you know, in one month, making what you're making in a year.
[06:06.5]
And got to ask you, what motive. What, what was inside you that made you actually ask them the question and invite them to lunch or dinner? Because a lot of people will see that and they get in their own head that this person is above me.
[06:22.4]
I can't talk to them. They have all this money and so on and so forth. What was it in your head that made you say, hey, I'm going to ask him a question, and if he says no, he says no. If he says yes, then I'm going to buy him a dinner and I'm going to learn, man. I, I think there probably was a part of me that thought, man, this guy makes a lot more money.
[06:40.7]
I'm just a little peon. Why would he give me the time? But even to this day, dude, I don't care if I see, if I see a. A shot and opening, I'm going for it. Like, at the end of the day, we're all gonna die, you know, like, you know, go for it, you know, I mean, like, what's the worst that can happen?
[06:56.9]
You get embarrassed and you hurt your ego a little bit, that might be good for you, you know? I was gonna say it probably didn't hurt that you were their loan officer too, right? On some of these deals. So didn't they need something from you? So maybe, maybe they were incentivized to say yes. Hey, dude, you know, regulatory guys out there, There was nothing that went on like that.
[07:15.3]
No, you're right. Yeah. And I will say to these guys, to these guys, to the positive, them, these are these two individuals, really cool guys, really down to earth and like, very nice. And it's, again, it's a small town, everybody knows everybody.
[07:30.9]
I mean, they knew my family. I've Known their family for decades. And so it was, it was an easy thing, man. It wasn't like a big, big thing on my part, so. Okay. But I was intrigued, man. I. I had not really been privy to seeing people making that kind of money.
[07:48.7]
And to me at that time, I was like, man, 50k a month. Like, they weren't just, like, netting that right. I'm not, I'm not talking about, like, yeah, but I'm still. I was like, wow, man. You know, that's. That's unique. Especially in this market, in this town, in this socioeconomic area, like, 50k a month was pretty impressive.
[08:07.7]
Sure. So you started in single family. How did you get trained on that? Is that through mentors? Did you join a Mastermind? Did you YouTube it? How did you get your education on it? All of the above. My brother really pushed me to follow Grant Cardone.
[08:26.4]
And, you know, as polarizing as he is, some people love him, some people hate him. He definitely, helped me just think larger, bigger. I started reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Mark Ferguson's rental portfolio books.
[08:42.6]
I followed him, got into mastermind groups, mentors, like those two individuals. And I would call and just, if they would give me the time, I would ask questions and just learn, YouTube. I, would say books were huge, podcasts were huge.
[09:02.0]
And started eventually going to, like, these 10x growth, con conferences and listening to other guys and networking and just going, man. And then also too, just kind of figuring out, like, in the beginning, I wasn't as close in a lot of masterminds.
[09:17.2]
And you make a lot of mistakes and you either quickly realize or you don't. And you, you know, you get kicked in the butt several times over and over. But, sometimes that happens anyways. But, yeah, I mean, all of the above. You know, I just grabbed everything at my hands. I didn't. I didn't finish college.
[09:32.6]
I tried college, but I dropped out and wasn't my path. But it's never a big fan of school and doing all that stuff, so I like learning in the field. Yeah, I know. For me, I like going to masterminds because what happens is you get around other people who can push you and you see where they are, and you're like, well, wait a minute, she's not any smarter than me.
[09:55.8]
He's not any smarter than me. If they can do it, it's just a matter of they have the directions, they have the path, and they're just going to follow this map and they're going to go There. Well, hell, give me the map. I know how to work. I'm not afraid to work. Somebody follow the map.
[10:10.9]
This isn't rocket science. Yeah, you learn from their mistakes, too. Like, they're. A lot of people are more than willing to explain the things they wish they did differently. And so you're getting their map and the stuff they wish they knew. Absolutely. Yeah. They tell you how to get around the landmines? That's.
[10:27.2]
Yeah, for sure. That's. That's the whole thing, man, is, I think, a big thing. Right. People like to talk about themselves, and so, like, in general. And so if you can. If you can get someone to open up and expect, express and explain, they love that.
[10:42.2]
And the mentoring side, I've done some mentoring with some people, and it's cool, man. Like, you. You got to help others as you were helped. And when you start giving back like that, it's. It's enjoyable. And like you said. Yeah, you help them avoid the landmines, and they help me avoid that.
[10:57.9]
And it expedites the goal, the financial or the life goal timeline. Right. Like, Instead of spending 10 years or seven years, I can spend three or five years and get to here, you know, and that's, That's huge, man. Absolutely. So what made you go into the specs?
[11:17.1]
What was the progression there? Meaning, like, you were in the single family for three years, and then you went to the specs. How long have you been in the specs? And how was that learning how to deal with the building department and everything that's involved with that? So, again, credit to my brother, he was already doing the fix and flips here in Atlanta, like, buying a 350,000 or $300,000 house, putting 40 to 60k in it, and then selling it for, you know, 480 or whatever, like some, you know, something like that, roughly.
[11:49.9]
And, I was being Mr. Realtor, trying to find him, like, deals and stuff like that, and also being a part of that as a investor on the. On the backside of that, taking some of those proceeds from those rental houses I had sold off and just putting it into that and then just watching and like, hey, let's go over the expense sheet.
[12:10.8]
What'd you spend here? Okay. Your framing was this. Paint was okay, like, learning. And, we. We got in contact or got met through our network of agents, guys, who were doing new construction. And this agent was like, hey, y' all should.
[12:26.2]
Y' all should, you know, link up with this guy. And he. He's a builder. He Does a lot of builds. And y' all come from the financing side and, you know, banking, you know, the investment. You've got some capital come together with this builder. And so we did. And we did several with a few different builders, and we did several different structures on different ways to do these builds.
[12:46.5]
And so that was kind of how it was is my brother's got a degree in financing and accounting, and I come from the banking side. Right. And so we have great relationships with a lot of community banks in Georgia, and mainly middle Georgia, getting more around Atlanta.
[13:03.7]
But, we brought that to the table. The capital, the banking relationships, you know, how to negotiate with bankers, you know, and hey, we need this or that off origination or, we want this kind of term or whatever it may be.
[13:18.9]
And so that's how we naturally got into that. And then from there just doing more and more new construction and realizing, oh, man, we can really go fast. It's more lucrative, it's easier. I know the permitting and all that on the front end can be more time sensitive, but, the, just.
[13:37.6]
Man, you work with a lot of fix and flips. You got to work within a confinement of the old home. And it can easily be done. And I still do a few of those on the side that I'll buy and hold. I don't sell them. But yeah, just naturally progress there. And then the dollar figure got higher and higher.
[13:53.9]
And this, you know, 15 or 20% or 30% at 600 or 800,000 is totally different than 3 million, you know. And so, you know, obviously that starts to compress as the dollar figure goes up. But yeah, I mean, that was kind of the natural progression there.
[14:11.2]
So when you're building now, you said that you came together with the builders. Do you have builders that you work with or do you guys have project managers on staff and you're actually managing the whole build from the dirt work all the way up? Great question.
[14:27.7]
So, work with several different builders. We were just the money for years. And we obviously were overseeing expenses and costs and we had budgets and where the investors and the money guys are really good. Right. On the number side, the builders may not be as good.
[14:45.6]
And so we saw. Oh, man, you know, we got tighten up here. There's. We eventually came to the place of where we were paying a builder a per build fee, and we're doing five or six a year. And the fee we were paying him, I was looking at my brothers, man, we could just hire somebody on salary and save a chunk of Money, right?
[15:04.8]
And then we have them in house. We have control. So we. We naturally did that. And, we got an office right here by our house and hired a builder. And we're like, all right, let's go. Let's. We got this. Let's get. We had six projects about to take off.
[15:23.1]
The builder sat around earning a paycheck every two weeks for about. About four or five months, as we had a lot of permitting on. On several projects starting, and we were kind of still finalizing some financing on those. Right before he, Right before we took off on all those, he gave us two weeks notice.
[15:40.8]
And, I was like, man, I saw where you were going with that. I'm like, okay, this isn't going to end well. I can see he's about to hit a wall, man. It was, I was. And I just had my only son, my new child.
[15:58.5]
And I was like, man, what are we about to do? We've got all these projects. We've got commercial projects we're still working on. I've got personal rental stuff I'm still doing. It's just a lot going on. I say, you know what? When he told me that there was something that kind of came over me.
[16:13.9]
I mean, I'm a man of faith. I believe in God. I believe there's a creator behind all of this. And I don't know, man. Honestly, when he told me, I was shocked, but I was just like, all right, let's go. Let's figure. Like, dude, I figured out, yeah, I felt pretty light about it. I was like, okay.
[16:30.4]
And I remember calling Cora as, hey. I was like, so and so just left. Just gave us our two. His two weeks. He's like, what? So I say all that to say we are now 100% doing everything. And honestly, coming from just the investment side to now handling every sub, knowing way more about what we're doing.
[16:54.2]
I really like it. And it mitigates even further waste, you know, cost better, better budgeting, everything. And so I would say once we get through, we're. We got six projects going now. We're about to sell two. Once we sell probably the three of these six we're doing, we're going to hire a project manager.
[17:15.0]
I've been building out a system throughout this whole time. Hey, day one, when we close, you know, here's what you do. You do A, B, C, D. You know, all that I'm building. I'm building the whole chronological thing of I want, like, an eighth grader to be able to pull up a Word document and follow and be able to build these houses, you know, to a degree.
[17:34.6]
And then call me and Corey on the high level stuff. So. So building out systems now, learning way more. I like it. I mean, I like throwing a pair of boots, getting out there, getting dirty, you know. Is that where scale is? No, but, you know, it's okay. I want to know. I want to know the fine details of what I'm doing.
[17:51.7]
It's only going to make us better. So, you know, a little bit of a speed bump, but I think it's also just going to be a great thing long term. So, we are the builders right now. And then we'll have a project manager come in and then our next hire will be probably a lady in the office to do procurement, budgeting and different, like paperwork, office work stuff.
[18:13.0]
We already should have a VA doing a lot of that. But I, have a tough time delegating. And, it's a blessing and a curse. A lot of times it's a curse, but I don't know, man. We'll get there. No, I understand. I do the same thing.
[18:28.6]
I tend to mule stuff and you can't be the mule. You gotta give it out. And I just, I had skimmed over the book a couple times, but I just finished, Dan Martell's, Buy Back youk Time. And now I'm reading, who to do the How.
[18:44.0]
I think that's it. Who, not how. And I'm really focused on those. And once I read it, I came back to my assistant and I said, okay, listen, read these two pages here. This is what's gonna happen. I'm not holding your hand anymore. I'm going to give you the goal and give you the tools to reach your goal.
[19:00.5]
If you have questions, ask me as we go along. But I expect you to problem solve and I'll pay you more money. But I'm not doing this stuff anymore. And she's grabbing it and there are going to be hiccups along the way, but that's how I'm doing it from now on.
[19:16.0]
And I kick myself because when I had my construction company, my best project manager, I was reviewing all of his estimates. And this is a guy who had built multiple houses, but he's new. I'm going to check his estimates. After about 60 days. He said, okay, listen, we have two choices.
[19:32.8]
You either need to stop looking at my estimates or I'm going to quit because I'm not doing this anymore. I said, well, what do you Mean he said I know how to build. Anything you're giving me is minor compared to the amount of time it's slowing this stuff down. I got to go.
[19:48.0]
I got subs lined up and you're looking at the estimate. We're going back and forth with the adjuster. I ultimately it's a pool of money. I'll get it done and we'll get it on budget. That's all you need to worry about. Like, okay. And I let him go and he was my best project manager. He didn't want to be involved.
[20:04.3]
So that goes along with the who. Not how is and buy back your time. Both of them the same premise that you hire good people and get out of their way. Yes. And it's so easy to fall into the oh, this only takes 10 minutes to do. Yeah.
[20:19.6]
But you do it once a week. It's 10 minutes. It's going to take me an hour to show someone how to do it. Yeah. But then multiply that by six months or a year and then you realize how much time you've spent and you still haven't trained the person how to do. Guilty. Yeah, absolutely. I think everyone is. Yeah. Yeah.
[20:35.1]
So, okay, so tell us about commercial. What do you got going on in commercial? So commercial, we've got a climate controlled storage facility. I'm really proud of that. It is in our hometown of Dublin. And we got brought into that deal by two other partners.
[20:54.8]
They had just sold a storage facility to a guy in Milledgeville, Georgia. And they, they had this opportunity under contract. It's at the end of a shopping center like a Kmart shopping center was a mixed use facility, like putt putt gymnastics, whatever.
[21:14.8]
A gym, about 40, 50,000 square feet. And they knew again through network and they said hey here the Harle brothers, Corey and Caleb, they have really good banking relationships. Know how there we know the storage. Let's bring them in.
[21:30.5]
We, they wanted to scale and do two or three or four and so we came involved there. They, they handled all of the, you know, gutting the whole thing, watching over the construction, etc. I don't take any credit for that. Those guys did an amazing job.
[21:48.6]
That took us about a year, maybe a year and two months to get it completely turnkey rolling. And man it's great. We're 90 plus percent occupied. You know that fluctuates here and there and but it's, it's turned out really great.
[22:04.4]
It's a really nice Facility really great, really great, product. We keep it very clean, it's climate controlled. We, me and my brother bought out one of the partners. So now we have a little bit. We have the super majority.
[22:20.2]
There's still one of the partners remaining, but love it. No tenants, no toilets, just, just their stuff, you know. And I like it. I like storage, man. I want to do more of it. We're looking in other markets. Those other partners, they have two other facilities that they did and we're talking with them about some other stuff possibly in the future. But.
[22:43.5]
Yeah, great, great. There. My brother's got student housing in a college town here in Georgia. He's had that for about five years now. We got another one under contract right now. I think it's a really good opportunity. Same market.
[23:00.9]
We already have, project, I mean, excuse me, in house management on the ground there. And so, you know, kind of going to be a plug and play type thing. It's a little bit larger of an asset, for us and, but excited for that.
[23:18.8]
We have a cabin up in North Georgia. I don't know if I'd call it like, I mean, it's a short term rental cabin. It's a family cabin that we have, but it's me and my brothers now and we do short term rentals through it, through a management company. Very hands off. I don't know if you call that commercial maybe, but it's a residential house.
[23:38.0]
But, we've done some land stuff. We've looked at some stuff with Dr. Horton on land banking. We almost did one deal like that, but ended up passing on that. Kind of glad we did. Based on the last 18 months of track builders.
[23:55.1]
But yeah, I mean, we, we're always looking and learning, man, all things real estate. You know, I don't, I don't do Airbnb arbitrage or stuff like that. I don't, you know, I try to stick to my circle of competence and then we, you know, we naturally grow.
[24:10.6]
And I'm not a big fan of like, let me just buy this random apartment complex in Louisiana or wherever I want to be there or I want to at least be very familiar with it. I want to be able to put boots on the ground and know it quite well. Maybe that, maybe that hurts me in the long run.
[24:28.5]
I don't know. But for, at least for now, that's where we are. But yeah, so trying to, use the high inspect building as the capital generator. And then we roll that into, buy and hold forever commercial real estate that hopefully will be here.
[24:44.9]
Multi generational type assets, good depreciation, great cash flow. So have you got timelines built out between you and your brother as to where you want to be at a certain time, say in one, three and five years in terms of we'd like to own, you know, this much in commercial.
[25:03.6]
This much. We want to be doing this many builds. Do you go that far down? We have it on the commercial side, I think we have on the residential spec side, because I think we can kind of extrapolate and underwrite that a little bit more directly.
[25:21.7]
The commercial thing. We both just know we want to get more exposure there. And you know, the storage deal, the apartment deals, those have kind of naturally come to us through different bankers or people we know or networks.
[25:39.3]
And as they come, we'll definitely go. And if all of a sudden it's a year and a half or two years and we've got a lot of capital built up from the residential side and we haven't acquired anything commercial, then we're going to be very aggressive on looking or like trying to develop or find something on the commercial side.
[25:57.6]
I mean, there's not a, there's not a metric or a number we're trying to hit per se, I guess on that. I just, I just know I would like more of that going forward. As well as something with maybe like a business, like a small business or like the blue collar business with Kevin, good friend Kevin Marin, blue collar millionaire.
[26:18.0]
I would like to get more exposure into that. And because that's steady, consistent cash flow, potentially a big exit at some point. I'm actually having dinner with him tomorrow night. But yeah, I would like to get something like that. Because I'm so heavily invested in real estate, I kind of want to hedge more of that.
[26:35.1]
You know, I've got some insurance products and stuff like that, But I would like to hedge a little bit of that for sure into something maybe like a blue collar business. Because I come from a very blue collar town. I know how to chop it up with those guys pretty easily. I like those very hard working, backbone of America type people.
[26:53.5]
But yeah, not a specific number or asset, you know, that we're trying to hit there on the commercial side. Okay, so as far as the blue collar, do you have a specific trade that you're interested in or are you pretty much open to, you know, a profitable business?
[27:14.3]
I'm open, man. As you know, like that windshield business, as you may know, with the windshield business Kevin has out of, a town not far from my hometown, which kind of blew my mind. Who would have thought that's. That's such a great business. And I wouldn't have been thinking, let's look at the windshield business.
[27:32.0]
You know, it's amazing these blue collar businesses that people start. Do you like something as simple, seemingly as windshields, and people are doing super well in them. It's wild. Yeah. Kevin took his gutter business model that was nation, you know, across the nation, and he implemented that, which was a major key into that situation.
[27:48.6]
Otherwise the scale wouldn't have been there. But no, I mean, Mike, not particularly, you know, H vac plumbing, windshield, you know, looked at it. We had dinner with a guy who was cleaning commercial, buildings with drones. You know, drone cleaning, you know, whatever it may be.
[28:04.9]
Interesting. Yeah. He's literally like a huge drone with a big hose and a duct tape and pressure washer to it, essentially. You know, obviously it's mounted, but spraying these big buildings and, dude, it's a great, A great business. I mean, he had really good numbers, a lot of good upside and pool cleaning, whatever it may be, you know, I'm not, I'm not gonna limit it to anything.
[28:28.2]
Again, Kevin being kind of a mentor. Being a. Kind of a mentor there for me on that, that's his area. You know, he's got the blue collar millionaire group and it's done well. And I think he gets a lot of good exposure, insight and deal flow with that. It's intriguing in terms of the, self storage.
[28:47.1]
Do you know Alex Pardo out of Miami? No, I do not. Okay. He was a single family guy and he has in the last couple of years moved into, self storage. And I know that he is actually teaching it. And what we'll have to do is just make a connection for you guys and, you know, you guys take it from there.
[29:06.7]
But he's a very solid guy. I don't know if I just said this, but we've had him on the podcast. He's part of a mastermind that we're in. Yeah, he's a really good guy. I think you guys would connect. He's a serious operator. He's not messing around.
[29:21.9]
He's not gonna take advantage of any situation. Solid, solid guy. So when we get off here, we'll make the connection for you. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, I would love that. For sure. Appreciate that. Good guy. So tell Us. I know that. Well, actually, let me ask.
[29:37.3]
You said that you've got the six and you just had the baby, so you guys have just gone off not too long ago on your own without the builders. Is that right? How long ago was that? I guess I had my child for just a little bit. So he, we hired him in December of 24. Okay.
[29:55.5]
And, I had just had my child November. And then he left us in April of 25. So, yeah, he wasn't about a six month, five month old there. But, yeah, not, not.
[30:10.9]
It's all still very new, you know, very fresh. Sure. Wow. So you're not too far into this, and you seem pretty calm and relaxed about the whole thing. Well, that's, that's because we're, we're sitting here just talking now every day.
[30:28.9]
I mean, I'm sure you guys have seen on the lending side, right? There's just, there's always something, you know what I'm saying? In construction, there's always problems and there's always solutions, and you gotta, you gotta find workarounds and you gotta be okay with that and expect that, you know, if, I, if I didn't, I would be pulling my hair out all the time, every day.
[30:48.9]
But you kind of roll with the punches, man. You know, you start to kind of get used to that. But yeah, it's, it has its challenging days. No doubt about it. Well, I gotta tell you, that's one of the things that I think that would be appealing to me building, spec houses versus when I was in the restoration industry, when you've got somebody in the house because they don't understand all the parts and pieces and they expect it to just come together.
[31:14.5]
And what they'll do is you'll show up, your drywaller shows up and the person says, oh, I forgot you were coming today. Can you come tomorrow? No, he has another job tomorrow. He has jobs for the next two weeks. If he doesn't do it today, it's going to be two weeks before he can get back into there.
[31:34.4]
And now you've thrown off all the other trades that are coming behind him. This is a schedule that we have set up. Well, I don't feel like having him come today. We'll just have to figure it out. And then you get your review. And they say, well, it took too long to finish the job. What do you want me to do? Come on.
[31:50.4]
Yeah, what do you expect? Yeah, I'm putting a puzz together here. And you wouldn't Let me put it together. And you kept one of the pieces, and you don't understand. And. Oh, it drove me batty. Yeah, I'm having stress just thinking about it. That's, interesting. Yeah, it's nice. You don't have the clients with the spec build that want all the customizations, and then, you know, the drywall all goes up, and now they want to move a room around or something like that.
[32:13.1]
Like, it's a little late for that. Yeah, man. Yeah. You know, it's funny. I, That one of the houses I'm building now, I was almost about to drywall. I just finished most of the framing and all the rough electrical and plumbing and all that, and had a neighbor a couple doors over, and they came and they were like, hey, you know, we love this house.
[32:33.7]
Literally, like three houses over. And, I was like, okay. And they're like, would you be interested in, you know, talking about selling? I was like, okay, I'll entertain it. And again, in life, we're always learning. And, I. I, was like, all right, well, here's. They kind of told me what they wanted, and, like, hey, we want to pull.
[32:51.5]
Want to finish the basement. This, not the other. I was like, all right. Got to a number. And they're like, sure, we'll do that. And I was like, okay, great. So there I was thinking, man, I got this locked in. I know my return. You're right. I know 85 to 90% of the remaining numbers on this. Some of those things I can't pinpoint down just yet.
[33:08.6]
But it was so stressful. I had to finish this house out on paper to the T as best I could to try to negotiate with them. Right. And to get this deal. But, I learned quickly, man. They want to change this. They want to change that. Hey, I thought you were going to rock everything, you know, and.
[33:26.5]
But I want to stay at the number. And. Well, hey, that earnest money, we talked about it, you know, can we cut that in half, and then we'll chop up the rest over the next. And I. Dude, it all started. The walls started closing in, and thankfully, I had not signed anything with them. But I had started doing a lot of the changes, like finishing the basement and all that, which was money.
[33:44.7]
But I was like. I finally told us. The guys. I'm sorry. You guys are great people, and I know you love this house, and you're so excited. It was one of the toughest phone calls. The wife was so unhappy with me, but. And I completely understand, but I was like, guys, I gotta let you go. This is it. I'm sorry.
[34:01.0]
Like, it'll be here when it's done, and y' all can come by it. But I can't do it because I don't have a back office team. I don't have, like, templates for all these selections. It's just me, man. And so. And they live across the street. They had no agent. It was them walking over there every day.
[34:17.0]
Like, no, the stress. I don't care if I made an extra 200 grand, dude, the stress is worth it. Stress was not worth it. So I had to kick them. So, yeah, for the foreseeable future, never say never. I will not be doing custom houses for a long time if. If ever.
[34:32.5]
But, yeah, no, I like the freedom. I like to be able to go and make decisions. I don't want to run it across anybody. That was a lesson learned. But at the same time, you must. You obviously got to build a product that people want. So if you don't have, you know, a client guiding what you're building, how are you guys figuring out what you should build on a given piece of land?
[34:52.9]
Great question. So we work with two or three of the top agents in our area. Me as well, having a license as an agent. I work with a lot of buyers and sellers, and I get to hear directly what the market's looking for. And one of the agents we work with, she's the top agent for this area. She.
[35:12.3]
She strictly is, like, in new construction. So we know what's trending, what's hot, what people are looking for. Oh, we want more pantries now or a larger prep kitchen, or, hey, I want a cold plunge and a sauna in my basement. Or, you know, all that stuff. We start to be able. We start to.
[35:28.7]
Can bring that in. And. And that helps us with that. Yes, because otherwise it would just. You'd probably be like, oh, well, I like. I like this. And it's like, no, it's not what I like. It's what the market wants and what the market. So, yeah, I try to stay out of the way, really, on that.
[35:44.2]
And we have designers, too. I, have designers that come in. They put all the design specs together, and they kind of work together with that top agent. And so, yeah, I want to stay what's on trend. I want to. I want it to sell fast. I want to have little unique aspects of it.
[36:00.3]
I want to do very nice stuff. Very nice stuff. So, yeah, it's. That's how. Yeah, That's a great question though. Really smart. And you said you're building like median or. That's my question. You're building in already established neighborhoods.
[36:16.2]
You're not doing a tract of 20 houses out in the middle of nowhere. So what's the price point of your houses compared to the houses around? Are you at the top, you in the middle? Try to stay just below the top. Ideally, one of these I'm about to find out.
[36:32.7]
The top probably, but that's okay.
[36:38.1]
Or I hope so. I mean, I kind of overbuilt. It was going to be my personal home and I ended up changing gears and we're in a great house now. It's just me, my wife and a 15 month old. I actually sat down with a mentor of mine and he was like okay, let's Caleb A and Caleb B.
[36:55.0]
Caleb A moves into this house. Here's what Caleb A looks like on all his numbers and his metrics and his timeline. Here's Caleb B. Who doesn't move into that house and who sells that house. And here's what he looks like on his timeline of his metrics. And I was like okay, Caleb B gets to his financial goals a lot quicker.
[37:10.4]
Caleb A is stressed out but has a really cool house and triples his expenses. You know, I'll take Caleb B. So fair enough. Got a little ahead of myself, got excited because we built houses. I knew I'd have great equity and I was like dude, I'll just build this house and live in it.
[37:26.1]
But yeah, I've decided to sell it. And I say all that to say I designed that for me and it was very custom, very high end, 12 foot ceilings, four sided brick, you know, nearly 8, 000 square feet. It's really big. So I'm selling it now. So it's, it's, it's a higher end spec.
[37:42.4]
It's like a custom kind of spec. So we'll see, we'll see what that looks like. But that's going to be, I'm going to list it for probably like 3, 4 to 3, 5. And most in that neighborhood the specs are anywhere from like this caliber of home.
[37:58.3]
They're around like three two five to three four five, you know, so I mean we'll see. But there's houses in there really bad lots. New construction, maybe 1.4, you know, but really bad lots. Okay, we've got one in that Same neighborhood for 2.6.
[38:15.8]
That's coming up 2.7. So I'm going to switch gears completely on you now. I know that we first connected because you're my travel brother from another mother. Tell me about your travels. You got any big stuff planned coming up, man?
[38:30.9]
You know, I wish I had more. Having. Having a child and losing the builder and, like, having to jump into all that has really put the travel on pause. But, man, Mike, I'm itching. I'm itching.
[38:46.7]
Me and my wife got married, and then we did. We traveled all around Italy for our honeymoon. And then, the next year, we did London, Paris and Switzerland. Really love Switzerland. And, Man, that was like, those.
[39:02.3]
Italy and Europe and all that was like, my first experience of traveling in Europe. We've been in the Bahamas, but so, man, it really. I was like, dude, I wanna. I wanna do more of this. This is way more. This is way cooler to me than a Ferrari or Rolex or whatever.
[39:17.9]
Like, I want experiences. I want moments, you know, I want different cultures, different foods. But no, I don't have anything. What's on our bucket list right now is Scotland and maybe Ireland. We've been talking about that. I would like to go to Amsterdam, too, if I could kind of circle all that in.
[39:35.9]
I sell two or three of these houses and get through what I like to call the trenches. Right now I'm going to go over to Europe for about a month with her and with my son. Good for you. And turn my phone off. So that's. Yes, that's the goal. But, man, Mike, you go some killer places. That's the real luxury, though, is being able to turn your phone off.
[39:53.0]
A lot of people do trips like that, and they can't. That's the luxury. Yeah, I don't, man. When I used to be the real estate agent thing, really stressful in my relationship. It's just. You're always on the phone, man. You can't turn off. I think, like you said, the ultimate success, when I.
[40:09.3]
When I really make it, you know, I want to. I want to get a flip phone that has, like, nothing else on it. And I'm gonna get a new number. And, like, only a handful of people can get ahold of me, and I can turn it off for two weeks if I want to, man. And, you know, if someone really, really needs me, they'll call my flip phone.
[40:27.8]
I'll just limit my minutes. Even give me, like 100 minutes a month or so. I just. That would be, like, the best. Just take my family, be off the grid. But, yeah, with my lending business, I took on a partner, and he thinks I took it on because he's smart and knows all these people.
[40:43.5]
But in reality, I'm going away in May, and I'm hoping not to turn on my phone, and we'll see how that goes. That way I'll know if I have the right partner or not or if I need to move on. He's going to be leaning on you, man. You got.
[40:58.7]
Yeah, Mike, you got to get out there and, you know, do your scuba diving or whatever it is. Skydiving, biking through some hills. Whatever, man. You gotta. Well, you know, that's what the partner's all about. Right? This will be a test, but when you go to Switzerland.
[41:14.1]
I know Matt, Loop has been there multiple times. I've been there a couple times. Zach, you've been there as well. In school. When I was in college, I lived there for two months. Okay. Oh, wow. Yeah. So we'll definitely be able to give you some information on where to go. But to me, Switzerland, Switzerland, it doesn't matter.
[41:32.0]
You can go anywhere in Switzerland, and it's just gorgeous. Yeah. Yeah. And it's clean. And the trains are on time. If they tell you it's coming at 4:02, that damn train shows up at 4:02. If it's 403, people start getting irritated. And one of my friends who lives there said that her husband or whatever left his wallet on the train, and he went back, like, three days later, and it was still there.
[41:51.4]
Grabbed it, man. Yeah. Just a beautiful place. Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah. That's. That's exciting. Well, I'm going to let you know right now, Caleb, because you do all of this food porn all the time, and I see all these photos of food, and I look at it and I gain weight by looking at the food.
[42:15.7]
And you're chowing down. You don't gain any weight. So since I'm going on vacation in May, I'm going to send you photos of, we're going to, Serbia and Romania. Was it Bulgaria? Northern Macedonia.
[42:31.7]
And then, I think it's. Armenia is the last one. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna. Every time I do a post, I'm gonna tag you so you can see it. And now you know how I feel every time you do a food post. How's that? Hey, I like that. Please do. Dude, me and my wife are huge foodies, man.
[42:48.5]
So, yeah, please, please share where you go and what you do and what you eat, because I Would if it looks really, really good, I'm gonna say, Jenny, we gotta add this to our list. I gotta go over and try this. Look at what Mike's eating across the world over here. That's good, dude. Cool.
[43:04.1]
So, Caleb, if people want to get ahold of you, and we'll put it down in the show notes. We know that you give your phone out to everybody now. This is pre flip phone days. What's the best way for people to get a hold of you, man? I would say Instagram. I mean, Facebook too, but I really put a lot of time and effort into my Instagram.
[43:22.3]
And that's CalebHarwell. H A R W E L L. But I don't really, I don't really have any other big handles. I'm not big on X or Twitter or whatever. I don't really do anything there. But, yeah, Facebook or Instagram. And if you.
[43:37.9]
And if you got my number, call me. But, or text me. But okay. Yeah, man. Really appreciate this. Fantastic, man. This has been a lot of fun. I knew it was going to be a lot of fun. And, Zach and I, we've got to have you put this aside. Now. Zach and I will be down in Atlanta in August, so we'll have to get together.
[43:56.1]
We can invite your brother Corey as well. And, we'll see if we let, Mr. Marin in the room or not if we decide we want him in there. Yeah, we'll see. He eats a lot. He tries not. He always tries to jump out, you know, walk out on the bill and stuff. So. Yeah. Kevin. Yeah.
[44:11.4]
I tell you what, that boy is sneaky. He'll just slide out on the check. I don't. I don't know what's wrong with him. Well, he's from New Jersey originally. He's one of those east coast guys. You gotta be, you know, northeast. You gotta be careful of those guys, like the guys in New Hampshire. You just gotta look out. Yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah.
[44:26.5]
Right before the check comes. I gotta run to the restroom. And then you have to see him again. Oh, sorry, I had to skip out. I got a phone call. Sorry, man. Yeah, yeah. All right. No, definitely. Y' all let me know what time in August. I'd love to. I enjoy it every time. For sure. Fantastic.
[44:44.2]
All right, guys, episode number 16 in the books. Appreciate, you listening in. Hopefully you got something from it. And, you know, save to zero. Keep going. You can live infinitely, you can grow infinitely, but all you can do is save to zero.
[45:00.9]
All right, that's it. Signing out later. Thanks, Caleb. Absolutely. Thank you, guys.