Feb. 24, 2026

Building Dreams: Jared Jones on the Power of Middle Housing and Real Estate Innovation

Send a text In this insightful episode of Living the Dream with Curveball, we welcome seasoned real estate investor and entrepreneur Jared Jones. With over two decades of experience in sales, investment, and development, Jared shares his journey in the real estate industry, including his role as co-founder of two impactful companies focused on middle housing. He discusses the pivotal moments that transformed his career and the strategies that led him to flip over 450 properties and develop ov...

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In this insightful episode of Living the Dream with Curveball, we welcome seasoned real estate investor and entrepreneur Jared Jones. With over two decades of experience in sales, investment, and development, Jared shares his journey in the real estate industry, including his role as co-founder of two impactful companies focused on middle housing. He discusses the pivotal moments that transformed his career and the strategies that led him to flip over 450 properties and develop over 600 doors. Jared dives into the concept of middle housing, explaining its significance in today’s market and how it addresses the growing need for affordable workforce housing. He also emphasizes the importance of vertical integration in scaling operations and shares valuable lessons on building trustworthy teams and processes. Tune in to discover Jared’s insights on navigating the evolving housing landscape and the opportunities that lie ahead for local investors. Whether you're a seasoned investor or just starting out, this episode is packed with inspiration and practical advice to help you thrive in the real estate market.
Want to be a guest on Living the Dream with Curveball? Send Curtis Jackson a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/1628631536976x919760049303001600

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> Curtis Jackson>Welcome to the Living the Dream podcast with Curveball. If you believe you can achieve. Welcome to the Living the Dream with Curveball podcast, a show where I interview guests that teach, motivate and inspire. Today I am joined by seasoned real estate investor and entrepreneur, Jared Jones.

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> Curtis Jackson>Jared is the co founder of two powerful Realty and middle housing. And he has two decades of experience in sales, investment and development.

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> Curtis Jackson>So we're going to be talking to him about what he does and, you know, his career and what he's up to and going to be up to.

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> Jared Jones>So.

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> Curtis Jackson>So, Jared, thank you for joining me.

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> Curtis Jackson>Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?

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> Jared Jones>Yeah. So, I'm down here in Southern California and, born and raised in a city called Riverside, which is about 30 miles inland, from Orange County. And my. I'm a dad with six kids and been married to my wife Ashley for 22 years. And, you know, started out early in my life in real estate, in that time frame, done a lot of sales, flipping, and over the last five or six years, done a lot of development. And so mainly we build middle housing, which is basically what it sounds like.

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> Jared Jones>It's the stuff in the middle. It's not the, the lowest, but it's not the highest. And it's for the workforce, the people that build our communities.

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> Jared Jones>and so we mainly do build to rent, in that space, but we do a little bit of build and sell as well.

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> Curtis Jackson>Okay, well, you've been in real estate for over 20 years, so what was that moment that truly changed your trajectory of your career?

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> Jared Jones>You know, I think that there was, there was a deal that I did early on in my career where, I had taken a commission to sell a property to one of my investors for $50,000. It was right after the market had crashed, and the previous value of that home was 300,000. The rents were great. And I literally called this guy up and I said, hey, I've got this deal. It's 50,000. It's a condo and a complex that you already own in. Do you want it?

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> Jared Jones>And he was over the moon. I took my 3% commission on that deal of, $1500. And I watched him proceed to call a friend and get the $50,000, of other people's money to operate that property. And within, you know, a week or two, he had it rented out and was cash flowing, even though he was borrowing the money from somebody else. And it clicked for me. I was like, wow, this guy is going to make $700 a month for the next 30 years on this property using somebody else's money, like, and I just traded that for fifteen hundred dollars. What did I do here? And so I looked at the ability to get a deal like that as the superpower and as the value add. And so I started targeting, opportunities like that. And instead of going to people to say, hey, I'm going to sell you this special deal, it's like, hey, here's a special deal. Would you like to partner? And so we. I, shifted that mindset, and that really changed the trajectory of my career.

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> Curtis Jackson>Where you flipped over 450 properties and developed over 600 doors. How did you change your strategy from, you know, small, deals to large investment developments?

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> Jared Jones>Yeah, and so, I mean, basically, I think it's kind of like most people that I talk to on a daily basis, they're like, oh, that's great. Like, I, I would love to do one of those. And then I talk to them in a year from then, and they're like, oh, yeah, that sounds great. I'm gonna do one this year, you know, and so I've never really had that.

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> Jared Jones>what I always had was like, oh, that can be done.

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> Jared Jones>I'm gonna go do it. And then when people ask me, they're like, well, how, how are you gonna do that? I'm like, I don't know, but somebody can do it, so I can do it. I'll figure it out. And so the, the truth is like, what. What was your ceiling becomes your floor. And so for me, it's like, well, yeah, for sure. I just was flipping two properties at a time and it was fine. But then two wasn't good anymore. Now I need to do five.

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> Jared Jones>And then it was 10. And, and then what I realized in development is if I can do two projects, I can do 10 projects. And it's just more people, it's just more capital. It's the same system. If I could speak to myself 20 years ago, what I would tell myself is systems scale, individuals don't.

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> Jared Jones>And I would have looked directly at what I was doing, and I would have said, hey, stick in this little box. And when you stay in that box, just do a lot of it. You're going to get way better, you're going to return higher. And ultimately, that's the thing that blows things up to allow you or that allowed me to get into the position where now where we have over 600 doors in process. Yes, we've done 600 doors. But we now have figured out the system. And once the system was figured out, it's like, well, do you want to do 600 or 1200 or 2500? The answer is the same. Just keep building the system because the opportunity's there. And then you bring people into a system. But once you have that system, you really, you can go as big as you want, as big as you're willing to continue to, to put into.

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> Curtis Jackson>Well, middle housing is becoming such a powerful conversation nationwide. How do you define middle housing and why do you feel like it's such a powerful opportunity right now?

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> Jared Jones>Yeah, I mean I define middle housing as like I kind of in the introduction, like it's, it's the stuff in the middle, but basically it's workforce housing. And so, it's not luxury home, it's not huge backyard. at least in our market it's not. It looks like duplexes and townhomes and condos or small lot subdivision single families. but back in the day, you know, in the early 90s, 80s, 70s, you could graduate college and get your first job and afford to buy a 1200 square foot ranch home in Riverside. Well, today you do the same thing and you need three people that graduated college to buy a ranch home, in Riverside. And so that's that product at that time was middle housing, a 1200 square foot ranch with an 8000 square foot lot.

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> Jared Jones>Today that middle housing product is more like a thousand square foot, ADU or a 1200 square foot townhome. And so it's these kinds of projects, that fill up the middle housing space. It's not apartment complexes, but it's also today it's not a 1200 square foot ranch home on an 8000 square foot lot either. And so it's that product that really, teachers and nurses can afford. Like that's the kind of product that we're targeting and we're building here in

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> Curtis Jackson>California where your companies offer a fully integrated platform from architectural to property management.

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> Curtis Jackson>So what advantage does vertical integration give you at scale?

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> Jared Jones>Yeah, I mean I think that that's one of the biggest pieces back to that thought process of systems. We realized that we couldn't scale, our operations as investors if we were reliant upon other people to get our plan sets through. And so we didn't want to become a design company. But now we have 20 on staff that are architects and engineers because that fed the system of creating the assets and we towards the goal of scaling like we, our team all Talks directly to each other.

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> Jared Jones>Each of these verticals have silos where they speak to each other. And it puts us in this position where it's like, oh, that was hard to design around that lot configuration. So you know what, next time let's skip that. And so our sales team knows, oh, we don't buy that, or you know, the management team is like, hey, it was really difficult for us to rent out that property that backed the freeway. How about we don't buy those anymore? and so same thing with construction. When they talk direct directly to, the architects and say, hey, I know that you put that, you know, 8 inch beam in, but I'm pretty sure that we can get it done with six inches. Can you rerun the math?

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> Jared Jones>And the cost difference On a, 15,000 square foot development could be a $14,000 line item. And you know, those are the different kinds of things that we get real time feedback. And lots of times when you're looking at scaling these kinds of portfolios, those kinds of details are just missed because it's like, well, I don't know, why did we design it the way that. Because that's the way that it's always done.

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> Jared Jones>Well, okay, let's ask deeper questions. And we really get to do that when we're accountable to ourselves and to our financial partners.

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> Curtis Jackson>Well, I know that build to rent micro developments are still new to many investors. So what do you feel like makes this opportunity more attractive than traditional model, single or family structured?

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> Jared Jones>Yeah, I mean, that's a really great question. I think that one of the things that is really important to understand with our brand or our flavor of micro development. I mean, micro development's really just infill, you know, and that's existed forever. You got a vacant lot on your street. Well, somebody's going to put something there at some point. Micro development for us is a focus on leveraging ADUs, you know, which are apartments in people's backyards and townhomes and, you know, other similar products to that, with existing streets, existing infrastructure. And so most of the time we already have a unit on the lot and we're adding three to 10 units. But one of the magic pieces for that is the state of California. Because our housing crisis is so bad. They have taken away a lot of the, zoning issues that slow these projects or stop them from the cities. And so now what's happened in California is I can take my buy box and I can say this. I buy 8000 square foot houses with a 1200 or 8000 square foot lots with a 1200 square foot house on it that sit close to the front of the lot. And I'm going to put three units in that backyard. And then I know if I want to do that in Riverside or if I want to do it in Inglewood, I know what my setbacks are. I know how quickly the city has to approve it, and I know that I can do it in every single location the same way. And so that opens up my buy box from a perspective what cities I work in. But then also it gives me an opportunity, to say this is a product that can scale statewide. And then it puts us also in a position where, because we know the timelines, the biggest risk in real estate development is time. It's how long does it take to get something done? And can you execute at the point that you get your project approved? And so if it takes you four years to get your project approved, well, what does stuff cost then? And did you not get all the units that you wanted to put on there? What does the debt look like? All of those pieces that get confusing versus the model that we run. We buy a property, we're able to start construction most of the time within six months, sometimes up to a year. But we have a very direct product that we're putting on. Our crews know what they're building, we know what they rent out for. And so you never can remove all of the risk and development, but you can remove a ton of risk. If you run a model that the cities have to say yes, they have to say yes to the kind of design that you're doing. You know how quickly they have to approve you like, and you have a very good idea of what you're going to be able to finance it for, what it's going to rent for, because it looks very similar to what you've already done. And so that's one of the major pieces that make micro development such a huge opportunity, is it removes all of those pieces.

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> Jared Jones>And then it also gives you the ability to access development as a small operator. Because normally to do a development you're like, oh, well, I gotta put together $4 million first and go do 100 units.

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> Jared Jones>Because otherwise it doesn't math out. Well, when three units in a backyard maths out, that's a powerful tool and a lot of people can access.

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> Jared Jones>Really brings power back to the main street to control our own housing inventory. we can start building, we can start building portfolios for rental. One project at a time, two projects at a time. Ten projects at a time. And so that's the optionality that makes this portion or like makes these kinds of laws for micro development very valuable to potential would be real estate investors.

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> Curtis Jackson>Well, I know that managing over $200 million of assets requires strong systems and leadership. So talk about the non negotiables that you've learned when it comes to building teams and processes.

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> Jared Jones>You know, one of the non negotiables is being honest with ourselves about who we are. I talk about systems and I talk about processes. Today, that's one of my biggest weaknesses. And so I had to recognize that to grow and to bring those people into partnership with me and help see what my talents were and my resources and bring them together with other people that had those resources. And then the other thing that I will say is you can teach skills, you cannot teach integrity. And so we have learned very quickly that if you have someone that you feel like you're unable to trust, it's the kindest thing that you can do to yourself, to your institution, to your investors and honestly to that person to offboard them as soon as possible. and so we will forgive a, ah, multitude of mess ups. and you know, because we believe in building people like we think that that's a very important thing, that we do within an organization is bring that job security to people. And that's not just on the amount of deals that we have. But it's like we are allowed to mess up, everybody is allowed to screw up. We all do it every day. But when we do, how do we handle it? And so if we've got the integrity piece there and we've got the people that are willing to work, we put into those people, we pour into them. But once we realize a bad fit, we cut the cord quick. So that's one of those non negotiables. Like we will not work with disintegrity.

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> Curtis Jackson>well, let's talk about the mistakes you see, investors make when it comes to deploying and raising ah, private equity. And how can they avoid the mistakes?

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> Jared Jones>Yeah, I mean I've met a few billionaires in the last few years of my life and prior to that I'd never met one. One of the things that I find very interesting about the billionaires is a massive portion of their portfolios are built on, off of operators. And so what they do is like we had a couple of them sitting in our office a little while back and as they're asking us these questions you know, they were different than the questions that most of our investors ask us. And it was really about the problems. Like what problems have you experienced here, what problems have you experienced there? How did you get through it? What did you do when that happened?

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> Jared Jones>What do you think will be the solution if this thing happens? And the billionaires invest in operators that are running opportunities, they are investing specifically in a certain product.

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> Jared Jones>They're not just looking for a deal. They want to invest in a system that's growing. But more importantly, we want to own our screw ups. And so we have decided over the last year and a half, like we used to look at ourselves, every time there was a mistake, we're like, oh, we totally screwed that up. And it's like, well, I mean sometimes we did actually screw it up, but the reality is most of the time we were just learning and everybody would screw it up because nobody knew the rules yet on the different law that was coming out that we're dealing with. And so what, what I would say to people that are looking to invest in private equity is know what you're investing in, feel comfortable with that kind of asset, ask yourself the big picture questions and then vet the operator. Like if you feel good about the operator, deals come and go, you know, like the, I mean at the end of the day you're going to have some good deals, you're going to have some bad deals, but the person that's operating the business, are you aligned with them? Do you like the vision? Do you like where it's going? Have they done enough of the thing that you're looking to invest in? And then ultimately like if they run up against a problem, how do they get through it?

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> Jared Jones>Like do they have an open mind and willingness to learn and not so proud that they can't figure out how to move around, an obstacle that comes up in their way. And so it was a really interesting thing for me versus a lot of like the smaller investors, that, that we would talk to hyper focus on all the tiny deal points. And yes, you should be looking at deal points. I'm not saying that that's not a thing. But for the billionaires, the people that have been very successful at making their money work for them, those people are betting on operators, they're looking at patterns and if they smell success on you, you're getting their money.

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> Curtis Jackson>Well, what advice would you give to a local investor who is looking to expand across multiple states like you have?

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> Jared Jones>so right, right now, what I would say as an investor I, I have operated in multiple states currently. Right now I only operate in California and I have some deals that I already own in other states. I would say look at your market cap. And so for me, the market cap on this, this kind of housing in California is like a trillion dollars.

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> Jared Jones>We need three and a half million housing units.

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> Jared Jones>And so the reason I say that is it's like before we look farther, can we look deeper? Like, can we go deeper into our niche? Because really moving into multiple states may not be the right answer for that operator. It may be, what am I missing within my own area? What am I not digging deeper in? Do I need to go wide before I go deep? And so when I look at this, we will expand into multiple states in the future, but we will do it with other operators. It will not be us operating. It will be a platform that, that we're pushing out to people that of our learnings, of the things that we've done in the resources that we've created around the kind of product that we do. But I think that specialization is key. And I often see what I recognized. I've done a lot of deals across different states and the best deals that I have done are in the spaces that I have the most experience. I've chased deals out of state that looked really amazing, didn't end up that amazing because I didn't have that deep experience. And so I would encourage myself previously to push back into what I knew and to keep it as tight to a small product box as possible. There's a reason that Chick fil a in an in n out do so well. their menus are super small. They're really amazing at chicken sandwiches and they're really amazing at cheeseburgers. And so that's my thought process and then expand after I've gone deep. So that would be my advice in

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> Curtis Jackson>the next five to 10 years.

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> Curtis Jackson>How do you see housing evolving and what do you think the biggest opportunities will be?

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> Jared Jones>I think that housing is evolving towards smaller, more efficient modeling. And I do think that we're going to be looking like the state of California is right now at the low hanging fruit. And that is, we already got streets here. Like we have a big backyard. Why are we not leveraging that? And so by doing that, I think we're going to have a high focus on affordable housing. And when I say affordable, I'm not talking about the government subsidy affordable housing. I'm talking about naturally affordable housing because it makes sense. And we're looking at all of the different pieces that's how we can deliver quickly, cheaply and scalably. Like we can do a lot of that in Southern California. There's a backyard everywhere. It is suburbia, it's suburban sprawl all over Southern California. So I think that a lot of the major cities are going to be re looking at their zoning and, and the largest opportunity that I see in this space is how do we leverage that? They are smaller projects, but they are fast and they are high margin. And if you put those things together with a smaller operator that has nothing but time and energy, that will make a massive impact on our economy. And it is the biggest investment opportunity that I see in the near future, for real estate.

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> Curtis Jackson>Well, tell us about any upcoming projects that you're working on that people need to be aware of.

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> Jared Jones>Yeah, I mean look, we're, we're raising every day, most of our projects we raise between 500,000 and a million and a half dollars. so we just picked up a, ah, 44 unit project that needs a million and a half dollars here in Southern California. and on a two year timeline, projects like that go from you know, five to $9 million in equity. And so, you know, it's, it's one of those things where there's an opportunity all the time to connect with us or operators like us that are finding these projects because we'll pick up a deal, two deals, three deals a week. and so there's just, there's always an opportunity to connect with us, or you know, operators if, if people are looking, to put their money to work where it's not Bitcoin and they're not hoping it'll go up, but where they're just investing in that super needed fundamental asset.

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> Jared Jones>Right. Like I love the thought process of investing in something that everybody needs, has intrinsic value.

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> Curtis Jackson>Well, throw out your contact info so people can connect with you and keep up with everything that you're up to.

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> Jared Jones>Yeah, I mean, middle housing partners on Instagram and then also, Jared Jones on LinkedIn. if anybody has questions around what we do, I'm always happy to, to get back to you and connect and figure out a way that we can serve you.

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> Curtis Jackson>All right, we'll close this out with some final thoughts. Maybe if I forgot to talk about something that you would like to discuss or any final thoughts you have for the listeners.

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> Jared Jones>Yeah, no, I appreciate that. So look, at the end of the day, there's a concept called ikegai and it's a Japanese concept of the opportunity to be involved in something where you have passion for it, the world needs, pays you money and you're good at it. And so I have been very grateful over the last year to recognize that this is my Ike guy. No matter what people are doing in their lives, if they can get into a position where, where most of those things are aligning, magic can happen. And then if you're, if you're just out there looking for investments, if you find somebody that's operating in that space, where you can see that all of those things are aligned, put money into them because they will return you money consistently. And the most important thing that I want for my children and that I want for the people around me is to find that spot in the world where they get to make those kinds of things happen for themselves. And so, people are amazing.

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> Jared Jones>They're resilient, they're ingenuitive, creative.

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> Jared Jones>And like, I want to just tell people that they can spark that within themselves. I love Simon Sinek's book Start with why. Like that thought process, is amazing for me. And so, you know, I appreciate being able to talk to people like, yourself, Curtis, and you know, share the pieces that I care about. I believe middle housing is that forgotten product. It is the American dream that's missing.

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> Jared Jones>And we just feel so privileged to be in a position where not only do we get to do that every day, but also that we have a movement and a group of investors that have backed us and that we're connecting with new people that are like minded every day that just want to be funding that vision. and so, that's my message to people. When you can get to that spot in your life where you get to do that, it's amazing. and my goal is to encourage everybody towards things like that, that light them up.

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> Curtis Jackson>Ah, all right, ladies and gentlemen, so go light up Jared's ah, Instagram and his ah, LinkedIn and check him out and keep up with everything that he's up to of anybody that's interested in real estate investing. Follow Rate Review Share this episode to as many people as possible. Also, Living the Dream with Curveball podcast just launched a new newsletter. So just go to www.craveball337.com and sign up for it so you can get exclusive news and keep up with the Living the Dream with Curveball podcast. Thank you for listening and supporting the show and Jared, thank you for all that you do and thank you for joining me.

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> Jared Jones>My pleasure.

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> Curtis Jackson>For more information on the Living the Dream with Curveball Podcast, visit www.craveball337.com until next time, keep living the dream.