William Schantz calmly made his way through the excited crowd as the workers moved around and scrambled to perfect the setup for a charity garden party. After all, it was his 9-acre waterfront estate in Tiburon that was bustling with pandemonium. He completed phone calls to negotiate the timing and location to get the supplies delivered and greeted the volunteers.
At a ripe old age of 71, Schantz has made a successful career, carving out opportunities from stones people would throw away. Figuring it out in his favor when he was a young boy of 7, Schantz started off by setting up a mushroom farm in the basement of his family home. However, soon the startup was shut down when his parents were not on board with him rolling in manure. So little Schantz ventured off to a new business of painting house numbers on curbs.
Fast forward to the 1960s, when run-down buildings were piling up, Schantz found a set of apartment buildings that piqued his interest. After a healthy convincing power put to good use, Schantz was joined by 9 partners along with $5000 each to renovate the triplex in Sausalito. Soon the building was good as new, subdivided, and sold for 400 percent return for investors. And the rest is history.
Soon William Schantz was a household name in the Oakland real estate community. An unusual venture kick-started his career of buying neglected buildings, run-down apartment structures across the American land, and blowing life into them. Carrying the accolade of Houston’s largest landlord, Schantz may have sold off his portfolios many times over the decades. Today, as the chairperson of Schantz Capital Management, his new buying spree is in progress.
His 27-year-old son – one of seven children – has joined him in his business as a managing director. Fit as a fiddle to this day, Schantz enjoys swimming almost on a daily basis in the chilly waters outside his 100-year-old boathouse that now stands tall as his office.
Quite uncanny, but doesn’t list his real estate strategy in technical, hard-to-understand terminology. His passion is so strong that he instigates anyone’s prowess in the field to showcase how they can reach the heights of success as he does. Being the expert he is, he makes it look so easy – that one is left wondering why not more people like him pop up every day.
Truth to be spoken, a genius and hard worker of his domain and one of a kind in his type. Upon being asked if he specifies his exit strategy as selling entire buildings, converting condominiums, or holding onto them for years to come, he answered for all. It takes a keen eye to observe and define a case to be able to see a prolonged hold of long-term cash flow, and it comes with the kind of expertise only William Schantz has.
For more information about real estate, visit https://www.billschantz.com/.
