Meet Paul Schon of Schon Tepler Group in Hollywood

Today we’d like to introduce you to Paul Schon.

Paul, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
Back in 2009 when I was brokering apartment buildings at Marcus & Millichap I was fortunate enough to get introduced to my business partner Artem Tepler.

Our mutual friend introduced us since he knew both of us were pursuing our real estate careers. He had just gotten his Masters Degree in Real Estate Development from NYU and moved to Los Angeles. We got along right away and started remodeling and flipping homes together. We were relatively successful flipping homes (flipped over 50 homes across LA County).

In 2012 we decided to transition to apartment development and purchased our first piece of land in Westchester to build a 13 unit boutique apartment building. The project was a great success and gave us the confidence to scale the apartment development business.

Today we are in the process of developing our 22nd 42 unit mixed use boutique building in Echo Park. Along the way, we decided to become vertically integrated and formed an in-house, fully licensed, bonded construction company that builds all of our development projects. In addition, we also formed an in-house property management company that manages our stabilized projects. Now Schon Tepler Group is a fully integrated real estate development and investment company.

Has it been a smooth road?
I believe if you have a sincere conversation with any entrepreneur you will hear similar stories that business is NEVER a smooth road to success. There is and will always ups and downs. And that has been the case for our business. Fortunately, more ups than downs!

One of the biggest struggles was dealing with General Contractors when we first started. The consistent pattern was they would always take longer and cost more than what we had agreed when we first started the project. After a few experiences, we decided to bring construction in-house and start our own construction company to control timelines and increase costs. We plan on being in this business for a long time so we felt it was the right thing to do.

Another challenge was getting our first construction loan for our first 13 unit apartment building. Banks did not think we had enough experience to perform. We are very grateful for the lender that trusted us to build our first development. To this day we still work with them. Nowadays getting loans is a much easier process because we have a successful track record.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Schon Tepler Group story. Tell us more about the business.
Schon Tepler Group is a fully integrated real estate development and investment company based in Los Angeles, California. Our focus is on creating and preserving value for our equity investors through the use of our specialized knowledge of the multi-family and residential real-estate business. Schon Tepler Group was formed in 2009 by Paul Schon and Artem Tepler.

A combination of experience of the principals, economic variables and real estate trends helped drive the initial business model: to acquire, renovate, and sell distressed residential and multi-family properties during “the great recession”. Being cognizant of changing real estate patterns and updated economic data, Schon Tepler Group has transitioned to become a vertically integrated real estate company specializing in the ground-up development of the multi-family real estate, property management, and construction.

“Where we’ve really found some great opportunities is in building these smaller boutique apartment buildings ranging from 12 to 45 units in Los Angeles. A lot of the bigger developers are not interested in developing these smaller developments. In addition, our residents enjoy living in a more intimate community rather than a huge complex where you have 300+ neighbors.

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
Unfortunately, we are currently experiencing a housing shortage in Los Angeles. Therefore we believe our industry will be around for many more years to come.

Also, our buildings are targeted to be more affordable than the high rises amenity buildings in the area. We are trying to do our part building one small building at a time to help with the affordability crisis in Los Angeles.

Contact Info:

• Website: schontepler.com
• Phone: 424-245-8438
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: schontepler

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