We were lucky to catch up with Matt Meyer recently and have shared our conversation below.
Matt, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Please tell us about starting your own firm and if you’d do anything different knowing what you know now.
My Real Estate Investment firm, LMN Investing, LLC, would not have begun without my oldest daughter Layla. She is a pandemic year graduate (2020) and out of college she wanted her own house but no one was hiring and she needed help. So, she came up with the idea of ‘house-hacking’ which is essentially renting out rooms in the house you live to help pay the mortgage. We helped her buy and she was so successful at cash flowing the property that we decided to buy another and rent by the room. And we repeated that to create a solid cash flowing portfolio of seven rentals since 2020. Real estate investing has generated a significant income for us and encouraged us, my wife, Layla and me to form a family real estate investing business. Layla now serves as my property manager while I work on finding new properties. Selfishly, it is a dream come true to work along side my daughter and wife in a family business. House-hacking is a viable method for young people to be able to afford a home mortgage in today’s volatile economy.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I have two engineering degrees and a doctorate in education but never fully utilized them in my career or business pursuits. My real estate portfolio allowed me to retire from my career as the associate vice president for business engagement and partnerships at the North Carolina Community College System after 25 years. And over my career, the most important thing I ever did was network. Sounds simple but I made many great and lasting connections that have led to business opportunities and great friendships. Besides my real estate investing company, I also serve as the senior advisor to the President of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of the State of North Carolina and am the lead consultant on the Electric Vehicle Charging Station Infrastructure Initiative in NC. Both of those opportunities were the direct result of building relationships during my career with the community college system. It really isn’t what you know but who you build relationships with that can propel you to success.
Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?
There are many strategies involved in scaling a real estate investment portfolio. Most are slow and require access to large sums of money for down-payments or renovations. After acquiring our first two rentals, we wanted to buy more properties but didn’t have the funds. However, my wife happened upon a course that promoted the use of a first-position Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC) on our primary home to build wealth. Banks will provide Helocs of up to 80% of your home’s value. This was perfect as I had significant equity built up in my home. We were able to secure a Heloc and use the available line of credit to purchase three properties in the span of six months. Furthermore, once we had established our LLC, we used a service (Fund&Grow) to acquire five business credit cards with 12 or 18 month 0% APR promotional periods which allowed us to maximize the Heloc for only property purchases and expenses and use the credit cards for our living expenses. We also converted two traditional IRAs into self-directed IRAs which we utilize to lend funds secured by real estate to fix&flippers, earning 12% interest. I am now taking advantage of one of the best ways to save on taxes (owning real estate and being a business owner), eliminated my primary home’s mortgage using the Heloc (no longer paying interest on an amortized schedule), and maximizing our self-directed IRA at greater returns than when managed by a financial company.
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
My success is a result of the relationships I built over the last 20 years. How I made and maintained such great connections is simply a direct result of being responsive and empathetic. We are all busy and yet no one likes to wait around for a reply to a call, text, or email. I made it my mission to be responsive and thorough in my communications. One colleague criticized my approach as a way to lose focus or be inefficient but he was never the person others reached out to. I became the first point of contact for our sister agencies and businesses seeking assistance. My quick responses and actions when called upon stuck in the minds of the many business connections I was making each week. To this day, people I work with comment how much they appreciate my attention to their requests.
Contact Info:
- Website: Lmninvesting.com
- Instagram: Lmn_investing
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/matthew.meyer.3950?mibextid=LQQJ4d
- Linkedin: http://linkedin.com/in/matthew-meyer-ph-d-08aa095
- Twitter: @mmeyer004