S2E41 – Heather Dreves – How to own real estate without the hassle of real estate

Key Timecodes

• (00:56) – Background history

• (02:55) –  Her real estate business background

• (02:37) – Affordable housing market

• (02:55) – The different locations and differences

• (09:56) – What is her company strategy with real estate investing?

• (11:56) – Where the real estate market is going

• (17:27) – Can they buy the funds through a broker?

• (18:59) – How big is her team

• (19:29) – What kind of returns the investors can expect

• (24:11) – What her customers are looking for

• (25:28) – The benefits of investing in real estate

• (27:37) – A great low-barrier option to diversify investments

• (31:46) – The worst business or investment advice she ever received

• (32:22) – The best business investment advice she ever received

• (35:49) – Guest contacts

Transcription

[00:00:03.430] – Intro

Payback Time is a podcast about building businesses wealth and financial freedom. We try to uncover the challenges our guests faced, the mistakes they made, and the steps they took to achieve their goals. The overall objective is to provide you with a roadmap that leads to your own success. Sean Tepper is your host. Are you ready? It’s payback time.

[00:00:32.730] – Sean

Have you ever wanted to own real.

[00:00:34.220] – Sean

Estate but never liked the idea of dealing with tenants and toilets? In this case, this episode is for you.

[00:00:40.910] – Sean

My next guest talks about a low.

[00:00:43.020] – Sean

Barrier to entry real estate fund with.

[00:00:45.120] – Sean

Low maintenance and nice residual paychecks. We specifically talk about how the fund reduces risk past returns and how to get started. Please welcome Heather dreams. Heather, welcome to the show.

[00:00:58.180] – Heather

Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.

[00:01:00.760] – Sean

Yes, glad to have you here. So why don’t you tell us about your background?

[00:01:04.750] – Heather

All right. Well, that’s a long background. So a little bit about me. For the last 20 years, I’ve been in the private money space, which is really a lending opportunity to provide real estate investors with the funding that they’re looking for outside of your more traditional sources and really fell into it by chance. To be perfectly transparent with you. I went to college like everybody else, thinking I was going down one path and decided that I didn’t really want to be a teacher. Which is actually kind of funny because I was on a podcast recently and they said, but you are an educator, you educate people about alternative investments. So kind of funny that it came full circle now, but I have done everything in the private money industry from lending, being a loan officer, being a loan processor, servicing those types of assets, having my securities license. And I really have found a passion for working with clients that are looking to invest capital outside of more traditional sources and just really educating them on how they can diversify their portfolio. I’m not by any means a financial advisor or an accountant, but I know a lot about alternative investments and it’s really kind of my passion to educate people because I think not enough people out there know that there are other options out there to really just add real estate to their portfolios without actually having to go buy real estate.

[00:02:32.860] – Heather

So we have came full circle. I am one of three fund managers with Secured Investment Corp. And we currently manage to real estate funds in addition to selling first lean notes. So, like I said, I’ve kind of done a little bit of everything in this industry and started from the ground up, and I think that’s really helped me be an expert at this and be able to pass my knowledge on to others.

[00:02:55.830] – Sean

Awesome. Thank you for that background, Heather. And as you know, we’re talking offline as our audience is primarily investors in the stock market, but they do like to learn about other investment opportunities. Now, there are a few other people I had on recently that talked about real estate, but more large syndication, like large projects that could be like 100 units per building or more. Now, your specialty is a little smaller, it sounds like four units or less. Is that correct?

[00:03:22.960] – Heather

Yes. What we really do is I’m not here to say that there’s not opportunities in syndication with apartments and storage units. We’re invested in that type of stuff too. But as far as what we manage, as far as assets in our funds, we focus around the affordable housing market space. So that means anything that’s a single family up to a four unit and non owner occupied. And we purposely do that for a couple of reasons. One is, as a team, we decided ten years ago, let’s really focus on our core competency. Let’s stay in our lane. We’re not going to try to be that fund that does everything for everybody, right? And we believe that in the affordable housing market space, at least, especially given the times we’re in, everything is so crazy. We’ve got inflation, we’ve got interest rates rising, we’ve got values of properties leveling off and in some areas actually declining. We believe as fund operators, that when you’re in that affordable housing market space, there is more opportunity to pivot. And what I mean by that is twelve months, even six months ago, fix and flip was great. There was lots of profit, properties were increasing in value.

[00:04:35.120] – Heather

We have seen that cool off. But because we are in that affordable housing market space, there’s also opportunity now because rents are increasing. So now we can cash flow these properties. So you have to be able to pivot and change your exit strategies on these things, given the market shifts. And we have found, at least for us, that being in that affordable housing market space has allowed us to do that. Maybe our strategy was fixed and flipped and now we’re going, well, actually, the return on investment, if you run the numbers, is better to cash flow it. So that’s why we like that space.

[00:05:09.800] – Sean

Got you. And I’m a little naive here, affordable housing space, I’ve heard, but I don’t really know what qualifies as that. So is that like a dollar range or price point?

[00:05:20.290] – Heather

I think that’s a really good question. And I think every area is different, right. Affordable housing market here in Idaho is much different than it is in California, right?

[00:05:29.530] – Sean

Sure.

[00:05:29.880] – Heather

And so what we use as kind of a barometer is we look at the FHA cap, which is the Federal Housing Authority cap. And as everybody knows, if you are trying to get a home loan, it’s much easier to go through an FHA loan because they are trying to create homeownership. Right? They’re trying to get people qualified for home loans that may be through just a bank that holds their assets isn’t as easy. And so what we do as a barometer is we don’t lend above the FHA cap and we don’t buy houses that are going to resell for more than the FHA cap because when you get over that, your database of buyers decreases greatly. You’re more into your jumbo home loans or really high end homes which also are affected when market shifts too. Real quick, the other thing with FHA guidelines when you’re in that affordable housing markets so just to give you an example where we are, I believe it’s like 220 is the FHA cap here, which seems really low. But those types of houses you can also rent in cash flow really easily. So if we lend money to a borrower and his intention was to fix and flip it six months ago and now we’re in the market.

[00:06:40.800] – Heather

We are and he’s going, yes, I think I need to just cash flow this. While this market rides out, he can still service his debt with us. Right? So every area has a different FHA cap. You can actually Google it and put your city in and it’ll tell you what that FHA cap is.

[00:06:57.530] – Sean

Got it below that, we stay below that.

[00:07:01.320] – Heather

That’s kind of our rule of thumb.

[00:07:03.580] – Sean

That’s good to know. That’s a good benchmark too because you’re probably going to be closer in Idaho to where I’m at in Wisconsin and Milwaukee. Our prices here, obviously they’re not going to be as high as some areas like Chicago or of course San Francisco. So yeah, I could certainly look that up and see that number. So that’s good to know. Now, since you were running a fund, what I’m picturing is like our investors want to get involved, they’re investing in you and then you’ve got a fund of probably a lot of properties in different locations around the states, correct?

[00:07:34.700] – Heather

Yeah. So our funds are also unique because they’re what we would consider diversified. So you’ll talk to some fund operators and they’ll tell you, hey, we’re a debt fund. Meaning they just lend that money out or we’re an acquisition fund. We buy and we hold assets. We actually are a diversified blended fund. And what I mean by that is we take 75% of our fund balances and we create debt. We lend that money out to other real estate investors that are either refinancing or purchasing investment properties. So we have these revenue streams from outside of the assets in the fund where we get origination points, we get monthly interest payments. So we’ve got these streams of income coming in. Right. Again, we only lend against single family up to four units and they’re always in a first lien position. So that’s a big part of the income stream and our fund and that’s nationwide. So we lend all over the United States. Again, it has to be for investment purposes. People can’t be living in it and secured by a personal the other 25%. We actually buy real estate, but only in our local market.

[00:08:45.490] – Heather

So in the state of Idaho and the state of Washington, we have an acquisition team and they go out and they identify projects for us to buy. A lot of them are out of state homeowners distressed landlords that are just mom and pops that own three to five rentals and they’re tired of dealing with tenants. We will buy those types of assets, but they have to be local to us. We have a contracting crew, we have a property manager. We don’t encourage people to invest in properties outside of their local market and we don’t do it either. So the assets we hold, again, 25% of the balance of the fund are in hard assets in our local markets. The other 75% is debt. We’re lending that money out.

[00:09:28.750] – Sean

Got it.

[00:09:29.120] – Heather

We have our own servicing team that’s collecting all his monthly payments. So the nice thing with our fund is if one area is a little bit slower than the other one month we can ramp up the other end and it helps us really have just consistent yields. We’re not that fun that you’re going to have a big win and then you’re going to be sitting there for six to twelve months waiting for another project to come along with constant cash flow and returning that fund over and over.

[00:09:56.180] – Sean

Yeah, makes perfect sense. You’re kind of operating like a bank. It’s almost like investing in a bank, right? Yeah. Banks are lending money out to businesses and people and you, as those investors out there listening, can invest in you when you’re getting that residual. We’ll get into some of the residuals here in a moment. You mentioned this, I haven’t heard too much and I love learning about real estate investing because some of the terms are new to me. You mentioned the first lien position. What is that?

[00:10:24.340] – Heather

So that means that when you lend money so if you were to go buy a home and you went to your bank to get a home loan, they’re going to file a lien against your property. That is what secures their investment in you. Right. We’re no different when we lend money to somebody, we’re going to file a lien and you do that through a deed of trust or a mortgage. So at the county level, someone could look it up and say, hey, Heather’s fund has a lean against this property. When you’re talking about liens, there’s different positions. So first lien means if you’re in first lien and that borrower doesn’t make their payments, you can foreclose and take that asset back. If you’re in a second lien or a third lien, you actually would have to start foreclosure, buy out the person in first to secure your second. Or if you’re in a third, you’re going to have to buy out the second and the first. So first lien is your most secure lien. Right. Got it foreclosed. And there’s ten other liens behind you. It’s going to wipe all those out if you’re in anything other than a first, which a lot of investors that are really aggressive will buy second liens and third lanes because they’re very profitable.

[00:11:33.760] – Heather

But you have to make sure, you know, hey, what’s in front of me? And in the event that this guy doesn’t pay, can I take that first lien out to secure your money? We just lend in a first lien position. It’s cleaner. It’s easier for us in the event of a default. But it’s not to say that there’s not other opportunities out there buying seconds and thirds. We just don’t focus on that.

[00:11:56.030] – Sean

Yeah, you hit it on the head. I was immediately riding on the same phrasing. It’s cleaner. I was thinking of less red tape, less pain.

[00:12:05.610] – Heather

It gets messy.

[00:12:06.810] – Sean

Yeah. Right now that’s good context. I’d like to slight transition from that to where the real estate market is going. We’re in this bear market, and some would argue that we’re kind of in a recession right now. Where do you see the market going with real estate?

[00:12:23.210] – Heather

Yes, I think we look at it two different ways. Right. We look at the lending side of it, and then we look at the acquisitions. I’ll talk about acquisitions first because it’s probably the easiest, because it’s just two markets where we’re located, specifically in a town called Spokane, Washington, and Quarterly in Idaho. And I mentioned this to you before we even got started. It’s very popular here. People are now working remote and have made a lot of money in real estate and are looking to move out of big cities. A lot of people are relocating where we are, so we haven’t seen a decline. We haven’t seen values increasing like they were last year. In quarterly in Idaho, they increased 20% in value. And if you look at it over two years, it’s almost 40%. It was just crazy. We have seen that cool off. We’re not seeing the increase in value. We haven’t seen the value decline yet. But houses are taking longer to sell. Where we’re located, there’s also a huge opportunity to hold rentals, because we’ve also had all these local people sell their properties to out of towners and make considerable money.

[00:13:30.420] – Heather

But now they’re priced out of the market, they can’t afford to buy again. So we are seeing a lot of opportunity for rentals. So we have started changing our strategy for the fund. Twelve months ago, it was buy and sell, buy and sell. I mean, it was easy to make money. Right now, we’re seeing our return on investment is actually higher cash flowing. And so we’re switching also as a fund operator, we’re saying, okay, there’s still opportunity to resell, but we’re also adding more cash flowing properties into it. On the lending side of it, what I would tell you is the biggest change we’ve seen is, it really kind of relates to what I talked to. Our borrowers are all over the United States and all different types of market. We’ve seen markets cool off. We’ve seen borrowers that thought they would sell something in 30 days. It’s taking 60, 90. They’re not getting in bidding wars. But what we do is we’re educating our borrowers also. Hey, have you looked at cash flowing this, holding it as a rental? Because they say in a downturn market, real estate investors turn into landlords, and that is happening.

[00:14:36.330] – Heather

We have actually added another loan product to help those people exit those loans. So before they were buying them, rehabbing them, increasing value and selling them, right now, we’re seeing a lot of them want to hold these as rentals. So we now have a 30 year rental loan program that we can actually refinance them out of our short term loans, and now they can get better terms and then hold them in cash flow. So that’s the biggest change we’ve seen. Two years ago through COVID, a lot of our borrowers were having challenges getting supplies, getting counties out. Everything was shut down. That is kind of passed. And things are opening up. Even materials are coming down in pricing. I think the biggest change is people’s exit strategies. It’s not as easy just to sell it, to get out of it. It’s now, hey, you better look at maybe just cash flowing that and writing this out. So that’s been the biggest change that we’ve seen.

[00:15:31.740] – Sean

Got you. Okay, that’s really good context. Now to transition to the investors out there listening, if they want to get involved, can they invest through a self directed IRA or four hundred and one K?

[00:15:45.700] – Heather

Oh yeah, I love talking about self directed IRAs. Okay, we just ran an analysis. I think over 80% of our investors use some form of a self directed account. So we’re very familiar with that. And the really exciting thing is if anybody’s looked into investing in a syndication or a self storage project, most of the time you have to be a high net worth individual to do that. You have to be an accredited investor. The really neat thing about us, we have two funds. We have an accredited investor fund, but we’re pretty proud of the fact that we have a Regulation A plus fund, which means anybody can invest. And the minimum on that fund is $1,000. So these funds are managed the same assets, just two different qualifications. And the neat thing about that fund, I have so many people that will call and say, I think I have an old four hundred and one K. I don’t think I ever did anything with it. I think it’s sitting with this employer from five jobs ago, those small dollar accounts, or even someone just getting started with making their initial contribution that funds perfect for because it’s got $1,000 minimum.

[00:16:54.430] – Heather

So both funds are friendly to IRAs or self directed accounts. As long as their custodian allows it, we can make it happen, and we actually take it to another level. We help them fill out all their direction of investment forms. If you’ve ever invested with a self directed account, they’re kind of tricky, and each custodian has the way they want things filled out. We actually do that for our clients. So they can invest under an entity, they could invest in personal funds, they can invest with an IRA. We’re really open to all that type of stuff.

[00:17:28.170] – Sean

So this might be a nice question, but so many of our investors use a broker platform to buy stock, CTFs and so on, so forth. Like, in my case, I use TD Ameritrade here in the States. You’ve got TD. Robin Hood ETrade. Can you buy your fund, this $1,000 minimum tree through, like, a broker?

[00:17:48.530] – Heather

That’s a really good question. And the answer, quick answer, is no. So our funds are similar to REITs, right. But the biggest difference is they’re privately managed, they’re not publicly got it. Okay, so you’re not going to find us on any of those types of platforms. Unfortunately, what I’ve had a lot of clients do is once they’ve talked to us and they feel like this is a good fit for their portfolio, they’ll move some money. I mean, I’m not here to advise people get out of the stock market. That’s not what we do. We’re just really here to say, hey, you can diversify with some real estate assets, and this is a way you can do it without having to buy a piece of real estate. Lend your own money out yourself, deal with tenants. And so what most of the time they’ll do is and we work with all different ones, we’re pretty active with Quest IRA Equity Trust out of Ohio. We do a lot of business with Mainstar, you direct. As long as they can move some of that money that they want to invest over to one of those types of custodians, then we can help them with the rest.

[00:18:51.560] – Heather

Unfortunately, they’re not going to be able to do it with a Fidelity or a TD Ameritrade. But we’re not on their platform. Not yet.

[00:18:59.430] – Sean

Right, not yet, that’s always the phrase. But it sounds like you’ll do a lot of the heavy lifting, the paperwork. I imagine a larger support team behind the scenes doing a lot of this work for us.

[00:19:11.510] – Heather

Yeah, absolutely. And it’s easier for us to help them and do it for them because they ask so many different questions. And we’ve tried letting them do it themselves, and it just is easier. So we have a pretty big, healthy admin staff that will help do that.

[00:19:29.310] – Sean

I always like to ask, what kind of returns can investors expect just based on past results?

[00:19:35.430] – Heather

Yeah, and we always talk in historical. So our Accredited Investor fund has a $50,000 minimum buy in, and then they can invest any dollars after that. That fund has been around over nine years and it has an average lifetime yield of 10%. So it’s a pretty well oiled machine. It pays out earnings on a quarterly basis. And the really neat thing, especially if people are using IRA accounts, they can actually reinvest their earnings. So instead of you invest 50,000 and you’re going to have a 10%, you’re probably going to have average yields of about $5,000 a year. Instead of that 5000 going back to your IRA, sitting there undeployed and having to find a new home for that, they can actually just reinvest their earnings, which is really nice for people that are growth minded, right?

[00:20:22.500] – Sean

Yeah.

[00:20:22.990] – Heather

They’re compounding my clients that really are looking for cash flow. So some of my retired people that are trying to replace income, people that have been self employed, that have sold businesses practices, they’re looking to replace cash flow. You can also get your earnings paid out so you can set it up however you want it. The other fund is $1,000 minimum buy in, and it does have to occur in $1,000 increments. So a little bit different than the other one. So at least $1,000 at a time. And they can invest more dollars. Those earnings are paid out monthly also with the option to reinvest. So they really can it’s kind of all a cart. Depending upon their strategy, they can set the accounts up however they want it. Both funds have just a really short tie up period. It’s twelve months. You have to stay in for at least a year. And then if you want to divest out, you can start that process.

[00:21:15.980] – Sean

Got it. And the returns of that smaller fund has been 8.3%. Okay, so pretty good.

[00:21:23.790] – Heather

We have preferred rates on our funds, if anybody’s familiar with that. The Accredited Investor Fund is 9%, meaning first nine goes to them. Then there’s a 50 50 split after. And the Unaccredited fund has a 6% preferred rate. We’ve never missed paying out either of those. So that has always occurred. They’re fully audited funds. They are regulated by the SEC and registered with the SEC.

[00:21:51.160] – Sean

Got it. And do you charge some kind of assets under management fee?

[00:21:55.350] – Heather

Yeah. So there is a fund management fee of 1.75. That is an annualized fee. It comes out of the earnings. They don’t pay that upfront. So every quarter, every month when we pay that, the management fee is paid accordingly. Then again, their preferred rate has to be hit. And then there’s a 50 50 profit split. So it creates motivation for our team. Right? Like we need those funds performing above and beyond that preferred and management fee to be profitable.

[00:22:26.460] – Sean

Got you.

[00:22:27.540] – Sean

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[00:23:37.290] – Sean

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[00:24:12.710] – Sean

I always like to bring this up, and it’ll be good to hear it from you is let’s say somebody sells a business or has a large liquidity event, they want to avoid taxes they can put that money into. Real estate is a great shelter. So I’m assuming you have a lot of customers that do that.

[00:24:28.930] – Heather

We do. I mean, we have a lot of customers that, again, use self directed accounts. We work with a lot of dentists and doctors that have set those types of accounts up, that have created wealth and grown. It tax deferred, which is awesome. We all want to pay less taxes. And then we have other clients that sell properties. They’re looking for more like a 1031 exchange where they can defer capital gains. We have other side projects for that. We just bought a really small 22 unit apartment complex in Spokane, and that provided some 1031 shelter for that. So those would be more people that are selling properties and they need to defer capital gains. Maybe they own the building that their practice was in and they sold that. So there are opportunities for that. But most of the people that are looking for tax deferment or tax shelter is usually through their IRAs and their 401 KS and things of that nature.

[00:25:27.570] – Sean

Sure. There’s another comment when I was doing research on your company about the kind of the benefits of owning real estate without the hassle of real estate. Yes. Touch on that, please.

[00:25:38.780] – Heather

Well, trust me, I’ve owned real estate and I still own it. And I deal with tenants and toilets now, and if I knew 20 years ago, I know now, I probably would have taken a different route. And I think the biggest thing is there’s so much information online, right? And so I’ve got clients that call me and they’re like, I’m going to lend my money out. I’m going to lend on first lien position notes, but I’m going to originate them. I have a massive team that originates those. I mean, I have a loan analyst, I have a loan officer, I have a processor, I have an underwriter, and I just think that people start chasing yield. Right? Well, you’re only offering ten on your fund, and I can go let this guy money and get 14%. Okay, well, where are you going to service it? What are you going to do when he doesn’t pay? How are you going to file? Let the professionals do it and learn from other people’s mistakes. Right. And I get those calls every day. Heather, you told me not to chase yield and I did it. I need help unwinding this now.

[00:26:38.900] – Heather

I should have just put my money in the fund. It’s like there’s a reason we have this massive staff that manages it. It’s not that easy. And even buying real estate, I’ve rehabbed homes. It is not that glamorous. It was not like Chip and Joanna. I thought it would be this great bonding experience, and I think my husband and I almost got a divorce through it, but you know what I’m saying? Why take on all that headache? Because probably like you, most of the people we deal with are professionals. They’re people that have created wealth for themselves, whether that’s through owning their businesses or being in a profession that has allowed them to create some wealth. Let someone else do the heavy lifting for you. You still get really good yields. 10% and even eight and a half is still amazing. Most people’s savings accounts are under 1%. I just don’t think there’s a need to have to go do it yourself anymore. There’s a lot of really good fund operators out there that you can get involved with. It provide you good yields.

[00:27:38.000] – Sean

Right. And in this case, a really low barrier to entry. A few of the other investors, they talked about some really great opportunities, but it can be a high barrier to entry. You have to be accredited, and minimum investments can be $50, sometimes $100,000, whereas this non accredited investor, $1,000 entry and you’re in and you get paid monthly. This is a great little model to diversify, if you’re looking for it.

[00:28:05.410] – Heather

Yeah, absolutely. And I deal with a lot of high net worth people that have family members that aren’t accredited. I just helped a guy that is a dentist that has high net worth. His mom is not accredited, but she is retired, and they’re trying to supplement her income because his dad went into a nursing. Home. We’re able to put her capital to work for her. And now we’ve created a path of income where they don’t have to worry about him being taken care of and where they’re going to get the income from. And she’s also not dipping into her nesting.

[00:28:36.920] – Sean

Right, right.

[00:28:37.660] – Heather

He’s able to live comfortably off of her income she’s making from the fund.

[00:28:42.240] – Sean

So, yeah, great example. Create that cash flow without dipping into that fund. In our case I talk about with our investors is as you get older, get into dividend stocks and let those stocks keep growing, and then you just pay yourself the dividend so you don’t.

[00:28:59.700] – Sean

Have to sell stocks to pay your.

[00:29:01.120] – Sean

Bills or take vacations. Right.

[00:29:03.840] – Heather

Yeah. Same exact strategy.

[00:29:05.790] – Sean

Yeah. Awesome. Well, before we jump over to the Rapid Fire round, the fun little round where we get to find out more about you, is there a question that I did not ask, but should have.

[00:29:17.130] – Heather

Asked, probably where they can get more information I’m sure you were going to.

[00:29:22.180] – Sean

Yes.

[00:29:22.520] – Heather

At the very end, they can always go to our website at Secured Investment Corp. And they can schedule a call with me. We’re really hands on here. We do 15 minutes consultations. We’re no pressure. We’re here to just really educate people, and if people decide it’s a good fit for them, we’d love to talk more about that. But no, you had really good questions, and I think we covered a lot in a very short period of time.

[00:29:48.290] – Sean

Now, you’re very direct with your answers, very clear. Thank you. But we’re not done yet. What I want to do next is we’re going to jump into the Rapid Fire around. There’s a few fun questions. If you can, try to answer each question in 15 seconds or less. You ready?

[00:30:04.400] – Heather

Okay.

[00:30:05.130] – Sean

All right. What is your favorite podcast?

[00:30:09.470] – Heather

That’s a tough one right now. I’ve been listening to a lot of Ben Bergeron.

[00:30:14.570] – Sean

Okay. CrossFit Guy. Okay.

[00:30:19.270] – Heather

Yeah. But he talks a lot about business, personal finances. Sure. Yeah.

[00:30:24.980] – Sean

That’s probably where I’ve heard the name. I’m very much in the CrossFit myself.

[00:30:29.300] – Heather

Me too.

[00:30:33.090] – Sean

Next question here. What is a recent book you read and would recommend?

[00:30:37.410] – Heather

Okay, so recently I’m reading leaders eat last. We do a book of the month for our entire staff, and we actually pay them $120 to read the book and do a six paragraph essay. So that’s actually the book of the month, and I’ve really enjoyed it.

[00:30:53.240] – Sean

Nice. That’s a cool policy you’ve got there in your company.

[00:30:56.210] – Heather

Yeah.

[00:30:56.820] – Sean

Yeah.

[00:30:57.930] – Sean

Cool.

[00:30:58.720] – Sean

Next one is a fun one. What is your favorite movie?

[00:31:01.770] – Heather

Oh, boy.

[00:31:05.410] – Sean

Is it hard to choose or you not watch a lot of movies?

[00:31:08.130] – Heather

I don’t watch a lot of movies.

[00:31:09.990] – Sean

Okay. TV shows.

[00:31:12.370] – Heather

I probably don’t want to mention the series I watched. I like murder mysteries. My husband is convinced I’m plotting. I’m like the date line. Oh, my gosh.

[00:31:27.830] – Sean

Sure. Now, quick segue like mine. Hunter netflix was a good one.

[00:31:35.330] – Heather

We only watched Blackbird, which is pretty sick and twisted, but it’s a good one. I think it’s on hulu.

[00:31:42.090] – Sean

Hulu. Okay. Yeah, it’s really cool. All right, I have a few business questions here. So what is the worst business or investment advice you ever received?

[00:31:55.490] – Heather

I would say the worst investment advice I ever received was waiting until you had enough money to buy a piece of real estate. Being open to private money and seeing the opportunities. It is not about the funding. It is about finding the right deal. You do not have to have all the capital if you find the right deal. There is funding out there and there’s huge opportunity to buy real estate if you’re an active real estate investor.

[00:32:20.690] – Sean

Right.

[00:32:21.400] – Sean

Great advice.

[00:32:22.550] – Sean

Let’s flip that equation. What is the best business or investment advice you ever received?

[00:32:27.680] – Heather

Write the offer. Write the offer and you’ll find the money. That’s something that has allowed my husband and I to start creating both for ourselves, is when I got in the private money industry, I always thought you went to your financial advisor and you went to your bank when you needed a loan. There is so much opportunity out there if you find the right deals, but you’re never going to do anything unless you write the offer. We educate people here on how to find deals, how to rehab them. But if you don’t ever take the chance and take a risk you’re never going to get, if you don’t change anything that you’re doing now, you’re not going to make changes moving forward. And I think the scariest thing is writing that offer on a piece of real estate. But there’s a lot of opportunity and wealth to be created through real estate.

[00:33:16.270] – Sean

Right.

[00:33:18.050] – Heather

Taking action, really, that’s probably the big thing.

[00:33:21.330] – Sean

A lot of people I know are sitting on the sidelines. They’re waiting for that perfect moment. And I tell you what, there’s never going to be that perfect moment. You just got to move. Last question. Here is a fun one. We’re going to hop in the time machine. So if you could give yourself advice, what age would you visit and what would you say?

[00:33:40.790] – Heather

I would probably go back to being 25. I’m not 25. I know that’s hard to believe, which is interesting because I have a 24 year old son, so I feel like the advice I’m giving him, I wish someone else would have gave it to me back then. Open a Roth IRA. I don’t even think I knew what a Roth IRA was when I was that age and start investing early. And I think that’s something that’s such a better opportunity now, because there are things like our fund for $1,000. I think everybody, at least when I was that age, I thought you had a lot of money to start investing. I wish I would have had some of the online webinars podcasts that we have available now back. This is going to date myself 25 years ago. So unless you had a mentor or somebody you knew that was doing this type of stuff, you didn’t know this information wasn’t out there. But I always wonder, like, had I started back then where we would be today. I mean, we’ve done well, but that’s really just been in the last probably 1520 years that we really got active with real estate, started making our money work for us, not working harder, working smarter.

[00:34:52.790] – Heather

I feel like the advice I’m giving my 24 year old who just got a full time fireman’s job, I’m like, oh my God, I wish someone would have told me all that stuff.

[00:35:00.400] – Sean

Yes. And good for him for quick segue here, getting into a trade. More of a trade job than going four year college with high student loan debt, right?

[00:35:10.910] – Heather

Yeah, well, he actually got his bachelor’s that he paid cash for it and went to a junior college and then went and got his bachelor’s and now just got hired full time. He’s like leaps and bounds ahead of 20.

[00:35:25.340] – Sean

Oh, my gosh, good for him. And really, thank you again for sharing your background and your real estate model. I think it’s a really good model, really low barrier to entry. And again, to the investors out there, if you’re looking to diversify, we can say this, people keep making more people where they’re going to live. They need homes.

[00:35:47.850] – Heather

Everybody needs somewhere to live.

[00:35:49.420] – Sean

Yeah, exactly. So real quick here, you did give your website address earlier. Why don’t you give us that real quick and then maybe your primary social channel.

[00:35:59.100] – Heather

Yeah. So you can visit our website. It’s Secured Investment Corp. We’ve got both of our funds listed on there. You can get quite a bit of information and then our first lien position notes, and you can even schedule an appointment with us. We do 15 minutes consultations and then visit us at LinkedIn. You can connect with me personally. Heather Dreams and or also our company secured Investment Corp. We’re also on Facebook. We do a lot of online webinars, lots of YouTube stuff, podcasts. So we have a passion for educating people on how to create wealth for themselves and leave a legacy for their families outside of their daytime jobs. And we’d love to help anybody that is interested in learning more about that.

[00:36:43.720] – Sean

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time, Heather. This is great.

[00:36:46.110] – Heather

Absolutely, thank you.

[00:36:47.530] – Sean

Yes. Hey, I just want to say thanks for checking out this podcast. I know your time is valuable and there’s a lot of other podcasts out.

[00:36:59.260] – Sean

There you could be listening to.

[00:37:00.430] – Sean

So thanks for taking the time to listen to my guest story. If you did enjoy this podcast episode.

[00:37:06.120] – Sean

Could you head over to itunes and leave a five star review?

[00:37:08.660] – Sean

That would be much appreciated. Thank you.

[00:37:10.820] – Sean

And last but not least on this podcast, some episodes we do talk about stocks. And please keep in mind, this podcast is for entertainment purposes only. So if you did hear any thoughts, buy or sell recommendations, please don’t make those decisions based solely on what you hear. All right, thanks a lot.

[00:37:29.280] – Sean

See ya.