Harley Green - Real Estate Lending: Get Paid Without Owning Rentals

Harley Green is a former software architect and computer engineer who traded a career designing complex systems for a different kind of freedom through real estate investing. After more than 15 years in technology, Harley and his wife, Adrienne, began investing in real estate in 2013, learning the business firsthand through renovations, investor networking, private lending, and self-directed IRAs. Those experiences ultimately led them to build InvestAway, a private lending company focused on short-term, first-lien real estate loans for experienced operators across the Southeast. 

Harley is passionate about helping investors put their capital to work through real estate-backed lending while building a life on their own terms. We discuss how InvestAway works, what investors should understand about private lending and self-directed IRAs, and the importance of protecting your capital when investing in real estate. Perhaps most inspiring, Harley, Adrienne, and their three children operate their business remotely while traveling internationally full-time. Join us as we explore how building the right systems, making intentional investment decisions, and thinking differently about work can help create greater time and financial freedom! 

In this episode, you will be able to:

• Discover how private real estate lending can provide investors with income without the responsibilities of directly owning and managing properties.
• Understand how hard money loans help fund fix-and-flip projects and small multifamily investments.
• Learn how co-lending opportunities allow investors to participate in individual real estate-backed loans without managing the entire lending process themselves.
• Explore how self-directed IRAs can be used to invest in private lending and potentially provide tax advantages.
• Understand how loan-to-value limits, after-repair value (ARV), renovation budgets, and holding costs help determine whether a fix-and-flip deal makes financial sense.
• Learn how market demand, property location, and realistic resale timelines influence lending decisions and investment risk.

The key moments in this episode are:
0:00 Family Travel And Real Estate Purpose
5:46 Why Private Lending Won
10:44 Hard Money Pain Points And Fixes
16:32 Funding Terms That Help Borrowers Scale
18:26 Underwriting For Slower Markets
22:56 AI Operations That Speed Up Draws
25:50 Location Freedom

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Full transcript here:

Harley Green 

We have been traveling for the last two plus years around the world. We've gone around the world entirely twice. We've gone to 24 plus countries with our kids, six continents. We just have Antarctica left. So maybe next year we'll hit that. And it's great because it's still investing in real estate. Like we are big believers in real estate as like an asset class to invest in. Um the lending does a lot of good. We're creating income for our borrowers, we're creating beautiful housing stock. We're solving the whole housing affordability crisis in the U.S. by bringing back unlivable homes to be entry-level homes.

Mike Swenson

Welcome to the Real Freedom Show. We inspire you to pursue your passion to gain time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. I'm your host, Mike Swenson. Let's get some real freedom together.

Mike Swenson

I'm your host, Mike Swenson. If you want to get started on your real estate journey, check out our website freedom throughrealestate.com. It's where we put all of our great content, all of our great interviews with the goal really to help inspire you, find a path, pick a path, get started, uh, do something in the real estate space. It's a ton of fun, and we're excited to see you come along for the ride as well. So today I'm super excited. We have an amazing guest. We've got Harley Green. Harley is CEO of Investaway, and you guys help investors deploy capital into short-term real estate-backed loans and create true win-win outcomes. You certainly have a lot of background too with different investing strategies. So excited to hear more about your story, how you kind of landed and got to the private lending space, as well as your experiences along the way. So, Harley, we're excited to have you on the show. Welcome. Thank you, Mike. Happy to be here.

Mike Swenson

Take us back a little bit, get us started, you know, your background and where you got your start into real estate. We'll go from there.

Harley Green 

We've done a little bit of everything in real estate as you alluded to. My background is computer engineering. Like many people, I started out with a W-2 job, and we just kind of got into real estate investing as a means of diversifying our investments. We had a lot of money locked up in 401ks and stock markets that we had very little control over and wanted to diversify from that. So we started out with just kind of house hacking. It was before we even knew house hacking was a term, but we had extra space in our basement and rented it out. Like, hey, this is pretty good, nice, easy money, got beat wet with doing leases and screening tenants. And so we started buying just kind of turnkey rent-ready condos near where we lived. Um, it grew from there. We started getting into short-term rentals. We also got into doing more advanced strategies, like doing flips and renovations, doing the Burr strategy. And then eventually we also got into investing in RV parks. We've also done some syndications in commercial multifamily. And we ended up with private lending because primarily my wife was running a real estate team and helping investors. And she would see time and time again, she would refer her buyers to other hard money lenders to help fund these purchases. And then it would drop the ball. There'd be poor communication, they would change terms at the last minute, they'd spike otherwise good deals that us as local investors in the market could underwrite and say, hey, this is a fine deal. Like if we wanted to buy it, it'd be no problem. So we decided, why don't we just help save these deals? And at the time I had just left my career as a computer engineer and was able to roll that 401k into self-directed IRA and become the lender on these. And it kind of just grew from there.

Mike Swenson

You know, it's funny to hear how many stories of people are like, I experienced something, I didn't like how it was done, or I think I can do it better. And that's how they get their start into something. And so, you know, I've had had countless people that have have done that. Exciting for you to be able to jump in that way. Before we we get into the nuts and bolts of invest away, just give us a little background on and kind of some of the whys and the hows and what you learned through some of those other methods of investing, and then we can we can dig deeper into the private lending side.

Harley Green 

Yeah. So one thing we learned across the board when we were doing these investment projects is, you know, when you're the active real estate investor, you're buying the house, you're doing renovations, even if you're just renting it, you're the one taking on all the risk. Yes, there's like, you know, you're using financing, there's a bank, but there's a lot less risk involved there. They're secured first position, you know, they don't have to fund if the toilet breaks or the water heater in the unit above you breaks and floods your unit. They're not the ones who have to get involved there. And when the deal goes sideways, it once everything sells, they get paid. It's very rare that they take a loss on their loan. Oftentimes, as long as they underwrite it well, there's a lot of margin. So while the person who's on the investor side might lose 10, 20%, the bank has enough margin that they're getting paid and completely satisfied. And so we saw that time and time again. Plus, they were not having to get called with headaches, there were not permit issues. And so for us, it became this idea of like we're still in the real estate space, like we like what real estate does as far as you know, an asset class, it's appreciating, we're doing well in the community, you know, we're turning homes back into livable houses that people can be proud of, but we're not having to have all those headaches that other investing strategies in real estate have. And so for us, it really made a lot of sense. And then in the last year, we actually realized that we were getting a lot more demand from our borrowers. They really liked the service that we provide and the specific fix and flip product that we've outlined. And we were out of capital. We were just using our own money at the time. And they, we just were like, hey, you got to wait. Well, that wasn't serving them well. And so we decided how can we continue to serve our borrowers well? And so we opened up InvestAway to have other people participate as co-lenders with us. And so they can come in and they can invest in specific loans that they choose from. They have all the underwriting details in our portal, and then they can become the bank and be a lender as well without having to like have it be a whole side business. And so that's kind of the genesis of InvestAway.

Harley Green 

We also like it because it's of a lifestyle business for us. We are international travelers. We've been traveling for two plus years all around the world, six continents, 20 plus countries with our family. And lending gives us that lifestyle because I'm able to underwrite deals, send and receive wires from anywhere in the world.

Mike Swenson

Let's dig into Investaway. You had mentioned, you know, bringing in additional lenders. How does that work? What are you guys funding? Give us kind of the nuts and bolts on that.

Harley Green 

Yeah. So our focus is funding short-term fix and flip loans for single family and then small multifamily projects in growth markets. So typically in the Southeast, we really focus on Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, and Missouri. We're open to other states where there's specific growth markets and an experienced investor as well. And so what we are able to do is provide the investors with uh speed and certainty that the banks just can't offer because we know these deals ourselves. We've set up systems that can underwrite very quickly and give people decisions within a business day with the exact terms. And we stick to those terms. We've never had to change the terms unless the borrower comes back and says, Hey, can you change it so that I can roll my closing costs into the loan? So yeah, then we're going to like change terms on them. And we offer features that a lot of other lenders don't that we wish we had when we were active investors, things like rolling closing costs into the loan, having no monthly out-of-pocket interest during the loan, having like one business day turnaround on draw so you get money quickly, and not having any junk fees. Like we just we make our money on the origination and the interest. We don't need to load up our borrowers with all other kinds of nonsense fees. And so we keep it very straightforward and the borrowers like that and they pay a premium for it. And we're able to pass that premium then on to our co-lenders. So the co-lenders can come in and instead of having to fund an entire loan themselves, they can just say, hey, I've got 50K. I want to put it on this loan. And then they are basically just replacing our position on it, freeing up money for us to go originate new loans. And then we pass the interest that's prorated on that loan back to the investor.

Mike Swenson

Sounds great. So, you know, hey, I want to be able to get into the lending space. I don't know how, I don't know the regulations. I don't necessarily have the connections or the capital to be able to do that. This is a great way for them to be able to step in, get their feet wet, put their money working for them on the lending side and kind of utilizing your platform and experience and connections and all that to be able to make that happen. Is that right?

Harley Green 

That's exactly right. We actually have a lot of people who maybe were private lenders or have done some deals as private lenders come to us because when you're doing it yourself, first of all, you've got to have all the capital for the deal. So that means you've got to have like 200, you know, 300K liquid ready to go. And then you got to know how to underwrite it, you got to know all the legal requirements, the documents, all this kind of stuff. It's a lot. Versus, and then the biggest thing that hurts people is the downtime. And so when you are doing it yourself and you don't have a deep pipeline, let's say a loan pays off, you've got your 250K back plus your interest. Well, now you got to find the next deal. You can't necessarily have a deal lined up the same day that that pays off, because as we all know in real estate, the payoff date shifts, you know, title delays, buyer delays, all these kinds of things. So you can't promise your next borrower that the money will be there on a certain date until you've actually got the money in your bank. And so that creates a problem because now you have to wait days, weeks, maybe even months between deals where your money is earning nothing. And that kills your overall returns. Versus with our model, we have the volume where there's always loans available. So when we get a loan that pays off, our investors are coordinated in advance and say, hey, this is the amount of the proceeds you're likely to get, plus or minus a few days of interest. Which loan do you want to roll into? And so the moment that loan pays off, they don't have to do anything. All the documents are already signed. It just switches over immediately into the next loan and continues earning interest. So it really juices their returns compared to doing it themselves.

Mike Swenson

Now you mentioned about rolling into self-directed IRAs. Is that something that's an option for folks to do here?

Harley Green 

It is. Self-directed IRAs are a great investment vehicle for private lending. Unlike direct real estate ownership, where you get all kinds of great tax benefits, which I love, we still buy real estate to offset our income with the private lending. It's just interest income. So it just gets passed through. There's not like depreciation or things like that that you get with ordinary real estate. So having a tax advantage investment vehicle like a self-directed IRA, where either it's tax-free in the case of a Roth or it's tax-deferred in the case of a traditional IRA, it makes it really optimal. So you're not getting a bigger tax bill that you have to then offset with buying more real estate in your personal account. Now, some people will invest it with a personal account. They just like the concept of that. They don't like the ups and downs of the market. There's a lot of reasons for doing it in both ways, but self-constructed IRA accounts are really optimal.

Mike Swenson

You designed a company around the struggles that you guys experienced or kind of what you wish you would have seen in the market. For people that haven't been in the private lending space or done hard money loans, talk a little bit about what those frustrations can be, what you've experienced, maybe how these loans are difficult or challenging or you know, maybe predatory, whatever that might look like for the person borrowing. And then obviously you guys have come in and you know provided the band-aid solution to be able to help with that, but talk through that space and why it is so difficult for people trying to utilize loans to for their investments.

Harley Green 

Yeah, Mike, I think we could probably have a whole podcast just on the pain points of hard money lenders and the things they do poorly. Some of the high points, though, are just like oftentimes businesses struggle to have employees that have um, you know, full knowledge of what the underwriting involves. They typically will have a separate branch of like your salespeople that are boots on the ground talking to the investors, trying to get borrowers. And then there's other people back in some other state, usually, that are doing the underwriting and making the funding decisions. And that disconnect is where there's a lot of pain points. Someone on the ground says, Yeah, we can definitely fund this. Here's terms we likely can do. And then it goes underwriting and it's like three weeks later, two days before the deal is supposed to close, they come back and say, Oh, well, this came back and it's slightly outside of the city area that we like, we are considering it rural. So your rates doubled or whatever it may be, or we're just not going to fund it. And now you have to, you're two days from closing. You've got an EMD that's on the line and you're really stuck. That's one of the most common issues with hard money lenders. Um, other ones are just like they have tons of junk fees. They have like an insurance underwriting fee, flood certificate fee, like things that while they maybe are like a low interest or lower interest rate than we might be, they make up for it on the front end with all these fees. And they're just junk. You don't need them like we run a hard lending business. The only fee that we charge is $100 for underwriting, just covering our VA's time that look looking at your file and a document prep fee that's direct pass through to our attorney, exactly what they charge for doing the loan doc. So it's very simple and straightforward. The other thing is the appraisals. The appraisal process, it's so varying. A lot of people require like a third-party appraisal, and that can take weeks and also be very inaccurate. There's just human error that gets involved. So what we've settled on is we use a hybrid approach where we use uh desktop AI-based underwriting and it gives us values. And then, of course, we still have the human loop where like, hey, maybe there's some bad comps in there, we're going to do a manual review to make sure we have a very solid understanding of the value, and we can turn that around in less than a day. So that way our whole underwriting is based on the asset and that ARV. We don't go and dig up tax returns. We don't go and look at your cash flow. It doesn't matter because our security is in the asset itself. And so as long as the ARV is a value that we can lend against and make the deal work for the borrower, we can say yes to it. So those are some of the things that we've really addressed there. And then it's just keeping um borrower capital liquid so that they have the money to go pay their contractors to buy the supplies, to do more than one deal at a time. That's something that we have really seen our borrowers love and why they keep coming back to us and paying a premium to us, is because we have these options like rolling closing costs and no monthly out of pocket payments to keep capital liquid. So yes, they're paying us a higher rate, but now they can do two, three deals at the same time with the same amount of capital, and they actually net more for their family doing it that way, even with paying a higher rate to us.

Mike Swenson

I remember when when we were first looking into doing fix and flips and things like that, and I started to run the numbers on hard money loans. I was like, holy cow, what I thought was gonna be this sweet profit after the fact when you when you put in the holding costs and the financing costs, it it eats up a lot. And so being able to have certainty around that and somebody that you know like and trust that's gonna do a good job for you is is really important. And and really they are your business partner because without great lending options, you can't get the loans to do the properties that you want to do. And and wouldn't it be amazing if nobody ever had to say, well, I wish I could have had the money to be able to do this project. And so when you when you bring certainty and and trust to that relationship, it's huge.

Harley Green 

It is. I get this all the time where I mean investors are like, uh, I just wish I could get into it, but I don't have the money. And I was like, what if money wasn't a problem for you? What would you do? And we that gets the brain thinking, like, okay, let's be solution-oriented, let's focus on finding the deal. And if they find a good deal, the money's there. Like if our loans are capped at 75% of the ARB, and we have found that if the borrower thinks they need more than that, it's probably not a good deal because things go wrong with flips. And if they need to get leverage higher than 75%, they are putting themselves at great risk of having a financially bad day because if one thing goes wrong, like, oh, that septic system needs to be replaced that you couldn't tell when you did the one walkthrough you get on a wholesale deal, your profit's gone and you have to bring money to the table to close it out.

Mike Swenson

Now, you did mention so 75% ARV. So somebody who's new to real estate investing, somebody who would maybe like to do some flips in the future, doesn't really know how it works, anything like that. Can you just kind of quick walk through a little more elementary level? Hey, I've got something that I think that I like. I I actually have a you know person that I know that's looking at starting some flips, right? And and I'm realizing how much I've learned over the years because they haven't thought about a lot of the things that I now is just it comes second nature, right? So kind of talk about that if if you think you've got a deal, how that works, and then how your lending can potentially fit into that and provide the solution for the project they've got.

Mike Swenson

Are you looking to get started or scale in real estate investing but don't know your next step? Are you overwhelmed thinking about finding deals, analyzing deals, doing due diligence, and managing properties on top of it? Go ahead and push the easy button and invest with us. Real estate investing is what we do full time. We've done dozens of deals with hundreds of doors. We have the knowledge and experience to handpick the best deals that most investors can't find. We've at large off-market deals all the time where you can hopefully find returns and economies of scale that you just can't find on your own. The best thing is it's 100% passive to you for less capital than you put down trying to acquire a property on your own. Don't let this year go by where you don't make the leap, add to your portfolio, or you just sit in analysis by paralysis. To find out more, visit freedomthroughrealestate.com and click on invest. You can book a call and learn more there. So get to scaling your portfolio now with us by your side. That's freedomthrurealestate.com and click on invest.

Harley Green 

Yep. So what we really focus on, like you said, is ARB. So that's after repair or renovation value of the property. So generally you're looking at um if you're looking at a deal, you're gonna look at the purchase price, and then you wanna look at your acquisition costs. So that's typically closing costs. Uh, it can be the loan, also taxes, title, things like that. And then your renovation. So if you're doing it yourself, maybe you're an experienced contractor, but you're just doing jobs for someone else, it's really easy to then estimate it. Otherwise, you know, get a few contractors, get a walk through and give you estimates. And that is what we consider the scope of work. That's the budget. So you want to add that into your acquisition costs. And then ideally, you're keeping that plus um holding cost of the loan. So that's your interest, and then also any utilities that you might have to pay for and insurance while you're holding the property. And if you can keep that capped right at 75%, that means when you go to sell, there's 25% margin, ideally. And so that covers like the sale cost from your listing agent and give you, and should give you a nice profit, generally like 20% of those costs. And with the right loan like ours, even if the loan is having a high interest and high origination fees, getting 20% when you only have to bring a small amount to the table of capital gives you a very high return on your actual investment. And so with our products, we're able to get even new borrowers in with just 5% down on the purchase price. And then experienced investors who've done three deals with us, we do 100% funding because, again, like you said, it was the relationship. People know, like, and trust working with us, and we know like and trust working with them. And we know that this is how they make their money for their family. So we're totally fine taking that risk on them of having no money in the deal. And so they can then do three, four, five deals at a time, which actually lowers their cost. They get economies of scale. They can buy in bulk, they can keep their contractor dedicated to them, working on just their projects, getting better pricing. And so even though they're paying a premium to us in rate, they're netting more overall than they would using traditional methods.

Mike Swenson

You know, one of the things that you know I've been talking about here with our team is it's nice on paper. We've we've got the project, we've got the renovation, and we've got the potential ARV based on comps, right? In a slower market like this, there may have been properties that have sold at that price. It may have taken a little bit longer than we thought. And so we've got some investors that have some pretty sweet properties fixed up really nice. The numbers check out, but they're sitting on the market and they're they're not selling. Obviously, for a fix and flip, you've got to be able to get the flip happening to be able to move on, you know, to redeploy that capital somewhere else. And so, kind of the the days on market and and being able to sell it quickly, and it's a it's a balance between the price that I think that I can get and the price that I think that I can get quickly. There's a little bit of margin there. So, talk about in a in a slower market or a changing market like that. I mean, obviously, you guys have identified some territories that you want to focus on, probably because I'm I'm sure the housing stock is moving more quickly, but kind of talk about that as well, in addition to just finding a comp sold at a price, it may take a while to get that price that you want.

Harley Green

Yeah. So part of looking at the ARV on our analysis is also market demand. And so we have a metric that basically categorizes market demand from zero to a hundred. And so when scores are like 60 or below, that's when we're going to go back to the borrower and say, hey, the market's a little bit slower. And that's of course backwards looking. We're taking the current conditions into account. And we'll say something like, you can probably do this project in four months in a perfect market where there's high borrower demand. So let's go ahead and just make it a nine-month loan term instead of four. That way you don't have to worry about paying extension fees or having that kind of stress. And so that's something we talk to them up front. So when we're doing the underwriting, yes, it's primarily based on the ARV and that project scope. We want to make sure things make sense, but we are going ahead and looking at also is it rural? Is it in a flood zone? Those are things that might make it harder to get an exit if they were to get it, keep it as a burr and like get a DSER loan. And there's some lenders maybe are going to have more strict requirements in those zones, or borrowers are sometimes just not educated on flood insurance. And so if they see something's in a flood zone, they might steer away from it, even you know, all things being equal for another house that is not in a flood zone.

Mike Swenson

You mentioned Tennessee, you know, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Missouri, is where you guys are focusing. What's the attractiveness there? And do you guys plan to expand on that, or do you just want to stick with that? Because there's there's enough people that are looking to use you guys in that area.

Harley Green

So we came on those markets just based on doing publicly available market data analysis, looking at um the sales to list price ratio. So these are homes in these markets, generally speaking, that sell very close to what they're listed for. So there's strong demand. There are growth areas, these are population centers that are continuing to grow, people are migrating there. So there's opportunity, there's demand for more housing. And there's also a lot of homes that are in the price points that most of our fix and flips operate in. So in that, you know, 100, 150K purchase, 250 to 300k kind of exit, which we really like. It gives our borrowers a lot of exit options. They can sell it to first-time home buyers, they can sell them to other investors just looking for turnkey rentals. They can keep it themselves and put a tenant in there and burr it. And so it gives them a lot more flexibility. Now, with that said, we also do other loans. We do some boutique loans with people that are experienced Airbnb operators, operating like luxury larger, you know, $500,000 purchase, million dollar exit type situations. We do those as well. But those are again like they've got to be an experienced operator with a track record before we're going to jump in there with the same kind of terms we offer, the standard fix and flips.

Mike Swenson

Yeah, we had a property that somebody was looking at that I think it was, you know, per. Purchase price plus repairs, you're in it for about $650, and the sale was around a million. And it's like, that's that's great, but we don't necessarily know when that property is going to sell. And it's tying up $650,000 of capital when you could deploy that in two, three other homes, four other homes elsewhere too. And so um, it's the the profit looks great, um, but at the same time, there's those other logistical things that um somebody might see past and and not realize that maybe it's a little tougher deal than they originally thought.

Harley Green

That's a good point. And you know, it you really want to talk to the people who are doing the operate, the operators, real estate investors. What is their unique strength? Like maybe someone is really good or they've got a partner with like decorating and managing Airbnb. So, like, yeah, it makes sense that it's gonna take a little bit longer, but they have a really unique skill in this area. So they're going to profit more than if they got into something that they're not familiar with, which is like these kind of entry-level homes that have a lot of mess, there's a lot more things that need repairing versus cosmetic side on those higher level flips.

Mike Swenson

Now, a couple of things I wanted to touch on quick. You had mentioned utilizing AI. So, you know, lots of businesses looking at different ways that they can utilize AI. For you guys, you know, how are you implementing it? How is it helping you guys with efficiency and being able to provide better service for your clients?

Harley Green

Yeah, so we've been really big on AI and just trying to have it take over all the back end operations. So we aren't wanting to have AI be out there making phone calls or taking phone calls. We have our executive assistants handle that. So they're real people, very friendly, nicer at customer service than I am, making sure that all of our borrowers and like title companies and stuff have great communication all the time. The AI steps in on the back end, making sure all of our loan files are getting all of our checklists. So we have SOPs for how we do underwriting, making sure everything's getting done, analyzing all the documents that borrowers upload. A lot of times borrowers, like they're not insurance experts, but we have very specific insurance requirements we require. And so they can upload that declarations page. And instead of having the human take 10 minutes to review it against the checklist from our underwriting, AI can just do it automatically and say, hey, there's no expiration date on it, or the coverage is not there the way we need it, and just kick it right back with that explanation to the borrower so they can pass it on to their insurance agent. So that saves time. Draws is a big area that we've um delivered AI and found huge time savings, which translates to much happier borrowers because they get their money faster. So when they upload all their evidence for a draw, such as you know, pictures of the completed work, invoices, uh receipts, things like that, the AI is able to analyze those, make sure all the totals match up to what their request is, make sure that the pictures show the work that was, you know, described in those invoices or receipts, and then it can give a quick like pass fail, or hey, here's things that we still need, and make a recommendation so that the VA then can go in, do a very quick review. Something that used to take a VA 90 minutes on average to do a draw is now four minutes because of AI.

Mike Swenson

That's great. Yeah, a lot of that kind of first pass stuff, not that you're completely replacing somebody, but kind of helping serve up on a silver platter what that person needs to do, and they can step in kind of like you know, we've always used this doctor analogy, right? Like when you go to the doctor, you really only see the doctor for a couple minutes because you've got that whole process and they step in. And so every person now can kind of be that doctor of that area of expertise because the AI has kind of teed it up for them and served it up on a silver platter for where they need to focus their time.

Harley Green

Yeah, and it's funny, I can tell when we're working with some other companies that are not using AI, most often it's title companies, because they just have all these errors that come back on these documents that like RVA runs through our AI to check and just spits out all the things that are wrong that did not match the um email intro email that we sent. This is like a clear bullet list of like, here's all the terms, here's just what exactly to put into the closing disclosure, and they still mess it up. I'm like, all right, you guys are obviously not using AI because if had you just put our email through and compared it to the CD you just sent, you would have seen all these issues.

Mike Swenson

One last thing, finally, here I do want to touch on, you know, you had mentioned being able to travel around a little bit and and creating a company that allows you flexibility of time and being able to work anywhere. Just talk a little bit about how that's been a win for for you and your family being in an industry where you can be remote and you guys can do some fun things as a family all while keeping your business growing and successful at the same time.

Harley Green

Yeah. So when we really decided to scale up the private lending, it was a big part because it does provide the lifestyle that we want to have. We have been traveling for the last two plus years around the world. We've gone around the world entirely twice. We've gone to 24 plus countries with our kids, six continents. We just have Antarctica left, so maybe next year we'll hit that. And it's great because it's still investing in real estate. Like we are big believers in real estate as like an asset class to invest in. Um, the lending does a lot of good. We're creating income for our borrowers, we're creating beautiful housing stock. We're solving the whole housing affordability crisis in the US by bringing back unlivable homes to be entry-level homes. And so we feel like it's just this ideal combination that provides passive income for us. Well, for you know, we're right, we're working passive income for our investors. It's an easy job for me managing this business. It's very quiet. We have two VAs and AI, and we're able to do millions and millions of dollars of loans, which is that small staff. So it's very quiet. There's not a lot of stress. I don't get midnight calls of contractors or you know, septic issues, things like that. And so for us, it has just created this opportunity to be able to travel, live where we want, be location independent, and even time zone independent. So there's very few times where we have to like be on a specific time zone. We can underwrite, we can wire money from anywhere in any time zone.

Mike Swenson

I love it. For people, Harley, that want to reach out to you, uh learn more about Investaway and what you guys are doing, how can they do so?

Harley Green

Yep. So the best way is find me on LinkedIn if you just search for Harley Green. I'm on LinkedIn. If people are interested in private lending and want to see the seven mistakes that we made when we first got into it and the solutions to those, I've got a free guide on our website at investaway.co slash PML seven mistakes, and they can get that free guide. The is the lessons that we learned the hard way.

Mike Swenson

Slash seven mistakes is the number seven, not spelled out seven. Correct.

Harley Green

The number seven says slash PML seven mistakes.

Mike Swenson

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on, Harley, sharing your story. Love to hear it, love to see what you're doing in real estate, and also providing a fun time for your family, being able to enjoy life as well. Thank you so much for coming on the show and uh best of luck as you guys continue to grow. Thank you, Meg. It's been a pleasure.