Matt Jones: Investing In Multi-Family & Senior Assisted Living Facilities

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE ON:

 Matt Jones is a real estate investor residing in St Paul, MN, who owns 40 units of multifamily and 244 beds of senior assisted living. He is the CEO of Hawkwing Capital, which helps people become passive investors in real estate syndications. He has a master of science in mental health counseling which comes in handy with building positive relationships in real estate. Matt co-hosts two podcasts: The Passive Real Estate Podcast and Pillars of Wealth Creation. He wrote the book, Book About Real Estate that summarizes and reviews top real estate books covering the full spectrum of real estate investing. As an avid reader, he loves talking with others about the powerful books he has read. When not doing real estate, you will find him cooking unique meals, traveling the world, and going hiking with his amazing wife.

In this episode, hosted by Mike Swenson, we discussed:

• How House Hacking can be a seamless first step into real estate investing
• How to maximize your time while working a full-time job and focus on expanding your real estate business
• Understanding general partnership and limited partnership in a real estate syndication
• The economies of scale purchasing a 100-unit property vs 100 single-family houses
• How Multi-family became Matt's preferred method of real estate investing
• What you should look for in pursuing syndications
• What was Matt's first biggest mistake that you could learn from
• Having buying power and winning together through a pool of investors

Timestamps
0:00 - Matt's Career Overview
2:01 - Journey From Mental Health Counseling to Real Estate Investing
5:35 - Scaling Up To A Larger Investment While Saving Time and Hassle
7:52 - How Real Estate Syndication Works?
18:08 - Matt's Advice To People Pursuing Syndications
24:37 - The 1+1=3 Mindset
27:19 - Tips For Finding Relationship In The Areas You're Looking To Invest
31:24 - How To Find Matt

FOLLOW MATT 👇
www.HawkwingCapital.com 
www.linkedin.com/in/matt-jones-mn/ 
https://www.facebook.com/mattjones7 
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... 
https://www.amazon.com/Book-About-Rea...

SUBSCRIBE IF YOU'RE LOOKING TO BUILD WEALTH THROUGH OPPORTUNITIES IN THE REAL ESTATE INDUSTRY 
✅ http://relfreedom.tv  

GET STARTED INVESTING TODAY AND ACCESS OUR DEAL LIST! 
📈 http://investwithelite.com  

PARTNER WITH US ON BIG DEALS! 
💵 https://eliteadvantagepropertieshq.com  

BUILD YOUR REAL ESTATE AGENT CAREER WORKING WITH INVESTORS 
👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 http://eliteadvantageagent.com  

LEARN ABOUT REL FREEDOM & HEAR MORE REAL LIFE STORIES 
🎙️ http://www.relfreedom.com   

FREEBIES: DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE FREEDOM FOUNDATION BLUEPRINT 
💵 https://www.relfreedom.com/blueprint  

LOOKING FOR A REAL ESTATE AGENT ANYWHERE IN THE US? FIND A TOP AGENT IN YOUR COMMUNITY 
🏠 http://www.eliteagentreferral.com  

JOIN OUR FACEBOOK COMMUNITY 
👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 https://www.facebook.com/groups/relfreedom  

SUBSCRIBE TO THE REL FREEDOM PODCAST 
🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rel-freedom-podcast/id1535281574 
🎧 Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5idXp6c3Byb3V0LmNvbS8xNDA3NjIyLnJzcw== 
🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5nXA5hLHbDzRwxypc2wLur  

LET'S CONNECT 
👉 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mswenson13 
👉 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/getrelfreedom/ 
👉 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@relfreedom 
🏠 Minnesota Real Estate: https://www.eliteadvantageteam.com  

Full transcript here:

Mike Swenson 

Welcome to The REL Freedom Podcast where 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 

All right, welcome everybody to another episode of The REL Freedom Podcast where we talk about building wealth, gaining time and financial freedom through different opportunities in Real Estate and today, we get a chance to talk about real estate syndications and what it's going to take to get started in a syndication what you should be looking for. So if you're looking for passive investing opportunities, I know a lot of times investors think that they have to spend a lot of time and energy and sweat equity trying to house hack or do things themselves. This provides a great opportunity to be able to passively invest partner with great operators who have done this before who have experienced and give you those returns that you would want on your real estate investments.

Mike Swenson 

So today we've got Matt Jones here. Matt is also from Minnesota. It's not often we have another Minnesota guest on but Matt is from Minnesota, a real estate investor who owns 40 multifamily units, and 244 beds of senior assisted living, CEO of Hawk wing capital, which helps people become passive investors in syndications. You have a Master of Science and mental health counselling, which is handy building your relationships with people in real estate. We'll talk about how to do that too. In the episode, you're the co host of two podcasts, passive real estate podcast, and Pillars of Wealth Creation with Todd Dex Heimer. And you wrote the book book about real estate that summarises reviews, and reviews, top real estate books covering the full spectrum of real estate investing, love talking with others about books and how to grow and when not doing real estate, find you cooking unique meals, travelling the world and going hiking with your wife. And so welcome Matt to the show. We're so excited to have you.

Matt Jones 

it's great to be here.

Mike Swenson 

Why don't you just start by sharing a little bit about your background, how going from mental health to real estate and the journey and how you launched into the holdings that you have and we'll go from there.

Matt Jones 

Sure. Like you said, I have a background in mental health counselling as well as disability support. So which has really nothing to do with real estate investing, but I read this little purple book called Rich Dad Poor Dad like so many people and it just blew my mind. It took me a while before actually took action on the lessons I learned from that and other books. But eventually I pulled the trigger and bought a triplex in 2015. So this was a living triplex I lived in one unit rented out the other two, what's called House hacking, I didn't know the term at the time, but that just seemed like a good way to create equity with other people paying down my mortgage and

Mike Swenson 

it was just called buying it buying a triplex and living in it. Yeah, exactly. term at the time. No, no, exactly.

Matt Jones 

And you know, I had managed on my group homes for people disabilities so like managing you know, self managed for the triplex, which was kind of like an easy group home for me. So it kind of pulling on my background and experience and strengths to be able to do that. And that would alright, and I mean, it was profitable. And then I was saving up money from my work my w two to be able to buy my next place. But it took me you know, a couple years before I had enough money for the next place because now the first triplex I bought was an FHA loan, so only three and a half percent down. But now buying my next place was an investment property that was 25% down so it took me a little longer to save up. But anyway, I was able to buy another triplex across town and that and I was you know, self manage that for a while. But that just got to be a pain in the butt because still working full time, as well as managing these two properties across town. And it just got to be a bit of a headache when things inevitably went wrong at both places at different times.

Matt Jones 

So I decided to step back and see like, Okay, this is not a good use of my time. And I better just hire a property manager, even though it's going to cut into my profits, even though they're not going to manage the pace as well as I can, personally, but it saves me the time to be able to focus on growing my business because it was just going so slowly compared to what I thought it would be. And then it was in 2019, I learned about real estate syndication as a concept. And that just blew my mind again, it's like learning that, you know, reading Rich Dad Poor Dad for the first time, you know, just like whoa, and learning about syndication for the first time. Wow, it solves all my problems for me, you know, I was trying to scale up by getting these triplexes to eventually train to attend Plex and and then you know 20 And and so on and so forth to get to the bigger stuff. And I thought man, this is gonna take me 20 years, maybe 30 years before I can get anything close to 100.

Matt Jones 

But with syndication, you can just jump right in. Like you don't have to graduate through the levels. You can just start investing right away with larger stuff. And you know with syndication also, I'm no longer dependent upon my ability to save up my money. need to be able to get down payments? Because really, you're using other people's money with syndication when you're active partner. You know, granted, you can invest passively with your own money as well. And often people do. And I actually like that as a concept. But yeah, anyway, so syndication, beautiful thing, it's really just a really complicated joint venture where a bunch of people are pooling their money and resources together, some are active partners running the deal, some are passive and don't do any work whatsoever. But together, they're able to make a much bigger deal happen than any of them could on their own.

Mike Swenson 

Yeah, what I love is it's it really is the power of using people's strengths. And what I've seen now working with investors, there's a lot of grind in doing your own properties, trying to manage yourself trying to find property managers, trying to find if you don't have a property manager than you're trying to be the general contractor lining up vendors, and sometimes vendors flake out, you know, I remember we had a flip, and we were going to do electrical work. And he was supposed to start on a Monday and the Friday before he got to a larger job, that was going to take them two months. And he bailed on us, you know, and so now you're stuck trying to figure it out. And so there's all these time savings and hassle savings, going from trying to do all that stuff yourself to levelling up to a bigger building. And in this case, you get somebody that knows and understands buildings can pick out a good deal, right? If I'm, you know, working my w two job, I don't have time to go find a great deal, nor am I in the industry long enough to maybe recognise what a good deal is.

Mike Swenson 

And so you're partnering with people who can do that. You're partnering with great lenders. And then you're partnering with great operators, managing the property as well, whether it's somebody that's on site, with a larger property, or somebody that a company that you go through if it's maybe a smaller building, and so everybody gets to bring their best gifts, and you get to bring your money, and half of that utilised well versus like you said, trying to go through the hassle of Do I have enough to save for this building? Or do I have enough to be able to scale up to the next building, you could just put what you have into that deal. And then when the next deal comes along, you can either take that and roll it in and a 1031 exchange or take whatever other chunk of money that you have and put it into a different deal. So it kind of solves a lot of problems at the same time.

Matt Jones 

Yep, exactly. Yeah. And you mentioned 1031, you can tend to 31 into real estate syndication, you know, there's specific rules and has to be set up correctly. But it is certainly possible to do that, too.

Mike Swenson 

So talk about some of these syndication. So for somebody that isn't familiar with it, maybe this is their first time listening to the podcast, and they haven't heard, or they haven't, you know, heard the term syndication, just kind of go through just the basics really quick for somebody of how that works.

Matt Jones 

Okay, yeah, so there's two sides to it with investors, there's the general partnership or sponsor or operator interchangeable terms. And there's delimited partners or passive investors. And so the general partners, they, you know, sometimes it's one person for a smaller deal, or it'd be a team of people for a bigger deal. And there's different roles within it. So somebody has to find the deal, they have to underwrite it, they have to put an offer with in, they have to get it under contract. And then there's a due diligence phase, which is, you know, making sure that, you know, everything's correct, you know, walking through all the units, reading through all the leases, and doing environmental studies of needed, you know, inspections, all this kind of stuff.

Matt Jones 

And then also, there's capital raising, so they have to raise capital from passive investors to be able to buy the place. So generally, there's going to be like a 25% down payment, plus, you know, whatever costs, there would be for renovations, if you're doing a kind of a value, add, play, you know, renovating the units, making them nicer, and then being able to rent them out for more as a result, you also want to see things like are the utilities cost effective, you know, maybe making the place greener is going to improve your profits. Because it's not always a matter of, you know, when you're looking at a property, seeing how you can raise rents and make more money, sometimes the easiest thing to do is to decrease expenses, you know, whenever you kind of like, you know, renegotiate contracts with lawn care and stuff like that. Anyway, so the general partners, they put the deal together, and the limited partners invest in the deal. And usually it's around a 30% to 70% split on the profits or we're also general partners will get about 30%.

Matt Jones 

That limited partners get about 70%. And it's the profits are paid to the investors, the passive investors through a preferred equity, or like So, generally, it's maybe around six to 8% or so of whatever they invested per year that they would get before the general partners get profits and Then there's a split after that. So like, usually the limited partners are going to get a bigger chunk than general partners get more. So this kind of incentivizes the general partners to do a better job with running the property. And, and there'll be like a whole period, something, depending on the general partner that they'll have this in the plan beforehand, before investors decide to invest a, whether they're planning to hold it for like three years, or seven years, or 10 years, or however long. Granted, like if, you know, somebody came up and was offering a deal, you know, to buy the place for too good of a price. And you know, they might sell early, which definitely happens, sometimes it's happened a lot over the past few years.

Matt Jones 

But also, the general partner can also decide to like hold on to the property for longer, if times get tough, because I mean, really, with real estate, if you can hold on to a property for longer, that you're going to make money in the long term. And I wouldn't say also, like with the 2008, recession, there was a lot of foreclosures on single family homes, but there really weren't very many with large multifamily, because there's just more cushion behind that to be able to, you know, handle things that happened. And also you think about like the cost of running 100 unit place versus 100, single family houses, you know, like the property manager, cost is going to be about 10% of gross for the single family houses. But it's only going to be about 4% of gross profits for the 100 unit plus, because now you've also got the economy of scale, it's a lot more efficient to manage.

Matt Jones 

And you can afford full time on site staff for leasing and maintenance. And if you're renovating the units, like you buy everything in bulk, you know, is the same stoves and flooring, same everything. Whereas 100 single family houses, oh, everything's unique and a big struggle like It's like doing 100 flips all at the same time. If you try that, and you've done flips and trying to do 100 At once Tricky, tricky, but you know, 100 or 100 unit property, you've got contractors in there that are professional, and they can get it down to a tee like one after the other sort of thing. So it's just a lot more, you get a better multiplier, essentially by looking at syndication with large multifamily or, you know, other kinds of properties as well. And, for me, it's a lot safer at the same time.

Mike Swenson 

And to with a syndication. So the way that this works is you are essentially, you know, in the eyes of the the SEC, the Securities Exchange Commission, you're selling something to a person, so they don't have a say in what happens. And so that's the difference here. So if I was buying a flip property, I have the decision making control over what to do when you're a limited partner, you're limited, right. And so it's it's just as if, you know, there's there's two sides of a table, the general partner is on one side, and we're offering the security to the person on the other side of the table, the general partner is the one kind of running it making the decisions, and then the limited partners in trusting them. But it's not like the limited partner can be like, You know what, actually, I gotta, I gotta sell right now. And so we're gonna go ahead and sell the building, they they can't make that decision as a limited partner. So there's, that's where the Securities and Exchange Commission comes in and says, This is what you can do and can't do. Right in terms of you no monitoring that investment to make sure you're following the rules and the guidelines in place.

Matt Jones 

Correct? Yeah, generally speaking, you're if you're investing in syndication, your money is not liquid, it's in there until the property refinances and you can cash out, or it sells and then you get your original capital plus your share of the profits. But at the same time, like the profits are great, like usually I'm looking at syndications that can double an investor's money in five years, which, you know, you can invest your money in the stock market, and maybe do okay, maybe do better. But the real estate is, for me, it's a it's not a get rich, quick thing. But it's a get rich, for sure. Kind of thing. Plus, when you're investing into a syndication, you're an equity partner. So that means you're getting the tax benefits from the real estate ownership. You don't get that from investing in stocks at all. So it's just a really nice, I mean, the laws in the United States were were made for real estate investing, like there's no other kind of business like it in the world, or country in the world that allows this kind of, you know, profits for real estate of the United States is great for it.

Mike Swenson 

Yeah, you like you said, it's not liquid. It's not like in the sense of, hey, I'm putting my money in Apple stock. I've watched it grow. And now I want to be able to sell it and take it out. But at the same time, like you said, yeah, you you have a chance to make money in multiple areas, and I should say have a great profit margin and the tax savings certainly is a huge help. Another idea too is if you're using you know, retirement funds, you can do a self directed IRA where you're able to place money into a fund like that. Well if it's retired Amid funds, you're not planning on using it next year anyhow. And so for something like that, you have a longer horizon. It's not like you're looking to sell that to go buy something. And so you're going to use that. So another great option is using something like a self directed IRA. Because if the building sells six months from now or two years from now, it's not like you're planning on having that money to do something else with it, and you can just roll it into the next future real estate investment after that building sells.

Matt Jones 

Exactly, exactly. That's a common way that people get, you know, invested into the syndications is by using their self directed 401 K or self directed IRA.

Mike Swenson 

Now, with a lot of syndications out there, they might have a limit, or they might have like a low threshold in terms of the amount of money you can invest. And so do you want to just talk about that for a minute? It's not like, Hey, I've got 1000 bucks, I'm gonna go put my 1000 bucks in there.

Matt Jones 

Yes. So there, I mean, on a side, there is a type of syndication called crowdfunding, which they do have lower minimums. But that's more like, you know, if you combined Kickstarter with real estate investing, and which is okay, but you don't get as much profits as you would with a regular syndication. So usually the minimums, it depends on the particular syndication and how they're setting it up. But it might be a $25,000 minimum, or a $50,000, minimum, or sometimes $100,000 minimum that you need to invest, to even get involved in that deal as a passive investor. And the syndication sponsor could potentially make exceptions for their data or something like that, if they want it, but it's, usually you want to do at least a minimum, because you think if you're raising a million dollars, and your minimum is $1,000, for an investor, how many investors do you got to raise money from to be able to get to that million dollars? Like, virtually? Yeah, exactly.

Matt Jones 

So whereas if it's a, you have a $50,000, minimum for that million dollars, now, it's only 20 investors that you need to get. So that's a lot more manageable from an administrative side. And plus, you know, you don't want to take somebody's like, last $50,000 Anyway, you know, so you want to only take it from either accredited investors or sophisticated investors that, you know, they could potentially lose the money if you know if worst comes to worst, because I mean, nothing's guaranteed of course, with with anything. But although I would say real estate is pretty close, as close as you can get. As long as the operator, the person who's running the syndication knows what they're doing.

Mike Swenson 

Yeah. And that's that's another guideline, too. For people that might not know they have an income limit, what's called a, you know, an accredited investor investor. There's an income guideline and net worth guideline. And yeah, that it's it's meant in theory to be able to protect the person that thinking, well, if I have x number of dollars, I'm making every year X number of net worth, I'm not going to be swindled into something that maybe I don't understand. And so there's there's a guideline there, depending on which type of fund you set up whether you allow accredited investors or not. But yeah, so that's another story for another day. So

Matt Jones 

yeah, definitely get into the weeds with all this. But

Mike Swenson 

yeah, so now that we've kind of gone through the basics there talk through, you know, as you've been working with different operators, as you've been looking at different deals, you have a network of investors that you've been working with, talk through what you've learned over these last couple of years about, you know, maybe good investments, whether it's locations, types of investments, types of operators, what are you looking for, what would you advise people to look for when pursuing syndications?

Matt Jones 

Well, there are a million different ways to invest in real estate, and you can make money with all of them. So my advice would be to explore the different ways the different asset classes, the different markets and decide for yourself, what makes the most sense for you, and your investment goals and your risk tolerance. You know, that's why I wrote my book called book about real estate that you mentioned, it's meant to help people explore the different types of asset classes and things to decide like, which one is going to be the right for them, and just stick to that one. So for me anyway, I personally like multifamily and senior assisted living, you know, multifamily is kind of my bread and butter, it makes sense, like, people are always going to need a place to live.

Matt Jones 

You know, usually, renting is more affordable than buying a house, you know, certainly right now. And the population of the United States is only going to continue to grow over the decades. So there's going to be a constant need for multifamily housing. And then senior assisted living is great right now, because there's what's we're calling a silver tsunami, the incoming influx of baby boomers that are just about at that point where they need that extra level of care from assisted living, and then memory care and that sort of stuff. So and the number of units right now are not near what there needs to be 10 years from now to cover that. So anyway, any Any assisted living that you buy right now, as long as it's run, right? It's going to do well.

Matt Jones 

And I guess another lesson, when it comes to syndications, the person who's in charge of it that's in the general partnership matters more than the deal itself matters more than the location matters more than the business plan, because the person who's in charge, if they are experienced, they've been through trials and tribulations before they've taken deals full cycle from buying into selling, and they've done, you know, you've provided a certain return rate for their investors in the past, those are strong indicators that they're going to do well in the future. Whereas a new person or somebody who's shady, you know, if they find the best deal in the world, you know, it doesn't matter, because they're going to make it go sour pretty quickly. So that yeah, the general partner or sponsor, the operator matters more than the deal.

Matt Jones 

So and then, as for markets, you know, I, you know, we're both local to Minnesota, I actually don't invest in Minnesota anymore, I mean, Minnesota is fine, it's kind of a slow and steady market doesn't have the, like the the big ups and downs like other markets do. But it's just not a great for growing my wealth, I suppose. There are good deals here. Absolutely. And there are ways to find the deals and make them very profitable. But I prefer to put my money elsewhere in other states where there's just a get better bang for my buck, essentially. So I'm really bullish right now on Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Carolinas, I know other people that are really like, like Texas, and some other places, but for me, anyway, I, I try to I can't analyse every market all at the same time. So I just kind of stick to that little area and have good deal flow and analyse the the properties there.

Mike Swenson 

And one thing that you touched on was finding something that fits. And I think for people that are outside of real estate, they sometimes have a tough time getting their head wrapped around it, cuz they're like, Well, I just want to make money, you know, like, what does it matter. But having worked with investors now for a few years, you learn that people have different preferences, just like, you know, whether it's whether it's like you said location, whether it's state, it might be part of town, within that state or within that city, it might be, you know, some properties need a lot of work, some are a little bit more turnkey, and you might not be wanting to take that risk. Because, right, if there's a big renovation that needs to happen, things can go wrong, you might project costs are 300,000, and they turn out to be 500,000. And it really affects the financials.

Mike Swenson 

And so everybody kind of has their different risk tolerance and their preference, some like more cash flow investments, some, like more appreciation plays some like the combo of both. And so there's all sorts of opportunities out there. And I think that's where people light up a little bit more when they hear about a certain investment opportunity versus a different one. And it's just hard to explain to somebody because they're like, well, what's the return? Right? But when you start to explain it, like, oh, well, we got to do that. Well, what about this? What about that? Well, then you start to see maybe their risk tolerance isn't where they're at. So it's, it's hard, when when you're outside of it to really understand kind of that preference piece. But you'll start to hone in on that.

Mike Swenson 

As you go through the processes. You hear about different properties, you talk to different operators, and you'll kind of figure out what's going to be your, your jam, what's going to be what you really get excited about investing in, right?

Matt Jones 

Yep, exactly, exactly. So it's important to explore whether he read my book or other there's so many great books out there that you can and great podcasts like this one, webinars that you can listen to for free, or meetup groups that you can attend or conferences, like you just have to get connected. I guess that's another big advice that I would have for investors is don't do it alone. Like I that was my biggest mistake. When I first started, I thought like, Okay, I don't want to share the profits with anyone, I'm just gonna do all this on my own and all the handyman work I can do on my own, I did and it just was a terrible use of my time. Like, you know, even if I can paint better than somebody I can hire that it's more cost effective for me to hire somebody out for that. And also with networking, the more partners and people that you can work with and get deal flow and potential funding sources and investors alike. You absolutely want to do it with other people real estate is a team sport, you know, you could try to do it on your own and do okay, but you're just gonna go a lot further a lot faster by working with other people.

Mike Swenson 

And I think going back to my comment originally talking about Yeah, everybody gets to bring their their best skill set to the table that's really where it's kind of the the one plus one equals three type of mindset is yeah, I get to use my money put it in a place that I feel comfortable with the operator like you said, you want it you want somebody that you can trust that you know is going to take your money and grow your money. And so that's the other thing too, is yeah, when you do a good job as an operator, you want to make sure you do a good job on that property.

Mike Swenson 

Because it'd be really easy to say, Okay, we're gonna sell this one, we're gonna go buy a different one who's in? And the hope would be, everybody's just like, Yeah, take my money, just turn it into the next one, right. And so that's the relationship piece that's really important is when you develop good relationships with people, and you show that you can help them make money, they're probably going to want to stick with you again, and continue to put your money with you because they trust you. And so, so yeah, when everything lines up, when you've got good operators, you've got that trust built, and they've shown that they can take their money and grow it. It's just it's a great long term relationship.

Matt Jones 

Yep, exactly. And I mean, there's other ways to add value to people besides us making the money, which is a good way, certainly, but also having good communication or, you know, showing them that you're high integrity, that you can help them get connected with other people that can help them, you know, and the ways that you add value to people in real estate doesn't even have to be real estate related. Like let's say you're at a an event with other people, and you meet somebody who wants to learn how to play the guitar, and you happen to know how to play the guitar, you could offer to give them some lessons. I mean, it could be as simple as that.

Matt Jones 

Or it could be something specific like you if you're really good with computers offered to and you know that they're having trouble with their computer system in their real estate business offer to help them work through that ticket to get that under control. I mean, so if you find like specific ways to add value to a specific person, that's all the better much better than just saying, like, Oh, if there's anything I can do for you, or let me know that that's not specific enough, like, like, you'll get to know people and see how you can get them connected with the resources they need, or you can provide them with what they need.

Mike Swenson 

So if I'm looking to get into real estate, or maybe I've been in real estate, but I'm not familiar with syndications, what would be some tips that you have in terms of how to go find these relationships you had mentioned, you know, you look at Kentucky and Tennessee in the Carolinas for investing in you're located in Minnesota. So if I'm looking at investing in other states, how do I find people that are maybe doing work in the States, I might be interested in investing in how does that work,

Matt Jones 

you just have to ask around, I mean, so you can either listen to podcasts to you know, pick up on people that are investing in the areas that you want to invest in with an asset classes that you want to invest in. Or you can go to events, whether they be meetup events, or you know, virtual things on Zoom, or conferences, and then you just ask around, to try to find who is working in those areas with those asset classes that you want. And who has good integrity, who has a good reputation. Because while there's a lot of people in real estate, it's really a small world at the same time, so people know other people. And by asking around asking for referrals, you know, if you're getting the same name over and over again, have somebody that you should work with, that somebody should probably reach out to.

Mike Swenson 

It's kind of like, what is it the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, right, where we're everybody's, you know, six people away from from, you know, being able to relate to Kevin Bacon in some way. It's kind of like that you once you start to ask around, you probably can start to put the pieces together pretty quickly by either networking events, going to conferences, or even just asking people I know, we had met previously and just said, Hey, who else do you know? And it's just asking those types of questions. And you start to connect to relationships reach out to new and different people. And you can kind of get where you need to go pretty quick. But that's the that's the interesting thing about syndications. It's not like, you know, you just Google Hey, who's buying, you know, you can probably find some stuff by googling but it's it's a relationship business, too. You want to be able to vet those people out. So it's going to take a little bit of relationship time asking people networking with people to figure out who you want to put your trust with your money in when you're when you're looking to invest in those syndications.

Matt Jones 

Exactly. And actually, one thing I'm working on to make this easier for investors is I'm creating a real estate investment fund, which will invest into syndications. So essentially, I'll you know, represent my pool of investors and then I'll go to the syndicators or the general partners where I already know, or excellence and finding good deals and say, like, Hey, I've got this big chunk of money for my investors. If you want this invested into your next deal, then you need to give us a little better rate of return than you're given the $50,000 minimum investors.

Matt Jones 

You know, with my pool of investors, we've got better buying power. And so then I can share those extra profits with my investors. That way, you know, my investors, they don't have to try to figure out like who's who in the business world or what's what with the the deals because I'm already finding the vetting of the syndication sponsors as well as the deals. And so they're actually also doing better through me through the investment fund. Then they would, you know, separately on their own directly investing in syndications. Plus, they're still getting the tax benefits, because it's still an equity investments,

Mike Swenson 

Right. And another way to take advantage of your network and the relationships you build, it's like, Hey, I know Matt, I know Matt's a great guy, and I trust him. He made you're not the one necessarily finding the deal in North Carolina, you could, but but if you know, the people that are doing the deals there, too, it's just one more relationship where Yeah, I don't have to go find all those people myself. If I know you, I trust you. You're gonna do a good job. Boom, you can put me into some some great funds, because you have those relationships, because you're, you're in that world every day.

Matt Jones 

Exactly. It's a win for everybody. Really, it's a win for my investors, because they're getting better rate of returns, and they have less hassle. It's a win for me, I'm making some money off of it. And it's a win for the syndication sponsors, because it's making it easier for them to get the capital raise under control for their property.

Mike Swenson 

Right. So then they get to focus on the due diligence, making sure everything lines up the negotiations, making sure the property management's taken care of figuring out what repairs need to be done. So they have to do all that plus raise the money, you can come in and say hey, I'll I'll take this piece of the pie here that takes a lot off their plate, and allows them to focus on making sure this deal is a good deal. So yeah, like you said, everybody wins. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing we covered a lot. And so I'm thankful for you and the knowledge that you have for people that want to reach out to you with your book your podcast getting in learning more about syndications. How can they get a hold of you?

Matt Jones 

Well, they can either go to my website, HawkwingCapital.com. And they through there they can download a free chapter from my book, or if they want to just email me directly. Feel free at [email protected]

Mike Swenson 

Awesome. Thank you so much, Matt for coming on the show. We appreciate it.