Nathan Street, founder of Novum Wealth, helps real estate investors secure 100% financing through hard money, private money, and creative financing strategies. A lifelong entrepreneur, he started his first business at 10 years old selling candy out of his bedroom window. Fast forward, and Nathan has flipped properties, built and sold a lead generation company, ghostwritten for some of the biggest names in real estate education, and authored 2 books. In addition to that, he and his wife also run a five-star restaurant. He now raises a blended family of nine children along with his wife.
In this episode, you will be able to:
The key moments in this episode are:
00:00:00 - Introduction to Real Estate Journey
00:07:06 - Real Estate Success Story
00:10:21 - Balancing Real Estate with Other Ventures
00:13:07 - Overcoming Financial Obstacles
00:15:36 - Changing Mindsets
00:18:58 - Benefits of Seller Financing
00:24:27 - Creating Novum Wealth
00:27:38 - Importance of Educating Yourself on Lending Options
00:29:00 - Connecting with Novum Wealth
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Full Transcript Here:
Nathan Street
So here I was fixing and flipping houses, didn't own my own house, and I was doing real estate. We did a $320,000 transaction, $17,000 in rehab, funded the entire thing through hard main lenders. Hard main private lenders on that. So nothing out of my pocket. We sold it six months later. It took me a little longer than I expected, but I made a quarter of my yearly income in one transaction doing that and it really just shut me off.
Mike Swenson
Welcome to the Real Freedom show where we inspire you to pursue your passion to time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. I'm your host, Mike Swenson. Let's get some real freedom together. Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of Real Freedom where we talk about real estate leverage, freedom, different ways that people have achieved or are striving to achieve time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. I'm your host, Mike Swenson. If you want to get started on your real estate investing journey or learn more about real estate, check out our website, freedomthroughrealestate.com we've got all of our content there, videos to watch. As I always shared before, the goal is to inspire you. Find somebody's story that resonates with you, find somebody's past that resonates with you, transferable skills, whatever that might be, and see how you can get into real estate and start building your own time and financial freedom. So today we've got Nathan street here, just a crazy extensive background. Background. I'll just kind of hit the highlights and you can chime in. Your main focus is with Novum Wealth. Kind of the reason why we're chatting about real estate related stuff. 100% financing, hard money, private money. So we'll certainly dig into that. But really interesting background. Selling candy out of your bedroom window at the age of 10, launching an LLC at 17, coaching investors at age 22, flipping properties, building sold a lead generation company, speaking author of books and raising a family of nine children. In addition to all of that fun stuff, you certainly have your hands full and then also running a five star restaurant as well. So a lot of stuff that you've got going on in addition to the real estate which is part of the journey and that's why we're excited to hear kind of how you're able to do that. So welcome to the show, Nathan.
Nathan Street
Thanks Mike. Appreciate you having me here. I'm excited to get into some of that too.
Mike Swenson
So yeah, just give us a little bit about your background. You know, would love to hear some of those you know, stories or kind of the upbringing and why, how that parlayed into real estate. And we'll just take it from there.
Nathan Street
Well, let's start with the hard parts. We'll get into some of that first. We'll just go through those. So, you know, as a young kid, I think entrepreneurship was. Was put into us. And I think the better word to put in that is forced into us. I grew up in a. In a pretty destructive house. A little hard to get involved with. You know, you wake up every day not sure whether or not you're going to have a good day or how that was going to work. And so you kind of have to create these mental situations for yourself to protect yourself. And one of those was to adapt to the financial requirements that were placed on us by my father. Yeah. And so I started becoming very creative and wanting to move some of that forward. So, yeah, I started my first. At that time, I started my first candy store. I found out that I could buy a packet of skittles at what, 25 cents for the whole packet, right. And then there's 50 cent, 50 pieces in there, half a cent each. If I sold them for two pennies, I made a very good return. So I started doing that with every candy I possibly could and would open up my window. Yeah. From right after school at 2 o' clock until 5 o' clock. There's always my times every day. And the kids would come from all over neighborhoods and they buy the candy. And then I would also do a raffle, which I come to find out. I lived in Utah at the time, but apparently that's illegal. I didn't know that. But yeah. So then they come by. I made really good money until one fateful day I got quite depressed and ate all of my inventory and then went to the arcade and spent all my money. But, you know, that's the way that goes. And then from there, you know, everything has always been like, how can I leverage my time? How can I leverage myself? Because every time I go and I do something, my thought, my primary thought is, well, why can't I just do what they're doing instead? And that's always been kind of the play on it for everything that I've ever gone into. And then real estate just happened to be. I was lazily sitting at the television. I happened to get one of those television programs that were so prominent back in the 90s that you can succeed, you can do what you need. And I didn't even have the money honestly to buy the program. At 17, I was pretty broke, so I convinced my mom to give me a hundred bucks. Mom, just give me the hundred bucks. I'm going to jump in. I'm going to do this. And she believed in me, so she gave me $100, lent me the $100. I bought the program and started calling right away. Ran into some difficulties right away, but I just realized that there was some potential in that. Going back to that, I ran into a difficulty specifically calling realtors. At the time, I didn't have a car, I was broke, obviously couldn't even afford the program, but I started calling it. About the fourth call in, I met a realtor. And the realtor, I sure remember his last name, we won't throw it out. But I went ahead and I talked to him about real estate and what I was trying to do. And he said, look, son, and I hate that word too, by the way. He said, look, son, what you're trying to do doesn't exist. I've been in the real estate business for 25 years. It doesn't exist. You can't do it, won't succeed. And I kind of gave up for about seven days. I was like, oh, he's right. I'm not going to do anything. And then I thought, you know, I'm going to just keep pushing. And so I ended up going to a real estate investment club, local real estate investment club, where I met a realtor by the name of Dusty. And Dusty was like, sure, let's do it. I'm all game. I'm up for it. And then at that same real estate meeting, I met a gentleman who gave me a construction card, you know, that he did construction, but in talking to him, he was actually a lender. And they became the catalyst for everything. And at that point, once I ran into someone that said that I could do it and that they were willing to finance me, it didn't take very long. And I was in there buying a house to fix and flip that I, you know, honestly, I couldn't afford. And at the same time, I didn't even own a house my own self. So here I was fixing and flipping houses, didn't own my own house, and I was doing real estate. We did a $320,000 transaction, $17,000 in rehab. Funded the entire thing through hard main lenders. Hard main private lenders on that. So nothing out of my pocket. We sold it six months later. It took me a little longer than I expected, but I made a quarter of my yearly income in one transaction. Doing that and it really just set me off. I changed my degree in college to work specifically on financing. I've. And then since then, I've done nearly 17, 17/2 years of training over 3,500 students. And I've worked primarily in the finance part of it. Really enjoy the creativity that allows a lot of the freedom. One of my favorite quotes, I'll just show this out. Yes. Empty pockets never held anyone out, held anyone back. Only empty hearts and empty heads can do that. It's beautiful. And so it just becomes a reality of it when you're trying to get something like that. You know, there's going to be all these roadblocks and these difficulties and everything's going to get in the way, but just kind of keep going. As long as you've got your head and your heart in the right place, you'll find a way to get it. Financing won't hold you back.
Mike Swenson
I love it because for a lot of people, they think of, you know, financing as restrictive and rules and regulations and that sort of thing. And hearing you talk about it, it's creative, it's, it's fluid. And so there's, there's options in place where I think a lot of people would think, like, hey, this is, you know, a, a rubber stamp or a certain box that I have to be put in, and if I don't fit that box, I'm not going to get the loan or do the financing. So excited to talk about that with you here moving forward. Curious to hear, though, talking about the restaurant. I want to quick here before we kind of go to the real estate side and dig in more about that. How did the restaurant come about for you?
Nathan Street
Well, you know, that's a great question. I think the restaurant is more just. It happened more than anything else. I've been able to cook most of my life going back on my mother, you know, who's been a big, big benefit, I think, over overall in my life. So she not only believed in me for the real estate, giving me the loan, but she would teach me to cook. And it was just the basic stuff, you know, follow certain recipes, and then she would just let me go. And I actually created cookies. They were peanut butter cookies one time and I failed miserably. It called for a teaspoon, teaspoon of baking soda. And I put tablespoons of baking soda, which is three times the amount, and they were flat disgusting. And I remember my mom response was simply, yep, well, go do it again. Just don't put tablespoons in. So we Threw out the batch and made a new batch and they went fantastic. And through that I just learned to love to cook. I've cooked most of my life. I find it very relaxing. And as my wife was searching for another investment to get into, she does her own investing as well. Business entrepreneur. And she's like, hey, this guy's selling his restaurant. I think it'd be great for you. Why don't we do it? And so we came up with the concept, I put together the recipes and we pushed it out and we've done very well with it. We to give a little tout on that. We currently have 128 reviews in under 10 months and every one of them is five stars. We have nothing less. So we do. It's a, it's kind of a hybrid quick service restaurant but it's good stuff.
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 hand pick the best deals that most investors can't find. We've got 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. So let's dig into the real estate side a little bit and then I do want to talk kind of balancing and juggling multiple plates because you know a lot of entrepreneurs that's really learning how to adapt that and do that is important but digging into the real estate side. So you know you had mentioned about trying to find somebody that would say yes to what you wanted to do. So kind of pick us up from there. Like how did you get into the lending side of it or even like the, you know, the fix and flip side and would love to kind of hear how that process matured for you.
Nathan Street
Absolutely. I think I think what's really important for your listeners to know as well is at any point you can get into what you're wanting to. And I think that's the reality that comes with, you know, our types of stories that come out of this. So here I am, a 17 year old kid, zero money and no experience whatsoever, and I'm getting into real estate investing. And I think that's a really important piece that people should hit on in getting onto those. Now, knowing that I had no money and knowing that I had, well, literally nothing, I had to find all of the pieces that were missing. And initially, like I mentioned, people said that it can't be done, but I figured that other people did it, why can't I? You know, I was just trying to be my own personal story on that. And as far as getting into those and getting to 100% financing and that type of thing, it is the minute that I met Darrell, Darrell is that hard money lender that initially just looked at the asset itself and just said, hey, there's the house, it's got some value, it's definitely worth quite a bit more than what you're buying it. I'll fund the whole thing. And as soon as he said that I could, for me, and I didn't even know other people had previously done it up to that point, but as soon as he said that I could, I knew that I could, I knew that I could just do it again. And what I started doing is learning how I could do it more and more in different scenarios. For example, I was had the opportunity to speak to someone that was selling a mobile home park. Now I've never owned a mobile home park, don't know how to do it, I don't know what's involved. At least I didn't at that point. And in speaking to him, he wanted quite a bit more money than I originally had to get into it. But he wanted out. He was interested in. All I simply did was talk to him about the option. What if we were to do some kind of seller finance? And he was open to the idea because he just wanted to leave and get more into a retirement position for himself. And so I took that part of the conversation with seller financing and then I started pushing further, come to find out he had financing and I thought, well, what if we could just do seller financing even though he has financing? And I had no idea that I was getting into something that was already created. They call it wraparound mortgage. And so we effectively used a land trust, didn't know Much about those, but did quick search on the Internet, put together a land trust, set it up, did a wraparound mortgage, and I purchased the entire mobile home park with nothing, no money whatsoever. And 25 slots, four rentals, five or six or six RV spots, all with nothing out of my own pocket. And again, each of these times, they come up in my head. I think every time I approach a new opportunity, whether it's commercial, whether it's residential, whether it's. It doesn't matter what it is, my thought is, even though I've got some money or may have some money, right? My thought is, how can I do this with as little money as possible and can I do it? It becomes a game for me, and that's really where I focus. And I try to put it as much together as I can because I know in reality I can do it. And then when it does happen, I can teach other people, this is how you do it. I just did it.
Mike Swenson
So talking about, you know, finding ways to do it for as little as possible, I think a lot of people, maybe traditional thinkers, and this is where I love people who are in creative financing space because they just think of all these different options and all these different possibilities and what you can do. And like I said, I think a lot of times early investors tend to think inside of these boxes. So walk me through finding deals and starting these conversations with owners where an owner might be thinking, or we maybe with our limited thinking, might be thinking 20% down, you know, whatever that might be. Like, how do you start those conversations with people? And it starts in your mind first, right? Like, realizing that people are open to this stuff is really where it starts. But walk through that process for somebody of, like, how do you go about doing that versus the traditional way that you think real estate purchasing should be done?
Nathan Street
Sure. Well, first, we'll give it kind of a touch points on that. First, you simply have to know that it can be done. We have been taught through school, and unfortunately, the realtors teach this as well. You've got to go to the conventional route because that's what they're so familiar with. That's what everyone is so familiar with. But at no point in high school or university was there ever brought up, hey, here are all these options. So again, the first one would be, number one, it can be done. It can. It can be done. Regardless, maybe what your own thinking or outside thinking is. It can be done. So that's number one. Number two, what I suggest is finding a foundation that you can go, okay, I know, I can do this one. What about this next option? So for me, it was hard money financing. And sometimes people might think about it and go, oh, hard money finance, it's not that great. But in truth, if I put nothing into it, I have no risk, and I can get into a transaction 100% that covers my foundation, I'm ready to go. Then I know I can buy. Even at that point, I know I can hit whatever it is that I need to, at least that then I can say, well, will this work? And if it doesn't, that's okay. I can still fall back on my previous. And I can go, I can still do hard money. I still do 100% financing hard money if that doesn't work. And the great thing is, every time I've done that and mentally in my head, because now I can fall back. And I think sometimes people get a little nervous, like, oh, I don't know if I can try that creativity, because if it doesn't work, I'm out. You know, it's not gonna work. But if. If people have that freedom to go, well, if it doesn't work, then I'm still okay, I can still do what I want. I can still get it. Well, let's see if this works. And at that point, once I get. I've gotten to my. That position and I worked with other people to get to that position, just honestly, you can do it. And you can see even if you fall back, you still have the opportunity. People become much more open to trying to present that. And then once they are open to presenting it to any sellers, hey, would you be open to this? And in their head, they weren't thinking originally, can I even present it? They know, well, if it doesn't work, who cares? I'll just back up and do my old plan. And then they go forward. And then suddenly they go, yeah, I'll do that. And all of a sudden, that whole door now opened up. Oh, well, they'll do. Other people do, well, let's just keep doing this. And it becomes very open now for.
Mike Swenson
People that might be wondering, why would a seller do something like that? Like, hey, if I could just take all cash at once, or, you know, whatever that might look like. Talk about the ways of why sellers are open to these things and the benefits for them.
Nathan Street
Well, most of that. Most of that falls back on kind of a seller financing idea or something creatively using seller financing. Well, seller financing actually helps sellers sell their houses faster. There's lots of statistics about it, ranging, it depends on where you read them. But a lot of statistics show that they sell faster. They also show sell for more money. Those two things are big. The second one that goes along with that too is that if they take all cash at once, they run into a tax burden. And that tax burden could be significant. My wife and I are looking at her investment house and trying to sell that and the tax burden is just massive. Trying to figure out ways to creatively manipulate that situation and sell the financing or a type of seller financing works really well. Now I'm going to give you, I'm going to give you and your key, your, your listeners one of my favorite ways to deal with this. So seller financing. If a, if a seller is willing even to consider hearing the concept seller financing, I love to plug in there the term temporary seller financing. And the reason I do that is because temporary seller financing, that temporary word creates an interest in their head because they've not heard that. And here's how I set this up and this is how I train other people to do it as well as myself. When a seller hears temporary seller financing, they usually say, what do you mean temporary? Oh, I'm just saying for maybe three months, six months, something like that at most. And then I'll just pay you all off. And here's how we do that. You go in and you do seller financing. They put it up and as soon as you take ownership, that's the key. Now you got control and you can even, you can even do a deed to them and back, doesn't matter either one, so that they feel secure. But now you've set it up and then you go and you find a bank, be able to be more of a, not your traditional bank that'll sell on the secondary market, but you find a bank that'll do what's called a no season refinance. Refinancing means you've previously owned it and now you're refinancing, paying off the old loan. So the seller did seller financing and the minute you take ownership, you start the refinance process with the bank and pay them entirely off and you've controlled the whole thing.
Mike Swenson
So you had mentioned hard money. And I want to back up a second for people that are listening to this and don't know necessarily the difference between what a hard money loan is versus, you know, a traditional financing. Can you just kind of walk through that quick or explain that quick for those folks that might not know?
Nathan Street
Sure. On a simpler set, hard money lender is a private person that's lending Their own money. They've probably done it before. They're familiar with real estate investing. They understand the investment style itself, but it's their own money. And because it's their own money, they don't fall under the restrictions and difficulties that were placed on conventional banks by, well, honestly, the government. So it makes it very easy to use, very easy to get into, easy to work with.
Mike Swenson
So talk a little bit then about how, you know, strategically. You know, you just mentioned about having these conversations with sellers, having sellers be open to this idea, single family, multifamily, you know, for somebody listening to this, like, how do you kind of get that ball rolling to be able to grow and utilize these, these awesome creative options that you've talked about.
Nathan Street
But as I mentioned earlier, first would be create a foundation. Find a. Find a good suitable lender that will finance you 100%. And if that's your, obviously your thing that you're going through. And the reason I suggest 100% is it takes all of the risk out because if I fail and I put nothing into it, I lose nothing. Assuming that I do now, you likely won't, because the lender's not going to give you financing if you're going to fail because they know the deal is great. Right? So that's not the. So once you get into that, that's the freedom point. So find one of those. That's what we do at Novum wealth. We do the 100% so people can relieve themselves and feel that, that comfort, because I understand that part of it. In fact, we'll partner with people, too, should they learn they have it, they're learning how to put it together and setting that up. So that's, that's number one. And once they have that, then start doing some additional research. And I can help you on that, too. You know, I can give additional information on that. But there's a lot of detail that are out there to help with. And the more you can expose yourself to it, the more you have the opportunity to really open up the potentials. Because obviously you can't use it if you don't know it's there. If you read and you go to someone's book or you go to someone's blog like you, or things like that, like you're doing right here with your podcast, and you listen, you're involved, you'll start to hear these things and you go, wait, that's new. I've never heard that. What's the subject to, oh, well, maybe I should do some research and boom, now what you've done is you've opened up your potential and all that does it just gives you one more quiver that you can use in your arsenal when you're talking to a seller, hey, can we do this? And sometimes you just go off the cuff. So really it's again, it's the strength. Finding something Vietnam wealth will help you with that. Two, learn more and then place it in there. And then three, just simply have those conversations, just be open with it, knowing that worst case scenario, just go back to your original way and keep going forward.
Mike Swenson
So talk about as an entrepreneur starting and running Novum wealth, how did that come to be and how did you kind of grow that?
Nathan Street
Novam wealth is. It's been a brainchild kind of for years. When I got into real estate investing and started training other people, the number one problem that nearly everyone ran into was financing. And in fact statistically written is the number one identified problem of investors is financing. And that's where I created the lead generation company that we sold off. And all of those types of things was specifically around finance. And as I went along in the real estate investing, I realized that there are a lot of people that have the same kind of dream that want to do investing but aren't sure where to start. So they don't have that foundational funding, that potential, that the risk free type potential to allow themselves to move forward into that dream. And I just thought one day, several days, to be honest, I thought, you know what, let's just take this passion that I have with financing, this ability that has taken me literally years to put together and let's construct it in a way that we can help other people obtain the exact same scenarios that I have to jump in, start building themselves out so they can work on those. And then I just assembled a great little team put together and we started setting it up and that's, and that's how we, we got it in there, just to really help other people hit that dream.
Mike Swenson
Out of curiosity, then how does that work on the financing side for that? Is it, is it securing funding partners that are willing to put up the capital for that or how does that grow from the beginning?
Nathan Street
Are you talking about on our side or with them?
Mike Swenson
No, on your side. On your side, like launching that. Because if I come to you and say, hey, I want this money for this loan, how do you put that together? Was it finding kind of private capital partners or how do you fund that on your end of things?
Nathan Street
You know, that's a great question. We will do it all during the years of being in the business and working with it, I had built in the area of 6,000 lenders and in fact information conglomerate of those. So I've got a huge pool to pull from if needed. On those. We work with one primary, one that he's actually jumped in as one of our partners, specifically under the financing itself. So if it's a big one, one that we can't financially personally handle, then we will definitely delve into others and we'll help work that through. But if it's something that's on the smaller scale, we can do several transactions without problems at all. And if that's the case, we use our own money. So we'll fund that directly, we'll be a part of it. And under the partnership specifically, if we're going to partner on that, we do a lot of our own finance transaction into that portion of it just again so they have the clarity and the freedom to learn and to grow and really make a substantial income.
Mike Swenson
Awesome. Well, I know for people listening that are starting out like knowing and understanding what options are out there for lending is really important because like I said, I think, you know, a lot of folks kind of come at this with this closed minded, limited box kind of theory and realizing there's, there's people out there that really want to help you and help you grow and do it with as little bit of money out of pocket as possible. And so I think, you know, there's so much out there, so just encourage people to educate yourself, reach out, out to people like you that can help them see like, oh, there's all these different options. Like you actually didn't realize there's, there's all these different ways that you can do it that you never even thought of that were possible. And so that's where good lenders like yourself give that opportunity for people to chase their dreams and do it. And it's finding good deals and finding good property that, you know, folks are willing to invest in and lend on. But doesn't have to be the lack of capital that kind of keeps you limited inside your own box.
Nathan Street
Yeah, exactly. I mean it goes back to that quote, right? Empty pockets never held anyone back.
Mike Swenson
Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Nathan for coming on and sharing your story. For people that want to reach out to you, learn more about Novum wealth, what you guys are doing, how can.
Nathan Street
They do so the easiest and best way is just go to novum wealth.com which is n o v u m novum wealth.com and then in there. You can actually go to our contact page right on our main page. If you've got a transaction you want us to take a look at, we can do that. You can also post questions the same way. Be happy to help out any of your listeners the same make sure they get taken care of.
Mike Swenson
Well, thank you so much for sharing your story. Excited to see all that you've done and best of luck as you continue to grow in the future.
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