How Matt Built a $25m Real Estate Portfolio PART-TIME

You don't have to be a full time commercial real estate investor to build up a sizeable portfolio of passive investments. Today, I'm sitting down with Matt Anderson, a real estate attorney who has built an impressive real estate portfolio - all while running his law practice and saving time for family. Here's how how he did it. Matt is real estate investor and attorney residing in the Nashville, Tennessee area. He lives with his wife, Taylor, and two boys, Ashton (4) and Julian (6 months). Matt has more than $25M of assets under management consisting of 280 multifamily units and 25,000 square feet of office in Tennessee. Matt is the owner of Anderson Legal, a law firm focusing on real estate and construction in Tennessee. He also is an owner of Foundation Title and Cloud Realty. Matt’s representation of hundreds of real estate investors, developers, professionals and contractors in real estate litigation and closings has provided him with a unique perspective and background. ➡ Contact info: https://andersonlegaltn.com/

Get commercial real estate coaching, courses, and community to jumpstart your investment journey over at CRE Central: www.crecentral.com

Key Takeaways:

• Building a commercial real estate portfolio part-time is possible with hard work, networking, and assembling the right team.

• Thorough due diligence on leases, tenant estoppels, and debt is critical in commercial real estate investing.

• Partnerships can be valuable in commercial real estate, but it's important to fully understand the deal and have everything documented.

• The benefits of commercial real estate investing, like forced appreciation and velocity of money, can outweigh the challenges compared to residential investing.

• Balancing financial goals with emotional well-being and having adequate liquidity/reserves is important when scaling a real estate portfolio.

About Your Host:

Tyler Cauble, Founder & President of The Cauble Group, is a commercial real estate broker and investor based in East Nashville. He’s the best selling author of Open for Business: The Insider’s Guide to Leasing Commercial Real Estate and has focused his career on serving commercial real estate investors.

Episode Transcript:

Tyler Cauble 00:00

Are you looking to take the next step toward investing in commercial real estate but don't know where to go? Series central offers a comprehensive education and coaching platform designed to help you get started. Our online courses cover a wide range of topics from the fundamentals to advanced strategies, ensuring you have the knowledge and skills needed to thrive in this competitive industry. As a member, you'll gain access to our exclusive online community and monthly group coaching calls, providing you with valuable networking opportunities and personalized guidance from experienced professionals. Whether you're a beginner or looking to take your career to the next level, cre Central has the resources you need. Visit www dot cre central.com. To learn more. Welcome back to the commercial real estate investor podcast live from the Carlyle Group Studios here in Nashville, Tennessee, and I'm here today with my good friend, the man the myth, the legend, Matt Anderson, you may know Matt, from such episodes as the Morbi method, a dangerous method, one that we have covered here on this on this podcast before as well as he's also in our investors roundtable. Matt lives right down the street from me. And we met through the real estate investors of Nashville, Gosh, 578 years ago, a long time ago, something like that. It's been a while. And you know, Matt is a real estate attorney. He's got a title company. He's got his own law firm. And he's got a pretty great story because he's built up a portfolio of over $25 million, mostly part time, right? He's still runs his law firm, he still runs, you know, the title company, or I guess you're kind of phasing out that part, handing it over to somebody else. But that's what we wanted to talk about today is how Matt built a commercial real estate portfolio of that size, part time. So Matt, that was a brief introduction. But tell us a little bit more about yourself.

Unknown Speaker 01:50

Yeah, yeah. And then the short answer is a lot of help, basically. But uh, yeah, so I got the real estate bug back when I was in law school, actually, and really became obsessed with it, read every book, I get my hands on, listen to every podcast I could listen to. And then I was fortunate enough to start practicing law in in construction, real estate related law. So that that part was lucky. And basically, my story is really started practicing law full time. And then me and my wife had a side hustle in real estate. And we our goal is to get to financial freedom as soon as possible. I had a goal to become a millionaire by 30. I think I missed it by like six months. Close enough. And, and then but really, the real goal is financial freedom. And we felt like real estate was the vehicle to get us there. So we started off house hacking single family houses, I was wholesaling. You know, I'd be taking calls from attorneys in my office in downtown Nashville. And I'd be talking to an attorney, I'd say, Hey, can I call you right back because I got a seller lead. So I'd hang up on the attorney and talk to Mr. Seller to try to, you know, get a get a wholesale deal. It's awesome. And so that's how I got started. And then eventually, it just started to become apparent. You know, the one thing that attracted me about real estate was leverage, right? In the fact that I felt like I could, I can get financial freedom fast, relatively, right, compared to most other options. And I just started to see other people doing commercial deals. And I just felt like it was a whole nother level up, right? It's like, if if I'm doing single family wholesale deals in Nashville, or I can get involved in these million multimillion dollar commercial deals, I just felt like I can go a lot faster. So that's sort of how that started to develop. Let's

Tyler Cauble 03:40

talk about the slow buildup of residential. How long were you doing residential real estate before you got into commercial? And what do you think your deal volume or acquisitions or assets under management was at that time? Because I would love to see next? When did you get into commercial? And what did it turn into?

Unknown Speaker 03:58

Yeah, yeah. So um, 2014 15 that's when I started to dabble in real estate. But that was more just like analyzing deals every day learning, right? I started to really make offers probably 2015 16. And I was broke. I mean, I was $150,000. Just in debt. Oh, yeah. You know, so started doing house hack, small wholesale deals. I never had a ton of deal flow because I was working full time, right. So it was never a volume game for me. So what we did instead of, you know, a lot of wholesalers, for example, they'll try to do okay, I did three deals, you know, January of this year, I'm gonna try to do 10 deals January of next year, we didn't ever really play the volume game because my time was limited. So I was just trying to do bigger and bigger deals like larger, larger wholesale fees, larger and larger asset acquisitions. So it wasn't in 2018. That's when I bought with a partner, my first commercial deal I would say technically, and we had, I mean, I think at the time, if I remember correctly, we probably had five units maybe that we owned, we did a lot of buying and selling before then. And that was also about the time that I realized I wanted to try to hold everything I could. So very low volume, you know, not very many assets under management until I started to get into commercial.

Tyler Cauble 05:24

Yeah, it's funny. That's how a lot of people start off, right. That's how I got started, right as a commercial real estate broker doing deals for other people. And you start to realize, like, okay, if I'm making 3040 50 grand on this deal, somebody else's making enough to where they can justify paying me 3040 50 grand a nice deal. I want to be that guy instead. Yeah. So you get into commercial real estate in 2017. How does that like? What is your real estate trajectory after that? Are you only in commercial at that point? Are you have you seen the light Are you still working on wholesaling? Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 05:55

I'm almost only commercial now. But I'm also an opportunist. So if something, you know, falls in my lap, like we did a couple over the last few years, still, within the last few years, we've done a couple large, technically single family, but they're like luxury, high end houses that we're wholesales, flips, things that nature, but it's we're really only looking for commercial. And there was, you know, there was a time where I was only looking for single family and small multifamily. And then there was an in between time where I was dipping my toes in the commercial water, but mainly still looking for single family. That was 2018, where I was trying to find a commercial deal. But still, mainly, I think I was still sending mailers, for example, for single family back then. And then now I don't really look for anything single family, it just doesn't make a lot of sense for us to look for it anymore.

Tyler Cauble 06:45

Yeah, I mean, the competition level that you have, just from mailers letter, well, you know, all the offers that are getting sent out all of the realtors that are out there. I mean, there's over 12,000 residential real estate agents in Nashville. And not to mention how many wholesalers are on top of that, and there's just so much competition, whereas in commercial real estate, you probably have fewer than 400 commercial real estate brokers that are doing anything.

Unknown Speaker 07:04

Yeah. And that was something that was really surprising to me, because, you know, the single family wholesaling game was really freaking hard, actually, yeah, it was hard. It's not easy. Like I'd be, you know, I'd be talking with the seller and some other guy down the street would be talking to the seller. And then, you know, we get in there and look at the the rehab costs, and I might only make six grand on the wholesale fee, you know. And then whereas the commercial. There was the building you you got to see actually before I bought it remember analysis of the office building. And I remember looking at that, and I talked to the seller, and me and the seller, we're having a conversation about yeah, I've gotten this offer and that offer and that offer. And I called up my my friend base, who was in the similar asset class. And I knew four of the seven offers. So like, four of the seven people who had made this lady an offer in the two years before I actually I was one of them. And you were one of them. Yeah, yeah. So it was really surprising me like that. It was actually way less competition once I started looking for, you know, once I moved into like the one to $5 million commercial, there was not very many people who are looking for that in my area.

Tyler Cauble 08:12

Yeah, I mean, it's a totally different ballgame. And that's, that's what's a lot of fun about getting into commercial real estate is that, you know, there's, there's such a blue ocean for you to go do whatever you want. I mean, I tell people that all the time. Like, it doesn't matter if you want to get into office multifamily, you know, retail industrial hotels, you can be just as successful in any aspect of commercial real estate, if you just are the one person that focuses on it. Right? Because there are so many people that don't like, nobody sends mailers and commercial real estate. Nobody, nobody does that. And guess what, I bought an awesome building back in 2020. Because I had nothing else to do but send mailers for 435,000 that we just sold three weeks ago for 625,000. I didn't do anything to the building.

Unknown Speaker 08:55

I'm gonna have to pick your brain on that one. Because that's, that's, that's the next step for me, I think is is increasing that volume a little bit. Because, yeah, we were always very low volume and just trying to do bigger and bigger deals. But but the reason was because of time constraints. So I'm lucky I had that obstacle because it it forced me in a different direction that I think was overall really awesome. Because now I've been able to build up some business equity and income, right, and not only real estate income, and helps, but I would you know, there's no reason we couldn't do the same deal. Another five or 10 times a year. Right. Exactly. Yeah. If we've got lead generation. Yeah,

Tyler Cauble 09:32

let's talk about that. Okay, we can put something together. So before we get into your first commercial real estate deal, I want to talk about networking and joining real estate groups. So we met at the real estate investors in Nashville, a group that I was a member of for a long time board member. I mean, I met a ton of people through there, including yourself. How pivotal was that to your success as a real estate investor because in my opinion, that's the number one thing that you should go do is go find a real estate meetup. It doesn't matter if it's Residential even if you want to be in commercial, you're going to meet interesting people there. What are your thoughts?

Unknown Speaker 10:04

Yeah, I mean, all of my best ideas had been stolen. I mean, that's like, without a doubt, like, I was inspired by local people. For every new strategy, I used every new asset I went after. I think, I think there's like a difference between people who want to see, like be seen as successful, or look successful, and people who really just only care about a result, right. I was results driven. I wanted to find a way to get financial freedom. And I didn't care. What who I asked for help, or who knew more than me. And so I just went around, trying to learn from everybody I can learn from. And so when I started buying commercial, I would, you know, I would call a contractor say, Look, this roof looks rough. I have no idea what this is going to cost. Can you help me? Right? I remember when I bought my first office building, you came and looked at it with me? Yeah, because I was a little bit worried that I didn't know what I was doing on like absorption and cost per square foot, stuff like that. So I'm, I'm always asked for help. Like, every time I got a little bit out of my comfort zone, I had a network of people that I had a lot of respect for, that I knew knew more than I did in certain areas. And I would always ask for help. But I was always willing to help other people to like, there was always people I can help in other ways. So

Tyler Cauble 11:21

yeah, I think that's a big thing. When it comes to commercial real estate, there's a huge difference between residential and commercial. And we were talking about this a little bit yesterday, which is that you have to have a team, right? In commercial real estate, you don't really have to have a team and residential, you can kind of do everything by yourself. You really wanted to. So talk about that. I mean, what was your team? How did you build the team? How did you find those people to make sure that if you didn't know something, somebody else was at least double checking your work?

Unknown Speaker 11:46

Yeah. Well, my first partner and teammate was my wife. And we did we still do a lot together. But for a while, it was just basically me and her. Right? We would, we would go door knocking and you know, drive for dollars on weekends and stuff before we had kids. So we we were grinding, stacking. Yeah, like that was like our weekend dates, like we'd be going to Colombia to put up a wall to like, I remember this specifically, we put up a wall to reconvert something back to a duplex. And like we're in there together, putting the wall up, right. Yeah. And so we started a, as we got, you know, we were able to do that just me and her, thankfully, because she's handy, but and then I had a huge advantage of being a lawyer, obviously, right? Because when I was able to look at these deals, a lot of commercial is lease review, like reviewing leases, and understanding what's happening with the leases. So I had a huge advantage there. But I needed other teammates, you know, we had to, like I didn't have a ton of time to find deals. So one of the things that started happening very early on was I had partners who helped me find deals that I wouldn't have found on my own. Right. So I became the lawyer partner. That was kind of part of my value add operational partner, and I was able to live leverage relationships to find deals.

Tyler Cauble 13:04

Yeah, that makes such a big difference. I mean, it's when you're getting into commercial real estate one, there's already a lingo, right? You basically have to learn a new language. And then you have to learn how to read contracts in that language. Yeah, man, that is tough. I mean, it took me a few years before I could look at a lease and feel remotely confident and knowing what I was looking at. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 13:23

it's a lot, even for lawyers, you know, when you step out of your comfort zone, and the area that you typically practice in, right, like I had, I was fortunate that I was doing real estate and construction related law for a while. But you know, when I go and I look at, like, my law partner does stuff with musicians, right? And when I look at their stuff, and they're talking about royalties, and I'm like, I don't know what's going on here. Right? So like, even a lawyer going into a new kind of contract. It's pretty tough. So for someone who doesn't look at this all the time, it can be pretty challenging. So you you gotta have, you know, I had a unique advantage there. But everybody has their own advantages, right? Some people have more time. Some people have more money, some people are contractors, some people are brokers, like everybody has the advantage, you just but you have to have teammates, to fill in the gaps.

Tyler Cauble 14:13

That's exactly it. I mean, you don't have to have money to get started in commercial real estate, you just got to go find the deal. You don't have to have deals in commercial real estate, you just have to have the money. You just have to have the connections or whatever it is like there's, you know, typically in every deal there's like two or three different types of people that can come together in a partnership. It works out really well. Yeah. Okay, let's talk about your first deal. How'd you find it? What was it? Who would you partner with?

Unknown Speaker 14:37

Yeah, partner brought me the deal. I'd done many deals with that partner before I'd hold him wholesale them stuff. You actually hit the nail on the head. I was getting tired of wholesaling deals to people who are making more money than me was starting to get kind of old you know, you know, like the urban dweller team. I gave them a few lots and gave it gave them these lots for way cheaper. But then I should have, you know, I don't regret it because we built good relationships. And I feel like you know, they've paid it forward and and back. But I started getting tired of seeing that there was a lot more upside on the table that I didn't. I wasn't a part of right. And so and I didn't like wholesaling either. Like I wanted to own real estate.

Tyler Cauble 15:18

Yeah. And it's kind of I mean, there's a fine line in wholesaling where, like you're either a good person or not. And it's tricky, very easy to cross into being a bad person. Yeah, I know, way too many people who have fallen into that trap. And it's, it's, it's tough, because I mean, you're trying to get a good deal, right? Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 15:35

it's it's very, it can get really ethically gray really quickly, depending on what's going on, or what sort of opportunity presents itself to you. It's really, you know, I always try to do deals where it's Win win, but you can find yourself in really strange positions, right? Where somebody just does, you know, somebody just does something really stupid on the other side that you didn't expect. And then you've got to decide, well, do I enforce my contract? Or do I try to give them grace? And it's not easy to figure out the right thing to do on that. It's a lot simpler to just buy a piece of real estate, and then add value to it. Yeah, it's not I wouldn't say it's easier, but it's like you don't one more step forward. It's exactly it can be more straightforward. Yeah.

Tyler Cauble 16:16

That's always say like commercial real estate's not easy, but it is simple.

Unknown Speaker 16:20

Yeah. Okay, so

Tyler Cauble 16:22

your partner brings you the deal. Oh,

Unknown Speaker 16:23

sorry. Yeah. So I didn't answer the question. So the first deal was, it was a, like a mom and Mom and Pop retail deal the guy had done a lot of business with, and he found an amazing deal. It was a deal that pretty early on, we thought was worth about 650, I'm going off memory, you know, this was 2018. But I think I'm pretty close. We thought it was about worth worth about 650,000, as is. And he had it under contract for half a million. And he had the seller agree to like a third seller carry with no pillar with no interest. If I remember correctly, what I don't think there was any interest, if I'm remembering this correctly, he

Tyler Cauble 17:01

just needed to get rid of it.

Unknown Speaker 17:04

Hey, if I understood how good I didn't even understand how good of a deal it was, then that's amazing. I knew enough to know that. And this is what made it easy for me, I knew enough to know that it was a good enough deal that it was gonna be really hard for me to screw it up. So that's the thing that made it. Like, let me leap into it is, is I knew this was a good enough deal, we're gonna figure it out, right. And even if we screw some things up, I felt like we had enough cushion to where it was no brainer on the risk side.

Tyler Cauble 17:33

So you've got $150,000 of equity built in day one. You've got the seller carrying, you know, somewhere around another 150. Give or take. Right? So how did you how did you structure the seller, Carrie was that second position to a senior loan from a local bank?

Unknown Speaker 17:50

That's right, that's exactly what we did. And you know, I remember sitting there and thinking through this because I don't think I'd done this before. And we had to coordinate with the lenders and get the lenders approval. Unlike other people that we've talked about, we actually disclose this talk to the lender, believe it or not, we told the bank the truth of what we were doing, and we got their approval to do it. And we did just you know, and they were cool with it. And in we you know, we had to get language in the contract, we put it in the PSA that the seller was going to agree to put their loan second to the bank and even had some language in there that they'd be willing to actively subordinate. If we needed to get another loan, which we did. So we actually had to get like a like Mazda, if I remember what we did is we went back and we got more money from the bank to replace the roof. And so we already had an in the paperwork that the seller was going to agree to subordinate even if the loan modified their documents or even if we needed more money. So that's what we did. That's

Tyler Cauble 18:48

pretty great. Did the bank require you to bring any cash down since you had the equity and the seller note?

Unknown Speaker 18:53

So here's the funny part. And I didn't know this was going to happen. We should up? Well, I knew leading up to the closing, obviously you get your paperwork or whatever. But we showed up and they wrote us a check for like 10 or $11,000. Gosh, so we showed up for my first commercial closing and they wrote us a check. And that was pretty mind blowing to me. I

Tyler Cauble 19:10

mean, I want to be you and I grew up I want to get paid to buy commercial real estate.

Unknown Speaker 19:14

Well, I you know, I doubt that right now in this environment that we can pull that off. But they were they were cool with it back then.

Tyler Cauble 19:22

That's awesome. Okay, so tell us more about this property was it was it occupied? What were your plans for it? I mean, obviously, you replace the roof.

Unknown Speaker 19:27

Yeah, yeah. So I mean, it was and this is the part where I was out of my depth right is like figuring out their mom and pop retail tenant stuff. I've never done that before. Exactly. There was like a laundry mat and one space was vacant and there was like a payday place on a shorter lease. So we had that was the big value added part was going in there and trying to clean up these leases, get extended terms increase the rents, you know, we had to replace the roof so there was some value at work involved. And so that's what We just got our hands dirty. We made a lot of mistakes. We had trouble renting out the middle space like we thought we were going to be able to rent it out quickly. We couldn't find a tenant. This

Tyler Cauble 20:09

is the one off Gallatin, right? Oh, you know about this one. We went and walked in, I think, oh, Briana walked it with Brandon. Thornbury?

Unknown Speaker 20:16

Yeah. Oh, okay. He ended up buying it.

Tyler Cauble 20:19

Did he? Okay, maybe I'm lucky with Brandon Nashville sold it to him. I guess I shouldn't

Unknown Speaker 20:23

be thrown out full names on. Sorry, Brandon.

Tyler Cauble 20:28

I'm pretty sure he's got his name on a lot of stuff. Yeah, that's

Unknown Speaker 20:30

true. But yeah, I forgot you walk that one. But, so we made all kinds of mistakes. But we knew on the front end that the fine. I mean, we knew the debt was fantastic. Yeah, that's right. That's amazing. Um, I actually like, it was a weird property to sell. Because we built me and my partner needed some liquidity at the time and eventually decided to sell out after just a couple years or something. But it was hard to want to sell it because the debt was so good. We, you know, we were getting, like every payment was full principle pay down. Yeah. How do you sell that? But we did. You

Tyler Cauble 21:00

know, let's, let's talk about that, though. Because that's, that's one thing that I feel like a lot of people may have a question about is, how do I determine when to get rid of a property to buy something else? Or because there's a lot of a lot of investors out there right now that have, you know, residential homes at 2.75%? Yeah. And there's commercial real estate investors that might have another, you know, five years on a five and a quarter node. So what is what is your thought process? Like? How do you analyze those deals to say, actually, despite this being incredible, incredibly low and the interest rates and paying that our principal? It's still more advantageous for us to move? Yeah, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 21:39

I mean, I think it's super depends on the person's personal situation in their goals. For me, one thing that's probably different than a lot of people is I put a really, really, really high value on liquidity. Because I know that I can go do these leveraged deals and get a ridiculous return on my cash. Right. So and that's not true for some people. So it's the equation I for me, I kind of do like a return on equity analysis on it. But part of that is, it's like you got to determine what your return on equity now is. And then what's your risk free rate of return is out in the market comparatively, after taxes is the way I think about it? Right. So like, I knew that for me, when I sold that deal. I didn't have very much cash at that time, if I remember correctly. So selling a property for six figure profit. At that time, I felt we could use that and snowball it. And then we did, because, you know, it wasn't that much later that we took a $100,000 down payment to buy a $1.4 million dollar building another belly. Yeah. You know, it's not like I took that money Exactly. And put it into, but you know, what I have? I don't know if I would have I don't remember my cash position Exactly. But I just knew I would have the ability to take that cash and make really high returns. So that's how I look at it is I would sit down and I would do your return on equity calculation after taxes. And then I would think to myself, What am I able to do? That's low risk, and that I have the time to actually do to get a better return than that. And if you can't come up with a good answer, just hold it. Yeah. Like, that's kind of my thinking is, and so I'm doing this analysis all the time, I've got these buildings. And I'm like, Well, my return on equity is pretty good. But it's not amazing. But there's basically no risk to let it ride. And I don't have to do any work. So I have to find an opportunity, that with the risk, adjusted rate rate of return, and the amount of time I gotta put into it looks better than when I already have. Yeah, what's my return on headache? That's, uh, yeah. So I don't know, that's not a very succinct answer. But it's just sort of some of the thoughts that go through my head when I'm trying to figure that stuff out. I

Tyler Cauble 23:48

can't I mean, that's pretty much how I think about it. And sometimes there's, there's just like, an emotional component to it. Like, sometimes you just feel like, you know, what, I don't really want this property anymore.

Unknown Speaker 23:57

That's true. And similarly, you know, I think everybody has a different risk tolerance and emotional and family situation on liquidity in reserves, too, right. That's the other thing too, is I've realized for myself and my family, I really, and I've made this mistake multiple times, I need to have a certain amount of reserves and liquidity for us to have no emotional baggage connected to, you know, how much money we have in the bank, right? So there might be situations and there are situations where the math doesn't make sense, but I know that my family is going to be emotionally happier. Because we have some money in the bank.

Tyler Cauble 24:33

Yeah, I tweeted about that the other day. It's like you don't always have to maximize every single aspect of your investing life. Right. You're there. You know, you get on Twitter, you get on LinkedIn. You see these people that are always arguing for maximize the ROI, get the highest IRR. Man you can't really put an IRR on not having a house payment. Right and the level of comfort that that brings you. Yeah, it's a terrible return on equity, but return on headache. It's

Unknown Speaker 24:59

about on stress. It's balancing. I've still got like, $120,000 in student loans, and they're paid off. Because, and it's like, you know, there's an argument for both sides, like the, you know, Dave Ramsey would would, you know, say I'm an idiot. But

Tyler Cauble 25:12

Dave Ramsey thinks a lot of people. Yeah, they're successful are idiots, but they're like,

Unknown Speaker 25:15

4%. You know, those loans are 4%. And they don't bother me, right? Like, if they bothered me, and they had some emotional toll on me, I would just pay them off, but they don't. And so

Tyler Cauble 25:24

and you can always get a much better return than 4% on exactly anything you do. So it's worth the arbitrage. Right?

Unknown Speaker 25:29

And so for me, personally, my my personal residence and my student loans, they don't bother me, because I know I can get a higher return. But what does bother me personally, is not having feeling like I have enough lizard reserves and liquidity, right? I don't I don't ever want to be in a situation, if I can avoid it, but I feel like I'm forced into selling something. When I didn't want to otherwise. Yeah, it's not

Tyler Cauble 25:52

a good feeling. Yeah. So so let's talk about how you how you scale that. So you went from a $500,000 piece of property to a 1.4. And then now you've you've gotten up to $25 million in assets under management?

Unknown Speaker 26:04

Yeah. And those are with partners. It's not like it's all me, but yeah, so. But

Tyler Cauble 26:11

I mean, yeah. How did you? I mean, let's talk about that. How did you find the right partners? How did you structure that? How did that be? I know, You've done a lot of presentations on partnerships and operating agreements, stuff like that. What was it that allowed you to scale into that so quickly, because I mean, if you bought your first commercial property in 2017, you're doing this part time, scaling up to $25 million in assets under management is a huge, huge accomplishment.

Unknown Speaker 26:36

Thank you. I mean, it all happened so fast. To be honest with you. I would say one thing I tell people I try to emphasize in my partnership, when I talk about partnerships and stuff with people is you really have to become the person that these people want to partner with. Right? Like that's the reality is, you got to understand what you bring to the table, and you got to understand how to bring people value. And the more valuable and sophisticated the potential partners are, the more value in sophistication you got to bring to the table, right, unless you're just trying to be only a passive limited partner with it's bringing money, you've got to develop some skills. So I was really lucky that with the law background, and the practicing in doing litigation in real estate and construction, that that was a real asset to people and the partners. I didn't really plan that out. I just sort of stumbled into it. And then I kind of layered on extra skills of negotiations, like became pretty good at negotiations. I became pretty competent in commercial real estate, right? So like, my first few commercial deals, first couple of commercial deals, people came to me because they trusted me. And they felt like I had operational competence that they didn't have on commercial side, right? So that gave me so they were able to find a deal that they didn't feel like they could handle themselves. And they were able to work with me on that deal. And I still do that today. Like I'm always looking for opportunities where you know, somebody who's a younger investor, for example, and maybe they've done, you know, 50 wholesale deals, but they've never bought a commercial building. And they, they may find an amazing deal, they think, but they're not sure because they don't know how to underwrite it. Or even if they feel good about underwriting it, they don't know how to operate it, right. So I'm always looking for synergies like that, and we just went bigger and bigger. So like I said earlier, instead of going volume, we just went bigger size and bigger size. So we, you know, we went from one four to one and started then at that point, only looking at million dollar plus deals, and then eventually flipped a switch where you're like, you know what, let's look for eight figure deals. I think we can do these now. And we just became confident that I wouldn't say confident we were still a little stressed. Like it was not comfortable. But I genuinely started to believe that we were capable of doing these larger deals. So that's what we've done. And I don't know, maybe we'll look for 100 million dollar deals at one point. I'm not I'm not there yet. Personally, I still got some more growth to do before. Yeah, before I feel confident of that. But

Tyler Cauble 29:08

let's go build or buy a legendary tower downtown or something. You know,

Unknown Speaker 29:12

it's on my bucket list. Yeah, a

Tyler Cauble 29:13

lot of fun. I love it. And going back to what you said earlier about finding young people who have that drive who have proven success in another way. I mean, yeah, we all have to start somewhere. Right? And none of us would be where we are if it wasn't for somebody else, giving a hand giving us a hand up. Yeah. Same for me, right. I mean, I got my start working for another developer who said, Go find a deal, and we'll find a way to partner on it. And so yeah, if you're listening, and you're like, you know what, I've been very successful in residential. I want to make the switch and a commercial. Reach out. We'd love to talk to you, Matt and I might do a deal with you. You never know.

Unknown Speaker 29:48

Yeah. And I mean, I think I had a really unique path because of the legal background. But you know, there's a lot of guys that I've seen, be propelled to six satis by being the deal finder, for example, yeah, like that's a very common path. So that's something you know, if I was young, and, you know, if I had to do it over again, I don't know, if I do all the school I did, right, I might have just jumped right into real estate to deal making. And if I were to do that, I would just be trying to become a master at finding deals and negotiating deals. It's probably what I would do today.

Tyler Cauble 30:21

That's it. I mean, that's a huge challenge. Because the thing is, like, once you get busy, once you get older, you're established, you got a family, you're not willing to put in those hours or you don't have to, but you're also not willing to put in all the time to go find deals all the time. Whereas if you're like 22, that's all you have is time to go do that kind of stuff. So those make valuable partnerships. They really do. We've got a whole bunch of comments here in the live chat, Jeff Harrison's jumping in, oh, labia familiar. This guy. So Matt and I are, Matt and I are at a mastermind together with Jeff. So Matt, always appreciative of the time you've spent with me with a commercial real estate nightmare. What are some due diligence must haves and or situations that should be huge red flags for newbie commercial real estate investors?

Unknown Speaker 31:06

Yeah, turn my head around. Shout out to Jeff.

Tyler Cauble 31:11

There it is the Gobots at

Unknown Speaker 31:12

this is a big question, Jeff. Um, you know, there's there's a lot of things I'll tell you a high level. So what are some due diligence must haves should be red flags. So it sounds like he's sort of asking you about due diligence. But maybe also referencing red flags to look out for with partnerships and passive deals to there's a there's a lot of things that we could talk about on the due diligence side. I mean, it's really kind of it's it's like, don't even have a separate home. Oh, yeah. We've got we've got like checklists. Yeah, you've got like a whole and also, yeah, so I would check out his resources on it, because you really need to be exhausted. I mean, a common mistake I see is just not adequate lease review. And not adequate tenant estoppel. Is is just like, something I see a lot early on, when it comes to

Tyler Cauble 31:59

let's, let's dive into that a little bit more. Because I completely agree. I mean, look, if you're buying an investment, you're buying the lease the property? Yes, sure. But you're buying the lease. So make sure you check it when you walk through lease to Staples, and tell us more about that. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 32:12

I mean, I don't understand why I mean, it's exactly right. That's literally what you're buying a lot of times, right? Because the whole way you evaluate it is based on the income, the whole way you can count on the income is based on the lease. And, and this is just like a whole other topic. I'll try not to rant. But investors get sometimes investors get really excited about returns, and they forget about risk. Yeah, you know, in everything you look at, I'm not to be too preachy, but it's if you're only looking at returns, and you're not looking at risk, you're not I mean, it's pointless, it really is pointless, I could come up with a way where you can get a theoretical 100% return. But you know, if if it's going to if it's going to fail 99% of the time, it doesn't matter. So I don't understand why people are not doing the same thing, when they're analyzing these deals, right? If I take a five year lease, for example, let me give like a really simple example that I actually saw, right? So I bought a building, and it had a five year lease on it, right. And there were a bunch of three to five year leases. Well, one of the lease provisions gave the tenant the right to terminate for No, for no reason, whenever they wherever the hell they want it. Because the sun rose differently that day. Yeah, whenever they want it well, so you compare that to the other five year lease, where they have basically no right to terminate unless the landlord defaults. And then if they terminate early, they owe the entire balance of the lease, it was a very good to your point, those are very different assets, if you want to think about them that way, right. So you have to, you have to really understand that and look at that in detail, and do good lease audits on these leases. And then you've got to get tenant estoppels, which, you know, the reality of it is, is when you buy commercial real estate, a lot of times it's very much buyer beware, right. So once you get past the closing date, a lot of times depending on what's going on in the paperwork, you're not going back after the seller, if they didn't, if they lied to you, or they hid something from you or whatever. A lot of times, depending on these contracts, you're not going to be able to win on that show. So you need to you can't take the sellers word for it, you've got to go to these tenants and make sure that this all lines up. And if the landlord says here's a copy of my lease with the laundry mat that's in the building, it's five years, they're paying 2950 a month, the rent goes up 5% Every month, in here's your rights. You got to go to the tenant and you need to get paperwork that's signed off by the tenant that verifies that, because otherwise what can happen is you close on the building. And three months later, the tenant sends you a termination letter. You said you can't terminate on me. I've got this lease, and they send you an addendum that you didn't get a copy of where they have a right to terminate, right. So you just can't You can't take that risk in commercial real estate, you have to have tenant estoppel signed documentation. At the end of the day, you need signed documentation from the tenants that they are in agreement with the terms of the lease that you think you have.

Tyler Cauble 35:12

Yeah, that's exactly it an estoppel is a tenant saying, yes, the lease that the landlord has provided you with during you do your due diligence is the waste that I have written and agreed to. You'd be amazed, sometimes landlords will just lie about it intentionally. But more often than not, it's just it's a clerical error. Right? The landlord has, you know, two copies of the lease, they they signed one and they decided, oh, you know, what, actually, that doesn't cover all these provisions. Let's just sign another one. And then you know, they just never replace it and don't think about it. So they're important for you to get those done. For me, on the development side, do your damn geotechnical. I mean, I've seen skilled developers not do proper geotech. I mean, there was one here in Nashville and Wedgewood Houston, I'm not going to name it because everybody would know what project it is. But it was a it was an apartment complex that started construction. And they started digging down to put their footers in and never hit rock. And so they kept digging, kept digging and kept digging, it was 80 something feet before they hit rock, which meant they had to dig all the way down to that rock bed in order to put the piers in to make sure that the building would be stable when it was sitting there. That is expensive. Well, and

Unknown Speaker 36:23

then this goes to just part of Jeff's second question is, you know, what are the red flags, the thing I see over and over and over again, when people are getting are getting into trouble when they're relying on other people is, one common theme is they don't understand the deal. And they don't know what they don't know about the deal. And in my opinion, look, if you want to give limited part, you know, Limited Partnerships a shot and passively invest your money. I'm not saying don't do that. But my general advice would be, you're better off not investing in a deal you don't understand, I think most people would be better off just putting their money in the stock market than throwing their money to some partner in real estate, because they think it sounds awesome, right? And I'm being a little facetious butcher, but it's sort of true, what people do is they're like, I trust you, you know, you know, more than me, you can't do that. You can't do that. I'm gonna verify.

Tyler Cauble 37:14

I mean, that's how you get a Chris Larkin situation. You know what I mean? So,

Unknown Speaker 37:19

I mean, look, if you are in the game for a while, and you build some really close relationships, there's a level of trust that can be involved in these deals in these partnerships, right? I'm not saying that there's not. But if that's not your position, if you're coming in to invest in the real estate, and it's not your main thing, then it is not a good idea to invest in deals you don't understand with people you don't really know.

Tyler Cauble 37:42

Yeah, just make sure you at least have a good high level, you have an attorney, that is reviewing everything to make sure that you're you're at least setting the operating agreement up, right. And then looking at a doctor, I mean, you've got to have kind of that third party that is not bought into the deal that don't have any reward for the deal happening. Typically, that's an attorney or friend.

Unknown Speaker 38:02

And you can't just the other thing that's related that you can't just be like, Well, they did a deal with so and so. And so and so. And it looks like it's going pretty well. Like that's not good enough.

Tyler Cauble 38:11

Is it done yet? That's like, let's see, let's talk about what it's sold. That's not

Unknown Speaker 38:15

good enough. Because that's, you know, that's the that's the onofrio story, right? It's like, well, there's, you know, these people must be smarter than me. Right? Yeah. And they must have done the due diligence. I haven't done it, and I don't understand it. But surely these other people have. I just don't think that's something that's worth risking.

Tyler Cauble 38:32

Yeah, I mean, it's That's exactly it. It's there's too much on the line. Jeff's also saying, You said you've had a lot of help love to hear your take on working with your wife and your extended family plus or minus. Oh, yeah, that's a good question. Because I think you've got a really good experience with family and I've got a terrible one. So I'm gonna share mine after

Unknown Speaker 38:50

Okay, okay, well, so one thing I've never done so far, is really taking money from family. So most of my health smart. None of my family has any money. So it wasn't strategic. It wasn't strategic. You know, if I, if I had somebody offering money that was a family member, I probably would have taken it. It just wasn't there. So like, when I've gotten a lot of help, it's mainly by people with better ideas than me people with more experienced than me, and then a lot of help with my wife. Like we did a lot of things together. So we both spent a lot of time and energy and made a bunch of joint sacrifices. Right. So that's, that's mostly what I mean by helping like people like you, you know, willing to come out and spend time and energy with me to help me understand things. I don't that I know, you know, better than I do. Right. And then I just try to return the favor as much as I can.

Tyler Cauble 39:41

Yeah, yeah. I I learned very early on for my grandfather not to do deals with family. He had had a bad experience when he was growing up with one of his brothers. And, you know, when I first got started in commercial real estate, and real estate in general, this is 2013. I kept trying to get my grandfather to invest with me. and buy a house in the nation's or bioy do a to build or whatever. And he just wouldn't do it. He was like, you know what i i value our relationship more than I value the money that we'd make together. So I always appreciate it that that is not a terrible experience that I had. Because if you're listening this, you're like, that was a terrible. It sounds pretty great. Your grandfather? Was that awesome? No, my grandfather is awesome. No, I had a family member steal a lot of money from me, and I'm still in a lawsuit about it today. And this is from a deal that I started working on, you know, 2015. So I mean, it's been years. And we're still we're still dealing with that. So, you know, it's just, it's unfortunate, but l Miller is saying, Hey, guys, join late. So sorry, if this has been discussed, would you recommend for someone building a multifamily portfolio to start small, two to four units? or pursue a commercial property of five to 10 units? Go commercial? Skip multifamily? What are your thoughts? Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 40:57

I mean, that was something. I mean, there's some skill sets you need to understand, right? You need to educate yourself on how commercial is valued. And, you know, you need to get yourself to a point where you're not making basic level mistakes that are going to screw your deal. Get my course. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you need to have some education on your belt, and a comfort level. And you probably need to have some relationships to like, if you're jumping right into commercial, you probably need to well, you need to have a team. And you probably need to have people who are ahead of you, who you can ask for help for. Otherwise, go for it, in my opinion.

Tyler Cauble 41:31

I mean, the thing about residential real estate multifamily, like it's so much easier for us to comprehend, right, because the majority of us grew up in a home, we grew up in an apartment, probably renting an apartment, we were in college, like we've been through that process before you understand it better. So it's very tempting, but at the end of the day, like you're busting your ass to make 100 bucks a month in cash flow. I mean, with with where Cap rates are today with what rental rates are and mortgage payments, like it just doesn't work, in my opinion. And everybody in their grandmother's trying to buy a two to four unit multifamily property. So if you find something, the chances of even being a good deal are, I mean, it's impossible.

Unknown Speaker 42:09

And I would say it's even more true. Now, you know, like, because based on affordability with comps and everything like that nature, when I used to buy single family houses, you know, I could go to like secondary tertiary markets, and find things that hit the 1% roll easy and stuff like that. So I mean, I could do stuff where I could actually build up a reasonable amount of cash flow. And a lot of guys I know and girls did that. But it's harder now where it depends on what your goals are. But to me, there's just something that's amazing about being able to buy something for a million dollars, add value to it. And because I've increased the noi, now it's worth two or 3 million, and I've created cash flow and equity. And that's hard to beat. That's hard. And it's hard to replicate that in the in the single family or small multifamily game because, like now I can hit the velocity of money and I can pull that money back out. Right, I can have a building that's appreciating that has principal pay down, that's got steady tenant, multiple tenants in it, and then I can pull some of that money back out to buy another one. Right, like you can really build some real speed there. That's tough to do and single family. Yeah,

Tyler Cauble 43:17

I mean, the benefits in commercial real estate, every single one is more powerful to me than residential, and even small multifamily investing. But forced appreciation. Oh, oh, yes. Oh, right. Like in multifamily. If you spent a lot of time you fix up the units, you rent it for a higher rate, you're still kind of going to be based on comps, right? Especially in single family homes. Whereas if you do the same thing and commercial now you're basing it on a strong cap rate, like yes, okay, you can sell a four unit multifamily property on a cap rate, but nobody's gonna give you as good of a cap rate on that one as they will for a four unit commercial property that has bought, you know, four tenets at five year leases, right? It's just it's so much more valuable to the right investor.

Unknown Speaker 44:00

But you know, on the other hand, you got to start where you're at, and you gotta use what you have, right? So like, you don't just do something because somebody else is doing it or because somebody else is telling you it's the better way, if you know how to buy some great single family or small multifamily deals. And that's what started do go for it, do something. Because I mean, there there are risks involved, right? Like, there are people who are in trouble in commercial because they were they didn't really know how to account for, you know, the debt, getting proper debt, for example, or they just thought the cap rate could never go up even a little bit. Right.

Tyler Cauble 44:36

Yeah, I mean, that's that's, that's a very fair statement. The debt in multifamily is a lot more forgivable, right and the debt and commercial, right, right, because in commercial 99 times out of 100, you're personally guaranteeing the loan. Whereas in multifamily, you're typically able to get, you know, Freddie, Fannie, you know, loans that are just backed by the asset So I mean that that can make a big difference. So it depends on what level of risk you're willing to take. Jeff saying what's been the biggest mistake you've made? And how did you correct moving forward? I just want to say Jeff jumped into my office hours this morning. Oh, yeah. And dropped a bomb have a question. It was from when we were in Burlington, Vermont. And the question was, where are you killing it in life right now? And where are you teetering on the edge of failure?

Unknown Speaker 45:25

Oh, he's getting serious. Yeah.

Tyler Cauble 45:28

That's a really good. Like, I have to live react to this. It was good. Jeff has Jeff, you got great questions. So what's, what's the biggest mistake you've made? And how did you correct it?

Unknown Speaker 45:39

Biggest mistake, I think, you know, I made a lot of mistakes in my personal life, that my wife could tell you about it. Sometime. If you're in the in the business world, I think the biggest mistake was probably two things that maybe or maybe you're connected, I spent way too much of my life trying worrying about what other people thought and trying to please other people. And then I spent too much of my life like, trying to do too many things. At the same time. I think if I would have made some decisions earlier to say no to more things earlier, I would have gotten a lot farther, faster, and more importantly, would have had a much happier lifestyle. Earlier, I was trying to do so many things at once, for the longest time that everything suffered a little bit. And then like the things most actually most important to me also suffer. Yes,

Tyler Cauble 46:31

it's that shiny object syndrome, which is so prevalent in the real estate industry, there's always that oh, well, I can wholesale Oh, I can get into flex development. Oh, I can get into retail value. I mean, there's yeah, there's an infinite number of things that you can do. Just pick one, you're really good at it and figure it

Unknown Speaker 46:46

out. Yeah, like if I would have just spent half of the time I was wasting on all this random stuff, trying to do everything to just buy one more building exactly the way I'd already bought one, right? Like I would have been better off just to buy one more building. That was the unsexy way I'd already known, you know, pulled it off one time. Yeah,

Tyler Cauble 47:03

I mean, for me, it was it's not having everything in writing. And fortunately, I've got a fair amount of underwriting. But that's what caused the dispute the family member I was telling you telling you all about earlier. Let me to be fair, you know, he told me when I was 24, that I would have to go pay for an operating agreement. And I was like, how much is an operating agreement? Yeah, like 3500 to five grand. I was like, Well, I don't have that.

Unknown Speaker 47:23

It's, uh, you know, what, it's a tough mistake. People ask me that all the time is it's like, well, you know, if you need partnerships, how do you not make mistakes and partnerships? And that's tough, right? Because, you know, it's hard to be equipped to handle something you've never done before. Yeah,

Tyler Cauble 47:36

just memorialize it somehow, like that was that is the one like shaving grace that we have is that I've got hundreds of emails, my involvement in that project,

Unknown Speaker 47:43

and I've made that mistake. You know, I'm a lawyer. And I do yeah, I do it more times than I'd like to admit where me and my part, you know, it's usually an existing partner that I have trust with, but still will kind of work out like a sub deal within a deal, for example, right? And like, we'll figure out a way that we're agreeing to handle something. And then we don't put something in writing. And then three months goes by, and I didn't do what I said I was gonna do, or he didn't say what he said he was gonna do, because we forgot about it. And we come back around to it. And we remember it differently. Yeah, like, well,

Tyler Cauble 48:13

because we've all got a lot going on. It's not that anybody's necessarily tried to be deceptive. Can't remember every little thing like

Unknown Speaker 48:18

that. And I found this funny thing happens where people almost always remember things in their favor. Yeah. Funny, almost every time.

Tyler Cauble 48:28

l Miller saying in order to take on a commercial property capital, Would would you need to raise capital? I mean,

Unknown Speaker 48:34

well, I mean, depends on sometimes

Tyler Cauble 48:37

you can get paid to close on commercial real estate, apparently. I guess it depends

Unknown Speaker 48:40

on whether you want to think about bank in seller financing is raising capital, but I guess you could think about it that way. Right? You typically got to find money somewhere, right? And you've got to you need somebody who is willing to lend you in first position. And then usually you need a down payment in some form. Right? And a lot of times, like right now, for example, we did it, you know, so our last couple deals we did. Like we did the similar thing where we got a big bank loan in first position, and then a big seller carry and second position. I don't know whether the both of those banks would have done that deal. exactly that way would do that deal right now. Oh, probably exactly the way we bought. We did it a couple of years ago. So

Tyler Cauble 49:25

yeah, it's all its timing, too. Right. You know, I mean, back in 2017, banks were a lot happier with where the market was they felt comfortable. Their portfolios were balanced. Yeah, today, they're not as hungry to win on commercial real estate. So like, unless it's, you know, home run of a deal.

Unknown Speaker 49:42

But I guess to answer his question, I have a different I started spending time around a bunch of syndicators. And I started to wonder like, I thought it was cool with the syndicators were doing but I also started to wonder whether, you know, this, this I'm just making up an example hypothetical the guy does 150 units with 14 partners in runs it, and I started to wonder whether they would have been better off to buy a 10 unit by themselves, you know? And so I believe that so do you need to raise capital, I would actually argue unless you have a really specific goal that requires you to go bigger and raise capital. You might want to be against the grain and buy the biggest asset you're comfortable with, with seller financing and your own money, for example. Yeah,

Tyler Cauble 50:27

I mean, here's, here's what I'll say to that, right? Because there's a lot of ego when it comes to being able to say, well, I own 1000 doors. Do you want 1000 doors? Or did you put $25,000 into four different investments of 250 units each? Sure, right. There's this this, you know, feeling and commercial real estate, where it's, it sounds really cool. You know, I own $60 million in assets under management. But I also have some partners, I've got a bunch of investors like I, you know, it's cool. It's great. It's nice, it's changed my life. But at the same time, I have bosses. Yeah, right, like, so it's, you know, the thing that changed my mind. So we've started buying in 2019. And I started raising capital and buying deals in 2019. I stopped in 2022. So we bought $60 million dollars with a real estate in three years. And I have about a deal with investors since because we exited one of those deals, right? Three years, we've actually exited multiple, because we've just bought them right. But I ended up walking away with not a small so I mean, six figure check, not a small sum of money, but I was looking at it going, the amount of stress, the amount of work I put into this, I was the only guy. Everybody else made more money than me in this and didn't have to do a damn thing. I could have, you know, what else could I have done in 18 months to make this much money? I could have been building single family homes. Sure. Right. So I was like, Well, I can do that by myself. Well, am I doing this?

Unknown Speaker 51:53

And that's why the you know, the part time thing, I think you emphasize part time in the title. It made me to have to start thinking about return on my time and energy. Yeah, right. And so like, I'm always thinking about that. And even when we did our couple last larger deals, we had the deals locked up, we knew they were great. We knew they were great deals, we had great seller financing, we were confident we could operate them and get a good return. And then we had to decide, do we want to syndicate these? Do we want to start a fund? Or how do we want to handle this? And we decided to just work with a couple small, you know, well, not small, but a couple partners instead of trying to raise money through a fund or syndication because to us, that gave us the best return on our time and our energy.

Tyler Cauble 52:36

Yeah. So yeah, I mean, there's something to be said about scaling quickly. But I would argue that doing deals by yourself just can't be beaten. Matt, thanks for joining us today. Man. This has been awesome. To y'all that are tuning in and listening. If you need help on negotiating your contracts, working on operating agreements, pretty much anything to do with real estate, Matt is the guy. I call him and ask him questions all the time. And highly recommend you do to Matt, if anybody has questions about real estate law, or they want to bring you a deal. How do they find you?

Unknown Speaker 53:08

Yeah, yeah. And we do a lot of litigation. So real estate law. So you can go to our website at Andersen, legal tn.com. You can just look me up on Facebook or LinkedIn or whatever and send me a message. I'm not that hard to find. So just reach out and we'll get you set up. You know, if you've got a serious legal issue, we'll get get you set up with a free legal consultation.

Tyler Cauble 53:31

Yeah, he's been involved in some pretty big ones. So you guys want to reach out to him for sure. Matt, thanks for joining us. Appreciate you all. And we will see you all in the next one. Are you looking to take the next step toward investing in commercial real estate but don't know where to go? Series central offers a comprehensive education and coaching platform designed to help you get started. Our online courses cover a wide range of topics from the fundamentals to advanced strategies, ensuring you have the knowledge and skills needed to thrive in this competitive industry. As a member, you'll gain access to our exclusive online community and monthly group coaching calls, providing you with valuable networking opportunities and personalized guidance from experienced professionals. Whether you're a beginner or looking to take your career to the next level. Cre Central has the resources you need. Visit www.cre central.com To learn more