LUR 2 | Assisted Living Real Estate

 

Approximately 10,000 baby boomers are retiring daily in the United States, and with this comes the need for goods and services that can service their needs. Assisted living is one of the services that is in high demand as we naturally move through the aging process. In this episode, Lisa Hylton interviews Carolyn “CJ” Matthews about her experience in real estate as a whole and her current experience in the residential living space and what she likes about it, the challenges, and the successes! Carolyn is the Director of Marketing for the Residential Assisted Living Academy (RALA) and is a founding member of the Residential Assisted Living National Association.  Listen in to learn more about this fascinating asset classes and CJ’s journey into it!

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Leveling Up With Assist Living Real Estate Investing With Carolyn CJ Matthews

Exploring The Assisted Living Asset Class

My guest is Carolyn “CJ” Matthews. Welcome to The Level Up REI show.

I love the name of that. I wanted to tell you that I was like, “I wish I had thought of that myself,” because I like leveling up. Leveling up says something about where you’re going and that you’re getting better. It doesn’t mean you get to that end result right away. It means that you get to level up. That’s a great thing. When I heard the name of it, I was like, “Good choice.”

The story on how that came to be was I work out in the mornings. I was working out in the morning and the song, Level Up, by Ciara came in my mind. I was like, “Wow.” I was driving to work and I played this song that same morning and I was like, “This is cool.” A couple of days later, I was in the shower and literally the song was like, “Level up real estate investing.” As I continued to build more content and talk to more people, I was like, “The Level Up REI. That’s totally it.”

I don’t know if you all can see this, but I can with your mic where it says the Level Up REI that is totally cool. Where did you get that?

The lady, Monick of Real Estate Investor Goddesses, they went to Secret Knock Women. When they were there, there was a company called Podetize. They are the ones who helped me with my show. They put together the mic and they branded and everything.

That’s a good company. I like Podetize company. I am so proud of you, first off. I want to say that it is awesome what you’ve done in such a short amount of time. You got the inspiration and then immediately you started taking action. That’s an important part of what we do when we’re not only entrepreneurs, but real estate investors. A lot of it is taking action. I see a lot of people that go look at houses, but they never make an offer or they make an offer, but they never go look for money or they’re waiting for everything to be right. I hate to say it, but you can’t. You got to go in and get some experience and start it. I don’t know if that’s what you have found on your side, but when I first started out, the guy who originally taught me was a guy named John Burley who was featured in the Rich Dad Poor Dad book. It was in the original Rich Dad Poor Dad. Have you read Rich Dad Poor Dad yet? A lot of people have.

I have but I didn’t realize this original Rich Dad Poor Dad.

It was the original publishing of it. It’s gone through some iterations since its original publishing. I got one of the original books printed on one of the original papers. In that original version was a thank you or something to a guy named John Burley who’s located in Phoenix. He gave seminars and this is before Kiyosaki gave seminars on real estate investing. Since then, he’s licensed his name and the Rich Dad Poor Dad name to an education company so that other people could learn how to do it. In this case, it was a guy named John Burley. One of the things that he did that was so different than everybody else is he made you make an offer.

You are successful when you can overcome and you have solutions to problems. Click To Tweet

It was a five-day seminar and you went through the process and he took you through all the theory, all the actions and all the different ways of doing it. At the time, he taught lease options. You would go by the house, and in my case, it was VA repos is what I picked up on. You’d go by the house and then you would a lease option it to the next person. You had the loan on the house and you would make money on the spread. Instead of renting the house, you are release optioning it and there are some advantages to that. The short of it is that the reason that I was successful is that they made you make offers while you were there in the seminar and go through the process.

It wasn’t some invisible barrier that you couldn’t get through because that is a huge barrier for a lot of people. It’s making that first offer and freaking out about it. Let’s face it, not everybody goes and buys houses every day as their thing. It’s usually a 1 or 2-time purchase, maybe 3 or 4 times with people moving around. It’s a big step for a lot of people for that first one. After a while, it becomes old hat. I was a single parent. I didn’t have a great job. I had a college education getting paid back in the day $10 an hour. I don’t know how you survive on that and this is 20, 25 years ago and $10 an hour isn’t a lot of money when you’re raising a kid and you’re not getting child support. I’m not saying that my ex-husband was a bad guy. I don’t want anybody to think that. That’s not what it was happening. We had split 50/50 and as a part of that, child support was pretty minimal if not at all. It was one of those things where you have to put a roof over their head and pay your rent or pay your house payment or whatever.

I went off and I bought fourteen houses in less than six months using all OPM, Other People’s Money. If you come to me, “I don’t have any money,” I’m the one person who’s like, “You did not tell me that.” First of all, you’re coming from a place of lack when you think about that. Second of all, it doesn’t matter if you don’t have money because what you have is knowledge. People want to pay you for that knowledge and the way that they pay you is by you coming to them with deals or opportunities. That’s what they want. Not everybody’s going to love you. You’re going to hear some noes. If you have your things together and you can answer certain questions, most people will go, “You know more than I know about it and I’m willing to risk with you. Let’s go do it.”

Fourteen houses in less than six months, was that a part of the lease option?

I bought VA repos and then I would turn around and sell or lease option them to the next person.

Can you break down what VA repos are for people?

There’s not a lot of them anymore. I wouldn’t use this technique anymore. That’s another thing about real estate investing. There are cycles to everything. Part of the trick is to have more than one tool in your tool chest for making money. Back then, what it was is that the VA lent a lot to veterans or got a veteran’s loan and sometimes people couldn’t pay their loan. The VA would take it back and put it up for auction. It was the whole series of systems of things. It’s almost any other repossession or short sale, you would go in and make an offer in this auction and you would buy it. Usually, you’re shooting for 20% or more below market value. That’s what you’re looking for. You’re wholesaling. You want to grab it at a below market value. That was the technique. You can do that a lot of other ways here as well.

The people had already moved out. The VA had already gone through the repossession. You weren’t kicking anybody out of their home. It had already gone through the system. It was a house that was sitting there empty. What you would do is you would then make an offer on it along with whoever else was making an offer. If you got it, it was yours and you paid cash for it. A lot of times, you can get it for more than 20% of market value. You might have to clean it up or as if you were doing a fix and flip. I didn’t have a lot of experience in doing a fix and flip. It was before HGTV was big. It was getting started.

LUR 2 | Assisted Living Real Estate

Assisted Living Real Estate: Not everyone is going to love you. You will go through rejection before succeeding.

 

You couldn’t fix a house in half an hour. I picked houses that maybe needed a coat of paint, maybe needed a new carpet, nothing major, all cosmetic. That’s what I picked because remember, single parent, not a lot of money, even though I was doing OPM. My specialty was going out and finding the good people for the lease option. That was a technique of marketing. You also marketed in a certain way to get people to come in the door and you have to remember it was 1999. Websites haven’t kicked in. They are still trying to figure out if the internet is a real thing and it’s going to stay around. People are still doubting that the internet is going to be around. We don’t have Facebook. We might have Myspace or something like that.

One of the big things is that you would advertise in the paper and you’d have them call a specific number that you got. This is before Google phone and all that. People would call that number and you would know that it was somebody calling about the house and you would do a showing. At that time, and the Dodd-Frank Act changed this, I know there are still ways around it or a different technique or you call it something different. You can’t call it like a lease option. You have to have a certain kind of contract for that to work. What you would do is you would charge them, “Here’s your down payment. You’re buying the house. You now have an option for that home. In two years when your credit is better, you go out and you get a loan.”

Most people unfortunately, it wasn’t going to work for them. For whatever reason, they weren’t going to go get a loan. That was unusual. Maybe they were dealing in cash businesses. Back then, this was in Vancouver, Washington, there was a lot of marijuana. There were people that were upstanding citizens. Everything was good. They made their money growing something that was federally illegal and they couldn’t prove their income. They wanted their own house so that they could do with it what they wanted. That’s what a lease option did for them. I had older people that made money but didn’t show income because it was maybe a trust or something like that and they would move into these types of houses. It was a very interesting clientele. We’ve had people that could afford the rent, they liked the idea, but they couldn’t carry through. You’d wrap it and then people would pay you the spreads. Let’s say you’re paying $1,000 for your mortgage, but you’re charging $1,500. Right there, you’re making $500 on each one.

These days you’re known to play in the residential assistant living area. That is your area of expertise. I want to know how you moved from buying homes and the process of lease options to then deciding to pivot into residential assistant living.

There were some iterations in between there. There was a buy and hold. There were fix and flips, nothing serious. 2008 unfortunately, or it was closer to 2009, was a rough year personally because I was a life and business coach. All of a sudden, people started dropping like flies. Meeting my own mortgage was a big event for me. Eventually, I did have to short sale. At that point I was like, “I’m out. I’m not doing real estate. There’s nothing that I want to play in.” It was a tough row to hoe. I didn’t lose money on the houses that I had at the time. I sold them. I did different things like that with them.

When you went into the short sale, was that your own residence?

My personal home. I’ve got to tell you, my significant other has a book out there that is how to keep your home out of foreclosure and that kind of thing. If I was to do it again, I was mature about it, I made the right decision but I was naive. Everybody was naive. They didn’t know, I went through four servicing agencies. It’s no wonder they couldn’t keep up with where my payments were. I got bad information and I would love to say that I was the only one. I hate to say it, but it makes me feel better that it was me and 100,000 other people that I know that went through that process with the servicing agencies eventually felt like a setup where you lose your home.

You were given the wrong information, which then puts you in the hole, which may create other issues. I hung onto it for about two years. I probably should’ve let it go about a year into it. My experience with that and what I got out, again, you don’t know what you don’t know. The truth of the matter is the sooner you get out of that house and can clean your hands of it and move on, that’s usually better because it allows you to start rebuilding faster instead of later, which allows you to get into a house again. I know several people that were able to hang onto their home, but they were rare, few and far between. They also had a lot more experience than most people. The average person had a struggle with that and trying to figure out how the system worked and what to do.

The challenge in the assisted living business is getting and keeping caretakers. Click To Tweet

You can save your home. I don’t want people to think that because there are ways of making that happen. However, you need to get a bunch of knowledge. You got to get good at negotiating and sometimes you need to have a lawyer do it for you. As soon as you get a lawyer, they’ll all of sudden pay attention to you. If you wait to get a lawyer, you can tell them the same thing that the lawyer is telling them. Everything changes too. This next round as we know, the world goes in cycles. The next cycle up, that may be slightly different.

You have different laws and different rules of the game at that point as well.

The knowledge is still valuable. I’m grateful for the knowledge that I got. I was out of the real estate business. I was like, “I’m done. I’m not doing this.” I had sold all my houses, everything was fine. I wasn’t underwater. I came up with a bunch of different things where I wasn’t financially responsible for it. Everything that came out pretty much smelling like a rose in the sense that at least it was crappy. I didn’t think it’s bad as it could have. I got a lot of lessons out of it. However, I love real estate and I got to tell you that if you love real estate, it’s a little bit like an addiction from an investment standpoint. When it works, it works fabulously.

I get more money like the stock market. I have friends that make money in the stock market. I don’t know how they do it. Every time I try to do something in the stock market, it goes flat. It doesn’t work. I do real estate and it’ll actually work. I’ll make money and I’m like, “This is great. I love it.” What happened is I also got older. I did not want all the headaches that come with rentals. There are headaches, challenges and problems in everything. It’s there. If you think it’s going to be all milk and honey and easy going with no stop lights and no red lights and it’s all going to be green lights for you, we’ve got to talk. That’s not the way it happens. Why are you successful? It’s because you can overcome and you have solutions to those problems. Otherwise, everybody would be doing it. If you’re like me or you, this is how it is.

You solve problems, you find out answers and you make money doing that. For me, there were a couple of things that hit close to home. One of the things I wanted was the real estate and however I wanted a big cashflow business. I wasn’t sure how I wanted to do that. I was speaking at Harvard and Gene Guarino was also speaking at Harvard. He’s talking about the senior care challenge and how you can buy real estate and open a business. You don’t have to be there and run the business. You have to have good management, good people working for you. By doing that, you would be able to make money, have steady cashflow and it’s a twenty-plus year business.

I thought it’s a ‘set it and watch it’ type of thing, but you don’t have to do work all the time. His conversation was, “Once it’s up and running, you’re working about ten hours a month on it. That doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be there.” I was like, “That’s what I wanted.” I also wanted the opportunity to be able to live overseas if I wanted to. I wanted to be able to travel. I was getting into my 50s. This is something I wanted to be able to have some flexibility without having to be present all the time. I wanted a lot of money straight up. I had a personal experience with my family with assisted living, which made me want to create something better. That’s what we did here.

I found two business partners that were in the same boat. They were looking for something like this. They like real estate. They had personal experiences as well with assisted living and they wanted something better. We promptly got together and started our process. We’re in the Las Vegas area and we have our flagship and I will tell you, it was not easy for us. There were all sorts of challenges that we had, but we had the come-hell-or-high-water attitude about it. It was going to happen and we were going to figure it out, how to make that happen. We did that. We went through a whole process and I can tell you about that. Of all the things that we learned there and how to syndicate big construction projects. We did it.

The residential assisted living, you have the aspect of owning the homes and then you can choose to rent out or lease out to the businesses that actually do the operation of the residential assisted living or you can do both. Do you and your partner do both?

LUR 2 | Assisted Living Real Estate

Assisted Living Real Estate: Keep your day job even if you hate it. You need that W2. It makes your whole life easier because it will pay for most of what you’re doing.

 

We believe in doing both. That’s for us. There’s a group of us, and when I say us, there’s a group of residential assisted living people. There’s a national association that was created because we have a certain level of care that we want to make sure it’s provided. Some of these places you go into, you can smell the neglect. I don’t know how they keep their license, quite frankly. We want something better than that. It doesn’t mean it costs more. It means its better care. I liked the real estate business mesh, where it dovetailed together. There are people out there that all they do is put together the house, make it ready for the people and then they find somebody who wants to lease it. That’s a great business plan as well because usually you can get 2 to 3 times what you would have normally gotten as a rental or as a lease for that property. It’s a single-family home. Let’s say it has ten beds in it. It would normally rent for $1,500. You’re renting it for $5,000.

That’s the typical profile of the properties that are good for residential assisted living homes that have about at least ten bedrooms.

No, it doesn’t have to have ten bedrooms. When we talk about ten beds, that’s the number that it’s licensed for. It might have only five bedrooms with two people in each bedroom.

You spoke about Gene Guarino. Who is he and what is his role in the business? 

Gene is a great guy. He has a training program in this, which I highly suggest everybody go to. You can get it online. It’s called Residential Assisted Living Academy. However, going gets you the view of what he’s trying to accomplish. He’s got a big audacious goal of helping hundreds of thousands of people get into this business. There’s what we call certified residential homes in the United States. It’s a different way of doing and providing care.

Certified residential homes, you said there was a group or a regulating body, an association. Is that connected?

Originally, yes. What happened is that Gene has been teaching this for years. It’s a three-day course. When you graduate from that course, there are different levels for people. You can get additional coaching or you can get help with getting things together to go to the bank. There are a lot of connections. What happened though was that there started to become a lot of students that didn’t need additional training but still wanted to get together. That’s where the National Association came from. If you open one up and you want to get that type of certification, I’m not sure if you go through the National Association or if you go through a Gene Guarino’s Academy, that you’ll have to check on. I’ve been with them for several years. They have get-togethers, masterminds where people who are already up and running. People who want to get up and running can come in and join and do all that. Because we were already certified, I’m not sure how you do it now. Give them a call. You can take the online course if you can’t make it, but I’m going to tell you, you’re missing out. If you want to know about it very quickly in a short period of time, that’s a great way to go. Physically go there.

How many homes do you and your partners own and operate in Vegas?

Assisted living is a long-term play in real estate that would allow us to go do other types of real estate. Click To Tweet

We have one. We’re calling it our flagship. I’m the National Association leader here in Vegas. We have several friends that have them. We’re in the process of purchasing two more that are already up and running. What was interesting was that here in Las Vegas, there was a large contingent of Filipino operators. Sometimes it’s a little bit before your time, but when people come over from certain places and about a few years ago, we had a lot of Vietnamese coming over and the United States channeled them into nails. When Filipinos came over, they were channeled into medical. Many of them ended up in California because you could pay for your house by taking care of people. There are residential assisted living homes in California where you can have six people in them. Those homes for a long time were run by Filipinos. I’m giving you the history.

In the Northwest, which is Washington, Oregon where a lot of this started out, it was a lot of Eastern Europeans like Romania, Ukraine and people like that. It’s very interesting. Here in Las Vegas, that group of people was mostly Filipinos. They were older homes and older people were running them. Some of the younger generations had come on and they would put the homes up for sale. What was fascinating is that they have a very strong group and network here. Usually, if you were going to buy one outright, it was usually a Filipino person selling to another Filipino person. That’s the way it was.

They were people that were already in the business and they already knew each other. To actually purchase a home from another Filipino would be unusual. We were first trying to purchase because that’s usually your best move. Buy one that’s already up and running. The problem was that some of the times, the money that they were asking for those, there was no room for improvement of cost. Finally, after several months of trying to negotiate and make that work, we finally said, “We’re going to purchase a house, get an SBA loan and then do the construction and open up.” That turned into a two-year process. We had the house for a full year. We had purchased it on a 12% loan. We had purchased it thinking we were going to be able to go get an SBA loan.

What are SBA loans?

It’s Small Business Administration. It’s like an FHA loan or something like that. You have regular banks offering these SBA loans, but they’re still government-backed. As we went through this process, we learned a lot about SBA loans. Here’s my advice. If you have a W-2 and I’m going to tell you, if you’ve read Rich Dad Poor Dad and you think, “I’m going to quit my job and go straight into real estate investing.” Keep your day job, even if you hate it. You need that W-2. It makes your whole life easier. Get enough houses that when you quit your day job that it’ll at least pay for most of what you’re doing and you have an investment strategy for when you don’t have a W-2. Keep your day job because it’s a paycheck. Banks love paychecks. Unfortunately, I had been an entrepreneur for a long time and had semi-retired. My two business partners, both entrepreneurs. One actually had a W-2 but you couldn’t count it because it was bartending. The money that he made that in tips, not so much in the W-2.

We also didn’t have healthcare experience. None of us had it except for maybe me who did long-term care insurance. There’s some relation there, but it wasn’t enough for the SBA and the banks. The other thing with the SBA is there are two different kinds of loans too. One helps you purchase the house and the other one helps you do the improvements. Quite often, the improvements to the home don’t make the home worth more. You’re looking at a loan-to-value rate of something. Is it loan-to-future value? Is it loan-to-current value and all of that? That comes into play as well. Let’s take a side note. Loans in general, when you go get one, having a W-2 is a good step one.

The second thing is that you have your business plan in place and all that kind of thing. The third thing is they usually want to see that 70% loan-to-value, maybe 80% loan-to-value or sometimes 90% loan-to-value. The problem is you can’t prove value or how is it that they figure out what value is. It becomes the problem. Is it the future value or is it the current value or where are they getting that from? You must ask that question. That will also give you how much money you need to have in your pocket to go get the loan. If you’re doing a simple residential loan with no construction, you’re just, “I’m going to go get a regular loan.” Usually, that’s 20% down that you need in your pocket to show that you have and then they’ll loan you the rest.

Here’s the other thing was residential assisted living. It is a residential loan and it’s a commercial loan. It’s this gray area because you’re going to be turning it into an actual business. The challenge then becomes if you can get a commercial loan, you want one because they understand that, “You’re going to take this house. You’re going to turn it into a commercial property, even though it’s in a residential area. It’s going to have added value to it.” They get that it’s what you would do with a regular commercial building. The snag comes. Some companies will loan on that. They’re rare, few and far between wouldn’t count on it.

LUR 2 | Assisted Living Real Estate

Assisted Living Real Estate: Assisted living is the one business that did not lose money during the downturn in 2008.

 

SBA loan on the other hand has two loans. The big thing is that one is for the purchase of the house. The other one is for what we would call opening the construction and opening expenses. Most of the time they won’t loan on what we call blue sky money, which is the operating expenses to get up and running. They’ll loan on fixing up the house to make it go but you still need, “How do I pay for salaries and until we make a profit?” I’m not trying to make this harder than it is because it isn’t. You go through the process and once you’ve done it, it’s like, “I’ve got this.” If you can find a house that’s already up and running, that’s a beautiful thing for getting an SBA loan.

If you don’t have money, you can always get investors. Just go pretend you have money. Where it comes from is going to be the question and we’ll work on that later. When you buy one that’s already up and running, if their books are good, then the SBA says, “That’s awesome.” If their books are bad, you’ve got another challenge. You’ve got to show a lot of stuff, you go through a different process with that. I want to be aware that you’re going to be looking at the businesses if you’re buying it and looking at how can I make money doing that? Don’t buy it based on their numbers alone.

It sounds like you should get the education and be around people that are in this business and know because I’m sure someone reading might be like, “I have no idea about residential assisted living.” That’s where getting around the right circles, going to these events like Gene’s educational program and getting educated can help you to bridge those gaps as well, I would say.

If I can do it, you can do it. The only difference between you and me might be determination. I do have a come-hell-or-high-water attitude. Sometimes it’s super easy. We’re in the process of buying one. She wasn’t quite ready to sell, but she is going to sell it to us. We have an agreement, everything’s great. It’s a timing factor for her. That was super easy. That was a handshake and a tour and, “Let’s look at the numbers and what you want for the place that seems reasonable.” That’s how easy that one was. The other ones, what we call the flagship that one was a tough one. We had some challenges with getting funded. There were changes going on. We thought we were going to easily be able to get an SBA. That is not the way that works, unfortunately. The SBA also changed rules for some people so that was challenging.

We had to learn how to syndicate and for all of you, syndication is raising money. You don’t need that to start, but if you don’t have money, I’m going to suggest that you learn how to do that as quickly as possible because it will serve you well no matter what kind of real estate you want to buy. There’s going to be a point where it’s smarter to work with other people who want to be in on the deal and they become your passive investors and you run the project and you get paid for running the project, creating the project and the project can be a long-term thing for you. Your risk is minimized and everybody else benefits as well.

If you’re getting into real estate or you don’t know how to syndicate to level up, I’m going to be straight with you. Level up and learn how to syndicate. There are several places in which you can do that. Monick’s Goddess is a great one. There are a couple of people, the real estate guys, radio show, they definitely teach you about that. They’ve got a good three-day beginner course. Petersen has a good one. That one’s mostly for apartments. He’s got a good one for apartments and those are the three that I know that teach it well.

Let me recap. It’s so worth it. What you’re doing is you’re meshing. It’s a long-term business. This is the beauty of it. Once you get it up and running and it is a cashflow cow when done correctly, it’s minimal work. It’s work, but it’s minimal monthly work. Once you get them up and running, that’s a great thing. Learn how to syndicate, for sure. If you’re going to get into this business, highly recommend Gene Guarino’s course. That’s Residential Assisted Living Academy. There is a network of people all over the nation. If you want to know more, you can go to those. Also, at real estate clubs, Gene or his son a lot of times will speak at them so that you can see and hear directly from him what’s going on.

Personally, buying one might be easier. However, they are few and far between. Building one is good, so there are three ways in which you can do that. Door-to-door, meaning you buy the piece of dirt and you build from scratch, buying a house, refurbishing it or buying one that’s already up and running. Another way that you can make money from the real estate side is that you can put it all together and buy the property, set up the property so somebody can lease it, passes fire and health inspection and then you can lease it to somebody in their business. Those are all ways in which you can get into this business. The beauty of it, it’s a long-term play and you usually make more money on that single-family residential home than you would be renting it out or even a fix and flip.

One last item to also touch on is that it’s an industry that’s needed. Everyone is going to get older. It’s one of those things that comes with time.

We have the Baby Boomer generation coming through. They’re starting out. That’s why I say it’s a twenty-plus year play. The cycle is definitely there where you need it. To boot with that is, people are going to start living till they’re older but they’re going to need more care. The quality of life is going to be a little bit different. They’ll live longer, but they’ll need longer amounts of care. It is the one business that did not lose money during the downturn. The big recession, depression or whatever you want to call it, in 2008, it’s the one business that gained. When we talk about it, we think that it was primarily because many people had to go back to work or find a job. They were looking for good quality places to put people that they loved, that they would have good care.

Another business similar to this, but not my favorite, is daycare. Adult daycare has become more and more popular. Sometimes they’ll mix it with children’s care. There’ll be two buildings put together and the two of them interact a lot. It’s a beautiful thing. However, getting caretakers from a business standpoint, your challenge will be getting and keeping caretakers in that business. It’s a lot of turnovers. I’m not sure why I’m not familiar enough with that business, but people that I know that are in it, it seemed to be constantly in a panic about getting caretakers. It’s something else to consider if that’s your thing. Our big thing was we wanted to do good in the world while also paying our bills.

That’s what we wanted. This was what came up for us that we liked and it was a long-term play in real estate that would allow us to go do other types of real estate. Airbnb or short-term rentals is a big thing. There’s a lot of money in that if you can find the right place for it, although laws are changing constantly. Is it the only thing that I do? No. I also do syndication for other people and also I put my money in other syndications, “Somebody’s doing an apartment building. I’ll do that.” That allows me to diversify real estate-wise.

Thank you again so much, CJ, for coming on. I appreciate it.

If your readers have any questions, I’ll be happy to answer them. It was such a pleasure. Thank you. For everyone else out there, I’m happy that you’re leveling up. Take care.

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About Carolyn CJ Matthews

LUR 2 | Assisted Living Real Estate

Carolyn is the Director of Marketing for the Residential Assisted Living Academy (RALA) and is a founding member of the Residential Assisted Living National Association, which helps to protect the rights of the Residential Assisted Living owner/operator.

She is trained and certified as a Residential Assisted Living Specialist and has helped train and support other RAL owners start their group homes from the ground up.

This first-hand industry experience with a reputable Assisted Living Academy is priceless information that will be used to successfully own and operate her own care home.

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