Welcome to The Gold Collar Investor Podcast with your host, Pancham Gupta. This podcast is dedicated to helping the high paid professionals to break out of the Wall Street investments and create multiple income streams. Here’s your host, Pancham Gupta. 

Hi, this is Russell Gray, co-host of The Real Estate Guys radio show and you are listening to The Gold Collar Investor podcast.

Pancham Gupta  Welcome to The Gold Collar Investor Podcast, this is your host, Pancham. Really appreciate you for tuning in today. I have a great and powerful show for you. The market has been going up crazy in the last one year, especially after COVID and all this money printing has been happening, and especially the real estate prices, if you’re living your own home, you know what’s happening to the market and how the equity in your home has been going up since you bought your house. So, the only way to tap into that equity I knew was to either do a cash out refinance, meaning you go to a different bank or the same bank from where you got the loan, you get a loan, a new loan from them and say, hey, my house has gone up. And now you get this new loan at a higher appraised value, and you pay off your old loan whatever the difference you get to keep that’s called cash out refinance. And the other way is to actually get a HELOC home equity line of credit on your house and which you can use it as you use your credit card. You take the money out; you use it and you put it back in you pay some interest on it. That’s what you can do with your primary home. But if you have an investment property, you can’t even get a HELOC these days, you have to get a second home equity loan on it where you either whether you’re using the money or not, you have to pay the interest on that money. What if I told you there is a third way to do it, and that’s what we’re going to discuss in this show. I have invited Matthew, who is the CEO and founder of QuantmRE, a company that solves a real problem for homeowners by helping them access a portion of their home equity without taking on more debt. This new financing tool is not a HELOC. It’s not a loan and it’s not a reverse mortgage. That means homeowners can get their cash from their equity with no interest and no monthly payments. Matthew and his team has helped over 100 homeowners use their home equity to pay off expensive credit cards, remodel their home, pay college tuition fee, or to diversify into other investments, all without taking on extra debt. Matthew has a proven track record in real estate innovation through his experiences as a co-founder of secured real estate income strategies fund and as president and founder of crowd venture.com, a real estate crowdfunding company. Hey, Matt, welcome to the show.

Matthew  Hi, Pancham. Thank you for having me on.

Pancham Gupta  I am so excited for the show today because you have something to offer which I personally want to learn about something that I heard for the very first time and so excited about it. Before we get started, though, are you ready to fire up my listener break our Wall Street investments?

Matthew  I think so yes. I think I’ve got something that will be of interest. So, I’m delighted to be invited on. I’m very much looking forward to sharing what we do.

Pancham Gupta  Great. Thank you, Matt. So, before we get started, tell our listeners about your background, and more importantly, the person behind that background.

Matthew  I mean, why would anybody want to know that, for goodness sake? You know, you’re talking about the quickest way of losing listeners is to give you my background. So, I think the best way of describing myself is congenitally unemployable. So, I’ve been out of a job really since I was in my early 20s. Only because I thought and probably still do think in my own way that I can do better than everyone else. And I think that is the entrepreneurial illness, isn’t it ,where you just have to do it yourself. You have to be in control, and it is a creativity bargain. It’s a I don’t know what it is but it’s something that I mean looking back because I’m 56 now and I’m looking back and thinking, I’ve been doing this for like 30 years, and it has is just as much fun today as it was when I started out. Creating your own business., solving problems, in a way is a bit like creating art. But along the way, I’ve been a stockbroker. I’ve been in a small corporate finance company based in London and moved over to the US about eight years ago. But again, before that, I spent a few years working with Richard Branson, rather Sir Richard Branson, and the virgin group. I’m a helicopter pilot. And you know, petrol head used to ride lots of motorcycles but then woke up and realized that they’re probably slightly dead more dangerous than they, I shouldn’t really be riding them. And really obsessed with all things to do with petroleum, gunpowder, and all sorts of stuff like that. I hope that answers your question.

Pancham Gupta  It does, a quite diverse background there. So

Matthew  Very generous of you. Thank you. Yes,

Pancham Gupta  I see that your background there, which says that literal background, get equity freedom, Quantm RE. So, let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about your company. Tell us what your company does and what do you mean by get equity freedom?

Matthew  Well, the problem that we solve is, if you are a homeowner, and you’ve built up equity in your home, the only way that you can unlock that equity and get your hands on some of your well-earned wealth, or your cash is to go back to the bank and borrow money. So, borrowing money means of cash out refinance of some sort, a second mortgage, maybe your home equity line of credit. All of these are different flavors of debt. So even though you may have hundreds of thousands of dollars of equity in your home, if you want to get your hands on that cash, you’ve got to go back, borrow money, jump through all of the hurdles that the Bank of Ghana ask you about your income, your credit score, and if you’re self-employed, audited accounts, all that sort of stuff. So, we have a way that enables you to unlock your equity without taking on more debt. And that means we can unlock up to half a million dollars for up to 30 years with no monthly payments, no interest, and no added debt.

Pancham Gupta  Oh my god, that sounds too good to be true.

Matthew  You’re not the first person to say that.

Pancham Gupta  Of course, I’m sure you’ve heard that many, many times. So, you’re saying just to summarize that like to me, like I have a home equity line of credit on my personal home. And prices have gone up tremendously since last year, especially since the pandemic started because of the liquidity and supply shortage and a lot of other reasons that I don’t even know about. The only way I know personally on how to unlock that equity, Let’s say if I don’t want to refinance my house is either home equity line of credit, where they will come the bank will come they will reappraise the house, right. And then they will look at me in my employment, my income, source all of those things that they have done before and then give me about 75 to 80%, if I’m lucky, of the appraised value in the home equity line of credit, right. And then as I pull the money in money out of the home equity line of credit, I pay that debt, whatever the debt service, and that’s how it works. If I don’t use it, I do not pay for it, right. The second way is, I get the that’s for my personal house but let’s say I have an investment house where a tenant is living, there, I cannot get home equity line of credit, at least in most parts of the country. And most banks since 2008 do not allow that. I think we can go out and get definitely get the second line of mortgage right, the second lien and there, whether I need the money or not doesn’t matter, I get that I would have to pay debt service on that. These are the only two ways and you’re saying that there is a third way which is what you do, which QuantmRE does and that is I can pull out the money and I do not have to pay any mortgage

Matthew  Is not. Yes, the answer is absolutely right. You are absolutely right because it’s an equity based transaction. It’s not another loan. We are investors, not lenders, we make our money by taking a share of the appreciation in your home when you sell it or when you decide to buy back the agreement. So, if we look at commercial real estate transactions, funding options are not limited to just debt. Even though you have many flavors of debt, you have Junior debt, Senior debt, and mezzanine financing. There’s also many flavors of equity based financing for commercial properties. So, you have shared appreciation mortgages, you have pure equity, you have preferred equity. So, the equity part of the capital stack in a commercial real estate transaction has a number of different investors who are willing to give up cash pay or an interest rate. payment in exchange for a share of the equity appreciation when the real estate project is sold. So that’s an equity investor. in residential real estate, there are no equity investors, if you are an owner occupier until today, well until you know these types of programs came along, and what these programs are, they’re just not debt. So, there’s no debt servicing, because it’s not a debt product, the returns are based on the appreciation of the asset. So as your home, hopefully goes, will continues to go up in value, you’re building additional value into that asset. Now, when you sell your home, if we can share in some of that appreciation, then we make a return on our investment. And that gives us a good return, which is similar or better than the return that we would get if we were going to lend you some money. So, what we do is we provide you with that capital today, in exchange for your undertaking, that when you sell your property, a share of the value of your property, or a share of that appreciation goes to us, in addition to the amount that we originally invested. And because it’s not a debt product, there are no monthly payments, because if there were monthly payments, then it would be a loan. So, it’s not that we’re doing anything that hasn’t been done before in the commercial world. It’s just it’s a different debt. It’s a different instrument. And because people are so used to paying interest, and they’re so used to paying debt servicing, it just seems psychologically difficult to grasp. And funnily enough, that leads to the statement that you made at the beginning, which is this sounds too good to be true.

Pancham Gupta  Right. So, thanks for that explanation. Now that clarifies it. So, you’re, in other words, you are the equity investor in the house so far.  As a homeowner, I invested the equity. So, I was the only equity investor in that particular home right now you come along, you are putting your own equity, you are in another equity, investor in the house. So now, we have two owners of the house as opposed to one owner, which was me, for example.

Matthew  And again, that’s a very important point is we are not owners. Even though we have the right to share in some of the equity appreciation, we don’t have to be an owner to do that. So, the agreement is not an ownership agreement. So, we do not go on title as co-owners or tenants in common. It’s an option agreement that sits outside of ownership of the property, where the obligation is still there. But we don’t have to go on title as owners, the agreement itself is protected by a lien on title. So, there is a lien, which is similar to a mechanic’s lien, where you are obliged to perform under the contract as you’ve agreed, in other words, when you sell your home, part of the sales proceeds goes to us. And we tell you right at the very beginning of the agreement, what that percentage is, so that percentage never changes. So, there are no surprises at any point. But the good thing is, we’re not owners, we don’t have any rights over your property. So, we’re not going to be knocking on your door, hoping to camp out in your spare room or telling you what color, you know, to paint the inside of your master bedroom.

Pancham Gupta  Got it. So, you really answered all of my questions there when it came to the collateral. So, you’re really securing your side of the equation by putting a mechanic’s kind of lien on the properties.

Matthew  Again, it’s a lien it’s very similar, the language of the instrument is very similar to a deed of trust. this is not a loan, but we refer to it as a performance deed of trust, but it’s very similar language. And that is recorded. So, what that means is when the home is sold as a lien holder, when the home goes through the escrow process, we get paid off first, or we get paid off before the homeowner gets their balance.

Pancham Gupta  Got it? Got it. So, let’s go into little bit of, of so many questions around the how to get the loan to value that you give out. Number one, number two, what does it cost to get this kind of agreement in place? And number three, what happens if the market turns? and the house goes underwater, meaning it owes more than what it’s worth? Do you lose that equity alongside the homeowner?

Matthew  Let me answer those questions in reverse order. So, this is an equity based instrument. The amount of our return is directly proportionate to the appreciation or the depreciation of the home. So, unlike a loan where the principal some remains in place, even if the underlying collateral goes up or down, you still owe that much money, which is why you can go underwater, if you are a borrower, because you may be in a position where you owe more than the asset is worth. In other words, your mortgage is worth more than your home. In our situation, it cannot be that way because the amount that you pay us is entirely dependent on the value of your home. Now, your next question was about pricing. So, the way that our programs work is, effectively we provide you with cash today, by taking a discount to what the current value of your home is. Or let me rephrase that by taking a discount to what the future value of your home will be. So, for every 10% of the current value of your home today that we invest with you, you agree with us, when you sell your property, you’ll give us 16% of the value of your home at that point. So, in other words, we’re buying 16% of the value of your home today. And we’re paying you 10% or the equivalent for 10%. Now, there are other protections in place so that if you were to sell your home in the first few years in the early years, then we restrict the amount of return on investment that we can make. So that if you sold your home a few months after you took out the agreement with us, you wouldn’t have to pay that full discounted rate, that rate would be significantly reduced. So, we make it fair. But you see if your house significantly falls in value, we may and you sell it to a bonafide an arm’s length third party purchaser in other words, you don’t sell it to your brother in law for cheap price, then we may end up getting back less than we originally invested with you. So that means that we don’t have that same underwater problem, you asked about loan to value. So, one of the things that we need to make sure we have in place is enough sort of cushion as it were. So, we always aim, the homeowner retains a minimum of 15 to 17 and a half percent sorry, a minimum of 20 to 25%. My mental mathematics took a holiday just then.  As a homeowner, you want to retain at least 20% of the equity after our transaction. So, you’re not in a position where you suddenly feel like you’ve lost all ownership of the property. And so that avoids that psychological feeling that if you hand your keys back, what difference does it make. So, you still have a vested interest, you’re still going to own 20 to 25% of the equity in your property, even after we’ve unlocked, or given you the ability to access your equity. And we will go up to 35 to 40% of the current value of the home depending on which state you’re in. So, if you have a million dollar home, for example, in that case, if you have a very low mortgage, we can invest up to 40%. So, in that case, it will be up to $400,000.

Pancham Gupta  So, let’s say let’s go with your example. Let’s say houses worth million today, right? And the mortgage on that house today is half a million dollars, which is 500,000. And so, there is 50% equity in the home right now based on the appraisal today, right? So given your constraint of at least 20%, which would mean $200,000 of equity after your transaction is done should be there for the homeowner. So that would make take the only 300,000 is remaining. Yep, that can be tapped in from QuantmRE, right?

Matthew  That’s right. Yeah. So, we talk also about combined lien to value. So, if you combine your mortgage and our agreement, normally, that needs to be around 75 to 80% as a maximum, so that fits when I was in your equation, you’ve got 50%, which is your mortgage. And let’s say that we go to the maximum that we can then we would be able to provide you with an investment of up to $300,000 in that case.

Pancham Gupta  Okay, so for that $300,000 investment, what all do you do? Like you know, so do you do an appraisal?

Matthew  Yes, so there’s a number of phases. The first phase is to use desktop valuation. So, we rely on third parties who are specialists in providing accurate automated valuation methodologies or avms. And those kinds of companies provide us with a, an indication of what your house is going to be worth today. And they’re actually, in many cases, more accurate than the more traditional ways because they can react to market data much faster. So, we get a pretty good idea what your house is worth, when we start the conversation with you. We know how much mortgage you’ve got, because you’ve got a mortgage statement probably from last month. So, we start with some pretty good idea of what the numbers are. And what will then do is, once we’ve identified that this is a deal that we can move ahead with, will then send an appraiser out, and that appraiser is instructed through a third party appraisal management company, so we don’t have control of that person. So, it’s a truly independent view. And that appraiser will come back and let us know what he or she thinks your property is worth, based on their physical appraisal, which may include a, you know, a full inspection. So, we get that we pay for that. So, you don’t have any out of pocket expenses. And then once we’ve got the appraisal back, we’ve then got enough data to be able to make you a like a full offer. In which case, we’ll say, you know, Pancham in your case, this is the appraisal, this is what the house is worth. This is how much we can invest. So, you can get anything up to that maximum amount. So, if we offered you up to 300,000, you might decide the journey one, let’s say $200,000. So, in which case, the numbers would still be the same, but the amount of the value of your home that is owed to us when you sell it would be proportionately less.

Pancham Gupta  Right. So, is there any closing cost involved?

Matthew  Yeah, so there’s, there are costs that are passed on at cost. And those are typically title insurance fees, registration, city fees, the cost of the appraisal. And, again, normally, they would work out to be around $1500 to $2,000, depending on the value of the home, there’s a once off 3% fee that we charge. So, if you wanted to access $100,000, we would take our 3% out of that, and you would net $97,000 less your direct costs, which would be let’s say, another 1500. So, you’d get 95 and a half thousand dollars approximately.

Pancham Gupta  So, three points, which is let’s have a 300,000. So that would be 9000, plus the 1500, or 2000. So about 10,000, 

Matthew  Approximately that. Yeah, and again, that’s those you got fixed costs and variable costs, the fixed costs tend to remain the same. But all of these costs are identified very clearly, upfront, before you have any obligation to continue. And at any point, you’re able to step off the bus. So, if you decide that you’ve got a better offer, or all your circumstances have changed, or for some reason, you don’t want to go ahead, then we run the risk of having paid for the appraisal that we might have to eat that cost ourselves. So, there’s no recourse to you in that situation.

Pancham Gupta  Until it’s closed. 

Matthew  Exactly. 

Pancham Gupta  Yeah. So let me ask you, in this example of a million dollar home, half a million dollar of loan and $300,000 worth of equity from QuantmRE, we can tap into. So, you would get $9,000 upfront fee, which is three points 2% of 300,000. And some closing costs. Let’s for the sake of simplicity, let’s make it $2,000. So about $11,000. 

Matthew  Yep. 

Pancham Gupta  And me as the homeowner, I would get $289,000, right? 300,000 minus 11,000, which is 289,000. So now, let’s say I sell this home in six months, or you mentioned about timeframe. stipulations, but let’s say in two years, I sell this for $1.5 million, right? Yeah. So, there is equity gain from the day of the appraisal to the sale, about half a million dollars, right. So, we have about 500 mortgage which bank gets right. So that’s million dollars remaining. Now, how do you calculate your return? 

Matthew  Well again, everything we do is based, again, depending on the state, but the example just to continue with my example, which is the deals that we found ourselves, we are looking at the value of the home when you sell it, so we’re not looking at the appreciation, we’re saying, what’s the value of your home, when you start the contract? what’s the value of your home when you finish the contract? Those are the two data points that we’re looking at. So, if you’ve probably created a little bit more equity as well, because you probably paid your mortgage off maybe

Pancham Gupta   Yeah, assuming it was the interest only loan

Matthew  Exactly. So, in that case, now there’s a cap that we apply which is 18% per annum, which is the maximum return on investment that we can make. So, in the early years, even though your property may have depreciated significantly, the amount of return on investment that we can make is capped at that figure. So if you were to sell your property in six months, for example, which was your first question, then even though the agreement says you would owe us, you know, 16%, times three, which is a 48% of the value of the home at that point, our return on investment would be capped at looking at the amount that we invested, which is 300,000, looking at what is 18% of that in the year, and six months of that, so it will be 9%, approximately, now approximately as double underlined here, because these are all subject to underwriting and appraisals, but the cap would kick in at that point. So, the cost of your capital would not be the full amount, it would be throttled back, and that same calculation would apply after two years. So, it’s a compound return on investment. So, we’d look to make 18% maximum in the first year, and then the same for the second year, which means that the balance of the appreciation would go to you

Pancham Gupta  Got it. So just to be very clear, in six months, I know you said that it would be capped at 18. and a half of that would be 9%, for the six months. So that 9% is the appreciated value

Matthew   is 9%, based on the money that we invested. 

Pancham Gupta So okay, 300,000 times 9%, which is $27,000. So, you get $327,000 back at the time of closing.  In this particular example, if you were to sell it in six months, it would be you get 327. And the homeowner gets whatever the remaining is, right. 

Matthew  Exactly, yes. 

Pancham Gupta  And if that time period was not six months, it was let’s say three years. In that case, what happens?

Matthew  Well, then we’re going to say, well, what is the lesser amount? So, is it the cap or is it the multiple? So again, if we were to say we unlocked or we accessed say 10% of the value of your home $100,000, when you sold your home, we will be looking for 16% of the value of your home when you sell it. Now the question then is if you sell your home at 1.5 million, is 16% of 1.5 million greater than or less than the annual cap? If it’s greater than the annual cap than the annual cap applies. If it’s less than that, then obviously, the multiple applies. So, what you’ve effectively got is a maximum amount that you would need to repay. But after that everything is dependent on the value of your home when you sell it.

Pancham Gupta  Right. So, 16% I just did a quick math here. 16% of half 1.5 million would be $240,000. Right? So, you would take that number, and you would also look at the cap, which is 18% times 300,000 times three,

Matthew  I was using 100,000 in that. Oh, okay. So, it’ll be more but so I didn’t mean to mix apples with pears. But yes, you’re right. So, on one hand, you’ll say what you say what is the return to us using the cap. The other is what is the return to us using the multiple, whichever is the lowest, that’s what would apply. But again, the important thing is, it’s very different to a loan, if you compare this to a 2.75%, cash out refi, then in the shorter term, it’s more expensive. As these agreements can’t go on, that price difference actually gets a lot closer, or gets a lot smaller. So, we get a lot closer to the you know, the cost of capital over time. Most important thing to remember though, is that there is no monthly payments, there’s no additional debt, what you’re doing is you’re effectively using, you’re selling some of today’s capital, today’s equity at a discount. The question then is what are you going to do with it? If you’re paying off credit cards, then you’re saving 20,25 29% so that’s the effective return on that investment, you may wish to diversify into another type of investment, whether it be real estate or stock market, which could give you better returns it could give you cash flow. So, in that situation, you’re turning your cash that is locked up in your home equity, you’re diversifying out of this single, concentrated non-financial noncash flowing assets. In other words, all your eggs are in one basket. So, let’s change that let’s move some of the money out of your equity into another type of investment, again without the burden of additional monthly costs.

Pancham Gupta  Right and this particular option, I guess you don’t care if it is an investment property or if it is a personal home right

Matthew  And that’s a very important point because  we don’t, we’re not restricted to investing in owner occupied properties. So, in your earlier point, when you’re talking about HELOC, banks typically won’t advance money under an owner occupied property by way of a HELOC, we will say that means if you have equity that you’ve built up in an investment property, you can get your hands on that, use that potentially as a down payment on another property, or use that for some other type of investment that you want to get involved with, without having to increase your monthly debt servicing burden.

Pancham Gupta  Got it? Got it. Yeah, that sounds great. You know, like, a lot of people, listeners of this show, they have investment properties, and you’re given the prices have gone up, maybe they want to keep the properties and pull out some equity. It’s hard, it’s hard right now to take that out without taking a second mortgage second lien.

Matthew  And again, because what this does is this protects you from the downside. So, if your property goes down in value, after you’ve taken out a home equity agreement with us, then we share that downside burden. It avoids the issue where you have increased debt servicing costs, because you’ve taken out a mortgage, where you’ve made an investment. And let’s say the investment that you’ve made is not performing it could be a rental property where you can’t find tenants, or it could be some other investment, where it’s gone down in value, or it’s not producing the cash, yet you’ve still got that debt servicing element. So, without we have it, it just changes the risk profile significantly. So, the ability to invest or to diversify out of home equity into something else, without that risk that you cannot find that additional cash flow that you need to service that debt that’s very useful, important, and valuable.

Pancham Gupta  Absolutely. Absolutely. So, thank you for sharing all your knowledge here. Matthew, I think I have all of my questions answered here. And unless you want to add something to this,

Matthew  we know I think you’ve done a fabulous job. You’ve asked all the sensible questions, all the questions that springs to mind most of people’s reaction to this is based on a psychological marriage that they have all the people are wedded to the concept that equity is sacrosanct. And that the only way you can access it is through debt and the near debt is bad. And people have very blinkered views about what they should be doing with equity. If you compare this to what people do in the commercial real estate, world, equity is just another instrument that is to be used to find capital. So, it is all about education, our biggest challenge is getting people to understand that there are now options, which are very, very valuable to people that cannot borrow money or don’t want to borrow money. But again, you know, all your questions are great, because it does frame what we do very nicely. And then it’s entirely up to the person who owns the house if they want to do this or not. So now they have options, whereas before they didn’t. It doesn’t mean to say that it’s the ideal option for them. Because for some people, it’s not. But at least for others, they now have an option that they didn’t have.

Pancham Gupta  Exactly. Well, great, thank you, Matthew, we’ll be back after this message… Have you ever wondered why the rich keep getting richer? What is the secret that they know but you do not? What if I told you that wealthy people make their money work for them into different places? Yes, the same dollars invested into different places and working hard for them while they sleep. They utilize these special accounts that have been in existence for more than 100 years. Do you want to learn more about these accounts? Then you are in the right place? Listen to the episode number five by going to thegold collarinvestorbanking.com/banking show. I repeat, thegoldcollarinvestorbanking.com/banking show or visit thegoldcollarinvestor banking.com… Let’s move on to the second part of the show which I call taking the leap round. In this round. I asked these four questions to every guest on my show, Matthew and my first question is, when was the first time you invested outside of Wall Street?

Matthew  Okay, now this spread betting count. It does contracts for differences. So, I was a stockbroker. I was about, I don’t know 22 or something. I was working as a far east broker. I managed to sort of, you know, get invited to sort of join this small, Far East brokerage, dealing with Hong Kong, Singapore, all the ASEAN Tigers fantastic fun. And the guy sitting next to me was making an enormous amount of money every day by betting on cricket match in England, I think England was playing India from enough.

Pancham Gupta  They’re paying today, you know, they just 

Matthew  I can’t remember what it was, but we were doing quite well. So, and you would bet like 20 pounds around or something. And I remember, even though we were I think we had all of the great stars that point, and we were doing really well. And all the indications were that it was going to be an absolute victory, which in effect, it ended up being, it would be really smart to be a contrary investor. And so, I was selling at 20 pound a run. So, I ended up after about two days owing my friend that I sat next to on the desk, 600 pounds, which is about half of my monthly salary at that point, because I just with no information with no research, and just on a whim, I thought, Okay, why not? So, my first exposure to non-Wall Street investing was something that’s, you know, high productivity I’ve ever been back since to spread betting or contracts for differences.

Pancham Gupta  Got it? Got it. So, my second question, did you have any fears when you did that?

Matthew  Will they say fools jump in where angels fear to tread? I mean, no, afterwards, there was an enormous amount of buyer’s remorse. So, I’m not sure if that counts. But again, in typical style, I went in ready fire aim, and looked at investments and just thought, well, yes, feels good, sounds good, great, I’ll do it. And then you do the research afterwards and this is not just for that investment. It’s a number of investments where you think, God, hang on, I really should have probably read this. And what do you mean that activities illegal, and you mean, you haven’t got a license for that, or, you know, stuff like that. So, over the years, I’ve sort of become the anti-investor, my friends used to laugh that I was the great contra indicator. So, if I was buying something they would immediately sell, and vice versa. So, from an investment perspective of anything, that I’m not in control of, I think, karma, or not karma, but the universe has tried to teach me that, that’s not what I should be doing. I should only be doing things where I’m in control. Because the difference is there that I research everything, you know, I take baby steps, I don’t leap it. And so, it’s, it’s the antithesis of what I do when I’m investing outside of my knowledge base.

Pancham Gupta  Got it. Cool. So, our third question, can you share with us one investment that did not go as expected?

Matthew  Well, again, yeah, I mean, I had this was I, right now, I am an active investor in the markets, but through distributed funds through ETFs, where my risk is spread across multiple stocks, multiple industries, where I have researched where I think those industries are going on why they’re going there. So, I am an active investor today, but much more conservative. I think it’s probably 10 years ago, I put a lot of money into one stock, which was a great story. It was it was a stock market, darling. But then this is in London, but then very quickly, over a period of a few days. And then a couple of weeks, it began to unravel very, very quickly. And what happened was what the CEO of the company, this ended up being worth about two, one half 2 billion pounds. so, the money was a couple of billion dollars. The CEO was lying, basically. So, there was this huge sort of, you know, unraveling and the stock began to plummet. And I just held on, I just thought, you know, it’d be better tomorrow.

Pancham Gupta  Yeah, 

Matthew  It wasn’t. 

Pancham Gupta  You do. And you 

Matthew  Have you ever tried to catch a falling knife?

Pancham Gupta  Yeah, exactly. I know the feeling. All right, so my last question for you, Matthew, what is one piece of advice would you give to people who are thinking of investing outside of Wall Street that is in the main street?

Matthew  Well, just research it. If you’re outside of Wall Street, you haven’t got that same level of transparency that is demanded in Wall Street. So, you’re going to have to do a lot more work, treat it like a job. So, in other words, if you are going to invest in alternative investments, research it, don’t put any money until you are absolutely sure that you know as much as you think you should know before you put your money in. And the next point is don’t go all in. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. This is more advice for stocks or investments where you’ve got liquidity. One of the biggest lessons I learned was, I think it’s known as the 8% rule. If something is falling, and it’s fallen by more than 8% sell it, because chances are, it’s almost a dead certainty that you will be able to buy that same investment or that same stock back at a lower price because it will continue to fall. So, holding on to the coattails of an investment as plummeting is the worst thing you can do. Just to cut your losses, so it’s not quite so relevant in, you know, non-Wall Street investments. But most of it really is just research, don’t trust your intuition. You know, trust, give your heart a break, put it on holiday and listen to your head.

Pancham Gupta  Got it? Great, great advice there. Matthew, thank you for your time here. how can listeners connect with you, if they want to find out more about your company and what you do?

Matthew  Well, everything is on our website, which is quantmre.com, which is q u a n t m r e.com. We also are about to launch a trading platform. So, for those of you that want to invest in the home equity agreements, and soon you’ll be able to do that. And we are aiming to develop that into a marketplace where people can buy and sell or trade, the equity and single family homes. So, there’s a lot of stuff happening. But right now, if you want to go onto the site, you can read about what we’re doing. There’s a calculator there where you can see how much equity we could unlock for you. We’ve been around for almost four years, we’ve helped, we’ve unlocked millions of dollars of capital for some pretty happy customers. So, we’d love to hear from you. And there are human beings behind the website, so you know, if you want to pick up the phone and give us a call, we’d be delighted to hear from you.

Pancham Gupta  Great, thank you so much for your time, Matthew. Maybe I can have you back once you have launched that platform and we can go into the nitty gritty of that. 

Matthew  I’d love to. Thank you very much. 

Pancham Gupta  Thank you. I hope you learned a new strategy that you can use to pull equity out of your house and still be and not have to pay any debt on it and it’s like another equity investment from an outside third party company. If you want more details to check out QuantmRE.  This is Pancham, signing off. Until next time, take care.

Thank you for listening to The Gold Collar Investor podcast. If you love what you’ve heard and you want more of Pancham Gupta, visit us at www.thegoldcollar investor.com and follow us on Facebook @thegoldcollarinvestor. The information on this podcast are opinions. As always, please consult your own financial team before investing.