(intro)

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.

Russell Gray

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. I really appreciate you for tuning in today. My guest on the podcast is K Trevor Thompson. He was a successful Vice President with 47 years of experience in the attractions and entertainment industry. He spent the past 20 years working for iFLY Indoor Skydiving, which he grew from one location to 80 worldwide. He’s an accredited investor who has invested in 20 deals where 18 with limited partners and 2 with general partner, as a general partner. He has also invested in many different other asset classes within real estate, including retail strip mall, townhouse to condo conversion, single family rental portfolio fund, self-storage in Charlotte, grounds up multifamily fund and a medical office building. Also, land development near New Tesla’s factory in Austin. So, tons and tons of experience.

(interview)

Pancham Gupta

Trevor, welcome to the show.

Trevor Thompson

It’s exciting to be here. Thanks for having me.

Pancham Gupta

Thanks for your time. Before we get started, are you ready to fire up my listeners break out of Wall Street investments?

Trevor Thompson

Absolutely.

Pancham Gupta

Let’s do this. So, let’s talk about your background. How did you get started to where you are today? I see that you’ve invested in many, many, many different asset classes. You’re primarily a passive investor now. Sorry. Mainly, an investor now — active and passive. So, talk about your journey.

Trevor Thompson

Yes, I have the — I call it the world’s strangest journey. In fact, I have a video on my YouTube. It says, am I really the most interesting man in the world? So, I actually started. I live in Niagara Falls, Canada, which is why my company’s called Niagara Investments. I actually started at the age of 13 working for Ripley’s Believe It or Not. I did that all through high school. Then I got a job with Guinness World Records, which was just opening down the street. I started there, and I got promoted two or three times. I got up to the stage where I was actually managing the Guinness rights for Guinness Book of Records. So, I operated one in the Empire State Building in New York City. I opened a franchise in Hollywood, California in Los Angeles. I worked with that company for 18 years. I wanted to open a franchise location in Orlando. I wanted to come to America. Even though Canada is not a lot different, but it is different. I wanted to come to the land of opportunity, you call it. So, I moved to Orlando. My deal with Guinness oddly fell through. I ended up opening a year-round haunted house of all things. It wasn’t very successful. I call it a scary business, but I enjoyed it and learned a lot. I’d made a commitment to do three years at least with the main investor.

Then I got recruited by a headhunter for this unique company called iFly Indoor Skydiving. The original location was in Orlando, Florida. It wasn’t very successful. They hired me. When I first started, they were losing $50,000 a month. Then within three months, we’ve made $100,000 on that next month. And so, we’ve got it very successful. I spent over 20 years with that company. I actually opened 46 of 80 worldwide locations. So, I traveled all over the world opening these locations. It was a great role. We actually got bought out by a private equity company.

So, I was always interested in real estate investing. In fact, at our very first team meeting, the owner of that company gave everybody a copy of Rich Dad Poor Dad, which is a must-read for anybody. Because it talks to the different classes of earning money and doing things. There are a lot of life lessons in there. But I did what so many people do. I stuck it on the shelf, and I kept doing my life. I got no time. I got no money. I got no time. I got no money. I had things building up, so I just did that like everyone else does.

Then we got bought out. So, I finally said, okay, now it’s time to get serious, to understand more about passive investing, more about creating wealth, doing different things. Of course, I stuck a big chunk of it in the stock market because there was nowhere else to put it at the time. I knew you shouldn’t just leave it in your savings account. Then I started analyzing and looking at investing in real estate. My mind was blown. I have no idea. I have no idea of all the powerful things that happen in real estate.

Again, it’s very brought out very well in Rich Dad Poor Dad, about the power of leveraging your money. A group of people takes your money, combines it with bank debt which gives you leverage, which amplifies your line and pay off values. You get this thing called cash on cash returns, which is then you get different things when the project sells. You get these massive tax breaks. Basically, if you start using these tax breaks, which you can’t use them all if you still have a full-time job. But you can use them enough to basically pay no income tax, or at least defer — it would be a better word — income tax until a later point. So, if you can imagine.

Then what will happen is, you take your deferred income tax, and you can buy another investment. So, in theory, the government is lending me money to go make another investment. This all keeps compounding. The more I learned about real estate investing, the more I just got hooked on it. I can see the power of it. What they say, 90% of all millionaires were created through real estate. I heard that. I just never really got it.

Then I’ll be honest. I started looking at retail and office first, and then I found multifamily. What I liked about multifamily is it’s very much like a business. You were making communities better. So, you were doing things for your tenants. You were doing things, creating jobs by fixing the apartments up, and then creating wealth for your passive investors. So, it was something I really understood. Because it was very much the small businesses that I’ve been in my whole life, but with these huge tax advantages.

Pancham Gupta

Right. Well, there is so much to unpack there. You mentioned Orlando, Florida a couple of times. Believe it or not, just three months ago, I moved to Orlando.

Trevor Thompson

Awesome. It’s a beautiful city.

Pancham Gupta: Yeah, are you in Orlando now?

Trevor Thompson

No, I’m in Austin, Texas. I’ve been here about 13 years now. Our company started in Florida, then it got bought out by a guy who was Texas-based. So, he moved the company to Texas in 2005. I moved in 2006 to Austin, Texas. Talk about a market that’s on fire and growing, it’s doubled in size since I’ve been here. I always tell people I used to drive by cows coming home. Now I drive by 30,000 apartments in a light rail station. It’s just amazing, the growth here in Texas, in Austin. Of course, Orlando has always been a great market for everything. So, I do now live in Texas.

Pancham Gupta

Got it. So, you moved to Austin. You said that you put your Rich Dad Poor Dad book on the shelf. When was it that you actually started investing passively?

Trevor Thompson

In 2018, we got bought out by a private equity company, so I did get a payday. And so, I got this big payday. I’ll be honest. They took almost 40% of it in taxes. In my mind, I remember hearing about taxes and different things, man, I’m totally unprepared for this. Wow, this really hurts. That made me, okay, I can’t be stupid enough to do this twice, like look at something and not do it. So, I started researching about passive investing. In October of 2018, I made my first passive investment in an apartment. Then it kept going from there.

As you’ve mentioned, I’m in quite a few deals. I’ve invested so far in 18 syndications as a limited partner, passive investor, and then two as a general partner. One of them is just actually about to close. We’ll close by the time this air, I’m sure. Five of them have gone full cycle. I’ve got what I’m going to call a big picture view. I’ve done everything from just got my money back to tripled my money in 320 months.

So, you got to be careful who you invest with, what you do. But once you find somebody, you can do very well. Of course, I’m starting to see the benefits of the total tax savings and all of these advantages.

Pancham Gupta

You said from getting just the money back to tripling your money. Have you lost money yet?

Trevor Thompson

I have never lost money, other than the difference between a passive and inactive is an active takes risk. So, as an active investor, I took risks when we were growing and buying a property. I had what they refer to as ‘at risk money.’ At total, we lost about $350,000. 75 was mine. But I want to make sure it’s clear. All of the passive investors, when the deal didn’t happen, their money was 100% returned to them. Us, as the people doing—

That’s part of the risk and the reward of being on the active side, right? You get rewards when things go well. You share those rewards with your investors, of course. Then when they don’t go well, you pay the price and your investors get their money back and are made whole. So, that’s a very important difference for people to realize. It happens just because buying something is complicated. This was a complicated deal, and we just couldn’t get it closed. And so, you do lose. You lose money you’ve spent. Then you lose something which is called ‘at risk money.’ Basically, like a deposit.

Pancham Gupta

Got it. So, I was reading your bio. We were talking just before the interview that you have invested in some entertainment fund, too. So, can you talk about that real quick?

Trevor Thompson

Yes, it was actually the first thing. When I first got my money back — of course, I did what everyone does — I just bought a bunch of funds in the stock market. Then I hired this company, an accounting firm, to look at where I was doing. They basically said I’m too weighted in one direction. They advised me of a fund that they were doing, my accounting firm was doing. So, it was a quite an interesting fund. I’ll be honest. The second I sent my money, I thought I’m an idiot. Because it was a short-term lending for movies. I thought that’s a crazy thing.

Pancham Gupta

Lending for movies, you said?

Trevor Thompson

Yes, short-term lending. If you’re trying to get a movie going, you’ll pay. You’ll need money. So, you’ll do it, and then you hope a producer will buy the project off of you. Then you pay the people back that got you to that next level. Again, it’s been a great investment because of the way they’ve managed the fund and their creativity within it. Again, it goes even back to real estate investing. You got to find people that are creative, working hard, trying to do things a different way, very much in protecting your investment. I got my first quarterly dividend. I thought, oh, this isn’t so bad.

Then I’ll be honest. COVID came. I thought, I’m dead. I won’t lose my money, because it will just be money to lend. But there’ll just be no money to lend because there’s nobody making movies, right? Hollywood is shut down. These guys, they have quite a broad spectrum of what they can do with the money. They are car enthusiasts. Just an interesting story. They started going to lots and buying exotic cars that were no longer needed. The lots needed the money. So, they bought a Bentley for $12,000, spent $20,000 bringing it up to pristine condition, and sold it for like $85,000. The fund benefited. Of course, they benefit as well because they get their management fees, and they get their portion of the fund.

So, it was something that I wanted to have outside. But I still had some passive stock investments. I’ll be honest. It’s either my big winners or my big losers. The big winners, they’ve all dropped down considerably now. But the big losers, I basically just have to sell order breakeven. I figure, okay, at some point, the market goes crazy. Because who knows what happens, right? You wake up one morning, and it’s way up. You’re like, “How did it go way up?” Then you wake up another morning, and it’s way down, like COVID when it crashed.

I woke up, and I’d lost 30% of my net worth just sleeping. That was another one that made me accelerate more into real hard assets that hold their value better. Yes, we all know, there’s been one real estate meltdown. We believe they’ve got all the checks and balances so that doesn’t happen again. But as long as you’re very careful with your leverage, you should be fine.

Pancham Gupta

All right. So, you’ve done many different asset classes within real estate. You’ve done grounds up development, multifamily to retail strip mall, to multifamily fund, and medical office building. You’ve done this entertainment fund, and you’ve invested in stocks. Given all that experience that you’ve had over these last four or five years, what would you say is your favorite asset class so far?

Trevor Thompson

My favorite asset class is definitely real estate.

Pancham Gupta

No, within real estate.

Trevor Thompson

Within real estate, multifamily is still my favorite. Because it’s something I really understand. You buy an apartment complex that needs — I’m going to call it needs some love. You go there, you make it a nicer place to live. You make it a safer and better place to live, and you do a better job operating it. I’ve been running small businesses my whole life. I get how you can grind out and do a better job operating it just by paying attention to incremental improvements.

Then when you increase the value of that apartment complex, it gets multiplied out by this thing called the cap rate. And so, if you can add $100,000 with the value to the bottom line in cash, you can create about $600,000 in additional value. Well, that delta is staggering. Make $100,000 is more earning income, but it gives you $600,000 in value. You start multiplying that over several deals over several periods of time. It’s very powerful.

Within apartment complexes, I’m everywhere. So, I’m in what they call deep value-add. Those are the ones that today, neither of us would like to live there or have our moms or daughters live there. But we want to make them a little nicer, to a nicer one that we’re just making the better operation and cleaning it up and doing some deferred maintenance to a brand-new A plus property, which is a high-end, luxury type apartment complex. It’s not a high rise or anything, but it has an elevator. It has a couple of pools. It has a lot of nice amenities.

So, I’m across all spectrums. Because each spectrum has different things that can happen to it. If there is a big drop in the economy, the higher-class apartments can suffer more. But on the other side, right now, even though we’re supposedly in this big inflation area, recession area, there are still a lot of demand for high-paid people. There are still a lot of jobs up there. Those people all need somewhere to live. The most interesting thing, too, is more people are choosing to rent than buy. Several factors in that — they want the flexibility; they want the different things to happen. With the increase of the value of real estate and the increase of the cost of mortgages, it’s just unattainable to do that. So, they are somewhat forced to go into apartment living.

Pancham Gupta

Right. So, let me ask you this. The market is shifting. I’ve been asking this to everyone now. The interest rates are all time on auctions all time. For a recent memory, let’s say, last two decades, they’ve gone up considerably compared to what it was. Inflation is high. There are some geopolitical events that are happening. There’s midterm election coming up. We’re recording this on fourth of November, four days before we have that. This is political divide that is gripping the country. So, what is your take right now? Are you buying? Are you still investing? Would you say that you will rather sit out for some time?

Trevor Thompson

I’m buying where it makes sense to buy. In other words, you really do make all your money when you buy right. You still have to operate right to get to the end and make the money. For example, the current deal that I’m involved in as a syndicator. We assume somebody’s existing mortgage at a lower rate. It’s locked in for the next seven years, which gives us lots of options. If in three years, interest rates go way back down, we could possibly get out early. We’ve started, told investors five years, but we’ve got seven on the loan. So, we’ve got a lot of options on it. There are still a lot of value to be created because it’s in a market that’s growing. It’s well below rent comps. And so, it’s doing really well.

We were going to make an offer today on a property, and we just couldn’t get good debt. So, our answer was no. The deal just makes no sense at that kind of interest rate. Now I talk a little bit about the interest rate, too. Right now, yes, we’re abnormal. But from the last three years, we weren’t normal. We were abnormal. Interest rates below 4% or 5% with long term debt, with lots of interest-only payments wasn’t normal. Then when we got to the 4% or 5%, even 6%, we started getting into what I’m going to call ‘it’s normal.’ You can still make money, right? We just got spoiled. So, you’re going to have to be smarter. You’re going to have to work harder. You may not make as much, but you’re still going to make money. Then now it’s to the point of being abnormal.

The deal we were working on — because it was a sub market, the best leverage we could get was 9%. Well, it made no sense. It made sense at 6.5% still, but it made no sense at 9%. So, you just walk away from the deal. Maybe in three months, things will balance out a little bit better. Because lenders are reactionary, right? Their whole deal is basically just not to lose their capital. And so, they’re very reactionary. They can overreact. Not only the interest rates go down, the amount of cash they want to lend out has gone down, the amount of markets they’re interested in lending in. This was a small sub market. Even though Texas is still a hot state, it wasn’t in what they call the Golden Triangle — Dallas to Austin, San Antonio and Houston.

Pancham Gupta

Right. So, that deal that you mentioned about where you assumed the loan, when did you close that?

Trevor Thompson

Well, we haven’t yet.

Pancham Gupta

Oh, you have not. Okay.

Trevor Thompson

Loan assumptions take a long time, so you have to be patient. We thought for sure we could get it done in three months. We’re in just past four and one week.

Pancham Gupta

Oh, wow. Is it a HUD loan?

Trevor Thompson

It is a Fannie Mae, government-backed loan. The problem is, so many people have switched to that. They don’t have the same resources for that. To be frankly honest, they don’t make the same fees for doing that. They make much more fees on a new loan than they do for a loan assumption.

A loan assumption is, “Hey, let’s just get a bad operator out and put a better operator in and protect our upside. Because we don’t want to take the apartment complex back.” Again, what we’re buying is it’s not being managed well, they’re struggling to make ends meet. They’re out of balance on their debt service ratio of coverage, which means they look at us a lot more. Can these guys fix this? Because again, if you’re just sitting at a desk making decisions, you don’t know if I’m a great operator or not. You just see my paperwork. We definitely all send in our experience and what we’ve done, all of our credentials. They definitely do look at that, but we don’t have this big track record of dozens of properties turned around over the last five years.

Pancham Gupta

On that deal, are you getting a great pricing because they just want to get out the sellers? Or is it like a distress sale? Also, what would be the—

Trevor Thompson

When we bought it, they weren’t as distressed as they are now. It was getting there. The reason for that is, they were coming out of interest-only period. So now, they were starting to have to make payments. Well, that’s substantial. Our plan, we’re making payments. We’re okay. We know we can make all of the payments based on our business plan.

It’s an absentee owner. He doesn’t have any infrastructure. It’s this swirling down the toilet effect, right? It’s just hard to hang on, where, for me, it’s less than an hour and a half away. I can go there every day if I have to. We can put a lot of resources. Because we know once we start the directory going up, we can start multiplying that.

Pancham Gupta

Right. Two questions. Did you actually renegotiate or re-trade on the deal given since when you have gotten under contract, and now there’s some drop in performance?

Trevor Thompson

We have not at this point. Basically, we went in it knowing that we were buying something distressed. We want to buy it. They want to sell it. We don’t want to jeopardize, after all these many months of working on it, to try to read jeopardize it. Now, we may have some holdbacks at closing. We may fight those after we close, because they were supposed to maintain certain levels. Sometimes there’s money on a hold back. But our goal is just to be a good buyer. We know we can fix it, and we know we can turn it around. We know it’s got great potential. It just needs a good operator.

Pancham Gupta

Got it. What’s your LTV, the assumption loan-to-value?

Trevor Thompson

It’s only 1%.

Pancham Gupta

Okay. So, the assumption.

Trevor Thompson

We had to raise, of course, all of the cash. Plus, we had to raise all of our CapEx. Plus, we have to raise — they wanted loan reserves. So we raised loan reserves. But on the loan reserves, we think we can stabilize within the year and then use the reserves to finish the second part.

We did our CapEx in two parts. One is deferred maintenance — spending a fair bit of money, making the grounds look better, fixing gates, and all of those different things to make the property more secure, make the leasing office a little better. Luckily, most of the interiors are renovated. Then the second phase of the operation are smaller things — resurfacing of parking lots, doing an upgrade on the pool, adding a pergola. But we can still make the place nicer without adding those secondary features. So, we built our plan going in to do that.

Pancham Gupta

Got it. Cool. Thank you for explaining that deal, Trevor. Let’s switch gears. I have this one question for you. Anyone listening are getting inspired by your story, that you were in corporate world for such a long time, in entertainment industry in Orlando, in Niagara, and now in Austin. Then from there, you moved into investing passively, and then actively into real estate and many different asset classes within real estate, with multifamily being your favorite, and also doing some investing passively in the fund. To anyone who’s listening and they want to get started, what advice would you have for them?

Trevor Thompson

The number one is to get some education. Understand. There’s a great book I always recommend called Passive Investing by James Kandasamy. It’s a great book. It talks about what you should be looking for. So, you want to get some level of education. You can get it from listening to these podcasts, going to different meetups. You want to understand at least a little bit about where you’re putting your money, which is quite ironic. We’re very happy to put our money in the stock market even though we don’t understand it. But to make that mind shift, you got to get a little bit of education — the benefits and the strengths of passive investing.

Then you’ve got to work really hard to find what I’m going to refer to as a good sponsor. We always use the term that you need to know. Entrust them. But it’s even to that next level. You’re going to become a partner with them. I took a little hiatus on investing, and then I started paying more attention. One of my investments, the one that 3x in 20 months, I spent a year looking at a sponsor. They actually ran some training courses through their group on asset management, which is what I was interested in. I went to all of their meetups like virtual ones. We were virtual back then. I went to anytime they were speaking at somebody else’s meet up. I just followed them. I got okay. I feel really good with these guys. And so, I made the investment.

I know I’ve rode a pretty strong tide because the Tucson market went kind of crazy. But I still think it’s a great market. Actually, when it’s sold, I reinvested again immediately. They had a deal. Because, again, once you do feel comfortable with somebody, it’s very easy to give them your money the second time. But take your time the first time when you’re giving money to somebody. Then maybe even split it into two. If you have $100,000, maybe do 250,000 investments. So, you can learn twice as much, just so you can walk before you run.

Pancham Gupta

Right. Cool. Thanks, Trevor, for answering all those questions. I want to move on to the second part of the show. But we’ll be back after this short message.

(break)

Do you ever feel overwhelmed by the thought that you have no time after work and find no time to learn about investing? Do you feel left behind that you are not putting your money to work for you? Do you want to create passive income, but you do not know where to start? If so, I have good news for you. I have created an investor club which I call the Gold Collar Investor Club for Accredited Investors. I will be putting together investing opportunities exclusively for this group. These are the opportunities where I have done my part of the due diligence for you and will be investing my own money alongside you.

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Pancham Gupta

Trevor, let’s move on to the second part of the show which I call Taking the Leap Round. I ask these four questions to every guest on my show. My first question for you is, when was the first time you invested outside of Wall Street?

Trevor Thompson

So, the first time was in 2018. I made my first passive investment in a real estate apartment.

Pancham Gupta

Got it. Did you have any fears that you had to overcome?

Trevor Thompson: 

So many fears.

Pancham Gupta

Talk to us about that.

Trevor Thompson

It was new, right? Again, I mentioned this earlier in the show. Not that I knew anything about the stock market. It was just everybody else does it so it’s got to be okay. So, I was really nervous. I didn’t quite understand it. But then, I became more comfortable when I got to spend time with the sponsor. Actually, I went on a bus tour of other properties they owned and they talked about. The team members came out and talked about how they’ve made improvements and increased rents. I got a lot of confidence in that group. So, I said, okay, that made me feel much better. I can invest with that. I did my second investment quite quickly.

Pancham Gupta

With the same group?

Trevor Thompson

Same group, yeah.

Pancham Gupta

Got it. Okay. So, my third question for you is, can you share with us one investment that did not go as expected?

Trevor Thompson

My second investment that I made — again, it was with the group I talked about. Two major things happened with it. Number one, they didn’t properly estimate property taxes. If you’re buying real estate in Texas, they love to chase their taxes. Number two, insurance started to skyrocket in Texas. They weren’t prepared. So, those two things basically really hurt their cash flow.

Then, of course, their debt service ratio became challenging. They were hoping to get a supplemental loan to basically do phase two of the CapEx, and they couldn’t. So, that really made it struggle. We got the plan started. We were hoping to get a supplemental loan later, and we couldn’t. Again, at the end of the day, I got all my money back. We didn’t lose any money. But it would have obviously been nice to have made some money. Again, that was just a couple of mistakes at the beginning. Then an operator who was successful — I was in other deals that I made money on. I just had that one that didn’t go so well.

Pancham Gupta

Got it. So, my last question for you is, what one piece of advice would you give to people who are thinking of investing in Main Street that is outside of Wall Street?

Trevor Thompson

Definitely, again, it’s almost to get educated and find somebody you know, like, and trust. You can get the education from them, but balance it out with some other people. You want to make sure that — I always say investing is like you invest in the jockey. The jockey is your sponsor. Then the horse, that’s the asset. For me, it’s multifamily. Then the track is also important. You want to invest in landlord pro-business states if you can. It doesn’t mean that investments don’t make money in California, but I’m just not investing there. I’m investing in pro-business, pro-landlord states. So, that’s the where.

Pancham Gupta

Got it. Cool. Well, thank you, Trevor, for your time here. If someone who’s listening to this wants to connect with you, reach out, and learn more about what you’re up to, how can they connect with you?

Trevor Thompson

My website is niagara-investments.com. My email is KTT@niagarainvestments.com. I’m also on LinkedIn and very active. So, if you just say, “Hey, I saw you on the podcast,” always accept, always happy to talk with you. I try to provide good educational content, because I believe shows like this and people providing content is what’s needed for people to feel comfortable to start creating passive income as their financial future.

Pancham Gupta

Great. Well, thank you so much, Trevor, for your time here.

Trevor Thompson

My pleasure. It was very great to be here.

Pancham Gupta

Thank you for joining today and listening to Trevor’s story. He has done enough experience as a passive investor. So, if you’re really looking to get started now, listen to his advice. Get educated and really learn about all different the aspects out there.

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to reach out to me. It’s p@thegoldcollarinvestor.com. Again p@thegoldcollarinvestor.com. This is Pancham signing off. Until next time, take care.

(outro)

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.thegoldcollarinvestor.com and follow us on Facebook @thegoldcollarinvestor. The information on this podcast are opinions. As always, please consult your own financial team before investing.