Ep. 81 How To Unlock The Equity In Your Home WITHOUT Adding Debt With Matt Sullivan

Welcome to the Next Level Income show where it's our goal to raise your income, your investments and your life to the next level. I'm your host, Chris Larsen. You can get a free copy of our book@nextlevelincome.com just click on the book link. Also, if you're an accredited investor, check out our Invest link. You can learn how to gain access to our Self Storage fund as well as other institutional quality real estate opportunities. You're not going to want to miss today's show with Matthew Sullivan. Matthew Sullivan is going to be talking about home equity equity contracts. He's going to talk about how you can access the equity in your property without adding more debt. Stay tuned. On today's show, we have Matthew Sullivan. Matthew is the CEO and founder of Quantum Re, 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, it's not a line of credit, it's not a loan, it's not a reverse mortgage. That means homeowners can get cash from their equity with no interest and no monthly payments. Matthew and his team have helped over 100 homeowners use their home equity to pay off expensive credit cards, remodel their home, pay college tuition fees, or diversify into other investments, all without taking on extra debt. Matthew has a proven track record in real estate innovation through his experiences. Co founder of the Secured Real Estate Income Strategies Fund and as President, founder of CrowdVenture.com a real estate crowd funding company. Originally from London. You're going to love his accent. Matthew worked with Richard Branson's corporate finance team and was even a director of the Virgin sponsored London Air Ambulance. A helicopter pilot himself, he's also the host of his own podcast, Hooked on Startups. Today's show is sponsored by the Airbnb Kickstart course. My wife and I started our first Airbnb here in the last year and we've come to love the ability to earn more money than we would if we had a long term rental. If you're interested in starting your Airbnb business with little money, scaling your Airbnb business, or just learning tricks about the industry in general, check out our airbnb course@nextlevelincome.com Airbnb that's Air, the letters BNB and you'll get a 20% discount code. Matthew, welcome to the show.

Chris, thank you for having me on.

Absolutely. And for those of you listening, you may notice my voice is a little different and that's not because I had Covid a month ago. I was fortunate. I kind of skated through that relatively smoothly. But it's because as we record this, we're still in the midst of the World Series, and my boys and I were at the game Saturday night and I'm still. My voice is still recovering from our win down there in Atlanta. So hopefully we got some Braves fans here. If there's some Houston Astros fans, we all know what happened by this point. But I don't want to talk about that today, Matthew. I want to talk about.

I'm going to bring the conversation over to cricket now.

That's right. Okay. You know, we could talk about that on today's show and that would probably educate a lot of people as well.

Bowls or something, you know.

Yeah.

Rounders. Yes.

Yeah, I'm actually really excited to dig into this conversation. I was reading through your ebook, which we're going to share with the audience, how to get here today. But before I do, if you don't mind sharing, you're in Salt Lake City, but you're not from Salt Lake, as we shared before the show. So maybe you could tell us how you ended up here, Matthew, and also a little bit more about your company along the way.

Of course. Yeah. I'm originally from the uk, moved over to the US almost eight years ago, originally landed in Southern California, which is where I got married and I have a family here now. We moved to Utah about a year and a half ago, really, just because we were sort of bursting at the seams in California and just wanted a bit more space. So the boys are out there every day on their dirt bikes and, you know, making all sorts of noise and muddy mess, which is what boys should be doing.

So great.

So that's great. But yeah, so one of the first things that I did, I'd always wanted to get involved in real estate. I was always a real estate investor, but very much a secondary investor. So I was never actively involved the businesses that I'd run over the years. My background is entrepreneurial. I've run businesses in primarily finance and technology based companies for, you know, 25, 30 years almost. I was, you know, very much involved in the Internet when it was first launched in the late 90s. How many years ago was that? Goodness. So when I moved here, I remember.

It, but it was a few.

Yeah, I was just like, you know, it seems like yesterday, but it wasn't actually. It was a little bit longer than that. So. And it's funny how you're seeing the Same thing happening again with blockchain and these types of new technologies. But that's a. That's a whole different bucket of fish, really, I think. But yeah, I just wanted to get involved in real estate and somehow leverage the experience that I put together in finance and platforms and technology. So I started off by setting up a small real estate crowdfunding company because the law had changed and you were allowed to do that. And one of the asset classes that I stumbled across almost five years ago, six years ago, almost, was this concept of being able to invest in people's homes when they still lived there, which I thought was a fantastic idea. The idea of not having to actually own the property, but being able to still benefit from the equity upside, but have the owner still live there and maintain the property and pay the mortgage. So that was really the light bulb moment for me, this concept of being able to invest in this hugely scalable asset class. Millions and millions of people that live in their homes that have equity. And so Quantum Re just developed from that. And in like a bite sized sentence, what we do is we help homeowners access the equity in their homes without taking on more debt. And at the same time, our plan is to make home equity accessible, investable and tradable. So that's our sort of big objective. But I should probably stop there.

There's so much, yeah, there's so much. I've taken notes here so we can dive back into some of these issues or topics here. So I think it's really, you know, I think if we take a step back. I was listening to a debate just two days ago, Matthew, on whether you should pay off your home. Like if you want to be financially independent, should you pay off your home? And I was actually a co host of a radio show in college. So we're talking, I think I was doing my grad program. So let's say this was about 20 years ago and we had a pretty heated debate. It was myself, mortgage broker, four of us on the show, and it was really me and a financial advisor. And she argued that you should have a 15 year mortgage. And I argued that, no, you should have a 30 year mortgage because there's value in having cash and being able to have the ability to pay it off but not paying it off. Well, that was about eight years before the financial crisis came. And one thing I found during the financial crisis was these lines of credit that I had on my investment properties. Not only did the bank say, oh, you can't take any more money out, they said hey, we want you to pay us back today for that money you took out. And what it really highlighted to me was I felt like, hey, I'm right, we should keep cash in our own pockets so we have access to this. Yeah, but the other thing is there are people that pay down their mortgages, that pay down their mortgages and they really, you know, they have no way to get that, get that equity. And you know, you say, you know, what does it mean to be house rich and cash poor? So maybe you can elaborate on that because that's really, this whole, that whole concept popped into my head is, and.

That'S a really, really interesting concept because homes are really funny things in some respects because it's the place where you live. So all of your life, your memories, your history is in the house. But at the same time, for most people, it's your biggest source of wealth, it's your investment because it's your biggest expense. So you've got these sort of, you know, the irresistible force meets the immovable object. So you know, people are saying, and we get this all the time where people say you shouldn't use your house as an atm. So before we dive into it, the programs that we offer are not debt based products. So let's just have a 10 second overview about that. What they are.

They are, yeah.

I mean, because if you look at commercial real estate transactions, you've got all sorts of different types of funding options available to you, starting with debt, all different flavors of debt. So you've got senior debt, junior debt, mezzanine finance, and then you've got all sorts of flavors of equity. So you've got equity investors, you've got preferred equity investors, you've got investors who lend you money, who have a share of the equity upside. So you have a, like a share depreciation mortgage, then you have mezzanine, which is like a bit of debt and a bit of equity. So, so you've got this whole stack of different options. As a residential homeowner, your options are limited to debt. In other words, do you want a mortgage? Do you want to, you know, a HELOC or a reverse mortgage? And that's kind of it.

Yeah, so, and I think most listeners know this, but you know, so I went and got a, I have a 30 year mortgage, but it's a 7:1 ARM, so it adjusts after seven years with the interest rate. You can get a 15 year mortgage. Right. Where you pay it off in 15 years, you can get a 15 or 30 year mortgage. It's a 80% and then you can add a line of credit like a HELOC on top of that. Right.

So you can, which is all great if you qualify. So the next piece. So here's interesting bit of data came out a few weeks ago that something like 18 million homes in the US are equity rich. And that means that the homeowner has 50% or more equity. And that's grown significantly because of the house price appreciation over the last year. And overall, and overall, there's $23 trillion of equity in residential homes. And that those are figures the Fed from Freddie Mac and trillion in equity. $23 trillion. So imagine you've got 18 million homeowners where they have 50% or more equity. Now, I can guarantee you that not all of those 18 million homeowners have the ability to borrow money. I can also promise you that not every single one of those 18 million people want to borrow money. Now imagine you're in a position where you've done what you, your college opponent suggested you do and you've paid off your mortgage. So you're sitting on half a million dollars worth of wealth in the bricks and mortar of your home. And some, by the way.

Right. It's just sitting there.

Well, that's right. And a medical expense comes up, or you want to send your kids to college or, you know, you lose your job or you want to buy that car you've always wanted. I know something like that. You know, from the sublime to the, you know, from the optional to the necessary, then the only way that you can get that cash back out of your house is to borrow money. So you're back in debt again when you've spent the last 15 years trying to pay it off. So you have to borrow money or you have to sell your home. So those are the only two options that you've got.

Yeah. So I guess just to kind of walk through a real life example. So my stepfather and mother paid off my childhood home. And I talked to my father, he's like, oh, well, it's paid off. And I said, well, you should go get a line of credit in case you ever need that money. And what he did was he did a line of credit on the house. I forget what it was up to. But for instance, he could have done that and he could have bought a car or used it for education. But your point is it's paid off. Now he's back in debt to the bank.

So in other words, it's great, so you pay it off. Now the other thing that happens is you lose the advantage of leverage. So in other words, your appreciation rate, your real return on investment decays as you reduce your leverage. Because what happens is that if the house price appreciation in your area is, let's say, 4% a year, if you pay off your mortgage, then you're only ever going to make 4% a year appreciation on your asset. However, your next door neighbor, who's got a 50% mortgage, he's making 8% and the guy down the road who's got a 25% mortgage is making even more. So, in other words, concept is so.

Important because I tell people your return on your equity is zero. And that's the point you're making. I think a lot of people lose that when they say, oh, I have this investment property, I'm going to pay it off. It's like, well, why would you want to do that? Because if you're making 30%, you know, with 20% down, you might only make 5 or 10% when you get that property paid off in profit.

Exactly. So the question then is if you don't want to go back into debt. And this is why these types of home equity agreements are so important. It's because it enables you to unlock or access big chunks of that $23 trillion worth of equity, but without having to go back into debt. So the way our programs work, because people are thinking, well, you know, if it's not, if it's not debt, how can you know what is it? It's an investment where in exchange for a cash lump sum that our investors give the homeowner, the homeowner says, okay, I will share some of the appreciation. So when my, if I sell my house in, in a few years time, if it's gone up in value since the day we signed the agreement, I'll give you your money back, which was your original investment, and I'll give you a share of some of the increase in value that the house has benefited from. So if my house goes up, I'm going to have some of that equity increase as the homeowner and as the investor, you're going to have some as well. And the other good thing is the investor does not go on title as an owner. So I don't have to share my spare room with anybody. No one else has got rights on the property. It is protected by a lien on title, but it sits, sits in a junior position. It doesn't trigger due on sale clauses with the mortgage. It doesn't trigger property tax revaluations. And the Best part is, because it's an investment, there are no monthly payments. So because I don't get paid as an investor until you sell your house or you may decide to buy me out at some point. So in that period, there's no monthly payments. It's not a debt product. So because it's not a loan, you can use that money to pay off other loans, you can use it to reduce your mortgage, you can use it to invest in something else that provides a much better cash flow and much better liquidity and potentially a much better return than your home equity does.

Yeah, no, I love that. So because, you know, we have a lot of investors, they have same thing, they have a bunch of equity tied up in their homes. They say, Chris, I'm going to take money out of my house at 2, 3% on a line of credit and I'm going to reinvest it at 15%. People use that. So let's, if you don't mind, Matthew, let's walk through a real life example. So you mentioned that homeowner that has a half a million dollar house. And we can make it simple, we can make a little more complex, but maybe they own it outright or maybe they $100,000 could walk through how that would look. And then let's say the homeowner wants to use money for either an investment or let's say wants to pull some money out for college. So what would it look like? They reach out to you and say, hey Matthew, I want to walk through this process and see if this is a good option for me.

Sure. Well, I'll give you an example of a 10 year agreement because the agreements come in different durations. 10 years, 30 years. So you can have these agreements up to 30 years, but a 10 year agreement would be, it's a straightforward discount. So if you want to access $50,000, let's say which is 10% of the current value of your home, then when you sell your home, you would give us 16, 1, 6% of the value of your home at the time you sell it. So it's just a straightforward trade. We give you 10% of the current value, but when you sell the property, you give us the equivalent of 16% when you sell it.

Got it.

And there's another component to take into account is if you sell your property in the early years, then we have a maximum return on investment, which depends on the property. So it's sort of subject to underwriting, but it's normally sort of 16 to 18%. That means the maximum Return that we can make is around 18% a year on our money. So if you were to sell your home after six months, then it would cost you less than 10% for that capital for that period. So it's not a loan. There's no monthly payments. Everything is determined on the value of your home when you sell it. So if your home goes down in value, we potentially could get back less than we actually invested. So there is a risk on both sides. But if it goes up, that's great because you're making more money as well, and we cannot eat into your existing equity. So it's not like a loan where if your house goes down considerably, you can't be underwater because, you know, we could end up, you know, taking a loss as well.

Yeah. So you guys have skin in the game. And I just did some math on my favorite thing that sits in my desk, which is my ti ba2 plus calculator. So if so I have a half a million dollar home I take out, and this is called a home equity contract.

Home equity agreement. Home equity contract. Yeah, that type of thing.

Yeah. So home equity agreement, home equity contract. So I get $50,000. I want to help my son out with his college expenses, or maybe I have a midlife crisis and I just want to buy a new sports car. Right. So I'm giving up 16% of my value at 10 years. So that looks like if homes appreciate 3% annually, looks like it ends up being about $108,000, which is less than 8% interest over that time. So one way to look at that would be if I could also say, hey, if I want to invest this, I think get 10, 15 or 20%. That's a good arbitrage. But I don't have to make those payments along the way, which is a really, really big difference.

It is. And we should go back to your point earlier, when the banks decided that they wanted their money back with like a day's notice. So the thing with debt is that.

You have that sort of 30 days, but, you know.

Oh, they were being generous then.

Yeah, they were being. Yeah, they were being very flexible at the time.

Yeah. Not including weekends. Yeah. Thing with home equity, it is an equity risk. And because it's equity, it means that, that, you know, if your house prices crater, we can't suddenly say, you know, we want our money back or if the world changes, you know, you know, that's the risk that we take. So you benefit from that because you've then got a clear run for 10 years or even up to 30 years to make your investments knowing that you're not going to get that call or you don't have that corresponding monthly payment. And that's really important because many investments don't pan out the way we think they're going to. So you might make an investment based on debt in the expectation that it's going to be paid off at a certain date. Now if that doesn't happen and you can't service that debt, then your problems start compounding. So you don't. From an investor's perspective, it's a much safer option to invest with equity because you've got that additional timeline, that additional flexibility.

So let's take for example, we're buying apartments, we're syndicating apartments. I tell investors three to seven years is a reasonable assumption. That's a big difference. Three to seven years, that's over 100% difference. The long versus short end. But to your point, we talk about, hey, put long term debt in place, low loan to value cash reserves, and that's the big thing. If you make an investment, you have to service debt. On the other side of that investment, you have money sitting in the bank that's not earning a return that has to go to that. I'm listening to this, I'm like, that's a big advantage. And also what comes to mind, I think about my stepfather, so my mother passed away. He's sitting in this, what we'll call it a half a million dollar house paid off. And if he wanted to have equity but still wanted to live in that house, he could do something like the 30 year option and he could have access to a chunk of that capital to use for retirement and wouldn't have to pay that back. And I would admit to you I'm pretty ignorant when it comes to reverse mortgages, but you brought that up. Matthew, maybe you could. We talked about the difference between a mortgage or a line of credit. Can you talk a little bit more about like what a reverse mortgage is and how that's different? Because I'm not exactly familiar with that concept.

Well, sure. Well, a reverse mortgage is a reverse amortizing mortgage. So rather than you making monthly payments and reducing the capital balance, you don't make any payments. And what happens is those interest payments kind of stack up and are added to the principal. So effectively over a period of time, your overall loan just continues to grow. And there are points where you know, ultimately it's, it will eat up potentially all of the equity in the home, depending on how long you have the reverse mortgage for. There are other restrictions. For example, you have to be able to qualify. So you've got to be over 62 to be able to qualify.

Thompson, is that right? On TV advertising. He's the former actor Senator.

Well, that's right, yeah. But the problem is you can't move out. So if you decide that you want to rent your house out, you have to be the owner occupier. You can't. And the last surviving. Once the last surviving qualifying borrower dies, then the reverse mortgage comes to an end. So, you know, so if you're in a home and you want your kids to stay in there that, you know, when you die, then you can't, you know, but with a home equity agreement, you can, you can transfer that agreement across. So there's a lot of costs involved. If you have an existing, existing mortgage and you want to take out a reverse mortgage, then you can only have a reverse mortgage. You can't have two mortgages. So the reverse mortgage will have to subsume the existing debt. And you might have a loan at 3%, but the reverse mortgage comes in at 6 and a half percent. So you have to buy out your existing loan at a higher rate. It's also quite expensive to set up. But generally the biggest difference is one is debt and one is equity. One has a payment, one has all of the issues associated with debt. And, you know, the equity structure is just a completely different animal. It's based on a different risk profile. You know, we're paid very differently and there's a lot more flexibility. You don't have any of the credit score issues that you get with loans. We can work with people with credit scores at 550 or sometimes even below that. So, you know, that comes back to my original point where you've got millions of homeowners that, you know, they may not be able to borrow money. So, you know, life changes and your credit score may. May have decayed to the point where no one wants to lend you money at acceptable rates, yet you've got, you know, half a million dollars worth of equity. So there's a lot more flexibility.

You have to sell your house, you know.

Yeah. And then exactly. Then that just, you know, that's the downward spiral.

Yeah, No, I think this is a great option. So let's get a little more technical, Matthew. So you have these home equity agreements that are out there. Are you all securitizing these or how are you working kind of at a grander scale?

Well, it's, again, a very timely Question, because about a month ago, one of the companies that we work with securitized 140, I think it's 143, $146 million worth of home equity contracts or home equity agreements, which was the first major securitization of purely these assets. And they also announced a billion dollars worth of capital commitments into this space. So what we've seen over the last three years, despite Covid, is this increasing interest from institutional investors into this space because the return profile has been proven. So we're beginning to see a pretty strong track record developing into how these types of assets perform from an investor's perspective. They're very scalable. Remember, there's no ownership, so you can grow the number of assets that you have, but you don't own any real estate. And that's actually very good because you don't have the cost of maintenance associated with that. You don't have all of the issues associated with, with being a landlord. You can still, however, benefit from the asset price appreciation. So there's been an enormous amount of interest and growing interest in this space. And we can really see the momentum beginning to build, particularly because house prices have appreciated significantly and the economic climate is actually more challenging, even more challenging, particularly because of the pandemic. So people are finding it harder to borrow money, yet their house is now at the highest rate it's ever been. So this real sort of tension between those two positions.

Yeah, no, it's interesting. So I guess the flip side of this, the downside would be if we went through another period like 2008, which you're looking at 10 year periods. And over a 10 year period, there's a pretty consistent appreciation in these assets.

There is. And remember that we're working with homeowners who already have lots of equity. When we have our, when the contracts are finished or when we sign the agreements. They maintain after our agreements, they still have a minimum 20 or 25% equity, depending on the agreement. So the homeowners we work with are not the homeowners who were highly leveraged, who had no incentive to keep their homes. You know, these are homeowners who have relatively low leverage. Even though they have a home equity agreement with us, we don't increase their leverage, we actually reduce it. So we are putting homeowners in a stronger position. All we want them to do is to keep their homes, keep paying the mortgage. Because we know historically, as you say, in any 10 year period, real estate will outperform inflation. So even though you take a 10 year period, which includes the 0708 crisis. At the end of that 10 year period, House prices will have appreciated faster than inflation. So again, the assets that we're investing in are in a sector which is pretty well insulated from the exposure that we would have seen in the highly leveraged times of the financial crisis.

Yeah, that makes sense. And where are you getting your capital to place this?

It's all institutional. So we work, we have family offices, institutional investors. They are the capital sources. So what we do is we work on behalf of, we originate agreements for those investors, we originate agreements for other companies in this space as well so that we can provide a broad spectrum of offerings to our customers.

Yeah, no, I love it. And I told everybody at the beginning here, if people want to learn more, if they want to get a copy of your book, what's the best way to get a hold of you? And then I'd like you to share more information about your, your own podcast here.

Yeah, I mean, everything's on the website. It's a quantum Re, which is Q U A N T M R E dot com. So we have all sorts of information. There's a calculator there where you can put in details about your property and find out how much we could invest. There's an ebook or a free guide which gives you an overview as to how these programs work. Lots of videos and podcasts and other information that you can listen to, read through and get a better feel about how these programs actually work.

The ebook's great, really good overview. I breezed through it myself pretty quickly here.

Thank you.

Yeah, as a matter of fact. And you have your own podcast, is that right, Matthew?

Yeah, well, yes, I have my podcast which is called Hooked on Startups. It's great fun. I mean, it is just still a great way of meeting people and it's amazing how you can just lock yourself away for like 45 minutes or so and have this great conversation with people. So that is a source of enjoyment, fun, and it helps maintain sanity for all of us, I think.

Oh, especially last year. I mean, I just remember that period sitting at home and it was a godsend having.

Yes, yes, there are people out there.

Yes, there are. Yeah, it was pretty cool to still continue to learn and grow and network and do that. So question I always love to ask at the end of the show, Matthew, is if you can go back to your 25 year old self and give yourself some advice, what would it be?

I think it would be to just find something that you like doing and this is not about, you know, finding your passion because, you know, it's just stick at something. So I had a telecoms company in my sort of, I can't remember, late 20s that I built up and it happened to be at the time when telecommunications were deregulating. So, you know, it did really well and grew really quickly. And then someone came along and said, can I buy it from you? And I went, yeah. And I should have said no, I should have kept it and grown it and focused. In other words, I think if you find something like that and you're good at it, stick with it and become the subject matter expert, you know, become the go to guy, become the center of the universe for that product or that service. You know, there's this constant drive to, you know, for renewal and to start new things. But I think if you can, you know, the guys that had the greatest success, I think are the people that found something that they were good at and just grew it and built it and weathered the storms and just got better and better and better. I think that's how the really successful businesses are built.

Yeah, I mean, look like Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, I mean, all these guys, guys, I'm from the Northeast, all these people that are building these, most of them are 50 plus and they've been at it for a long time.

Yeah, just. That's it. Just determination, drive, same thing, just chipping away. I think that's one of the key things really is just find something and just keep building. It's like with Quantum. We're almost four years old now and we've seen all sorts of challenges, but now we're in a position, we're in the jet stream, effectively. So it would have been so easy just to sort of find 100 reasons why we shouldn't continue.

Yeah, no, I love it. And there's a book out there. I think it's called Mindset. Might be Grit, but I think it was Mindset. And what stuck with me was that they studied these young children, these adolescents, and it wasn't the ones with the most talent that became the most successful. It was the ones that had the long term view and said, I'm going to be a professional musician, for instance. Right. And they stuck with it and stuck with it and stuck with it. And those were the ones that were most successful. So I absolutely love that advice. Thank you so much for sharing that with. Thank you. And thank you for sharing this concept to me. It's been fascinating to learn about it through your book, Matthew, through the conversation today, check out Matthew and his company, Quantum R E. That's Q U A N T M R e dot com. We'll have that all in the show. Notes Get a free copy of his book. If you're interested in learning more about how you can use this concept, check out his website. He's got a ton of information on there and if you have any other questions you can reach out directly to to him. Matthew, thank you so much for being on the show today.

Chris, thank you. It's such a pleasure. Thank you for having me on.

Hey Chris, here again. I hope you found this episode valuable. Now I have one more thing to gift you. We have a page for my coaching clients where you can get a free copy of my book as well as much more from previous guests on the show. Just check out nextlevelincome.com coaching to get a free copy of my book, audiobook and much more. I'll send you a copy of my book and cover all the shipping costs as a thank you for listening to the podcast. Also, please like share and take just 90 seconds to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts.