In this interview, host Cody (joined by Christian) talks with multifamily investor Matt Hawkins—known as the "Lumberjack Landlord"—about how he created and leveraged a custom 30‑year fixed‑rate bank product to finance a portfolio of roughly 40 properties (over 100 units). Hawkins explains the obstacles he faced, such as traditional bank limits that capped borrowers at 4‑10 properties, and how he overcame them by targeting senior lenders rather than frontline mortgage officers. He details the process of designing a presentation, negotiating a "target‑plus" pricing model (adding a modest spread to a benchmark 7‑year debt), and securing rates only about one point above market, far cheaper than commercial loans. Hawkins shares his relationship‑driven tactics—asking why a loan is denied, highlighting his strong global coverage ratio (2.1 versus the required 1.2), and leveraging his proven track record to negotiate better terms. He describes how he used the product to refinance the bulk of his portfolio into 30‑year fixed loans at roughly 4%, performed multiple cash‑out refinances that generated $2.5 million in equity, and maintains high debt‑coverage ratios (≈2.2) while keeping loan‑to‑value around 60‑70%. The conversation also touches on broader market considerations, such as demographic shifts and interest‑rate outlooks, and underscores that formal finance education isn’t required—persistent communication and data‑driven negotiation are key. The episode concludes with a call to action for viewers to follow Hawkins’ channel for deeper operational insights.
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Cody, is that the right person to talk to? Uh, no, no, never, ever, ever. And so the key is you want to start at the top and get pushed down. That's always the way that you want that to happen.
Hey YouTube, welcome back to the channel. This is Cody and Christian, and today we're joined again by Matt the Lumberjack Landlord. What the heck are we talking about today?
Today we're going to be talking about bank debt. Now Matt is the master of bank debt. This is the man who actually wrote his own bank product and had them market it to the US. This is a product that people can get now just so you can get more homes on a 30-year fixed rate debt.
It's incredible. I didn't know you can make your own bank products, but turns out if you're an excellent operator, you can do whatever the heck you want within reason.
So we're going to turn it over to the investor who is way smarter than us, Matt Hawkins. Let's talk about bank debt. I'm sure everyone actually wants to hear this story. How many properties do you actually have currently on 30-year fixed rate debt?
So we have, we have about 40 properties on 30-year fixed rate debt. And to do that, a little over 100 doors.
Now, you didn't just get a whole bunch of cosigners to use their 10 loans, right? This is—
these are your loans.
All mine. All, all in my trust's name.
But I was told you can only do 10. How the heck is this possible, Matt?
Well, interestingly enough, I— that was the thing that I butted up against for years, and it was a real frustration point for me. I would talk to banks, they're just like, nope, the limit's 10. Nope, the limit's 10. And in fact, for people that were investing in the Great Recession, it was 4. It was 10, then they knocked it down to 4. So what— how I got DQ'd out of the game for a couple of years was I literally got to the point where I had 5, and then they passed the rule, it was 4. I couldn't get my next loan. The only way I could get my next loan was if it was a commercial loan, which we all know is a point, point and a half more expensive, and it's 25-year amortization instead of a 30-year amortization. And so I was sitting there saying, okay, every deal that I'm doing now just got a whole lot more expensive. So there was really not a whole lot I could do. And then as I got larger as an operator and got better relationships with my bank, I understood better what the landscape of the bank was. A bank only makes money when they lend out. It's just that simple. And what they want is they want deposits because then they can lever up on those deposits. If they're taking in $10,000 in deposits, they can lend out between $90,000 and $100,000 on $10,000 of deposits. So, the first thing that you do is you talk to the bank and you say, hey, I'd like to give you more deposits. They're like, yeah, sure, we love deposits. Okay, but here's what I need you to do. I need you to give me a product that actually allows me to buy a 30-year fixed-rate debt. They're like, well, but it's more than 10 properties. Okay, it is, but you can portfolio those loans. You don't have to sell them to Fannie Freddie. Now, I don't mind if you have the same structure as a Fannie Freddie loan and you're servicing it. I don't mind that. However, I need to be able to buy 1, 2, 3, and 4-unit buildings with 30-year fixed-rate debt. So the big key is understanding who to talk to in a bank. Most people will deal with a mortgage broker or a frontline mortgage person. Cody, is that the right person to talk to? No, no, never, ever, ever. And so the key is you want to start at the top and get pushed down. That's always the way that you want that to happen. So the person that you always want to talk to is the senior lender. Senior lender is the person who makes the decision of what rates that business or that bank are going to charge. Not only that, but they're the ones who will also look at risk assessment because the senior lender understands the entire book of business that they have in-house— commercial, residential, everything. And so when you talk to that senior lender, they're likely going to say you need to bring them the concept. I actually put together a 4 or 5 slide presentation put it on Lumberjack Landlord on YouTube and said, here's the presentation. This is how I did it. Had the conversation with senior lender, worked with my VP that I'd worked with and have a good relationship with. She helped me put it together and then she pitched it to senior leadership and the senior lender said, yeah, for people that already have their 10 units, they're great operators. They never have late payments. They continue to expand their business. This makes sense for us. This is good business for us to get into.
So are your interest rates super high? Because that's the first thing that a lot of people are going to think about. Sorry to just butt in, but no, no, no, you're good. Are you getting like 6% and 7% interest rates when everyone else was at 4%?
No, I was getting— so the way that they— so most banks, when they create a product, what they have to do is they have to do something called a target plus. And a target plus means that they have to look at debt in the market. In this particular case, they attached it to what was a 7-year debt in the Boston Exchange. They look at that 7-year debt and they add a premium to that 7-year debt. So when everybody else was getting, you know, 4s, I was getting 5s. When everybody else was getting 5s, I was getting 6s. And when they were getting 6s— so I ended up being typically about a point higher, but that's much less than commercial debt. And most importantly is I have 30-year fixed rate debt, which we all know what fixed rate debt looks like over a 5-year period.
Well, I mean, someone on YouTube said that my fixed rate debt was going to become variable someday. Yes, the fixed rate, but some people don't understand and they just want to hate. But fixed rate's wonderful.
I find that people that still live in their mom's basement shouldn't talk. So Yeah, I hear that a lot from other investors that are— or other people out there. They're just like, well, what about the silver tsunami of all these retirees and the demographics of the US changing? I have an idea: wait 20 more years and don't do anything for 20 years because a silver tsunami might come. Oh yeah, P.S., by the way, what if in 20 years everybody's living to 110? Because age continues to get— people continue to get older and older, and people don't want to leave their homes. They want to stay in their homes and and then they want in-home nursing care. So yeah, like if you wanna debate the silver tsunami or any of these other silly notions, we can certainly do it. You know, like is everybody gonna change their, their strategy because China today announced that their population growth is down? Like, oh no, that's something that impacts you in 20 or 30 or 40 years. And let's face it, in 40, I likely am not gonna be here unless I'm, you know, partly, uh, you know, uh, a robot. So you're not that old. 45, old enough. Yeah. A lot of mileage on this.
While everyone takes a minute to like and subscribe to both of our channels, I wanted to ask you, how did you learn how to do this? Like, you're figuring out how to navigate banks, find the right person, come up with a lending product. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the rule is they have to be able to not just service it to you. They have to market this product to everyone. They can't do— banks can't do one-off products for one person. What was your education level going into this? Did you Do you have like a master's in finance? What does this look like?
So I didn't get out of the 9th grade. So everyone here is more educated than I am factually. And so it's nice to be hanging out with so many educated people. I mean, you guys have like high school diplomas, like that's something I could only aspire to have. But that's— I think that's the key pieces is just having that conversation with the bank. I think far too often people assume what the answer is without even asking the question. And my constant approach is ask not, want not. And then if they say no, I say why? Like I'm a petulant child. Why? Why is that the case? Why would you— if I've proven to be such a good borrower from you, I've never had a late payment, my returns, you know, when they look at your global number and a global number is they look at your debt, and they make sure that you have 20% more than your debt to service it. So it's called a 1.2 global number, global coverage number. I'm at 2.1. I blow all the charts out of the water. So I said to them, I said, I'm probably, if not your best, one of your best as far as debt coverage goes. So why wouldn't this make sense for the bank? Now, the key is it's just like anything else. People buy from people and people do things for people that they're in relationship with. And so I don't shop my bank every single time. I even say to them, all right, I'm going to let you win on this one, but I get to win on the next one. She's just like, why do you say that? And I go, because you know that rate's not the lowest you could go. And sometimes she comes back with an eighth or a quarter point lower. I was like, see? And sometimes she's just like, that's it, don't even ask. Okay, now I'll get to the next one.
Because you've really mastered the bank game and you've figured out how to get all these bank products, which to be real, most people don't think is real like that. And then they try it and it'll work for them if they persist or it won't if they don't. Do you just keep refinancing, cashing out? Because that global cash flow, like your debt coverage ratio, that's really good for a lot of our properties until we, we tanked some of the cash flows to build. We were around 2 as well. Most people don't get there. Are you just doing cash out refis whenever you can? Or are you letting things just amortize and you're just leveraging up to buy more stuff later?
That's a good question.
Yeah. So really good question. So we did. So basically when I saw rates, the value of being in the game for 20 years is when I saw rates in the threes, I said to myself, these are in the threes. I'm never going to see that again. And if I do, it's going to be absolute pandemonium. Where banks are not going to want to put paper out there for that amount of money and for that little money. And so I took the opportunity to create this product with the bank, which was brilliant on their part. Kudos to them for being free thinkers and thinking outside the box. And then the second thing was it gave me the ability to refinance essentially all of my portfolio that was 4 units and less. So now having 40 out of my 47 deals, you know, 40 out of my 47 have, you know, 30-year fixed rate debt. So I have zero debt risk when I have zero interest rate risk when it comes to any of that debt. And frankly, it's all locked in at right around 4%. I'm never going to need to sell those assets. I'm at 4%, 30-year fixed. I did 2 cash-out refis. I did 1 deal. So this is how you structure it. Again, when you're smaller, you can't do this stuff. But when you get larger, these are some of the things that you need to set up for for yourself, right? Because when I was buying stuff in the, you know, 2010, '11, '12, rates were 6.5 or 7. And so when they got down to 5, it was like, I mean, I could refinance, but I think, you know, I want to just continue to pay down and create equity. What I did was when I created this product and worked with the bank, I said I had the carrot for them, you know, a little bit of carrot, a little bit of stick. The carrot was I'll give you 18 deals you don't have right now. How about that? And because I'm going to give you 18 deals that you don't have right now, I just want you to let me do it on 12 more that I have with you. And I said, and then I want you to let me use the product moving forward. So we went back and forth and they were great about it. I mean, at the end of the day, they're a bank. They're supposed to lend money. The issue is you need to lend it out with as little risk as possible. And are you more at risk lending against a $10 million building or more at risk against lending against 40 2, 3, and 4-unit buildings. The 2, 3, or 4-unit building option for them is far sexier. It's because you want to find those local banks that are in the community, of the community, for the community. It's, it, it wins on both sides for them. They're investing in the community, they're investing investors that are investing in the community. And so we did one cash-out refi, it was 9 units, it was a little over a million bucks. And then 6 months later, I put myself through the torture again and did, I think, 10 on that one. It was another million something. And then I did another 4 or 5 and it was another half million something. So it made me, it helped me recapitalize to where I was able to create about $2.5 million in cash. And that's all debt. So it's all service debt.
That's not too shabby, especially when you're still at your 2.2. Coverage.
Yeah. Yep. Yeah. And so we were— because of rents going up and what we were able to, you know, kind of re-manage and reconfigure and trade out some tenants and upgrade some tenants and, you know, what we called value-add deals because we were able to do that. Yeah, we're still over— we're still north of 2 for, for debt coverage.
So if we have— if we have pretty stable interest rates, we stay in between the the 6% and the 7% range. Will you continue to borrow till you drop, or are you going to pay this stuff off someday?
I won't. I will, I will ride or die at my 4% 30-year fixed. So that would make me 75. I'm stuck with those loans probably forever unless there's some global collapse and the bank comes to me and says, we still have to make money. Will you take money at 2%? And I'll say, I guess so. I guess because I know I can turn it into something else, right? So yeah, I think the key for me is, is that 30-year fixed rate debt, I want to keep that as long as I possibly can. And there's no scenario where I would get out of those assets because they're levered probably between 60% and 70% loan to value. So there's no idea where I would get out of those assets to then fully lever up to maybe 80% to then take something that's a 6% or a 6.5%. Even if the debt coverage is there. I want that lower payment. And it comes to the point where I've never met a landlord in their 60s that wanted to do as much work as they were doing in their 40s. So it gives me the ability to, as the cash flow continues to get better, and as the rate continues to stay the same, it allows me to do something different with the business where I have that much more capital to spread.
Love it.
Yeah.
That's awesome.
Yeah.
Great episode. We appreciate you coming back for episode number 2 talking about bank products.
Yep. If you haven't yet, check out Matt's channel. It's Matt the Lumberjack Landlord. Fantastic channel. A lot of the nuts and bolts on how you actually run your portfolio, get the conventional debt. We're the creative finance guys.
We'll show you how to buy anything with nothing, but Matt will show you how to take it to the next level.
Yep.
Appreciate you guys watching. Tune in next week for another episode with Matt Hawkins, Cody Christian.
