The challenge for most real estate investors is to either get the money for investment or find great real estate investing opportunities.  In this episode, Monick Halm’s guest, Peggy Beauregard, has found a way to profit from real estate without having to do either – by being a real estate matchmaker. Here, she teaches us how to become one. As the team lead of We are Real Estate Matchmakers, she matches cash to deals and deals to cash.  Peggy is a real estate broker, expert on section 1031 of the tax code, as well as self-directed IRAs. Listen to Peggy as she shares her matchmaking strategies, including picking a niche, assessing its economic situation, and taking action.

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Real Estate Matchmaker – Interview With Peggy Beauregard

We have a special guest and I’m excited to introduce her to you. The reason I invited her is that she has an ingenious and clever way of profiting in real estate. What I love about it is that for most people, the challenge is either finding the money for investing or finding a great real estate investing opportunity. Our guest, Peggy Beauregard has found a way to profit from real estate without having to do either. She’s a real estate matchmaker. She matches cash to deals and deals to cash. Her company’s motto is, “We save you time because the deals are brought to us. You make money because the returns go to you.” It’s a win-win in helping the people who find the deals, but don’t have the money. She’s helping people with money who want to make their money grow and find deals.

She began her career in costuming and retail and she started investing in real estate in 1986. She has many years of being a real estate investor goddess. She’s a real estate broker and an expert on Section 1031 of the Tax Code. That’s the section that helps people avoid paying capital gains taxes. She’s also an expert in self-directed retirement accounts. She’s a financial freedom consultant who advises on passive investment with double-digit returns. She helps match investors to real estate so they can pay their mortgage, fund college, take great vacations, and retire without fear of outliving their money. In this episode, we’re going to share about how he became a real estate matchmaker and give you ladies some advice. Welcome, Peggy. I’m excited to have you.

Thank you. Monick. I’m excited to be on your show. You’re the most amazing lady that I have ever met that is enthusiastic about helping others create their financial freedom. You have many paths that you’ve created for that. I love the things you are doing. They’re interesting and a little off the cuff and I love off the cuff people. Thank you for inviting me.

Thank you for coming. Let’s start the beginning because you started in real estate investing way back in 1986. What got you started real estate investments?

I’ve been thinking about that. I’ve had a lot of coincidences that have come up. I was thinking about what was the one thing that got me interested and it was a book I read by Robert Allen called Nothing Down. My husband and I were driving in a car going on some trips. We were reading the book to each other as we switched driving during a long trip. We kept saying, “How could we do this?” I was already in real estate at the time, but I was an agent. If you could do it with no money and we have a little bit of savings, we could do something with that. That’s what sparked my interest. I was in real estate and I could look at what is called the MLS, which is Multiple Listing Service. I started looking at income properties in my neighborhood and I went, “We could buy some of these.” That’s what sparked the interest. I started looking at the income that would come in a duplex or triplex or something like that and thought, “All this extra money would help.” That’s how I got interested. I started moving forward on that.

Did you start with no money down? I’ve read that book. I was wondering, is that how you started your first property?

We put money down. I didn’t know anything back then. We did traditionally. We went into our savings account and put the money down.

That does the job and you start to cashflow. What was that first property that you bought?

The way we bought that first property was on a short sale. It was three units in a lot. We put the money down to a new loan. We first got paid off because it was low and the second had to take a big huge discount. That’s how we bought our second property. The first property we bought with no money down was from my husband’s father. He decided to move to Hemet and he owns two on a lot. He let us buy the property from him with whatever we could get out of a refinance. How’s that for an opportunity? We had to pay the royalty cost.

That’s a small price to pay to get a cashflowing property. Congrats. I love that. Fast forward to 2017, tell us a little bit about where you are in your real estate investing.

I did some 1031s, took our properties, and put them into bigger commercial properties. One of the things that I learned is, the way to make good returns is to invest in bigger properties that have more income. I did 1031 exchanges on the properties that we had and went into some commercial property. They were shopping centers, self-storage, and that kind of thing. Those properties all ended up getting sold because I was in partnerships. One of the lessons is to know your partners. They voted to sell the properties. We ended up selling those properties. I said, “I’ll cash it while the market was doing its crash and crunch.”

Do the due diligence on the deal to make sure that it would pass your investors. Share on X

When we came out of that market, I started investing with other people because they’re pounding the pavement, looking for the deals, and they’re given double-digit returns. I thought about it because I was looking for industrial parks with time. I said, “I’ve got to find a park, put the deal together, go find the money to help close the deal, do all the work after managing, and qualify for the loan.” All the things that the syndicator has to do. I said, “I don’t have to do that. I can invest my money with good people that are getting double-digit returns on apartments, self-storage, and other commercial deals.” I’m now a partner with other people.

You passively invested in some syndication. We’re active syndicators, but I also passively invest and that’s nice. It’s nice to have other people do the work. Tell me about the real estate matchmaking. How did you get into that?

I was in my mastermind course. I was on the hot seat and was talking about the frustrations I was having and finding the deal and bringing in the right partners. They started quizzing me and asking me about my background. I was telling them about all the people that I’ve met throughout my life that I’ve helped become financially free by referring them to other people that had deals. They could be the lender or be a partner not ever thinking that it could be an income base for me. They said, “Why aren’t you doing that, professionally?” I said, “I never thought of it.” It was that simple.

“I can get paid for this?”

Not only did I never get paid for it, I never even got to thank you from the syndicator. I get a call, “Do you have anybody else,” but never got, “Thanks. You’re great.” That’s what I do. I go out to real estate meetings. I meet people and talk to them about what they’re doing. If they’re syndicators and they’re looking for passive investors, I start working with them. They put the deal together and give me an executive plan. I make sure that it’s going to give double-digit returns and has add value because we like properties that grow. I don’t want to sit at 8% all my life. I want it to go up to 8%, 10%, 12% over the lifetime of the hold in. They have to add value, but I want what everybody else wants. It makes it simple. I looked at a lot of deals. Most of them aren’t worth putting out to other people because there’s something that’s high risk on it. It’s a long process that I go through. I have some videos on how to go through and my checklist. I’m a checklist girl.

I love checklists. You do your checklist. You have the due diligence on the deal to make sure that it would match your investors. How do you find the investors?

I have a database. I also go to real estate meetings and other meetings. I talked to them about what I do. If they’re interested and want to know more, they give me their cards and I follow up with them. I have some educational videos that I send out to them about what to do before you give anybody any of your money. I’m sending out what the deals are. I talk to people. “What do you want?” “How do you want it?” “When do you want it?” After that, I match the deal to that person. It’s important to know where that person is in their life. You can’t say, “I’ve got a deal. Do this deal.” You’ve got to know, are they young? How many years do they have left? Do they have kids? What are their money goals? It’s a money conversation to have. It’s the process of it. That the challenging part, the match up.

What’s the biggest challenge?

It’s matching the people to the proper deals. Matching them mentally so they’ll make the investment because people are leery when they’ve never invested in real estate before. They’ll spend six hours on Google researching a pair of shoes and their financial guy will say, “You should be in this,” and they go, “Okay.” It’s funny, but it’s true.

They spend more time planning their next vacation than they will for their future or retirement.

If they plan their vacation, they’re like, “We need to earn this much money this year so we can take this vacation.” That would be a shift in the conversation.

 

One of the things that I love about what you’re doing is, you’re taking great advantage of a resource that a lot of people have but don’t realize they could make a profit out of. That resource is relationships. In terms of real estate, I like to think that you need four main resources to get a deal done. You need money, time, expertise, and relationships. I love that you were able to profit through the relationships because you’re not doing the syndication, you don’t have to do the legal work, and you’re not finding the deal. You’re matchmaking and profiting from that. It’s an ingenious way to do it and you’re good at it.

I wanted to say that I meet great people.

For people who are out there who think, “I want to find all of the properties and I don’t have the money to invest.” You can invest your time, relationships, and profit that way. What advice would you have for a woman who’s starting out or back when you first read that book? Even before that, you were already in real estate as an agent, but somebody who’s green and starting out. What advice would you give her?

There’s lots of advice and people can do what they want with it. For those seeking to be in real estate, there’s income, agency, buy and hold, and syndication. Those are a few of the areas for women to go into real estate. There’s also passive investing. One, you need to know what they are. You have to understand that going into this business is not an easy business. It’s a complicated business. It probably takes about 10,000 hours for you to understand what you’re doing, all the quirky ins and outs like the legal complications, and the challenges of it. What I would advise for whoever is going into it is, pick a specific area and become an expert in that. Pick your niche and be coverage to one another.

Pick the niche, find a mentor, get into a mastermind group. Hang out with highly successful people. When somebody tells you that you can’t do it, find another friend. Find people that will support you in what you’re doing. When you hear around naysayers, get away from them. What I would say is, know what you want in your life and your wealth. How much do you need to put the kids through school and take vacations? Have a money number in mind. If you need $60,000 a year, go for the $60,000 a year in passive income or whatever your net is before taxes that you’re going to bring in. Have a number in line to pay the mortgage, feed kids, myself, utilities, and the car. What is the number you need? That’s the number you need to get by so you could have the life you want. More is not a number.

My philosophy is, go out in five years, look five years ahead and say, “I’m bringing in that $90,000 a year because I need that extra $30,000. The $60,000 covers me and I need $90,000.” Go out to $90,000 a year and look at the path that got you there. You’re looking backward and that’s how you create how you got it done, “I bought six houses over that five years. I raised money. My mom and my dad helped me with this. I had a couple of friends that were interested in being partners.” Create that path and collage, whatever, or something like that. Look back to see how you created that path. That’s not for people that want to be in real estate. When you have a goal and you are goal-oriented, it’s always good to know how you got there. That’s what dreaming is about. You create when you sleep and how you get to something through your dreams. I don’t know whether or not you saw dreams in your sleep, but I do. That’s two pieces of advice that I can give.

Pick your niche, after that, make sure you are aware all the time of what the economic situation is of whatever that particular niche is. If you’re in self-storage, is this a good time because there are all these foreclosures. People need a place to put their stuff, until they rent or buy or whatever they do next. If you’re going into apartments, is this a good area to do apartments? Do things go up there or are they steady? You go into the Midwest and you might get $3 a year more year after year. Understand what the economic market is and what the niches there. That’s super important. Never compare what your prices are or where you live to the price somewhere else. I have people that have gotten hurt. They left California and went, “$60,000 is cheap,” but $45,000 was where the market was.

It’s not about the price tag, it’s about your return of investment.

It’s about knowing what the market is. I’ve met them. They say, “Californians will come in and they’ll pay this because they’ll think it’s cheap.” People like that make me a little angry. That’s a lack of integrity and I never know what to say to people except, “I’m not sending anybody to you.”

When you talk about a niche, are you talking about asset class as a particular type of asset? Are you talking about income agency, buy and hold syndication, or passive investing? When you’re talking about a niche, are you talking about apartments versus self-storage versus industrial warehouses? What do you mean by niche?

Each person who wants to be in real estate doesn’t just go into real estate. Real estate has hundreds of different areas. You could be a developer, buy land, and put a map on it. That’s what a developer does. You can be a builder, take that map, put the streets in, and do all the utilities. That’s a niche. You call it a niche because a niche makes you rich. You can be a single-family flipper. You could find industrial parks and buy and hold them. You need to do one area. You don’t need 2, 3, or 4 areas. The other thing is, see what all the competition’s doing and don’t do it. Do something different. If everybody says single families, and a lot of people are in an apartment, who’s doing industrial parks? How about mobile homes? Is there a lot of competition on it? Pick one area and become that expert. That’s what I’m talking about.

Whoever is going into real estate, pick a specific area and become an expert in that. Share on X

That’s great advice.

People talk about all these big apartments, but you can be an expert on the 5 to 15 units. You don’t have to have an onsite manager in California and that’s a great way. You could buy that first income property. You sit there until it builds enough equity that you could take some money out of it and buy your house and let that apartment complex pay your mortgage on your house.

That’s one of the beauties of refi. It’s not a taxable event. People can pull out their money. It’s a great way, ladies, to leverage real estate. You get your apartment or property, it builds up some equity. You can pull out cash to pay any taxes on it. You can take that cash to buy something else. Rinse and repeat. That’s a beautiful way in which people can grow their portfolios without having without continually having to invest more money. That’s great advice.

That’s good.

We’re running towards the end. I want to make sure we have time for our trinities. You also said that you have a gift for our readers. What is the gift that you have and wanted to share?

For those who are interested in getting into the business themselves, I have a checklist. If you want to work in your area or want to go into another state where you don’t live, I have a demographics checklist. It gives you all the different websites to go to and all the things you need to check off to make sure that this is the area that works for you. It also tells you all the things you need to do to open escrow and make the purchase. It’s an 8 to 10-tab checklist because when I was in the business, I made checklists. I didn’t forget anything. It’s easy to forget one thing, to make a costly mistake in this business, and to sign a contract that says, “Things will expire without anything in writing,” and I’m against that. I need to have stuff in writing. I can’t have something go away and I didn’t get to be aware of it. Maybe you didn’t want that deal.

Having that checklist is invaluable.

Thank you. They could email [email protected] and put in the subject line Monick. This is a gift to your readers and I will send that checklist to them. I’ll send it on to you also because you invest in lots of areas.

Send her an email, put Monick in the subject line, and get yourself this checklist. This will save you time and money. You would want to get it. Thank you for that. That’s super generous, Peggy.

You’re welcome.

We’re getting towards the end. We’re going to end as we always do with a trinity, which is a celebration, gratitude, and a desire. What are you celebrating? What are you bragging about?

 

I was at a real estate meeting and I’ve been invited to join a Robert Allen Mastermind group.

The one who started you on your journey.

That’s right. Who could resist? I said, “Yes.” I’ve been invited to join that.

Well bragged.

It’s great. I’m so excited.

It’s gone full circle. I love it.

It is. Here’s what I’m grateful for. I wrote a few things down and we read Napoleon Hill’s, Grow Rich! With Peace of Mind. This is for all the people reading. “Know your own mind. Live your own life. Close the door on the past. Make your mind say yes. When you are free of fear, you are free to live. Succeed in being yourself. Be in a mastermind group. There is magic in belief. Be enthusiastic and you will grow rich with peace of mind.” Thank you for that. Let me tell you my one desire that I have is for everyone to be comfortable talking about money like it is a recipe.

It may not be a taboo topic to talk about it. It’s so shall your desire be or better than you can imagine. It’s a beautiful trinity.

Thank you for inviting me to the show. You’re such a lovely lady. I have fun with you.

Me too. I’m going to share my trinity quickly. I brag that I am going to Washington DC because my stepdaughter is graduating from college at George Washington University with honors. I brag that the whole family is going out there. We’re going to be there for days. After graduation, visit the Smithsonian’s and the mall. It’s going to be a lot of fun. I am grateful for my husband. He is my business partner and my partner in many things. He’s such a cheerleader and has been helpful to me as I’m finishing my book, which is another brag. I wrote a book, The Real Estate Investor Goddess Handbook. He’s been helpful and cheering me on in getting that done. I’m grateful for him. That is my trinity. Thank you, Peggy, for being here, and thank you all for reading. Always keep it juicy and keep it fun. We’ll catch you next time at the same time and place. Bye

Bye.

Important Links:

• Peggy Beauregard
• Nothing Down
• [email protected]
• Grow Rich! With Peace of Mind
• The Real Estate Investor Goddess Handbook