Journey to Multifamily Millions

Diversifying Assets to Stay Ahead in Any Real Estate Market with Jeremy LeMere, Ep 120

• Tim • Season 1 • Episode 120

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Welcome to the Journey to Multifamily Millions podcast, where we speak with professionals on financial topics!

Jeremy LeMere is the Managing Principal of Star Capital Management Group where he helps investors achieve above-average returns outside the stock market through real estate.

Jeremy talks about his real estate journey, beginning in middle school and progressing through several asset classes, such as single-family homes, multifamily apartments, and self-storage facilities. 

He highlights the need to build up funds to get true time independence, the adaptability that real estate investing provides, and the shift from active to more passive investment roles. 

Jeremy offers a thorough guide on creating and diversifying a real estate portfolio that is suited to individual and market circumstances. He also covers the BRRRR technique, difficulties encountered during the Great Recession, and the numerous advantages and factors of various asset classes.



Episode Topics

[01:26]  Meet our guest, Jeremy LeMere
[03:41] Scaling Up: From Duplexes to Multifamily
[05:46] Transition to Self Storage
[06:50] Diversifying with Commercial Properties
[07:19] The Importance of Passive Income
[28:12] Fund Structures and Investment Strategies
[28:52] What is one red flag every investor should look out for?
[29:29] What is a myth about the real estate business?
[31:13] Connecting with Jeremy



Notable Quotes

  • "We’ll move funds into a fund-of-funds model to focus on hard money lending and smaller syndications where others take the primary GP role." – Jeremy LeMere
  • "The Great Recession presented opportunities, but there was a snapback in terms of who was getting loans and how much, making capital very restrictive." – Tim Little
  • "Fix and flips can be a good way to build a lot of capital quickly, but the problem is the taxation." – Tim Little
  • "The self-directed IRA was its own entity, allowing us to double our assets and escape limitations banks placed on us as individuals." – Jeremy LeMere
  • "Flipping is almost like a job itself. Many transition into syndication or passive investing to achieve time freedom through capital." – Jeremy LeMere
  • "Self-storage appealed for its low-touch aspect; you can automate operations, save time, and focus on finding more assets or improving the existing product." – Tim Little



👉Connect with  Jeremy LeMere



👉 Connect with Tim

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[00:00:00] Jeremy LeMere: The first goal in real estate is to get to the point where you have Capital, right? Capital will set your true time freedom because you can redeploy that capital in a lot of different ways. You can put it back into real estate. You can put it into other types of business ventures. but in the end, most people are trying to deal with time freedom. And, being a syndicator or anything like that, or doing the flips or managing your own properties so that you can maximize your cashflow that you're getting back out of those assets. Those are all going to consume time. And ultimately to escape that, whether syndication, the rental portfolio, whatever it is, you need to get passive.

[00:01:16] Tim Little: Hello everyone and welcome to the journey to multifamily millions I'm your host founder and CEO of ZANA investments Tim Little and on today's show we have with us Jeremy lamere Jeremy is the managing principal of star capital management group where he helps investors achieve above average returns Outside the stock market through real estate Jeremy. Welcome to the show

[00:01:38] Jeremy LeMere: Thanks for having me, Tim. Look forward to the conversation.

[00:01:41] Tim Little: yeah, let's get into it. So i'm excited To hear about all the different asset types that you're invested in But first, please tell us about how you got started in real estate and how you got to where you are today

[00:01:53] Jeremy LeMere: Sure. Yeah, it's been a long road, actually. Real estate first touched me when I was probably in middle school, my parents had,they were in the passive income, I'll call it concept, but they actually never were passive. They were active landlords, had a couple duplexes that they bought over time, but blue collar, fix them yourselves and do all the dirty work, even mowing the grass. Interestingly, it was one of the first entrepreneurial aspects, exposures that I had, was related to the duplexes because my parents actually had us purchase the lawnmower and the weed eater and things like that and contracted with us, to do those activities way, way back then. A lot of years went by, my parents still own the duplexes. In fact, my mom, now fully retired, just recently sold the last one. But during that whole time, I went out and I got myself a corporate job, and did engineering work for 20 some years. And, ultimately towards the end of that career, I finally was able to settle down and not transfer around with my company anymore. And the great recession set us up in a really good position to say, Hey, Let's get into real estate, right? Product pricing had really pulled back significantly. cash flowing assets were readily available for purchase. So we started buying some of the, I'll call it B class, duplexes and things like that. With the great recession, things were pretty tight from a lending standpoint.So we really got cut off. Pretty early, we had to really go digging around with multiple lenders and stuff in order to try to find more money to borrow, from, from other lenders. Cause there, they were really restricted to, Hey, you're not a seasoned investor. So why don't you do this for a little while with one or two properties, and then somewhere down the road, we'll give you some more money when we know that you can handle this.So ultimately I made the transition, In order to raise more capital, we got to the point where we started going out and doing fix and flips, tied up some more of our time as we were getting seasoned and also to buy a better valued properties, with a little bit of a different twist on what we were borrowing money for, compared to just rentals.So we did some fix and flip stuff. Then we would BRRR a property, do another fix and flip, burr two or three properties, and then do a fix and flip, burr several more properties. We really reached the point, around probably six years in, five, six years in where we had a lot of individual houses, duplexes, and we wanted to get to scale, we wanted to get out of the full time job, and now with 10 to 12 properties, we You're right at that breaking point where it's almost too much work for a full time job and to do the activities and manage and everything. Because I didn't have a property management company. It's just what I didn't know at the time. We self managed everything and to this day we continue to self manage. We stood up our property management company in order to address that. But, we went down the path of getting into apartment buildings.And, we wanted to scale faster so we bought another 50 units of apartments. And larger multifamily properties. And all of that was organic, right? At that point, we were still purchasing stuff with our own money, redeploying the capital that we had built up in the assets that appreciated over time from 2011 12 on through 2018. And we just kept building that portfolio out. And around 2020, we really reached the point where, okay, I was able to leave my full time job if I wanted to, and had property management stuff starting to set up and put a team in place for that, virtual assistants to answer the phones. but we really saw ourselves needing to jump one more set bigger in order to have that management be very effective and properly leveraged. So at that point, multifamily Cap rates were really falling significantly. So we really, we migrated over to self storage and we wanted to stay in our backyard. So by going to another asset category, it gave us the opportunity to re leverage our property management in the same geography, while still finding assets that really made sense from a cashflow standpoint. So we actually went out, worked with another business partner And we started syndicating and this was the first kind of time that we actually went out and pulled in investor funds and raised the capital necessary along with some of my own capital to actually get into self storage. At that point we went out,just under a year, we went out and bought a thousand doors of self storage. And that, that gave us the scale in the storage side, which then left the property management company really in good shape to operate and have I'll call it a full work week with the staffing that we had set up. So we marched forward for a while with that. We continued to dabble in some additional apartment stuff. And, in reality,we started picking up some commercial properties. So some storefronts and things like that. we had acquired two or three doors of that with some of our self storage. So it gave us an exposure to that. And we continued to grow that element of it in our backyard. At that point I was able to leave my full time job and, ultimately,at the point now where we're hitting, I'll call it our life cycle on a standard syndication, coming up in the next year and a half. So we're looking at potentially exiting those deals if it's appropriate. And if I exit, I'm actually going to be working on, I'll call it scaling back because the reality with syndication. If you're a general partner in the syndication model and you've got active work to do. So for myself, it was a necessary step in order to, I'll call it to stay occupied, but I'm at the point now where financially I don't necessarily need to be contributing that time, to others,from an outside, general investor standpoint, and we're going to start scaling back some of our active businesses and starting to migrate ourselves to more passive. configuration. So we're going to exit some of those GP syndication structures, move those funds into a fund of funds model where we're actually able to do hard money lending, maybe some smaller syndication deals that we partner with someone else who is the primary. GP on the activity. And, we'll go from there and work with our investors that want to stick around,to get those returns, work on some other types of deals and with a little bit different perspective of time use. So that's the 15 year journey for myself in the real estate, since I started back in 2010,

[00:08:28] Tim Little: That's exactly how you know, like I would have done it had I known right and a lot of people are looking for that And it's such a great roadmap for how to get from step one to where you're at now Because it's it seems like you went to the next step in each progression because it made sense right or because there was a business necessity Behind it. So I'll start at the beginning of some of the stuff you were talking about You Sounds like you had a pretty unique advantage in that, your parents were doing the real estate thing. So you got exposure to it. and it sounds like they were savvier than you're letting on if they were hiring their own kids, because I've heard a lot of CPAs talk about that just in terms of these like niche tax advantages you could get and stuff from hiring your own children. You got to stay within the rules and the laws and everything.but I'm impressed with that already. my, my kids are six and nine right now, so I don't know how much work I could have them do, but,

[00:09:23] Jeremy LeMere: nine is good. Nine is good. They're paid. They're ready to be painters at nine.

[00:09:28] Tim Little: but if nothing else, just like your parents, I'm trying to at least expose my kids to this stuff. And then, Hey, maybe by the time they go to school, what I'm thinking about is. getting them a duplex and saying, Hey, you're in charge. You live on one side, rent out the other, whatever, to your friends.

[00:09:46] Jeremy LeMere: So that they're forced to learn business, they get all those lessons along the way. Cause I think that, they may hate me at first, but they'll definitely thank me down the road. Be careful with that one. I have friends that have done that and the reality is you can make the child become savvier than you think. They're going to stay living with you and they're going to rent both sides of it out.

[00:10:06] Tim Little: Yeah No. Yeah, why not live rent free? No, and then going on past that, you talked about obviously the great recession and a lot of bad things but it also presents opportunity Just like anything else. But you also mentioned the unique aspect of that, which was, Hey, there was all this supply as a result of what just happened, but at the same time, lenders had learned their lesson too. And there was a snapback in terms of who was getting loans, how much they were getting. And capital was very restrictive at that point. It sounds like you were still able to make it work. To an extent but you hit the end of your rope there at a certain point 

[00:10:45] Jeremy LeMere: exactly. And what's interesting, we hit that limit and we ultimately stepped aside and at that point, learned about, and this is early on in the days of self directed IRA activity. The internet kind of led the path to being able to learn more about alternative, asset classes IRAs even. And frankly, the folks that can actually put those packages together, cause there were way less. companies that handled that product at the time, as well as lenders. There were only two banks in the country that you could find that would lend to a self directed IRA. yes, it had a limit on the, the, normally you could get a 70 to 80 percent LTV. They were limited more at 50 50, but it was still an opportunity. And if you knew that appreciation and high cash flow was there, it was a great opportunity to package real estate within the self directed IRA. So we did that early on at that point too to help grow it because that was asset based lending. And it escaped the limitation on us as individuals about having more rental properties. based on the bank, looking at us as individuals owning our own real estate, right? They, the self directed IRA situation was its own entity doing the activity. And it gave us the ability to double down on the number of assets that we had for that short window of time.

[00:12:06] Tim Little: Yeah, that's interesting because I have a solo 401k and so I've used that for passive investing, right? Because I have like checkbook control, but I hadn't really thought about as much using it as an entity and holding the property Within it, but now that I think about it when I was in grad school, I was renting from this older couple And the apartment itself You Was part of their retirement account so i'm guessing that they had something similar and that's how they were able to do it.

[00:12:37] Jeremy LeMere: Sure. Yep. Yeah. And it's a great opportunity to get that appreciation in a bucket tax free. there's puts and takes on different aspects and different types of accounts. It's really important that you learn what those limitations are, at the right point in your investment career. Some things work well. At other points, you may start to dive back out of it and do other things, other strategies. For sure.

[00:12:59] Tim Little: Yeah. And you brought up burr in there and just for the people in the audience who might not be familiar with that method. Can you walk us through the burr method?

[00:13:08] Jeremy LeMere: Sure. So ultimately if you have the opportunity in my case, I had built up enough equity, I could actually buy the asset and I'd buy a discounted property, usually like a house that was substantially damaged by flooding or something like that. Get it at a pretty steep discount. take that property and do the rehab on it and get it prepared for the market. And then ultimately we would then start the rental process and put a tenant in it. And at that point we would go find refinance it. effectively I wasn't even, I had self financed it, but we refinance ourselves out of it and put a bank loan on it with the income that's coming in against it, and then just let it sit and pay down the equity and let it create the cashflow and we take our equity and move on to the next one and, effectively repeat it in the next asset. I

[00:13:57] Tim Little: Yep. Makes a lot of sense. and you hit on something with the fix and flips that I do hear a lot because so many people that are in real estate do it at some point. But what I've found is that they realize it may be a good opportunity to build, You know a lot of capital quickly, hopefully right if things work out the problem is one the taxation, right?

[00:14:18] Jeremy LeMere: It's taxed very heavily because of the short term duration on it, short term capital gains and then the other side of it is the amount of work that you need to put into it while you know flipping and fixing Actually all parts of it. And so it becomes almost like a job in and of itself So especially people who have a regular nine to five job They just find it to be too much at a certain point and then they tend to transition into either passive investing or active Investing on the syndication side of things where they can make their own hours mean, the first goal in real estate is to get to the point where you have Capital, right? Capital will set your true time freedom because you can redeploy that capital in a lot of different ways. You can put it back into real estate. You can put it into other types of business ventures. but in the end, most people are trying to deal with time freedom. And, being a syndicator or anything like that, or doing the flips or managing your own properties so that you can maximize your cashflow that you're getting back out of those assets. Those are all going to consume time. And ultimately to escape that, whether syndication, the rental portfolio, whatever it is, you need to get passive. So you need to find a way to, either, build the right portfolio so you can pay for the property manager. So you can actually escape that, but you're still going to manage the manager, or you have to, like you mentioned, get to the point where you're truly passive by investing with someone else who's doing what you used to do on the active side. They're responsible and can do the same thing for you and you be. I'll call a silent partner or the limited partner and actually just be able to receive the income from your investments. That, in the end, is the ultimate goal.

[00:16:08] Tim Little: Yeah, and I'm so glad you not only brought that up, but articulated it because I've said this before, but it's funny to me when I hear so many syndicators or fund to fund managers. And they act like they want to be doing this forever. And I will be the first person to say no, the ultimate goal is I want to be that LP. I want to be that limited partner who's in 10 or 20 deals and just, sitting back and getting all the benefits of real estate without having to do all the work up. You know throughout and granted to limited partners or should limited partners do some work? Absolutely vetting the deal vetting the partner or vetting the gp Sure, I'll grant that but in the grand scheme of things they're not sitting in on property management meetings They're not going to the asset manager meetings. They're not going to the GP meetings. You know all these things that are required legally and otherwise You for the deal for those general partners who are more active. So yes, amen one day I want to be on the beach shipping a mai tai while i'm heavily invested in multiple deals You know across a spectrum of different assets

[00:17:24] Jeremy LeMere: And I would say that what's really nice about the migration across the spectrum is that you're going to transition from a W 2 job. If you find an area, a niche within the real estate part that you can be focused on, that you can be passionate about, you'll be way more successful. Then I do this real estate thing because it's only a bridge to get to the other side. But one of the most important elements of it is flexibility and time freedom. If you're doing a nine to five job, five days a week. That is commitment every day for those five days. You might get some vacation there, right? Depending on how, how much, how veteran you are in the organization or what you can negotiate. The reality is you still have a pretty rigid schedule. When you get to the real estate side of it, you can start to be the boss, to start to structure your resources around. Being gone for long weekends all the time or extended vacations all the time, or, in my case, my wife is a teacher and my kids during the summer, it's an infinite amount of vacation possibilities, right? I'm the only one that may still have to touch my email from a remote location in order to keep things moving, but everybody else is free to do whatever. if you can get two, three hours in before they get up in the morning or, while they're getting ready for the day. You can have your, tailored back work schedule all taken care of, and you can keep everything moving and be where you want to be, do what you want to do, and still then when, when we come back to the normal school year, I can spend more time doing certain things or take care of that next flip that we purchased or, structured into a BRRRR strategy, have those things lined up and take care of them during those times when you're constrained and you're, from other family members,timeframes. To me, the flexibility that you get going from a W 2 into it to continue to generate income, build that, that nest egg that you need, then be able to go passive later on and have 100 percent time freedom and just deal with your investments from wherever you want to deal with them or hand them off to a responsible person that you can count on to deliver, for your retirement for the rest of your life at that point. 

[00:20:07] Tim Little: Yeah, exactly. It's a matter of you getting to set the dial of how active you want to be Based on your time freedom because you're not beholden to that. They better be in the office by 30 and not leave until for whatever the case may be. Let's talk about some of the different asset types because you mentioned this Evolution and it's not to say that you dropped one in favor of the other It sounds like you're doing all concurrently So talk to me about what,I think you talked about what prompted the shift to self storage, but what benefits did you see in self storage that you weren't, seeing in multifamily at that time?

[00:20:50] Jeremy LeMere: Sure, there's two parts, two really big parts to this. One is you have to be able to sleep at night, right? And to come from a world where you haven't done real estate and make some folks get into this and they haven't even owned their first home, right? Their first investment is a rental property. it's not their house. and that's fair because. At certain times, like maybe right now, it's better off renting and renting from yourself, right? With the cost of a home and the payment and what is the better value that, that, that moves around over time. But ultimately, I had already owned a home, had done renovation stuff on properties and come from a background that is technically oriented. So hands on for me, it was normal. So I was comfortable with that. So that was my entry point. And ultimately. It was, how do we do more properties? It was always a fear of what you don't know and get enough knowledge and education, get a peer group that you can bounce ideas and concepts off of, and you can continue to grow in your real estate endeavors and be comfortable. So you can sleep at night because once you can't sleep at night, your health is going to deteriorate and there's lots of problems, right? And you have to figure out how to grow your portfolio. And maintain that stability that everything, because everything will fall apart around you if you don't have that comfort level. Once you have that comfort level, then it's about what's, where are the opportunities. And for myself, high cash flow and single family, which was very accessible. In the great recession, then it went to houses. We're starting to get priced out of the range for cashflow. So it was like head over to multifamily, multifamily move down in the cap rate situation, and it got to the point where it was like, the next opportune asset in my market that I was comfortable with was self storage. How much different could it be? Yeah, there's more doors and things like that, but it's less touch-points. There's no toilets and things like that. So we entered into that, learned our processes that we've put in place after, observing and monitoring and learning from around us, put those things into place, got a stable process. We ran, ran our operations really well. Over the year and a half after we started into self storage, those cap rates started to compress substantially and drop right down to where self or sorry, where multifamily was. So at that point we were like, we can buy the opportune properties. But we're not going to be out there wholesale buying, buying self storage because we're not getting the returns that we used to. We're not going to deliver to the investors what we were before. So if we can't find the right asset that has rental increases or something like that, that can drive the value. It wasn't going to provide what we wanted for the additional work that it was going to create. So we started migrating into some commercial assets where we could find the right properties. And the one thing that we found with commercial properties is we always buy in a preferred area or location because commercial properties can go vacant, based on the economy. There's not a necessity for a business to exist during a slow economy. People have to live somewhere in houses and apartments and things like that during a slow economy. They may double up in some properties and things like that.

[00:23:59] Tim Little: yeah.

[00:24:00] Jeremy LeMere: But that's relatively insignificant compared to the number of businesses that can evaporate when dollars disappear. so we bought some commercial assets in, call it high traffic areas along highways and things like that, that would stay as a preeminent location just because of the advertising that comes from the traffic. So we bought some assets there. We stabilized our portfolio and we've been steady now, with our portfolio, just Looking for the, with interest rate rises, now we're coming to a term of a whole period and we're trying to figure out is it time to exit? If it is, we'll redeploy those assets in another place.frankly, we have yet to identify what that is because we don't know where interest rates really are going to settle out. We'll cross that bridge and we'll make those decisions. We continue to monitor the whole market.that's the progression that we've been going through those assets or

[00:24:54] Tim Little: a lot of sense. And I think the thing too is you've been nimble and being able to move from asset to asset, which just gives you more flexibility in deploying that capital that you have. Because,if your respective asset market, just, if there's always deals, people will say there's always deals to be found, But when it takes a year to find the right deal as opposed to a month you don't want that capital sitting around and so maybe you look at those other assets I have not gone into self storage, but I definitely see how there's benefits there the low touch aspect, right? It's very low, not management intensive, I guess is the right way to put it which is really attractive, because you can automate things in a way that saves your time and allows you to find more assets or, improve the product, get more units rented, et cetera. And then they just have, different benefits from an investment standpoint to, from the passive investors standpoint, it might be different hold times for those different types of assets, especially with something like commercial, where, you, you might have a 10 year triple net lease, which is a completely different, investment picture compared to I don't know, a five year holds value add multifamily for example.

[00:26:15] Jeremy LeMere: So it, I think it provides choices and options if you have, passive investors as well to bring in different types of investors, because ultimately no one should be investing in something like that. Doesn't meet their investing goals. And if you deal in one product, that's okay, right? you're the expert in that product But you're going to be limited to those investors who want those returns or that risk profile, whatever it may be the term of the investment. Yeah. I, we've overlapped all of those assets and I just, I just sold the last single family house. The last two, just about four months ago as we've exited, real estate has peaked and like single family homes are at this resale level. It's starting to stagnate a little bit and we finally moved out of those assets and I effectively moved the money into private money lending activities in the short term. Where we can build, still, generate the revenue that we want to generate or return at a pretty good clip, but stay very liquid for wherever things start to move around here over the next year and a half. So we'll stay in that mode, relatively liquid. We'll continue to evaluate. The positions that we have in our syndication activities and when the right time might be to exit that, but we'll just monitor what, what's out there to, to where we go to next. And it may be back into an asset class if there's a change in structure, or we may move into a more concentrated asset class, if it's appropriate going forward.

[00:27:49] Tim Little: Yeah, and if you could quickly break it down to me if i'm the passive investor and i'm looking at You know the offerings that you have How is my money being invested because you just talked about it being a fund am I investing in a fund that is associated with a specific deal or is it a specific asset or what does that look like from the passive investor's perspective?

[00:28:12] Jeremy LeMere: Sure, when we do syndication, it is specific to a property or a specific deal. It could be a bundle. We could buy multiple assets. In one case, our syndication has four different self storage unit sites on it, or I'm sorry, spread across the city, within it. In some cases, it may be a diverse set of properties. But, generally speaking, those are, one off purchases, one time in one time out, we're now working more in a structure after several syndications, there's a cost to that structure. So we're actually now starting to work under the fund to funds structure where we're actually, creating the documentation set one time, but then we do individual offerings. For different types of investments that are within that fund. And individuals can elect to be in very specific ones and garner the return of that specific element. So let's say we want to do a private money loan, and you're in the fund. You can elect to, to put your funds into that private money loan. And you will get the returns from that private money loan. Obviously it bears the risk of only that private money loan, but generally speaking, you could also elect to go into five different ones if you wanted to over a period of time and kind of ladder, the ins and outs of those funds. So all of those things can become options. and there's different ways to structure them, but our particular one affords us the opportunity to do a variety of different asset classes all within there, with very low cost. I'll call it very low friction from the cost of establishment of each of those forward looking investment opportunities.

[00:29:52] Tim Little: Nice. Yeah. That seems like, if I'm the investor, right? Like it gives me the opportunity to diversify if I want to get into different asset types that you offer, but also, it gives me a choice, which a lot of people like. I think that's the concern that some investors have with,I guess we'll call 'em blind funds. you say some people say hey, we will invest in a ground up development class projects. That's what we will invest in. You're not choosing the project, we're just telling you if you invest your money, know that's what it's going to go into. And these will be your general returns. And some people, I guess understandably, are uncomfortable with that because they want to be able to vet each deal as it comes along on its, on its merits, and invest that way. Okay. So that's interesting and I've heard of the type of fun that you're talking about but it's not as common yet. I don't think so It's interesting to see

[00:30:50] Jeremy LeMere: Yeah, and I agree, I come from the background, it's hard to do due diligence if you don't know what you're putting it into. you really are trusting the operator or the general partnership in identifying and vetting those opportunities because you will not know what they are ahead of time. All you know is it's an asset class. And the best you can think is I'm market timing in a particular investment class. And it is an opportune time and they'll probably do well beyond that. You're trusting the operator to, to do all of that underwriting and deliver on it.

[00:31:27] Tim Little: Yeah, that gets tricky. All right. Jeremy, it is time to go into the turbo round. So if you're ready, I'm going to ask you three questions that I ask every guest that I have on the show. And I just asked for a quick, honest answer. Are you ready?

[00:31:41] Jeremy LeMere: Sure. Yep.

[00:31:42] Tim Little: All right. First question. What is one red flag? Every investor should look out for,

[00:31:47] Jeremy LeMere: I would say cheap real estate. It's usually cheap for real, for a reason. And,

[00:31:53] Tim Little: Yeah.

[00:31:54] Jeremy LeMere: due diligence, And that, and being able to identify what is that value and is it really a value. Cause shiny objects, best prices or stuff like that. Isn't always the indicator of where your best value is for your investment.

[00:32:08] Tim Little: Yep. All right. What is a myth about this business that you would like to set straight?

[00:32:13] Jeremy LeMere: I think it's, having to be active in it. I started in the whole process thinking everything had to be hands on. That is a myth. Now, if you want to be hands off, you need to be very knowledgeable so you know the proper place to invest in, because there's ample places to put funds and you can lose all of those funds. So you need to at least become educated enough. In order to invest in the right places, you don't necessarily have to be active to be in real estate and to learn it and get through it and become wealthy from it.

[00:32:46] Tim Little: Yeah, absolutely. All right. Final question. What does success look like to you?

[00:32:51] Jeremy LeMere: For me, it's,getting the flexible time freedom that comes with real estate at the right scale, working your way through the W2 transition into active real estate, and having some flexibility. And then eventually building your wealth. And with the idea that you can move your investors on and you can become the passive investor and have that time freedom and do as much work as you want to do within real estate. But generally speaking, there's more than enough activity just in doing the due diligence for your own investments that when you get to the right size, I believe that you can be a hundred percent passive. investor and still stay close enough to the market, just managing your own investment portfolio. And that's where I want to be, where I'm targeting getting to now. I'm at the point where I can achieve that. I just have to migrate my portfolio to the performance of, my time freedom, to that level of exciting syndication activities that we're currently active in. So that's my next step over the next two to three years. And the thing about real estate is it's not like the stock market where you just can't go push the sell button on the next open market day. This is a three to five year strategy ins and outs of everything, because you can lose significant amounts of money if you must exit when you don't want to exit. So exiting at the right time,and having that plan and a migration and working towards those things and in steps, it's the best way to get into it without becoming overwhelmed. And it's the only successful way to really exit it, without having a detriment of sale values or something like that. Fire sales.

[00:34:32] Tim Little: Yeah, I'm right. I'm right there with you. I'm looking forward to the day when I can transition into limited partner status on my terms. but as you said, it's all about timing. You definitely don't want to have to sell when it's not the time to sell. All right, Jeremy. Hey, this has been awesome. I really enjoyed the conversation. Please tell the listeners how they can get ahold of you and if there's anything else that you'd like to share with them

[00:34:56] Jeremy LeMere: Sure. you can reach out to me. I'm up in the Wisconsin area. So if you're in this market or in the greater area, Feel free to reach out to me anywhere in the country. I'm always following real estate all over the country for the different markets, and you can reach me at Jeremy@lemere.Com pretty straightforward. First name at last name. com. And, you can always visit starCMG.Com,in, hop on our investor side and follow us along there. And if you want to invest in our fund. And, being the passive side, we're certainly open to working with folks on that side too.

[00:35:30] Tim Little: All right. We'll have all that information in the show notes jeremy Thanks again for coming on and I look forward to seeing you continue to do big things on your journey to multifamily millions

[00:35:41] Jeremy LeMere: Super. Thanks, Tim, for having me.

 


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TIM LITTLE (FOUNDER/ CEO)

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