Growth & Grace

Announcer 0:00
This is a Kun V studios original program.

Wesley Knight 0:03
The following program is underwritten by Crawford management group, Harris capital Mortgage Group, Tiffany Lloyd consulting and Chris glow, and does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 Jasmine Moore, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education even

Music 0:21
better than I was the last time, baby, we back,

Tiffani Lloyd 0:38
we back and we back and we back. Are we back and we back and we back? Hello, hello. Hello, Vegas. How's everybody doing

Leaha Crawford 0:50
after Thanksgiving?

Tiffani Lloyd 0:51
It it's it is almost another year. Y'all

Leaha Crawford 0:55
Almost there, almost there. But today we got our other co host is back. Yeah, yeah, he's back here for his monthly visit. So just to check in with us, just to see what's going on, just

Lamont Harris 1:04
to check in, just

Leaha Crawford 1:05
to check in, just check in, you're

Tiffani Lloyd 1:06
tuned in to growth and Grace today with Leah Crawford and Tiffany Lloyd and

Lamont Harris 1:12
Lamont Harris. Hey, Mr. Harris. Hey, hey. How you doing? I'm well, how

Leaha Crawford 1:16
y'all I'm amazing. And also, we got Mr. Miss Morgan here with us. Hi, Morgan. Hello. How you doing? Well, all right, so I'm glad you are here because you asked the question off air, and I want you to ask that question again because you were talking about something you wanted to do. Yeah. Um,

Morgan 1:35
so I'm 25 um, and figuring out life is really figuring out what I can invest myself in and how I can build long term. So I'm wondering, how do I get started investing? And we were specifically talking about in real estate. So I don't want to. I don't know if I have an interest in being in real estate, but I do know that I want to be able to invest in properties to um, most likely rent them out or anything. But you guys were telling me that I should know real estate. So where should I get started? From there,

Leaha Crawford 2:10
we gonna turn that to you. Lamont, you see we turned

over and looked at you. How do we begin so?

Lamont Harris 2:16
So, first off, great question, Morgan, um, I'm gonna start with number one. I love the fact that you're 25 right? And what I love most about you being 2525 is when I first learned this industry, right? So, so the real estate and mortgage industry I was exposed to at 25 right? So I think the first question that I would have for you, when you talk about wanting to invest, I would ask number one that you define your investment goals, right? I think that's first, right? And what I mean when I say that, I mean that you ask yourself some really important questions. Like, one of those questions is like, are you looking for passive income, right? Is that what you're looking for, or you're looking for long term appreciation, or are you looking for a combination of both? Right? That's the first question that I would ask you to ask yourself. The second question that I probably would have you ask yourself is like, how much risk are you actually willing to take? That's an important question, because people don't ask themselves that question until you're working alongside someone else who has a project and they say, Hey, listen, I need an investor for this project. We're looking for X amount of dollars, and you can expect X amount of return, right? But if you hadn't asked yourself the question already, in terms of of actual risk that you're actually willing to take, and you're okay with, you might be okay with, Hey, I'm okay with, this is my first deal ever in life. I'm not really willing to put more than $5,000 into this, right? And all I'm looking for out of it is x, y, z, right? But you need to clearly define that up front before anything else. I do think what we were talking about with you off air was was really important, and that was learning real estate right now, learning real estate can come, you know, it could come in a number of different ways. I think the easiest way to learn is if you actually took a class to become a real estate professional, even if you never went through with actually getting a license. That's fine, but I think it's important to have that same knowledge that a real estate professional would have, right? So I think, educating yourself so that you're well informed when individuals are using whether it's something as simple as terminology in your midst, so that you don't feel lost, or if it's actually a potential transaction that they're presenting you with, and they're presenting it in a way, shape or form, that that's not it's not. Presented, I guess, more or less in a in an elementary form enough for you to be able to understand without having to know all the real estate terms, if that makes sense, right? So I think that's important, right. But, you know, I think that's step one, right? The step one is defining your investment goal, right? And part of that is asking yourself some of those key questions. And then I think, from that point on, right, we talk about choosing a strategy. Investors do everything from fix and flips to buy and hold, long, start, long, long term real estate. You know, those are some of the things that they're looking at when it comes to strategy. But that, that second part is educating yourself, right? And then the third, I think, is getting your finances actually in order, right, so that you can make that transition.

Tiffani Lloyd 5:47
So, education 101, what does that look like? Education 101,

Lamont Harris 5:51
could look it could be as simple as aligning yourself with a mentor, right, who's already gone down the path that you're trying to go down. But in choosing a mentor, I would choose someone that's like minded and has same values, right number one, but also share similar belief systems in terms of what you're looking to accomplish. And that's why I think it's so important of actually identifying where you're going to go with this, right? Are you going to be one of those investors that's looking because looking because I've got investor friends. All they do is fix and flips. They don't care about anything else. They're not interested in being a landlord. I've got other people who are like me in the sense that I only believe I don't like fix and flips. I only believe in buying and holding real estate, and I do believe in being a landlord, because I believe people are always gonna need, what a place. They are always gonna need a place to stay over their head. That's it. Yeah, right. And when, when people don't have money for anything else, they gotta scrape up the money just go to have somewhere to go to sleep.

Tiffani Lloyd 6:52
That is very true. Lamont, very, very true. So, 101, okay, so what if, like, Do you have any idea, like, what you want, where you would want to start?

Morgan 7:07
So defining my investment goal, I know that I want passive income. I want it long term. Okay, that kind of go

Leaha Crawford 7:13
together. They kind of go together. So

Morgan 7:18
I know that right now where I'm at in life. I'm not really settled on a place, one just place state. So it's like, how can I create an investment in one city or one state that can allow me to have that passive income, to move around and have that freedom that I'm desiring?

Lamont Harris 7:35
I think there's two answers to that. I think the first is in order to to really guide you on that, the first thing that I would say is define how much you're willing to put into it, right so that that monetary investment that you're looking to make that initial no matter how small it might seem to some or how great it might seem to others, I need you to clearly define that, because then where we look in the US is going to be based off of where you're at in terms of what you're comfortable spending, right? Because, because we know that buying homes in Las Vegas is a lot different than buying homes in Birmingham, Alabama or Detroit, Michigan or Memphis, Tennessee, right? We know that that market, those markets there, it looks, they look completely different. But what they do is they allow for people that maybe I'm not ready to buy real estate in Los Angeles, but I sure can buy some real estate in Memphis, right? So maybe Memphis is where I start. I use my cash flow from Memphis so that I can make moves in LA Gotcha.

Leaha Crawford 8:40
But it's the plan. I know. One place to start is market research. You gotta have the data. You gotta have the data. And when you pull the data, and the data is public information, and there are websites out there that have the public information, I can share one with you. You don't have the education, but you don't have the education and the mentor absolutely needed. Actually, it was a mentor group that showed us the data from the five best markets. And Las Vegas is one of those markets. Yeah,

Lamont Harris 9:09
you were, you were mentioning a few moments ago about the different real estate meetup groups that we have here in the city. And

Leaha Crawford 9:16
it might be just going to those absolutely and networking with professionals and listen, or just listening, passive conversation, just listening, and really, you know, taking notes. And, okay, so they did this. They did that because what you want to do is you want to position yourself to win, right? But the first thing to start, you got to have a credit to start, because credit is important when you're starting, when you start investing in real estate and money. So having a job saving some money so that you can start, because a lot of people start with buying, purchasing their first home, that's how they start, because that home builds equity, and then you use that equity to make other. Moves. That's just one strategy,

Tiffani Lloyd 10:03
but start, and also because you are transitioning, and say you were to obtain a gift, you know, a monetary value, and you're working, and it's not, or you just have your own business, and it's not a, you know, an average business where you're getting a 1040 or whatever, don't allow that to stop you. There are alternative ways to invest with not looking at it strategic. I learned that from Lamont and you're and the gentleman that was here before, because a lot of time we allow our ignorance to stop us because we think, Well, I can't do it because it does not look like the typical way of existing or earning my money. So just don't let that stop you. If you have alternative ways of earning money, that's why it's important to work with someone who's who knows the business, because they can actually direct you on how to invest alternatively. Yeah,

Lamont Harris 10:58
because, I mean, they're, they're, you know, to Tiffany's point, there's, there's opportunities to become an investor without even actually having a job, right? So, so we do not need people, right? And I'm speaking specifically from the finance standpoint. We don't need people to necessarily be employed. We don't necessarily need people to have tax returns. In order to become an investor, you can become an investor without those things. Do those things help? Yes, well, of course they help. But there are opportunities out there. If you don't have them, don't feel like the door has been shut in your face, right? And you don't have a chance. But at the

Leaha Crawford 11:38
end of the day, you still do have access to capital. Absolutely, no matter what it is, you need access to capital, absolutely, I'm just

Morgan 11:43
now getting back on the financial train of like, so I have a financial advisor right now, or she's a coach, basically, and she's helping me, like, reorganize all of my finances to just be able to have a good starting point. And the one thing that she's asking me is really to figure out what I want like, and that's the big goal of the conversation, like, how can I create those passive incomes that I could give me lasting security? Basically,

Leaha Crawford 12:13
I love that. Well, you know what? It's a game called Cash Flow. It's a game called cash flow. And in the I'm big on board games, because if you start to train your mind to think a certain way, so you look at things differently, where somebody where somebody else, sees

tragedy, you see opportunity, you

Lamont Harris 12:31
know, the best game ever in life. It

Leaha Crawford 12:33
was well, monopoly was so cash flow actually takes some of the concepts from monopoly, and it looks at it a different way, because it's, um, based off of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki book. And you basically have to go through and you get this job, and then you get these opportunities that come up. Like, you know, you had the opportunity with your friend, right? And you have to make a decision on whether or not you have the money to invest in this opportunity, sure, and if you have the money, an idea is to get your passive income more than your active income, so that you can quit your job, right? And you work towards this goal in this game, and you watch some people go bankrupt. I watch a board game. It's a board game talking about, yeah. It's called Cash No, it's a game. It's a board game. It's a board game called cash flow. And I used to play it a lot, and I stopped playing. I started. I used to play it a lot when I long time ago. We'll keep that at that.

Tiffani Lloyd 13:36
How many players? Does it need

Leaha Crawford 13:37
only two. Okay, you only need two. You only need two. Okay. And actually, I said I was gonna start playing it with Nasir, because Nasir wants to invest in real estate, and he's been saying that since he was about six, that he wants to invest in real estate. Of course,

Leaha & Tiffani 13:51
of course he does in units, and of course he does cash,

Leaha Crawford 13:56
but wanting to do that, but also being in position to do that, because the biggest thing is, my biggest fear was being able to invest and if I lose, am I going to be okay if I lose, even though you never want to, right? But am I okay if I lose? So when I'm looking at different markets, I'm looking at the weather patterns. I'm looking at, can that place be insured? You know, what if something happens? Plan for the worst, hoping for the best, but always being optimistic. And you know, like, hey, it's gonna come and it's gonna it's gonna be great. And when I tell you Lamont is correct, when you're looking at the different markets, barriers to entry in Detroit, in in Michigan, in Tennessee down south is a lot different from the west coast, but also their creative ways to even do it here. And we can talk about, you know, wholesaling, which we didn't talk about, that's another option, right? Wholesaling. That's why he said, Go to the different groups and learn, yeah, because wholesaling is. Basically you're paying for advertising.

Tiffani Lloyd 15:01
Speaking of advertising, how does Morgan get in touch with you?

Lamont Harris 15:06
Yeah. So no, Morgan, you can get in touch with me by reaching out on the company's website or giving me a call. So that website is www dot Harris, capital, and that's c, a, p, i, t, a l, mortgage.com Again, that's w, w, w, dot Harris, capital, c, a, p, i, t, a l, mortgage.com or you can reach out to me directly and skip all the middlemen and just call me directly at 925-255-3621, say that again. 925-255-3621,

Leaha Crawford 15:42
I have a question for you, though, yes, a different question. Something totally different, about mortgages. If someone wanted to get a reverse mortgage, okay, and they have a current mortgage on their home, okay, can they get one? So

Lamont Harris 15:53
that's a good question. I'm gonna step out there and I'm gonna say, just based off of my knowledge, I'm gonna say no, I'm gonna fact check myself right now, but I don't think so, and that's because when an individual gets a reverse mortgage, number one, they have to be living in the home,

Leaha Crawford 16:12
okay? So they're living in the home, but there's a but there's a mortgage on a home,

Lamont Harris 16:15
correct? There? When they're living in the home and they do a reverse, the whole purpose of the reverse is the freedom of that mortgage, right? So, so there won't be any mortgage payments on the home.

Leaha Crawford 16:26
I understand that, but if the say the house is worth, let's call it 100,000 and they probably owe about $20,000 on a house, but they want to get a reverse mortgage. Can they then, because the reverse mortgage normally, they pull the equity out correct and pay off all the debt, or whatever, and then they live rent. I mean, the mortgage is less than 80% LTV,

Lamont Harris 16:48
so are you asking me, Can they get a secondary mortgage on another home?

Leaha Crawford 16:53
This is their main home. Okay, they want to get a reverse mortgage. They have a regular loan now, but they want to come out of that and get it. They're old enough. They just want

Lamont Harris 17:01
to get it. They can come out. I didn't come out and get a reverse mortgage on their current home, on the current home. Yeah, on the primary, on the primary, right? That's your question. Yes. Oh, the answer to that is yes, okay, okay, I misunderstood your question. You thought

Leaha Crawford 17:12
I'm as an investor. You gotta invest? No, no, I'm talking about this is my primary residence. Yes, I live here, yes. And I am older, I want to retire, yes,

Lamont Harris 17:21
and you have a mortgage Currently, I have a mortgage currently, and you like to get out of that and get into a reverse So, yeah, absolutely, okay, absolutely. It's done every

Leaha Crawford 17:29
day. I keep every people ask the professional Stop telling me what somebody else said. Okay, got it. That's why you want to have good people around you that know the industry,

Tiffani Lloyd 17:37
right, and he's a good one to have that knows the industry, and he has opportunities like, if you decided you wanted to work within the industry. Oh,

Lamont Harris 17:46
yeah, don't get me started on that. Oh, let's go. So, so, so listen, absolutely right. So here's something really, really neat. So last week I'm going to share something with you guys live on layer air, right? So last week, I'm in Pontiac, Michigan. I'm at United Wholesale mortgage, which is the largest wholesale lender in the United States. That company is owned by Matt ishby. And Matt ishby, President, CEO of United Wholesale mortgage, also owner of the Phoenix Suns and Phoenix Mercury. He actually invited us out. He sponsored the launch of we launched something called the Black mortgage professional Alliance, the B M P a. The purpose of the B M P a is to provide opportunity for individuals that look like you and I in the mortgage space, and give us an opportunity to be able to help go back into communities. Because we talked about this a few months ago. We talked about bridging the gap of home ownership and black and brown communities, and we talked one of the things that that separates those communities, and in my opinion, was that there was a lot of fear when it came to buying a home, and then there was a lack of education, yes, and we talked, one of the ways that we could help with that education is if we had more folks that looked like those folks in those communities, educating and going out and actually advocating on their behalf to show them Hey, buying a home is not as difficult as you may have thought it was, let's create opportunities for blacks and mortgage number one, but number two, let's create opportunity for all of us, regardless of race. But let's create opportunity so there's an even playing field when it comes to I want to buy a home, but I'm afraid, because I don't think I'll qualify, right? So we wanted to make it really, really. We wanted to really level the playing field, if you will. And so I want to give a huge shout out to Matt ishba and UWM for seeing that vision, because they were huge. We flew out 50 mortgage professionals. Professionals and real estate professionals from across the country to go out to be a part of this inaugural launch. So super excited about that, because I believe only good things are going to come out of this. Because I think it goes back to what you were talking about when we were talking about investing educating. It goes back to educating, right? So educating is everything. But I'll be honest, when I was introduced to this business, Morgan, at 25 I knew nothing about mortgage. I didn't even know what a mortgage was. I'd heard the term 1000 times, but I had no clue as to what it was, and so it started for me at 25 so now my passion is like, hey, if it started for me at 25 How many can I go help before they get 25 right? Can I go grab them at 1819, 2021, and expose them to this entire world? Because when we talk about real estate to most people, most people think the end all be, all is a real estate agent. They don't know anything about the profession, mortgage, mortgage title. What's a title agent? What's an escrow officer? They have no clue. And so that's where we come in. We come in by saying, Hey, listen, if you're at least 18 years old, we want to educate you. But not only that, we want to create opportunity for you. Right back in the day when we were coming up, the only thing that we had was, hey, if you didn't go to college, Mom and Daddy said, go to trade school, right? Well, now, outside of picking up and going to trade school, this is a trade. It always was a trade, though, always was a trade, always was a trade, but it's one that people really value today, right,

Leaha Crawford 21:39
right, but I love the education part, because I think that a lot of times the fear of home ownership is lack of education, absolutely, and like we talked about it earlier, you're going to you have to pay to live somewhere so and cost of rents are getting kind of expensive here now, even for a simple home, and your first home might not be your dream home, Right? First property might not be the dream property. That's it, but you build to it, right? You build to it, but you got to see it first. Because I believe in creating a vision, creating a vision of what you want, and knowing what the goal is, and then you go backwards and move the steps to get there. And the vision can change. The vision can change. It can get bigger, you know? Because when I first started, I just want, I knew I wanted to buy a house. I didn't know what type of house I didn't have. It wasn't clear. But when it became clear, it happened

Tiffani Lloyd 22:30
the what is the greenhouse?

Leaha Crawford 22:34
No, actually, I got another one now, baby, I'm moving on to, yeah, the greenhouse. The greenhouse, well, it wasn't green, it wasn't green, but it's, that's part of the transition, because it's getting to where it needs to be. Yeah, I knew I need I know I need to live somewhere. What are your thoughts? What you think I'm just

Morgan 22:49
taking

Leaha Crawford 22:52
it all in. But what I can say is, you want to start somewhere. You want to start somewhere. And the start might be contacting Lamont, sitting down, going to some meetups, and understanding that you don't know anything. So you're like a blank slate, which is beautiful, which is beautiful, because now and then, as you're going through and you're talking to people, and you might talk to 10 different people, get 10 different answers to the same question, that's okay, and you just figure out, because everybody's path was different. So they might have had different challenges, and they see something different. But you know, you want to get to passive income. So learning about, how do I get to the money to purchase a property with the passive income? What do I need to have in place? Yeah, and then you work backwards. You have the financial advisor that's good, because somebody is coaching you, helping you get to the goal, you get the mentor that is sitting there with you, and you know, hey, we're pouring into you. You're gonna win.

Tiffani Lloyd 23:48
All that too is win

Leaha Crawford 23:49
no matter what, no matter what. This

Tiffani Lloyd 23:53
has been a great conversation, guys. Oh, and you've been listening to growth and grace with Leah Crawford, Tiffany Lloyd

Lamont Harris 24:01
and Lamont Harris,

Tiffani Lloyd 24:02
and we got Miss Morgan Lloyd in the house, Morgan, Miss Morgan.

Leaha Crawford 24:06
I think it was, I think it was good. So let's go over it again. You want to develop, define your investment goals. What else was it? Choose your strategy and figure out your financing, and become educated, yeah. But that's yeah, when you define it, you want to become educated. You

Tiffani Lloyd 24:23
want the education, and you want to find the perfect fit. I shouldn't say perfect. Nothing's perfect. The right fit, yeah, the right the right fit mentor, because I kind of feel like Lamont would be a great mentor for you. He has a vibe. You have a vibe. Vibe. I just think he's very educated and he knows his business, so you know talking to figure out what you want to do. He's a great resource to have. Just a great starting point.

Leaha Crawford 24:51
Great starting point probably be in contact. And the good thing is, no matter where you are, telephones work. Telephones work. There's no. Longer. You know the remember back in the day when you had to pay a minute, pay per minute, pay per minute. It was more expensive during the day than it was at night. So you call people at

Tiffani Lloyd 25:09
the seven o'clock. So we're just

Morgan 25:11
talking about how we should just get a landline, yeah, bring it back home. People can't contact us unless we at the house. We

Tiffani Lloyd 25:17
were talking about how when they first became big out here, I don't know when they became big, where y'all were, but I remember the kids were toddlers. Shaquan and I, we refused to get um, cell phones. We were like, they wanted to connect with us. They can wait till we get home. There's no way these people are addicted to this thing. Now look at us. Listen

Lamont Harris 25:34
The I remember. Listen, since y'all want to go back, I remember the beeper. Not well before the beep well, not app, not before the beeper, but when, when we had the old school answer machines, before Verizon and all them, got creative with the answer machines, where you could call in and listen to the voicemail, oh,

Leaha Crawford 25:51
you had to go home.

Or,

even funnier, right? I remember, because the first conference call was the three way call, yeah. Remember you had, you had a three way or you had to call waiting, so you had to hit the button, yeah. So you had, yeah.

Tiffani Lloyd 26:06
Remember you had to interrupt the call to get it somebody, but that was when the

Leaha Crawford 26:10
person had the one way line. But they charged you for that, yeah?

Tiffani Lloyd 26:14
Well, they charged the parent. They charged Yeah, they did. We never saw the

bill. Oh, so did we

Leaha Crawford 26:21
the best of times, best of times it was the best. But no landlines. So y'all talking about going to get the landline,

Tiffani Lloyd 26:28
because it's like, what if there's this tragedy, and only person in our family that has a landline is my mama. You know that's crazy, are you? Yeah, my parents still have a landline. Wow. Okay,

Morgan 26:39
I have a landline.

Tiffani Lloyd 26:40
And what's crazy is, no, you have a landline. I

Morgan 26:43
have a landline.

Tiffani Lloyd 26:43
I'm really considering it, because I think emergencies might call for it in 2025 I don't know. I could be wrong, interesting, but it's funny because I got the

Leaha Crawford 26:56
landlines at the office too. So that's what's up. We had landlines All right. So this ends our show for today, and until next week. Next week, we

Tiffani Lloyd 27:03
got something special coming on. Have a beautiful rest of y'all weekend, and I'm excited for next week conversation. Yeah, I

Leaha Crawford 27:11
am excited as well. Lamont, you should try to stop by here next week. It's gonna be good. All right, it's gonna be good. All right, until then, we'll talk. We'll see you next week. Be blessed, guys. Bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai