May 25, 2023
Today’s Guest is Eddie Martini.
Eddie was featured on Episode 778 on April 13th, 2023. We’d recommend you to give that show a listen before listening to this show. If you are listening to the show we’d recommend you to watch the show on the How to Scale Commercial Real Estate channel. There will be visual aspects to this show in particular.
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@howtoscalecommercialreales334
In this show Eddie discusses the power of leverage and other people's money (OPM) in real estate investing. He breaks down the math behind how banks generate money and the rate of returns they make, using examples from the 1980s, 1990s, and the 2008 financial crisis. Join Sam and Eddie in today’s show
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The Power of Leverage [00:00:00]
Underwriting a Recent Transaction [00:02:01]
Bank Rates and Returns [00:05:15]
The Banks' Brilliant Move [00:07:42]
The Power of Leverage in Real Estate Investing [00:10:50]
Underwriting a Real Estate Transaction [00:12:15]
Finding the Right Lender [00:15:17]
Calculating Rate of Return [00:17:05]
Wealth Maximization Account [00:21:33]
The Power of Leverage [00:23:38]
Wealth Maximization Account [00:24:37]
Accessing Funds from a Whole Life Insurance Policy [00:31:04]
The Power of Leverage [00:32:15]
Vesting Period for Whole Life Insurance [00:35:21]
Patience in Funding Whole Life Insurance [00:39:11]
Comprehensive Wealth Plan [00:40:53]
Estate Protection [00:40:10]
Contact Information [00:41:27]
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Connect with Eddie:
Social Media: @martinilegacy, @eddiemartini
Website: www.MartiniLegacy.com
Connect with Sam:
I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HowtoscaleCRE/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samwilsonhowtoscalecre/
Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com
SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE A RATING. Listen to How To Scale Commercial Real Estate Investing with Sam Wilson
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-scale-commercial-real-estate/id1539979234
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4m0NWYzSvznEIjRBFtCgEL?si=e10d8e039b99475f
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Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below:
Eddie Martini (00:00:00) - You do see people out there that are into real estate, especially flippers that are really into accessing hard money because they do not want to touch their personal funds. They don't wanna touch their checking account. They would much rather go out, pay interest to someone else, essentially let them really take on a lot of risk. They know that there's even a small amount of margin. We're talking 6% in both of these scenarios. A six, it's a 6% margin. One's a 66.67% rate of return. The other is 200 we saw in the TARP funds, it was only a 3.5% margin and it was a 700% rate of return on their money. So it's really powerful when we start seeing that, and that is why real estate is so attractive to, I know both of us here and to a lot of our clients that we help, you know, get involved with it because of leverage.
Intro (00:00:47) - Welcome to the How to scale commercial real estate show. Whether you are an active or passive investor, we'll teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big.
Sam Wilson (00:00:59) - Eddie Martini came on the show on April 13th, 2023. That's just recently here. That was episode number 7 78. What I'd suggest if you're listening to this episode, is actually go back and check that one out first. You get to learn a lot about Eddie, what he does and why he does it. We're gonna have a little different flow here to the show today where Eddie's actually gonna more lead the show and, and I'm kind of gonna be here as a participant and it's, uh, I think we've got a lot of of good things here in store for you as well. The second thing I'd recommend is if you are listening to this, check out this, this episode in particular on YouTube, because we're gonna be going through some, some spreadsheets, we're doing some math, we're doing some kind of some fun things here in the show that we don't normally do, and I think a visual version of this show would be particularly helpful for you. So check that out, uh, there on our YouTube channel, the How to Scale Commercial Real Estate YouTube Channel, and you'll find this episode there as well. So those are the two things I would suggest. Eddie, welcome to the show. And if you don't mind, just uh, take it from here. But if, but first of all, if you can just give us kind of a rundown to the flow of what this show is gonna be like here today. And then, uh, the floor is yours.
Eddie Martini (00:02:01) - That sounds great, Sam, thanks again for having me back. I really appreciate the opportunity and I thought today would be really good to actually break down the power of leverage and O P M, which stands for other People's money. I mean, you and I both already have an attraction to it. We know kind of how it works, but like a lot of people we come into contact with that want to get into real estate investing, they really don't understand the basics. So if you're good, I'd like to share just some financial calculators with you. We'll kind of again, show the math behind how banks do generate money, how they generate the rate of returns, why they have the biggest buildings in the most prime areas across our country. It's cuz they can afford to and they make some really great rates for returns. So we'll share that with everybody and then if you're open to it, I figure we can underwrite a recent transaction that a client called me on, really see how people like you and I dive into the numbers to really make sure it's something's viable and worth pursuing.
Sam Wilson (00:02:52) - That sounds like a plan, Eddie. Let's, uh, let's take it away. How do banks indeed then make money?
Eddie Martini (00:02:57) - Fantastic. So we'll start here. We're gonna take a trip back in time, Sam, we're actually gonna head back into the 1980s. And believe it or not, back then banks were actually paying 9% on CDs and . A lot of my clients are like, what? Take me back to the good old days, 9%. That's better my retirement accounts doing. And I'm like, absolutely. But with the good came the bad, and on average they were charging around 15% to lend money to people. So before I really understood the truth behind the numbers, I kind of looked at this and in plain sight we're like, great, we have a 6% margin, they're making 6% of their money. But when we actually dive deeper and see what that looks like year over year, for them just creating that small margin, it's actually a 66.67% rate of return. Can you believe that?
Sam Wilson (00:03:48) - So break that down for me. I'm, I might be, uh, not had enough coffee yet this morning. How's that possible?
Eddie Martini (00:03:53) - Yeah, you bet. So this right here, this is how we are showing proof of actual leverage and utilizing other people's money. They're taking money in, even though they're paying 9% out for every dollar that you are paying 9% out, you're actually able to lend out at 15. So when they break that down, that actually generates not just a 6% margin. That is actually showing that that is a 66.67% increase in the dollar is value. Right? Right, right. So it's, it's just phenomenal when you start seeing that. And so I looked at that and I, I think you and I both get this a lot on what's the purpose of opm? Why do we look for other people's money? Why are we paying someone else interest when we could just utilize our own dollars? And so I wanted to break that down real quick. And again, we're back in time.
Eddie Martini (00:04:42) - We're in the 1980s and let's say I went to the bank and I borrowed a hundred bucks from 'em while they're lending money out at 15%. So at the end of the year, I would owe them $115. This one's a little bit simpler when it comes to the math because that comes out to 15% rate of return. Sure. Right. So they're utilizing their own dollars In this scenario here, they're only making 15%, but up here they're able to leverage and borrow essentially other people's money and utilize that to actually lend now to others and make that small margin. Sure.
Eddie Martini (00:05:15) - So it, it just, it become, became super powerful for me. And if we even take a step further into time, and we head into the nineties, you know, we had that whole savings and loan fiasco going on, and even with the banks making 66.67% rate of return, they still got themselves into a pickle. And good old Allen Greenspan, he was the head of the Federal Reserve at the time, and he started looking into bank's books and he is like, wait a second here guys, you're paying 9% on CDs. Are you kidding me? Because those are guaranteed rates of return. This isn't supposed to be re a retirement account, , this is something that is supposed to be a safe place for people to just save some dollars. So he said, this is absolutely ridiculous. You guys really should only be paying 3% on CDs. The bank said, okay, that's, that's fine.
Eddie Martini (00:05:57) - We'll, we'll we'll do our 3%, but we still want to have that 6% margin. So bank rates for around 9% on average. Then. So when we look at that math and see what they're able to do on that spread, 200% rate of return. And it's just amazing to me. Everyone thought Alan Greenspan had some magic fairy dust. No, he understood the math behind the scene. He understood that you guys, if we can get our rates of return at 200%, you guys are gonna climb out of this hole rather quickly. And they did within months, they got themselves out of that savings and loan fiasco. So it's really powerful when we start seeing this and we take another further step into time. And a lot of people don't realize that during 2008, uh, during the unfortunate mortgage crisis and, and and resulting real estate market crash, the, the government looked around and said, wait a second, all these foreclosures that are still coming to market, if we start seeing all of that continue to happen, there's not even gonna be dominoes to continue to fall.
Eddie Martini (00:06:59) - , we, our economy could just be gone. Poof. So we need to step in here and see what we can do. So they came up with an emergency program called TARP and they started releasing funds to the banks and it was billions of dollars that they were able to lend out to them. And I saw it at certain points, it was down to 0%. That actually carried for a very long time, 0% dollars to the banks. At certain points it was a quarter percent and the highest I saw TARP funds being available was a half a point. So we're just gonna give the banks a worst case scenario of, Hey, you guys caution you guys a half a percent in order to access these funds. They looked around and yes, they had some derivatives that they had to pay off on those bad mortgages and kind of get themselves, get their books balanced a little bit better.
Eddie Martini (00:07:42) - But by the time they all of that figured out, they've realized, well, we actually still have cash reserves on hands and we actually have more TARP funds available. So they said, let's see here, what can we do? Oh, you know what, right now treasuries are actually paying 4% and it's a guaranteed rate of return and there is, nothing's forbidden us to hop into a treasury. So let's see what that does for them. 700% rate of return, Sam, even worse as far as my opinion, even worse, they're utilizing taxpayer dollars in this scenario to access the funds. They're using taxpayer dollars to pay back the rate of return. Pretty darn brilliant. Don't you think?
Sam Wilson (00:08:23) - It's absolutely brilliant. Yeah. You look at it from this perspective, like, this is crazy. Like we have a, a government created entity that's lending money at a half a percent the turnaround and buy government backed treasuries that they're gonna get 4% on it. It's, it's just a convoluted cluster if you ask me.
Eddie Martini (00:08:42) - I couldn't agree more. And the feds did, uh, finally catch on to what was going on. It was of course, down the road after these rates of returned we're still going bananas and the treasuries were dropped down accordingly. But we still look at this and we go, well, you know, 300% rate of return, that's still not a bad day for those banks. Why in the world would they ever get back into banking? When you start looking at this, it's like, well, let's just keep accessing TARP funds, right? And we'll just keep recycling this. Well, the challenge with that, Sam, is that this can only be done once a year. It's a one year commitment to get that rate of return from the treasury. Whereas if we step back in here in the nineties, this is our fractional reserve banking system. So for every $10 it gets deposited, they get to go, they can go lend out nine of those and just keep the $1 in reserve. So , they can do this over and over and over again, which is why they did of course get back into their day-to-day of being bankers. Right.
Sam Wilson (00:09:34) - But
Eddie Martini (00:09:34) - Right, right.
Sam Wilson (00:09:35) - That makes, that makes perfect sense. You borrow at three, you can lend at nine, you're, you're 200% rate of return. That's, uh, that's a great model.
Eddie Martini (00:09:45) - Indeed, indeed. So when we look at this and like the banks are the OGs of O P M
Sam Wilson (00:09:51) - For sure,
Eddie Martini (00:09:52) - Right? I mean, they figured this game out a long time ago, and the rest of us, which is smart of us, we're looking to duplicate success. There's no point in reinventing the wheel. And so this is why you do see people out there that are into real estate, especially flippers that are really into accessing hard money because they do not want to touch their personal funds. They don't wanna touch their checking account. They would much rather go out, pay interest to someone else, essentially let them really take on a lot of risk. They know that there's even a small amount of margin. We're talking 6% in both of these scenarios. A six, it's a 6% margin. One's a six, 6.67% rate of return. The other's 200 we saw in the TARP funds, it was only a 3.5% margin and it was a 700% rate of return on their money. So it's really powerful when we start seeing that. And that is why real estate is so attractive to, I know both of us here and to a lot of our clients that we help, you know, get involved with it because of leverage.
Sam Wilson (00:10:50) - Right? Right. And that cuts both ways. I mean, because we, we, we do that again, you know, when we go out and buy a property with leverage, we're doing the same thing. It's just the numbers are changing. You know, maybe let's say in this case I'm borrowing at nine and I'm, I'm returning an 18%. Now my spread is, you know, I'm, I'm getting a 200% rate of return on my money or I guess a hundred percent, hundred percent rate to return on my money.
Eddie Martini (00:11:13) - Yeah, you're doing great. Yeah. Let's see this. Yeah, you do nine 18, boom.
Sam Wilson (00:11:17) - Yeah, it's a hundred percent rate.
Eddie Martini (00:11:18) - It's a hundred percent rate of return. Right. So it's, it's super powerful when you start looking at it. And so if you'd like, we can kind of hop into an underwriting transaction now and really see, you know, kind of how this works in, in Yeah,
Sam Wilson (00:11:30) - We can let, let, let's do that. And, and I'm, I'm, I'm, again, I'm, I may not have had enough enough coffee here this morning, but it's just the same. I know I already said that. It's the same thing, just repeated like we borrow because leverage is beneficial. It, it, it juices our returns, um, you know, and not the same thing for the bank. They borrow my money to then lend out to somebody else and it juices their returns. So yeah, I guess there's, there's always the debtor and the lender, somebody else's debt is somebody else's is, uh, somebody else's equity and it just seems to keep repeating itself. So I think at some point in this show, you're gonna give us how we get outta that cycle. I know, I know that is part of the, uh, part of the equation here today. But let's, let's do an underwriting, uh, underwriting, let's see, let's see what that looks like on a deal maybe that you've done recently.
Eddie Martini (00:12:15) - Absolutely. That sounds great. So yeah, we'll hop into, and this is what's great, Sam, is, you know, you and I both know that to get into real estate, the first thing you need to learn how to do is how to underwrite a transaction. Yeah, right. We have to see is this a viable option or not? Because I mean, that's really what I think causes a lot of failure in this industry is people getting a little bit too far ahead of themselves. They get too deep into a transaction without doing their due diligence. And this is the very first step I think any of us should take if we're considering investing in real estate. So we'll look at a recent transaction, uh, this is based in the California area. It's a really cool, um, industrial building, uh, actually happened to already have two great long term tenants in it.
Eddie Martini (00:12:58) - So it was a really clean deal and I think it's a great one for us to kind of go on display here. And so we'll hop in here and first thing we wanna start, start with the course is our purchase price, what were we looking to purchase? And these fields can be different. So that's why I had to type that in actually twice is because we've have been in markets, you and I both have been through them where property values can either be higher or sometimes lower than what the actual purchase price is going to be coming in at. So it's important be able to have that flexibility. Right.
Sam Wilson (00:13:25) - So in this case, if you're just listening to this, Eddie's putting in $650,000 in both the value and the price of the property.
Eddie Martini (00:13:31) - That's correct. Very good. I appreciate that. And closing cost wise is gonna be the next field we're gonna input here. And this was a buyer transaction. So typically really across the nation that I've seen, it's very typical for sellers to cover for the majority of the closing costs. This client in particular just had around 1%. So $6,500 was gonna be their closing cost, uh, fee here. And that was really just going towards some miscellaneous title and escrow fees and a few inspections. So nothing too major there. Sure. Again, realtor fees, we can plug them in. It is an important field to be able to have access to. In this instance though, uh, this was a buyer that I was looking to conduct this analysis for. So there's gonna be 0% in real TURs. The next important thing that we need to understand is why we're gonna get a cost value approach when it comes to our appraisal, is we want to determine what the difference is between land value and our structure value.
Eddie Martini (00:14:24) - And you and I both know, Sam, the reason why that's so important is because we can only depreciate the structure value on these properties. So this instance, it came out to around a hundred thousand dollars, was gonna be our land value that left $550,000 for them to depreciate in. Since this is a commercial transaction, we get 39 years to spread that over. So it's this, this, I hope you guys are starting to see why Sam and I really like real estate as, as part of our retirement, our investment tools. Because of this leverage, because of depreciation, the tax advantages are just really almost unmatched. So we also have the ability, after we get the land value and structure value, uh, calculated, we're able to see that. You could see my basis for depreciation did not auto-populate. Again, this is because sometimes Sam, you and I have people that come to us that already own a property, and so they've already done some depreciation.
Eddie Martini (00:15:17) - So we need to have that field as being flexible. In this instance, it was a brand new purchase, so the basis for depreciation is also gonna be $550,000. We did find, um, a first mortgage that was able to go ahead and pick up, um, the transaction here, which again, you know, that's why it's so important for us to have, you know, the right, um, network put together as far as trusted advisors, because not all advisors are created equal. And having a trusted lender advisor is super crucial. In this instance, our lender advisor was able to find, uh, someone who was able to carry 80% loan to value in a first mortgage. They did not charge any extra points and they were gonna charge 'em a 6.99% rate fair. All in all, in my opinion, since it was a commercial transaction, they're gonna spread these out over two years, which would be a loan term of 240 months. I
Sam Wilson (00:16:13) - Think you missed 20 years there.
Eddie Martini (00:16:15) - Oh, thank you sir. I appreciate that. Loan term of 20 years, spread it over 240 months, right? So that's gonna calculate, uh, a loan payment of 4,028 per month is what that's gonna come out to for overhead on this transaction. In our first analysis here, there's not gonna be a second mortgage. This particular buyer did have the ability in their checking account to go ahead and come for this total down payment, uh, which again is going to be $136,500 for this initial analysis. And, uh, property taxes came out to about 6 77, uh, 19 per month. His insurance was gonna be around 450. And the maintenance was really light. Like I said, it was a industrial warehouse space, all pretty much paved very little landscaping. So quick mow and blow, nothing major there. But you can see Sam, we can get quite detailed as needed, right?
Eddie Martini (00:17:05) - People look to purchase condos, town homes, we can plug in the homeowner association fees here to really get deep into this. If there are other, any miscellaneous fees, we can go ahead and plug them in here and make sure that we actually understand really from a macroeconomic approach, what we're looking at. Mm-hmm. , we did have tenants already in place, which again is super magical. Not always gonna be the case, but in this instance it was, they're paying around $7,000 per month. And the next important thing, Sam, you and I both know this, that's super important, is that we need to understand what are the costs of being an investor. And at the end of the day, there are gonna be taxes in implicated. Now, I know you're screaming going, Eddie, what about 10 31 exchange? I get it. We will go there, Sam, we will get that calculated in a second.
Eddie Martini (00:17:52) - But I always like to conduct analysis In a worst case scenario situation, how can this transaction stand on its own two feet? If we can make it better with these other tools, great. But let's really see where we're at. So this particular buyer was in a 25% income tax bracket will all be in a 15% capital gains bracket. And since depreciation, recapture tax is a sliding scale and it goes u up to 25%, uh, and it really depends on what your actual personal income tax bracket is. He would've been subject to the maximum of 25% and, uh, depreciation for capture tax. And so he, we also had the opportunity, Sam, for people like you and I who are real estate professionals, we can't go ahead and check a couple of these other boxes. Or again, if someone's just looking to see, hey, what is my personal, what is my primary residence I'm looking to buy, what does that look like, rate of return wise?
Eddie Martini (00:18:43) - We can plug that in, we can get some extra, uh, tax advantages that could auto calculate over here. So when we take a look at, you know, what this transaction, um, is able to do, we wanna see how long are we holding this for? And he said, okay, Eddie, I I really only wanna hold it for about five years. Like to see at least what that looks like. If it's still pencils out after that, great. But I really wanna take, take a look what that is. And Sam, he was looking to hit 10%. That was his goal. And if we look right here even, uh, well one thing we need to factor in, right? We want worst case scenario, let's factor in 6% in closing costs, okay? Again, you and I both know it's to negotiated both fee, but we wanna hit him with worst case scenario. And
Sam Wilson (00:19:23) - We're assuming where, where you are right now is on disposition of this property in five years.
Eddie Martini (00:19:28) - That is correct. Thank you for yeah, clarifying that. So this now is getting kind of the end of the road. We've now plugged in for as far as the analysis goes. We wanna see if I hold this property for 60 months, I also knows five years, what does actually look like for me. And really it was healthy. I mean 12.52% rate of return. And that is without factoring in any appreciation. So again, on its own two feet, I think it's really a fantastic opportunity. But Sam, you and I both know also we love real estate . It has a extensive track record of having positive appreciation. I think 4% is actually pretty conservative at the end of the day. Um, but again, we can always play with this. If someone wants to be even more conservative of that or if they wanna be more aggressive, we can really see what things look like.
Eddie Martini (00:20:13) - We plug in 4% and appreciation over those five years. We just went from 12.52 to 21.77% rate of return. This buyer was ecstatic. He couldn't believe what he had kind of stumbled onto here. And so it was really powerful for him to be able to go in, not really have to be too aggressive on his negotiations. He knew it already penciled out to, you know, what he was able to do. And it made for, uh, you know, a really successful analysis, uh, conversation with he and I. Now again, we wanna see Sam, what does it look like with the 10 31 exchange, right? If we don't have any tax consequence, if we're basically gonna forward all of those on to a future property, look at that. We can break 27% greater return on this transaction if he does not have to, if he's gonna exercise a 10 31 exchange. So we can conduct these again rather quickly, uh, with people, give 'em a really nice snapshot of where they stand and, you know, make sure that something's viable. But as you mentioned earlier, you know, in our conversation, I help people make this even better. And that's what I really love about creating strategic savings accounts is that we can take an awesome investment opportunity like this real estate transaction and we can forward a five x the rate of return. Would you like to see how that works?
Sam Wilson (00:21:31) - Yeah, let's, uh, let's dig in.
Eddie Martini (00:21:33) - All right, my man. So we wanted to factor in that this gentleman had worked with me in the past and he had built what's called a wealth maximization account. It's basically a strategic savings account that allows our funds to grow at 50 to 80 x. The rate of return that you'd get at a commercial bank allows us to still maintain the access, the liquidity that we need to be able to invest in opportunities like this when they come. So I'll just point out some really important factors to why a wealth maximization account is better than just relying upon another source of op p m such as like hard money. So in this instance, he did have access to 130,000 in his wealth maximization account that he could put into this transaction. What's really important, again to understand is your first lender that's putting this 80% up. If this wealth maximization account was actually a true loan where there were strict repayments scheduled payments coming into play, we'd have to report that to the first mortgage. We'd have to tell them that, hey, there is actually a second lien at being it put in place on this transaction. And so in this instance that would be going back to the first mortgage and saying, Hey, surprise, we're at a c LT v a combined loan, two value of 100%. Do you still wanna gimme the money? Their answer would've been no. Right?
Sam Wilson (00:22:54) - Yes,
Eddie Martini (00:22:54) - . So this is really powerful in that you're, you've built your own private family banking system, you're able to access those funds just as you would with getting a hard money. Second, I think it's also being a good steward who'd wanna see what would a hard money lender charge me for a lean being in second position. We actually did find one, they weren't that unreasonable. It was actually really cool to see that there was money out there available at 9.98%. And so I just told the client, you know, you actually get to decide what you're gonna pay yourself back, but I just think being a good steward of our money, we should pay ourselves back what someone else would've charged us. So he agreed to that. He at least wanted to see what it looks like, you know, in this analysis to see, okay, it is actually still pencil out.
Eddie Martini (00:23:38) - I said, let's check it out. We're also gonna amortize this over the same time period. We would the first mortgage, they're basically being paid, paid down at the same rate. So we're gonna do a loan term of 240 months, which again is 20 years. So yes, this is going to affect our cash flow. Um, we are now, uh, looking at 52 81 per month just for our mortgage payments, where before we were at 4,028. So that did, uh, affect our cash flow. But Sam, if you look at our rate of return, we just jumped to 91.84% rate of return from from 21 . So that is largely due to the down payment right here, only now needing to be $6,500 as the actual cash out of pocket for this buyer. And he was able to turn $6,500 into a net cash out of 141,672 over these five years.
Sam Wilson (00:24:37) - That largely stems what you're calling a wealth maxim. Do we call it wealth maximization max?
Eddie Martini (00:24:44) - Yeah. Wealth maximization account. There
Sam Wilson (00:24:45) - You go. See, I told you, not enough coffee here today, , uh, I can't even speak. I'm on podcast all day long, . Uh, so I'm guessing this wealth maximization account is just another name for a whole life insurance policy. Does that sound about Yes,
Eddie Martini (00:25:02) - That is. Yeah, that's correct. So instead of the traditional way of doing whole life insurance, where in my opinion you might as well go dig a hole in your backyard, put 30 grand in it, and then 20 years go dig that hole back up and pull your 30 grand back out. That's about as efficient as most whole life insurance policies are traditionally speaking. But modern whole life insurance that's created, that's a cash value focus purpose. It turns into a very, very powerful financial tool as we can see right here. It
Sam Wilson (00:25:30) - Does. And the, and the reality of it is that that 130,000 is still your $130,000. You've just put it in a different account, right?
Eddie Martini (00:25:41) - That's correct. Right? That is exactly correct and that's the big key. Uh, whereas, you know, we get our money locked up a lot of times into, you know, qualified retirement plans where we don't maintain that access, that liquidity. Now we're have the opportunity or the option of missing out on these opportunities of a lifetime. Just like this gentleman found. He was able to pick up the phone, get a wire 130 grand sent over and consummate this deal with a big smile on his face knowing what the future looks like.
Sam Wilson (00:26:10) - Sure, yeah. I mean your rate return, your rate return and, and I might be contrarian here on this, on this podcast, but, but I think it'll shed some light. Maybe, uh, maybe you can, you can tell me why I'm wrong, but the rate return has gone up so much just because as we're modeling it, it's just showing basically all but 6,500 bucks in leverage. So I mean, obviously the higher the leverage, the greater your rate return would be.
Eddie Martini (00:26:34) - Absolutely. You got it Sam. That is, that is exactly what we're trying to get out with people. And also, again, he had the money, he had 130 available in a checking account still, but what he can do now, Sam, is technically if he can qualify for more mortgages , he can go basically 10 x this now so that 130 grand, he can spread it out if he only needed 25 or $6,500 increments of it. I mean, he's got a long ways that that money can now stretch where he can go repeat this process. And that's what I think is really, really powerful about having other sources of op p m For
Sam Wilson (00:27:08) - Sure. For sure. And, and I know some very smart people in the real estate, uh, uh, world that are big proponents of this model. Uh, so it's, it's, when you hear me give contrarian views, it's, I think it's cuz I, I want to, I want to really, um, just clarify some things on this. So the questions I would have would be like, okay, so you got cool, we, we did this in a, a cash value whole life policy. We've paid into it over all these years and now we're gonna pay that policy back a 9.98% rate of return. At what point in time do I, as the investor in my own private bank get to then have access to the fruit of paying myself 9.98%? How do I get that back without taking a loan outta that policy and then, then owe it back to the, the insurance company? Does that make sense?
Eddie Martini (00:27:54) - Yeah, no, I I can, I can follow what you're doing there. Yeah, I mean essentially this rate of return, it's kind of a, it's kind of a moot point as far as how you're paying it back. You're not able to inflate, uh, the rate of return that your policy is actually gonna get. So even if, let's just say the, the cost of these funds were even 1% or even 2%, let's say it actually costs you money to borrow your funds back, right? If you're paying yourself back at 9.98%, you're just accelerating the amount of principle that will now be available for future transactions. So it's actually a really cool process cuz once you actually get to years 10 and beyond, there actually is no cost to take these loans out. So you're credited to the account exactly what the cost is for the loan. So you're at a zero cost from years 10 and beyond to repeat this process here where that, again, in that scenario, that 9.98%, I mean that's, that's gonna rapidly accelerate how much equity essentially you're establishing back in your cash value of your policy.
Eddie Martini (00:28:51) - And what's really powerful, the reason why you do not have a repayment structure , is that those policy loans are backed by a life insurance policy. So the life insurance company understands that heaven forbid something happens to you, they can deduct whatever outstanding loan balances are from your death benefit, right? So it makes it a real big win. And that's why I like storing my cash with these type of companies is that they are extremely conservative with how they generate their rates of return. And so I'm not looking for them to hit any big home runs. I want a nice safe place. I want contractual guaranteed rates of return. I do want the ability of participating in margins. I do like that part of it. Uh, but I don't want that to be based upon why I'm doing this, this, this decision is purely made on, if I could save at x, y, Z bank at 0.015% or I can save in my family bank at four, two 5%, where would I put my money?
Sam Wilson (00:29:48) - Well sure, sure. I mean in that scenario that makes sense. But I guess going back to we're growing this principle, right? We're growing this principle balance. But to what end, other than just growing that principle balance, at what point in time can you go to that Sam's personal bank and say, all right, cool, I want to go buy a, you know, I don't know, let's make something stupid up. I wanna go buy a million dollar airplane and I wanna go flight around the country and uh, how do I get that money out of Sam's personal bank to buy my airplane? I wanna fly around the country.
Eddie Martini (00:30:21) - You bet. I love it. So yeah, the great news, Sam, is actually year one, the very first year you established this, you already have access to cash value. So there's not really a vetting period as far as, hey, once you hit this year, now you can access this, you have access to it from year one, right? So in in that scenario, yes, uh, you had the ability, you've stored up enough cash value to purchase, uh, you know your private jet, it is as simple as there is zero underwriting involved. It says that's what lsem I really enjoyed about this is before when I was so real estate focused and EC building equity focused in my real estate, there were times in my life where I could not qualify to access the amount of money I needed to purchase more transactions. I couldn't document enough income for the underwriter to say, yes, I'll give you another loan.
Eddie Martini (00:31:04) - Right? Well in this instance my money's not locked up, it's still a phone call away. I do still need to make a phone call, but it is where do you want the money sent? Not what are you using this for? So that's really powerful. I mean you and I both know Sam, there's times where we need to invest in ourselves. We need to be able to join some mastermind groups, develop some skill sets, whatever it may be to actually sharpen our sauce. We can be successful in the investments we're looking to pursue. Well it takes means to be able to participate in those kind of things. So I've utilized my funds for those exact reasons. Like I'm actually flying out to Houston at the end of the month, uh, to further dive into this truth concepts training. And those are funds I'm gonna access for my family bank to again reinvest in myself so I can add more value not only to my own investment pursuit but as well as to my clients.
Sam Wilson (00:31:52) - That loan that you take out from that policy to do what it is that you're talking about is just that though it's a loan, right? You now owe that back to the insurance company?
Eddie Martini (00:32:03) - Yes sir. That is correct.
Sam Wilson (00:32:05) - Okay. That is correct. Is there ever a point in time in which you can in which you can harvest that equity that you have built without then owing it back to the insurance company?
Eddie Martini (00:32:15) - That's a great question. Yes. So similar to your qualified plans, any funds that you've actually contributed towards it, cuz these are all post-tax dollars that are being contributed to these funds. You have access to all of those funds, zero cost, no loan needed, you can liquidate, there's no penalty behind that. The only time you're gonna see a tax consequence in these is if you go to liquidate above and beyond principle that you've put in and now you're tapping into the gains that have been earned in this. If you do not wanna take a policy loan for whatever reason, if you actually do the math on it and for a reason, you decide that it makes more sense to liquidate it and take the tax consequence, you do have that ability, but you would only have a tax consequence if you tap into liquidation of gains.
Sam Wilson (00:33:00) - Got it. Okay. So again, going back to that 9.98% that is gains. So you start liquidating those gains, then you start getting taxed on it. Is that correct?
Eddie Martini (00:33:11) - Yes. It's actually more so the policy itself that's generating the four to 5% internal rate of return. Those are more so the gains that I'm referring to. Cuz again, I wish , the policies would allow, like you said, to say, Hey, I've got an investment opportunity that it pencils out and I can pump 9.98% now into this cash value focused life insurance policy. Unfortunately, it does not work that way. You cannot backfill gains. It's gonna be the gains are earned on you contributing monies towards premium. And way I, the way I set it up, most insurance agents do not like me because I build these things where they are cash value focused. And so that means that there is the least amount going towards actual principle based premium and there is the most amount going towards cash value. So that's what turns these around into, again, from a typical and traditional whole life insurance policy that again, that whole digging a hole in your backyard scenario versus a modern cash value focused whole life insurance policy that turns this thing into a supercharged savings account, which happens to come with a life insurance policy.
Sam Wilson (00:34:15) - Right, right. All right, I got one more, one more thing to throw at you that has been kind of a, a, maybe a hiccup or something. Maybe you can explain here in our analysis and tell me what I'm missing with a say bank A right. You go to bank A, you put a hundred bucks in bank a I can go to bank a tomorrow and I can withdraw a hundred bucks. I go to a whole life where in this case your wealth maximization account and I put a hundred bucks in the cash value might be, I don't know, especially early on, 30 bucks, 40 bucks, something pretty low. So we're we're not taken into account like what the, the amount of time it takes to break even mm-hmm on that policy before it's like, okay, I've contributed and again, I'm just using that number, uh, I wish my million dollars would buy a jet. That would be fantastic. Uh, I'm not sure I wanna fly in a million dollar jet. That that sounds sketchy to me. Um, but either way it's gonna take me a certain number of years before my cash value and actually deposited funds equali or, or kind of become the same. Is that correct?
Eddie Martini (00:35:21) - That is correct. So that's a great point you did there, Sam, and I appreciate you bringing that up. So there's gonna be a certain time, I guess you'd call it a vesting period, vetting period, however you wanna put a label on it. But yes, how these policies work is it the insurance companies do have to make money, right? If they don't make money, they, they go out of business and then this whole family banking concept, which is really cool of them to do, they give us everything we need to have a bank without the brick and mortar and we can all access it. It's really neat, but they have to go stay profitable. So yes, those first couple of years there's gonna be premiums paid that and some of those dollars are gonna go towards paying commissions. They're gonna go towards their just administrative costs and just again, to make sure they stay profitable because guess what, at the end of the day it is a life insurance product.
Eddie Martini (00:36:02) - So heaven forbid something happens to you in year one through five or even one through seven, but let's say you've only contributed a hundred thousand dollars by your seven, well your death benefit is probably gonna be seven to $800,000 that they're paying out to you. So when you start doing the math on that, as far as rate of return, you're still into the 50, 60, 80% rate of return, which again, it's not supposed to be considered an investment, but if we're actually looking at the numbers, that's how that works. I would say typically Sam years six or seven is when we're actually at a breakeven point, if not positive in the amount we've contributed versus the amount we have access to.
Sam Wilson (00:36:39) - Right. And that, that is just, I guess, a part of the equation that you have to, you have to build in there. Again, there's some really smart people that I, I know and respect that, uh, use this strategy quite a bit. It's, I'm still warming up to the idea. Uh, it's something, it's just personally, it's like, okay, I gotta figure out how this, how this all plays in. And I think this has been very, very helpful. So when you hear me throwing things out there that are, um, clarifications on it, that's just it. It's like, okay, how do you make this work? And again, there, I know there's a thousand ways to structure these and like you said, there may be, you know, traditional methods of whole life policies, we might as well just, you know, stuff the trash bag full of money and lit it on fire and called it, called it a good time.
Sam Wilson (00:37:19) - So, um, I know there's ways to, to do this. I just wanna get some clarification on that and thank you for pointing that out. Your six to seven is about when that, when the dollar amounts are the same. So all things being equal, you probably just had to calculate in, you know, on the, you know, somehow the time value of money over that period to make it just slightly more clear as to what it is you're doing. But again, I know there's some advanced strategies here we're talking about and ways of of, of making this work. So I'm not saying you're incorrect by any stretch, just getting my head wrapped around it. Anything else you wanna clarify on that front maybe that I've, I've missed there Eddie.
Eddie Martini (00:37:53) - No, you actually, Sam, I appreciate and I really welcome those challenges because that's how people, I mean there's a lot of people that are listening and watching this right now. They're gonna have similar questions and so I don't want them getting hung up on, hey, my grandpa always told me that life insurance is expensive and not to pursue it. , I get it. I'm not saying your grandpa's wrong because the way he understood it, the way he was presented life insurance, it probably was not as valuable of a financial tool, right? But there are strategies out there that with some really simple changes and some simple writers that you can add, you can make these really powerful financial tools. And it was hard for me too, Sam, to wrap my head around initially. I'm like wait a second, if I've got a hundred grand right now, why would I only wanna have access to 92 of it, you know, at the end of the year, right?
Eddie Martini (00:38:35) - At the end of year one, right? Well you have to look at the macro, you have to understand, okay, first of all, do I need access? And you might, do I need access to that a hundred grand this year? If you do, if you already have something that we just went over that scenario where you're earning 22% rate of return, you need to commit those dollars over there, you may wanna look into that, right? But if we can be patient, if we do see that, hey, especially right now we're in kind of some uncertain times. Yeah, I'm getting a lot of people hopping on the train right now because they don't wanna put their money into a market currently. There's so much flux going on. They're like, I wouldn't invest right now. I'm not saying they're right or wrong. That's just what their comfort level is on their risk tolerance.
Eddie Martini (00:39:11) - And I said, okay, great. This is an ideal opportunity to start funding one of these policies cuz when you do hop back in the game, instead of you squeaking by with a 12 or even finding that awesome 20 plus percent rate of return now because you were patient over the last five to seven years and you funded this, you're now able to knock that first deal right out of the park and you're earning 90 plus percent rate of return on the first transaction you go back to market with. So I feel like over time you actually made a better financial decision being patient and saying, Hey, I didn't take a transaction down the past five years, but now when I do take this next one down, I can almost make up for that lost time. I get to deal two, I have more than made up for lost time. I'm talking deal three, four, and five, man, I truly afford to five Xed what I could have done without taking that strategic saving step.
Sam Wilson (00:40:00) - Right? Right. And I think one of the other things here that that's, and and again, I don't wanna get into all the nuances of, you know, these particular, maybe I have, I probably have already done that. All right.
Eddie Martini (00:40:09) - You're doing great. Yeah, you're good.
Sam Wilson (00:40:10) - , , scratch that. Uh, the, one of the things I think that's interesting in these, and I've done done a fair amount of reading, uh, on these policies and, and just kind of how these are structured and how, like you're talking about, you know, wealth, wealth building strategy is probably some of the estate protection, uh, tools and things that are inside of there. So I think it's a more, as a more comprehensive, um, plan, these could fit in very nicely, especially on that front where it's, you know, it's not subject to creditors and things like that. So you can kind of shovel some, shovel some money in places that, you know, God forbid somebody comes after you that they can't, uh, that other other people, um, you know, lawsuits, et cetera, just can't access. So I think some of those things are, are also super powerful.
Sam Wilson (00:40:53) - Eddie, this has been, uh, very insightful. I've really enjoyed the way you came on the show last time. And we just talked about the comprehensive kind of wealth plan, how to look at the holistic view of building wealth and how the, the tools and strategies that are available to us. I know we've gone really deep in the weeds here on, on strategies of how to use, uh, the correctly structured cash value whole life policies inside of our real estate transactions and how that can maximize our returns. This has been a blast. Thank you for sharing it. If our listeners do wanna get in touch with you and learn more about you, what is the best way to do that?
Eddie Martini (00:41:27) - Yeah, I'd say the simplest way is visiting martini legacy.com. You can read more about me there and it's a really simple way to hop on my calendar, schedule a free complimentary consultation that we can kind of go over your wants and needs, see where you're at on your real estate and investment and retirement journey. See what we can do to make some tweaks there. And if you're on social media, just look up at Martini Legacy or at Eddie Martini. Be happy to chat with you there. Eddie,
Sam Wilson (00:41:49) - Thank you again so much for your time today. I do appreciate it. It was a blast having you on the show a second time.
Eddie Martini (00:41:54) - Thanks for having me, ham. Hey,
Sam Wilson (00:41:56) - Thanks for listening to the How to Scale Commercial Real Estate podcast. If you can do me a favor and subscribe and leave us a review on Apple podcast, Spotify, Google podcast, whatever platform it is you use to listen. If you can do that for us, that would be a fantastic help to the show. It helps us both attract new listeners as well as rank higher on those directories. So appreciate you listening. Thanks so much and hope to catch you on the next episode.