How To Build A Great Property Management Team with Ed Mathews

In today’s episode, we chatted with Ed Mathews, Principal at Clark Street Capital. Ed discusses his background in real estate investing and his focus on value-added multifamily apartment buildings. He explains why multifamily investing is attractive and provides stable cash flow. Ed emphasizes the importance of property management in creating a positive tenant experience and increasing property value. He also shares his strategy for choosing investment locations and structuring deals conservatively. Ed discusses the holding period for properties and the need for conservative underwriting.

Listen To The Podcast Here 

Watch The Episode Here 

What’s Covered In This Episode

• Multifamily investing provides stable cash flow and is a resilient asset class.
• Effective property management is crucial for tenant satisfaction and property value.
• Choosing the right locations for investment is key to long-term success.
• Structuring deals conservatively and avoiding over-leveraging is important for financial stability.
• Conservative underwriting and due diligence are essential for successful investments.
• Regular communication and support for investors are important for building trust and long-term relationships.

Connect with Ed: 

• Website: http://clarkst.com/

Resources 

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Read The Transcript Here

Trevor Oldham (00:01.982)
Hey everybody, welcome back to the REI Marketing Secrets podcast. Today on the show, we have Ed Matthews. Ed, super excited to have you on the show today.

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (00:09.878)
Thank you. It’s good to see you, man.

Trevor Oldham (00:12.05)
And for audience out there who’s like, who the heck is Ed Matthews? Do you mind just going a little over into your background and how you got started into real estate investing?

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (00:20.354)
Right. Who is this guy and why is he here? So I am Ed Matthews. I’m the principal at Clark Street Capital. We own and run several companies, but the primary job is Clark Street Capital in which we buy…

value-add multifamily apartment buildings as I as I like to tend to say we buy crappy apartment buildings from landlords who really aren’t that great at their jobs and You know we go in we make them clean and safe and then upgrade them So that people are proud to live there and stay hopefully a really long time

Trevor Oldham (00:57.458)
And when it comes to multifamily, there’s any number of asset classes within the real estate space. You could go into your self-storage, your mobile home park, obviously multifamily. What really drew you to multifamily other than, say, these other asset classes that are out there?

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (01:11.51)
Well, it’s kind of twofold. One, Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs, right? The fact is that shelter is something that, you know, all human beings are gonna always seek. And, you know, you look at how this asset class has performed over the last.

Trevor Oldham (01:16.27)
Mm-hmm.

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (01:26.546)
50 years, including being stressed in 87, 91, 99 through 2001, 2008, and so on. And by and large, value add multifamily, particularly C and B class, tend to weather those storms very efficiently and effectively. Values tend to get hit, but the fact is that from a cash flow perspective, rents tend to

and in most cases at least trend with inflation which is a good thing.

Trevor Oldham (02:02.206)
Yeah, people definitely need housing. It’s always a given.

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (02:04.586)
Yeah. So, so there’s that. And then, you know, the other part of it is, uh, I’m drawn to it because I, I really, you know, I have a passion for it. Um, I think it probably stems from the fact that, uh, growing up as a kid, I was one of those kids that lived in, you know, that type of an apartment. And, you know, I watched my mom work, uh, you know, two, sometimes three jobs just to make ends meet. And so, you know, I feel a connection with the folks that live in our buildings.

And I don’t know that they know that, but nevertheless, I sleep well at night knowing that we’re taking real good care of those folks because, like I said, I was that kid once.

Trevor Oldham (02:46.654)
That’s awesome to hear you. You find that so many operators are coming in, they’re trying to cut costs. And as a result, the experience of the tenant is not great. And then sometimes when they don’t have great tenants, that can lead to other problems coming up within the properties. And it’s at the end of the day, it’s a human, you know what I mean? You can look at it as numbers on a payroll and revenue and expenses, but it’s really a person at the other end that’s going to be renting out this property. So I really liked that.

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (02:54.518)
Yeah.

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (03:02.806)
That’s it.

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (03:11.518)
Yeah, and here’s the thing Trevor the fact is and I was talking about this yesterday with an investor Somebody who’s looking at us and you know the if you put a 20 unit building on the left And are you building same identical building on the right?

and you look at how they operate, right? You know, the fact is that when residents are, live in a clean, safe, well-appointed place where they’re proud to live, they tend to stay for a really long time. And like, you know, looking at every quarter or so, we snap a line and take a look at this. And you know, the average tenancy in state of Connecticut, which is where most of our portfolio is, tends to be about 17, 18 months,

pretty much every other year, right? And so in our buildings, our average tenancy is just a click above 4.1 years. And so the cool part about that is kind of twofold. One, I get to lay my head on the pillow every night knowing we’re doing right by the folks that live in our buildings. But two, our buildings are also more valuable and cashflow better, and here’s why.

They tend to, when people live in a place where they feel heard, respected, where everything’s nice and things are well cared for, they tend to pay their bills on time. They tend to…

you know, especially rent, they tend to stay a really long time. And I’ll get into that in a second. Um, and, you know, they take excellent care of the building because they want to keep it nice, right? And so what happens is that lack of turns, that lack of having to do lease ups saves us per unit, it could be thousands of dollars a year. And so that money drops right to our cashflow, right to our bottom line. Pretty much.

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (05:02.798)
And so that increases NOI, which increases the value of these buildings. And so when we go into a neighborhood, we’re fairly confident that we can turn around a building very quickly and relative to its peers, outperform within a matter of a year or two.

Trevor Oldham (05:21.454)
I want to talk about the property management aspect of it. I’ve lived in two different apartments. One had a great property management team. They were friendly. Anytime I had an issue with the apartment, super easy to work with. Conversely moved a little bit closer. So my wife could be closer to work. New property management team, totally different apartment, you know, owner. And I found with them things where you’d run into where there’d be first day we walk in, there’s no dish in the dishwasher rack. It’s just, uh, it’s basically empty. Things like that, even though they signed off that they checked it.

We had a light bulb go out. I don’t know, the maybe first week or two we were there and they wanted to charge us like 30 bucks to fix it. And not that we were paying super expensive rent, it was probably a class B property, but we were still paying like two grand a month for rent. And it was just mind blowing to me comparing one location to another location. And then it was almost like we couldn’t wait to get out of there. And then as anytime we had a problem, it would take forever to people to come in and get the problem fixed, but just.

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (06:11.722)
Right, exactly. Exactly.

Trevor Oldham (06:17.758)
On your end, when it comes to the property management team, is that just such a key essential part of just that whole tenant experience?

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (06:24.51)
100%. And that’s, that’s actually why we, so we worked with local property managers for years and, you know, had some good experiences and some not so good experiences. And, you know, that inconsistency taught me and our team that, you know, we were better off bringing that in and in house and, you know, creating Clark Street management. And so that’s what we did. We don’t manage other people’s apartments. We just manage our own.

But that way we knew that the residents, when they called and they got yes sir, yes ma’am, no sir, no ma’am, we’ll be right out and actually follow up. When the problem is solved, somebody follows up to make sure that the problem is solved. Thanking them for living in our buildings. The point that…

kind of running home for me as I was at an event, uh, MM five a few years ago and I don’t remember if it was Jake or Gino, but one of them said they wanted to be the Chick-fil-A of multifamily. And I said, yes, that’s exactly it. Right. You ever go to a Chick-fil-A and somebody serves you and you say, thank you. And what do they say? It’s my pleasure every time. Right. And so we have taught our team to react the same way. These are human beings. This is their home. And if they’ve got a problem, we need to solve it because we want them to be happy because we want them to stay. It’s easy.

Trevor Oldham (07:45.602)
I think you look at Chick-fil-A, you pretty much go look at any Chick-fil-A outside of Sunday. It’s going to be packed no matter whether it’s 9 a.m., 5 p.m. So that’s the great analogy. Then I was just thinking of another story where with our property management where I think it was again the first couple weeks we moved in using the oven and it had like this very strong gas smell so walked outside called the property management team like oh it’s okay just go back into the apartment we’ll check it out tomorrow and I’m thinking oh my gosh could this be like

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (07:51.295)
Right, exactly.

Trevor Oldham (08:13.79)
I guess like, I don’t know if it was, but they didn’t really do anything to like, make me feel better. We’re saying where the other company you call up, they get back to you, you know, rather quickly. So definitely kudos to you and bringing that into your house property management team. Cause I find a lot of operators where they run into issues is they do find great deals on these properties. But then when it comes to managing the property, that’s where that downfall is. And they try to use a third property management team. They don’t take that extra step. Like it sounds like you and your company does.

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (08:19.243)
Yeah.

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (08:33.038)
Mm-hmm. That’s where they fall apart. Yeah.

Trevor Oldham (08:42.542)
to build out that property management team. And how has that been building out that property management team to help you manage your properties?

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (08:49.102)
it’s a challenge, right? I mean, finding the right people with the right mentality to, you know, it’s a lot of the folks in this business aren’t necessarily customer oriented, right? You know, it’s not necessarily a service oriented business. It’s very much a transactional business. And so, you know, finding the right people to work, a lot of cases we’re pulling people out of other industries to be able to pull them into this, you know? And the thing is, is that as we’ve begun

extend our portfolio, you know, one of the things that we’re kind of working through literally right now is, you know, as we acquire a building and we find a quality property manager in place, do we keep them or do we kind of hybrid and say, okay, you’re going to be feet on the ground, but we’re running it, which is I think where we’re landing. Or do we, you know, over time, hire our own people in that in that area. And I think we’ll get there. But, you know, at least

They are crystal clear when we go in and acquire a building say down in North Carolina that they understand here is the expectations. You know, we’ve got a whole orientation package that we take our team through. And, you know, the property managers that are going to work with us. They’ve got to go through it and they got to buy off buy in. And if they can buy in great. And if they can’t, well, then they’re just not a good fit and we’ll figure we’ll figure it out, but

Um, you know, I think that’s kind of where we’re landing is, uh, outsourcing some of the, you know, day to day maintenance, the handyman or the superintendent, the, you know, the plumber, the electrician, the HVAC folks, um, and everybody else is going to be Clark street employees. So work so far.

Trevor Oldham (10:28.35)
Yeah, that’s perfect. I think having that team member on your team is key. Making sure that they’re the right fit and making sure they’re, just because they’re coming over from the previous, I would say regime or however you want to call it, operator I should say, coming over from the previous operator, you want to make sure that they’re still doing a good job with their company. But with that said, I know you mentioned earlier, a little earlier in our conversation, that your company invests in Connecticut. Are there any other states outside of Connecticut or locations within the country that you look to invest in?

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (10:32.947)
It is indeed.

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (10:39.754)
Right, sure.

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (10:58.402)
So we are aggressively moving into North Carolina. We just started that at the beginning of this year. We’re making offers left and right. I’m basically making at least two or three offers a week on buildings. And we’re in negotiations on several of them and we’ll see how that shakes out. But the fact is that

in order for us to grow here in Connecticut, our objective is to get to a thousand units by the end of 2025. The only really way to do that is to buy much bigger buildings. And so the…

buildings that we would normally target, they don’t live here in Connecticut, right? Connecticut is more of an old New England, you know, you can buy six units, you can buy eight units, you can buy 10 units. There are very few 250 unit apartment complexes. And the ones that are owned have either been in the same family for 100 years, or they’re owned by, you know, a big conglomerate or a big PE firm. So the, you know, so that’s when we started to look at other states, North Carolina fits the bill.

It’s a landlord friendly state. It is, you know, there’s plenty of opportunity from a value add perspective. You know, the job growth is exceptional. The population growth is equally good. There’s a diverse population of employers. Median incomes are right on in terms of relative to rents. So yeah, there’s great opportunity there. We are looking at other states like Kentucky and Indiana and Ohio and we’re more opportunistic there. But you know, the focus right now is.

to find that anchor building in North Carolina, plant the flag and then buy several hundred units around it.

Trevor Oldham (12:41.61)
That’s an awesome strategy. And I don’t know if it’s from being in New England myself growing up in Massachusetts and then now moving over to New York. But when I was down in North Carolina a couple of months back, I found the people to be a lot more friendlier than the people in Massachusetts and New York. I’m sure we Connecticut too when you’re driving around and you’re getting honked at and people are swearing at you. Where in North Carolina, I’m like, this is nice. People are friendly. I don’t know if it’s the weather or what it is.

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (12:54.314)
That’s true.

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (13:06.049)
Yep. Southern hospitality is a real thing.

Trevor Oldham (13:09.686)
Yeah, exactly. But when it comes to these deals you’re finding and really looking over say the last year, year and a half or so, obviously a lot of multifamily operators have taken a big hit just on how they’ve financed their deals and different things like that. But curious how your company has been over the last year and a half. And then also going forward when it comes to finding these new deals, when it comes to like structuring them and just making sure that they’re going to be okay. Because again, you hear some of these operators just over leverage. I mean, you can sort of tell

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (13:16.334)
Sure.

Trevor Oldham (13:39.51)
you know, with their bridge debt and their LTV and their, you know, the coverage ratio, where, where they’re going to be, make a mistake. But curious when it comes to your company and just cause I find it is a little bit of a hot button topic within the multifamily spaces, you know, how the, you know, different operators are structuring their deals based on, you know, how everything’s been going down.

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (13:57.022)
Yeah. So with the smaller deals here in Connecticut, you know, we would acquire properties with 30 year debt and then, you know, use either capital, our capital and, or our partner’s capital to rehab the properties and then, um, and then hold on for a really long time, uh, you know, as we refi out or we decide to sell a property to trade up, you know, that’s when we’re returning capital. Um, as far as the properties, you know, the much larger properties, you know, honestly, I’m inclined to do the same thing.

thing because the you know I would rather have I would rather give up equity to really good partners than you know sign up for bridge debt that has some sort of variable in it that I can’t predict you know the fact is that if you go on Twitter right and you listen to all the folks on retweet and you know the mortgage you know there’s a lot of knowledge out there there’s a lot of experience and they don’t know I don’t know do you know

Trevor Oldham (14:38.2)
Mm-hmm.

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (14:53.006)
You know, there’s no crystal ball, right? I have no idea what the fed’s going to do over the next two to three years. Are they going to drop rates? Maybe probably. Uh, when don’t know. Right. And so that’s not predictable, but what is predictable is the fact that, you know, even at, you know, agency debt these days is like six and a quarter. Uh, normal commercial debt is probably, you know, local bank credit union type. There’s probably a half a point beyond that. Maybe you have full point in some cases.

But here’s the thing, the mortgage rates right now, the average, the 50 year running average for mortgage rates in the United States is 7.74%. So we’re smack dab in the middle. In fact, we’re on the lower end of that range of historical norms. So, if you can’t operate in these environments, you most likely paid too much for the property and that happens.

But, you know, like you were saying, I know plenty of operators out there who bought at 3%, you know, maybe a bought a rate cap and that recap is now under pressure at least. And the, you know, the fact is, is that they can’t refi out because they’re, you know, their refi price is, you know, six and a half percent when they were holding 3% and that blows up their cashflow. And you know, so, so that, yeah, there are a lot of people who are

Trevor Oldham (16:02.926)
Thank you.

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (16:21.374)
little bit of trouble. But, you know, I saw Neil Bauer speak and he made an excellent point. There are 990,000 multifamily properties in the US. And you see the Wall Street Journal or the Times or, you know, any of those other papers are, you know, online and they’re saying the multifamily industry is in peril. It’s not. It’s 3000 buildings, right? That’s it. So it’s a minute number of buildings that are under the rate pressure that we’re talking about.

Trevor Oldham (16:42.798)
Mm-hmm.

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (16:49.214)
Um, but nevertheless, that’s what makes the headlines. So, you know, I’m very, I’m bullish on, on multifamily, but you know, you have to buy it right. And in fact, Every offer we send out these days has kind of two components to it. One is, uh, if we buy it with bank debt or.

you know, credit union or whatever agency debt or whatever, depending on how big it is. Uh, and that’s one price and that price, you know, we won’t buy unless there’s a two point spread between our debt costs and the cap rate we’re buying at. Right. So if that, if it’s at a, if it’s at a, you know, a, uh, if our debt is 6%, right. Then the, the most we’re going to pay is an eight cap. Right. And so, so we, we provide the offers based on, on that model. Now, if they want what they’re asking for, and I have this

Trevor Oldham (17:29.975)
Mm-hmm.

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (17:38.672)
conversation multiple times a week these days is, you know, I am happy to pay a 2021 vintage price. If you will give me 2021 seller financing at 3% that same vintage, right? Because then I can make the numbers work. But you know, and most of them get it, they kind of you get a kind of a sly smile from them. And, and you’re like, Yeah, I know. Right. But, you know, there are still a lot of folks that cross their arms and say, no, I’m

Trevor Oldham (17:50.028)
No.

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (18:08.51)
I pray for them because they’re not going to get their price and it’s going to be a while. So if they do. So because I think the dumb money on the street is kind of shaken out at this point. I think the folks that are making bids these days have their act together.

Trevor Oldham (18:23.962)
Yeah, I really like that from the standpoint. It doesn’t sound like you’re going out there and forcing yourself to buy deals just to get into deals, just to raise capital. You’re going out there and making sure you’re finding these good quality deals. And I think that’s super important because I’ve seen a lot of operators and sponsors, and almost they’re finding so many deals and they’re raising so much capital. And sometimes I wondered to myself, are you actually vetting these deals? Are you just bringing them on? Do you have sort of a strict guideline? So I do like to hear that you are very properly vetting.

these deals. And I thought it was funny that you mentioned about the mortgage rate. I know when me and my wife were buying our house, obviously not an investment property, but we could have got our fixed rate was like five and a half or we could have done a 10 year arm at 5%. It would have saved like a hundred bucks a month. And I was going back and forth. I was like, what should I do? And then I looked up the historical rate and I was like, the historical mortgage is like seven and a half percent. It’s like even five and a half percent fixed rate over 30. That’s still cheaper. And then I can always refinance if it does go save for 3%, 4% not.

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (19:02.978)
Yep.

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (19:16.226)
Great deal.

Trevor Oldham (19:22.134)
that I know we’re gonna see that in the next little while. So I think that’s a super important point that you brought up. But when it comes to the properties that you are going out there and buying, say whether that’s Connecticut, North Carolina, these other states that you’re looking into, do you go into it with a game plan of saying, hey, I wanna hold this property for three years, five years, seven years, or is it just more dependent on a per property basis?

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (19:22.518)
Right.

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (19:46.122)
It is definitely dependent. Our model is based on an average five-year hold. But that said, I get asked all the time, any of your buildings for sale? And my answer is always, they’re all for sale. You make me an offer at my target price, we got a deal. So if somebody is going to come in three years and offer me my five-year price, we’re going to work that deal out.

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (20:14.106)
you know, the fact is, is that we go into these in with kind of on the building acquisitions, we go into these deals with a five year model in place. Um, and we communicate with the investors. This could be three, it could be seven, you know, we’re basically targeting a specific return and a specific sale price point or offer point. And, uh, when we get that is when we either refire sell. And in most cases we’re selling and trading up.

on the development side, you know, that’s more of a 10 year hold, right? Because it’s, there’s a lot of capital to be put into the property in the first couple, three years. And you really don’t start to see really, you know, market expectation type returns until you get into the seven, eight, nine 10 year range. And so we go into it very conservatively. You know, I mean, the thing is, is that

there was a lot of quick money made over the last five years, uh, responsibly or irresponsibly. I’ll leave it to the audience to decide. I have my own opinion. Uh, but you know, the guys chasing ACFIs, they did very well, right? But it, the, it’s coming home to roost as they say also, but, um, you know, the, the fact is, is that we buy slowly. Um, you know, we finance as best, you know, as best as we can, we,

I can’t remember the last time I didn’t put 30 year debt on a building. Um, I’m sure I did it, but I can’t remember. Uh, and, and the fact is, is that, you know, we go into this knowing that, uh, real estate is a marathon, not a sprint.

Trevor Oldham (21:54.446)
Yeah, I think that’s perfect, especially for those listening with these operators that saw quick success in the last couple of years. I think it’s important for the audience to understand, at least for me, when I was looking at deals, I try to underwrite them myself. Talking to you Ed today, it sounds like everything you do is conservatively, but every time I hop on a call with a sponsor, they’re always telling me we underwrite conservatively. That sounds good. Maybe the equity multiple, say 2X over five years, the IRR, whatever it may be. The equity multiple sounds reasonable.

but sometimes I might say three, four, and then you start to say, hey, let me dig into this further. And I found that for me as a passive investor, as you start to dig further, you start to look at things like, what are they projecting the vacancy rate? How much are they gonna increase the rent? So I think someone listening, you always gotta do your own due diligence on these deals and not just take the word of the operator and sponsors. And again, and I think you’ve done, you sound very conservative, so I’m just pointing that out to the audience where sometimes you talk to these sponsors and.

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (22:28.62)
Right.

Trevor Oldham (22:51.958)
and operators and they say, hey, I am conservative. And then you look at their deal and you’re like, wow, that’s kind of scary that you have variable rate debt. That doesn’t sound too conservative to me, different things like that. But let’s say someone is listening to this podcast today and they say, hey, he knows what he’s talking about. I love where he’s looking for his deals. What does it look like when someone hops out on that prospective investor call with you? Are you just getting some feedback on their background, looking for some of their prior experiences or just like more of a, hey,

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (22:56.666)
That’s not conservative. Yeah.

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (23:02.821)
Right.

Trevor Oldham (23:21.494)
Get to know your type of call.

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (23:23.206)
It’s, so I look at this as dating and then marriage, right? And so the first call is all, it’s a first date. I wanna know, you know, where are they in their journey, your financial journey, where are they trying to get? You know, what is their timeline? How are they gonna use the money over the course of, you know, once we return it? And that indicates to me what type of project.

you know, we can put in front of them going forward, right? We tend to curate different types of projects for different people. And, you know, someone who is investing with their self-directed IRA is, you know, and then they’re in their 30s, you know, they’re thinking it’s a huge long-term, right? You know, 20, 30 years.

And so that is one type of project. Maybe a development project may be more in line with what they’re looking for because of the longterm returns over that eight to 10 year timeframe. Whereas somebody who’s my age, I’m 54, the line is a little shorter, right? And so that may indicate one of the private equity funds that we have or…

where we’re investing in, you know, very short term deals. So we just announced a debt fund. We’re actually, by the time this is live, we’ll have announced it. The, that is, you know, focused on funding short term projects. So flipping small multifamily, you know, acquisition type deals. And, you know, so the whole there is, you know, anywhere from six to 18 months. So it’s, you know, much shorter, you know, syndication maybe a, or, or in some cases,

ventures depending on the deal. You know, they tend to be, you know, three to five years, maybe seven at the outset and that, you know, the only way we would, the only reason we would hold for those extra couple of years is if another 2008 happens, right. And you just have to let the rain pass before you go back out to market.

Trevor Oldham (25:25.438)
Yeah, that’s a great example of handling a call with a potential investor. I just think to myself, I had a call on Friday with a company. It was another multifamily company. Seemed interesting, but showed up to the call, called me five minutes late. So should I even take the call? So that was sort of the first red flag. And then when I was on the call, I don’t even think they asked me like what I was looking for. It was just, here’s everything about our company. Here’s what we’ve done. And then they booked a, it was a 15 minute call. So now we’re down to 10 and then they spent 10 minutes explaining their company.

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (25:46.446)
heart cell.

Trevor Oldham (25:53.706)
said, okay, I’ll send you all I do to our investor list. I was like, well, I didn’t even tell you what I’m looking for, you know, if you have those properties coming up. And, you know, and I find, yeah, and I find a lot of folks do that, which is pretty crazy where I just more, here’s all the great things about our company, which is, yeah, I wanna learn about that in your background and different things, but I also want you to sort of get an idea of like what I’m looking for, per se. So I think you do a great job of that. And let’s say again, someone’s listening to this, I don’t even.

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (26:01.895)
Yeah, a lot of those guys.

Trevor Oldham (26:23.838)
Maybe they have to have the call with you, but they say, okay, now I’m ready to invest with their company. What does that look like after someone has made that investment? Is it communication monthly? Is it quarterly? Is it webinars? What does that sort of look like?

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (26:33.196)
Yeah.

So it’s on a, on a systems perspective, it’s monthly. Um, but every single investor on the, you know, within one of our deals has my personal cell phone, they can call me anytime. And the, the fact is, is that, um,

you know, I have, you know, it’s interesting. I work with a lot of C level executives and one of the, and you know, type a, I’ve got it together, masters of the universe type personalities, right? And almost to a person they ask, well, why can’t I do this myself? And my answer is you can, you just don’t have time because you work 80 hours a week and you have a family and, you know, you, unfortunately you’re a human being and you acquire six to eight hours of sleep a night. So

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (27:22.772)
So that’s not possible. So if you are interested in doing this I’m happy to teach you everything and I always tell people I’m a cheap date right for over a cup of coffee I’ll answer any question you have

and I will do my best to teach you some sector of the market that is interesting to you. You know, in most cases I’m even happy to buy the coffee. But the fact is that there are lots of investors within our world that we have, we give them access to the point where they’re basically looking over our shoulder as we’re doing stuff. And, because they want to learn how to do it themselves. And so I welcome that. You know, if we have…

a couple of investors who have started to buy on their own over the course of time. And I view that as a win, right? So.

Trevor Oldham (28:14.43)
I’ve thought about that to myself. Why don’t I just go out and buy the properties? And then I remember I don’t wanna deal with all the headaches. I enjoy being a passive investor and having someone like yourself where I can, you know, you can help guide my money into these deals and be that steward of the one going out there and finding the properties and putting the property management team. And then I started to go down the list. I’m like, yeah, I got enough going on in my job and with my family, I’d rather just, you know, I’m not gonna be able to pay 100% attention to this deal and what’s going on. I’d rather, you know, have someone like yourself add that.

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (28:21.738)
Yeah, there’s…

Trevor Oldham (28:44.03)
knows what they’re doing, can find the deals, can manage the deals and all that good stuff that comes with that. But it’s been great talking to you today. And if our audience is interested in learning more by yourself or about your company, where should they be going to?

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (28:50.55)
Right. Thank you.

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (28:58.882)
So the fastest way to get to me is at clarkst.com, which is our website, C-L-A-R-K-S-T.com. I’m Ed at clarkstreet.com. And you can also find me and our company. I’m Ed Matthews with one T on pretty much every social channel that the folks in Silicon Valley have built. Likewise, Clark Street Capital is everywhere as well. So we’re pretty easy to find. And then lastly, if you wanna connect on a podcast like this,

have our own podcast called the real estate underground. So if, and that’s more educational based.

Trevor Oldham (29:35.422)
I’ll make sure to include all that in the show notes of today’s episode. But Ed, thank you so much for coming on to the show today. I really enjoyed our conversation.

Ed Mathews – Clark St Capital (29:42.218)
Likewise, thanks Trevor, I appreciate the opportunity.