Interview 15.1: Jeff Brown, Real Estate Investment Advisor

Jeff, What Do You Do?

I met Jeff Brown last year on the telephone. After an hour or so of questions, we decided to work together. Somewhere within that hour, I asked the “What do you do?” question. Jeff had a wonderful answer. “I make people wealthy, and help them reach their retirement dreams.” Jeff didn’t need any lessons in conversation from this writer-business girl.

I liked Jeff right away. He is integrity, intelligence, and intuitive detail about his business. Last week, this week, before taxes seemed an appropriate time to interview Jeff about his business. You’ll note that neither Jeff nor I suggest that you invest your millions without developing a plan that you fully understand.

Let’s begin.

Jeff, why should someone have a real estate investment advisor? How can a RE advisor help plan my retirement?

Essentially when you begin anything as crucially important as investing for your retirement, you want to ensure you have the answers you need when you need them. The greatest value a real estate investment advisor brings to the table is answering questions you didn’t know to ask. There’s very little planning you can execute when you don’t even know the questions.

Your advisor should understand how to create a Purposeful Plan for your retirement. He or she should be able to integrate financing, proper cash reserves, where to invest the capital, (what region) along with what kind of real estate makes the most sense. And those are just the basics.

The ability to simultaneously understand the appropriate tax law, including 1031 tax deferred exchange, various depreciation approaches – including cost segregation. Maybe the most important skill is being able to get the timing right when making moves with all or parts of your real estate portfolio.

This next piece of advice may surprise you – especially coming from a real estate guy. The very essence of retirement, at least financially, is nothing if not lots and lots of monthly income – and it better be reliable. Towards the onset of retirement I have many of my clients convert some of their equity into investments outside of real estate. Why? Because these specific investments, offered by another segment of the investment community, produce the pure gold retirees long for – annual TAX FREE income — for life.

In the end, your real estate investment advisor should be able to be the Captain of your retirement ship, navigating you to the retirement you’ve always dreamed of. He should be able to plot a course, and weather troubling seas. He should be able to adjust on the run, and in real time, because Murphy is alive and well.

It might help to know what a real estate investment advisor isn’t. He isn’t a real estate agent who sells houses one day, and the next he’s an investment expert. I’ll make an absolute statement of fact here, unfettered by any wiggle room – there is no such animal. The necessary training to be an effective advisor is almost daunting it’s so comprehensive. Tax law, after tax cash flow analysis, demographic trends, proper structuring of transactions, and a myriad of other factors.

And even though I have that training, plus almost 40 years of experience, I still have specialists in several fields just a phone call away. Retirement is too important to be ‘pretty sure’. Doing things on purpose has to be the bedrock principle of everything you do when investing for your retirement. There are very few happy accidents.

Okay, so now I get the part of what Jeff does, well sort of. . . . He guides real estate investments so that I can retire with cash to live as well or better than I did when I was working.

In Part 2, we’re going to talk about the two myths that get in the way of most folks being able to retire with out having to supplement their cash income.

Thanks Jeff. This is important stuff.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Jeff writes at his own blog BawldGuy Talking and is a contributor at the Bloodhound Realty blog. Jeff will be attending SOBCon 07 in Chicago on May 11-12.