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Show Summary
In this conversation, Matt McCurdy shares his journey from corporate America to becoming a successful real estate investor, focusing on mobile home parks. He discusses the importance of intentionality in life and business, the impact of COVID-19 on his investment strategies, and the value of shifting from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset. Matt emphasizes the significance of determining one’s value and delegating tasks effectively, as well as the power of journaling for personal growth. He also introduces his book, ‘Corn Fed Millionaire,’ which focuses on building wealth through real estate investing in the Midwest.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Matt McCurdy (00:00)
I have a son that’s now seven and you know, in 2020 he was two and just seeing the small little shifts that he’s doing and changing. He’s in first grade now, you know, learning a bunch. Uh, there’s a lot of firsts that eventually become the last. So trying to ensure thatI am present with him and seeing all the first and the last together and not being regretful of, know, in 10, 15, 20 years down the road saying, man, I wish it would have been around to see those things.
Micah Johnson (02:08)
Hey everyone. My name is Micah Johnson here with the real estate pros podcast. And today I’m joined by someone I’ve been looking forward to speaking with Matt McCurdy, who’s been making some serious moves in the mobile home park space. I’m excited to talk about this. Matt.Pleasure to have you on, I think our listeners are really gonna take something away from how you’re using real estate investing in your life on purpose. That’s what I’m really excited to dig into, that overall arc. So let’s dive in. So first off, people who may not be familiar with you, give us a short version of what your main focus on these days are and what markets you’re currently operating in.
Matt McCurdy (02:23)
Yeah, thanks for having me on.Sure. I’ll
answer the first question or the second question first. I’m in Cedar Rapids,
I’ve ⁓ born and raised in Iowa, ⁓ originally from the Des Moines area, but moved over to Cedar Rapids for ⁓ corporate America experience back in the day and kind of fell in love with the market. It’s a blue collar neighborhood kind of area where there’s a lot of different food processing. ⁓
manufacturing positions here. So love Cedar Rapids. ⁓ Been putting my money where my mouth is and investing here. So what got me into real estate was with ⁓ Robert Kiyosaki, like most people, right? Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Reading that book kind of changed my mindset and then subsequent books after that and created my business plan.
Micah Johnson (03:34)
You read the Bible, huh?Matt McCurdy (03:45)
in December, or I’m sorry, July of 2012 and bought my first single family house, like most people in December of 2013. And then was out of corporate America by December of 2016. in three years, we scaled it up with single family houses and duplexes. And then since then, you know, became a real estate broker, bought a couple of mobile home communities that you reference.Micah Johnson (04:01)
Man.Matt McCurdy (04:15)
And then, you know, now kind of looking back on it with the financial freedom, starting to invest in other people and helping them, you know, make their dreams a reality as well.Micah Johnson (04:26)
That’s awesome. I love that arc. Let’s get into the early stages. You got your first single family. What was your mindset about real estate when you were buying that first property? What was your goal then and what were you trying to do?Matt McCurdy (04:40)
Sure. Yeah,I actually, if you want to get really depressed, go back and look at offers you made back in 2012 and 2013 that you never got, right? Like that’s a good way to humble yourself real quick. ⁓ But I had a formula and I was very conservative with that formula because we didn’t know at that time, you know, coming off the 08,
financial crisis that real estate was really going to kind of do this, right? We had no idea. ⁓
It could have just done this for the next two decades for all we knew. So I was, was conservative, but what I did look for after, you know, my, my principal and interest payment, my, my, uh, insurance, uh, payment and property taxes, I was looking to clear about $500 a month for every single family house. So backing into that number, I knew what I wanted to make. So I backed into the number of here’s what my purchase price should be.
plus my renovation costs, that should get me that number. So that was my simplistic formula.
Micah Johnson (06:35)
was a whole goal of buy and hold. It wasn’t like a flipping strategy at that time. It was to build a rental portfolio.Matt McCurdy (06:41)
Yeah, and I’ve since stayed that way. I’ve sold a fewhere and there where they just haven’t aligned to my portfolio after having them in my portfolio for a few years.
There’s several reasons why I’ve done that, but it’s less than a handful of properties that I’ve actually sold over the, what are we at? Almost 13 years now that I’ve been doing this. So I really value buy and hold because as I tell anyone that wants to talk about flipping, really like what Robert Kiyosaki talks about, when you’re flipping, you’ve created a business for yourself. When you buy and hold,
You’re holding it, you’re really invested in that asset. And then through inflation and appreciation, that property continues to go up over time. As soon as you sell, you create a tax consequence for yourself. And that turns into kind of a shuffle in the deck in the Titanic kind of situation. I guess I’m just too cheap to pay the taxes.
Micah Johnson (07:51)
That’s a really good distinction there too is one is a business, one is more of a life plan in a way. It’s a way for you to create the life you want unless you’re just the kind of person that wants to run a business. I’ve been in real estate since 2014 and the folks that I’ve met that do 50 to 100 plus flips a year, they want to be the CEO of something.Real estate just happened to be the commodity that they chose. If it wasn’t real estate, they’d be building another big team in a different industry. It’s really a personality setting. And that’s where, like we were talking about before we started recording, I like the arc that you’re gonna share today about how you have gone about real estate in your own way. So you started building those, building your portfolio of buy and holds. What happened next?
Matt McCurdy (08:44)
Yeah. Through that, I eventually left corporate America in 2016 and kind of fizzled, I wouldn’t call it fizzled out, but just kind of held tight in 2017 and didn’t really do a ton, bought I think maybe a duplex or two in that year. And then in 2018, I was kind of at the fork in the road, if you will, and said, am I going to just stand pad at my 20 ish units that I had?Or am I going to scale this up a little bit bigger? And I kept coming back to just, you know, looking internally and saying, am I good with this? Or do I really want to, you know, on my deathbed, do I want to say, well, do I ever regret because I didn’t really scale this up larger? Should I really go after it? So I did in 2018, I think we acquired roughly 13 or 14 properties that year. And then just kind of have been shooting that, that
trajectory up since really 2021. So got my broker’s license in 2019. It seems like every year there’s a new milestone of doing something different. Right. So I became a real estate broker after being an agent since 2015.
And it was primarily just to help other real estate investors and myself. That was a big thing, right? Just using that commission.
to help on the renovation side, right? Using some of that cash that I was giving to an agent that may or may not be helping me in the best appropriate way, really just doing something for myself and investing that back in the business. So just finding different businesses that supported, you know, what I was trying to build. And then 2020, as you mentioned, bought my first mobile home community, 2021. I decided that was so great.
It was like 11 lot mobile home community. The second one in 2021 was 190 lots. So really kind of pushing that up. then since then I’ve been kind of taking a little bit of the foot off the gas, if you will, and really trying to value my time with my family, ⁓ friends and family and really trying to be present there instead of this hard charging real estate investor that’s working.
60, 80 hours a week, ⁓ having really a frame of mind of why I started this back in 2012, 2013, right? It was to get out of corporate America, have financial freedom, and then from there build the life that I really wanted through intentionality versus just letting it pass me by, right? So ⁓ really invested in that. from there I’ve become an author.
wrote a book to help other people and, you know, see where that goes.
Micah Johnson (12:15)
What’s the name of that book?Matt McCurdy (12:17)
corn fed millionaire. just published it, ⁓ right before Thanksgiving. Here it is. And yeah. Yeah. So I wrote a book because I’m in Iowa. Like let’s play to the stereotype, right? I could have, I could have chose a pig millionaire as well, because we have, ⁓ funds, fun stat. we are outnumbered by hogs in Iowa seven to one. So we have seven hogs.Micah Johnson (12:23)
That’s awesome. I love the name. That’s so killer.OK.
Matt McCurdy (12:47)
one person. that’s a beautiful stat. it is a book, ⁓ the synopsis of it, the guide to building multimillion dollar wealth through one to four unit real estate investing in the Midwest. There’s so many authors, so many ⁓ real estate investors and gurus and people on social media talking about the East and West Coast. And like, why can’t, and the Southeast even, right? Like that’s the darling lately.Let’s start talking about the Midwest and how great it is. ⁓ It’s fine that people are overlooking it. It’s great for people like myself and others that are invested in here because I truly think eventually our country is going to just kind of cave in for searching for that affordable housing. There’s an affordability gap that continues to just fester. And I’ve seen it.
Micah Johnson (13:38)
Mm-hmm.Matt McCurdy (13:44)
early on, know, in the 2010s, 2015, where tons of money was going from the West Coast into Colorado and now Colorado is becoming unaffordable. And it’s like, where is this money going to go? Right. People are just searching for something to truly help their families and ensure that they can do something, you know, and not just live paycheck to paycheck.Micah Johnson (14:08)
Yeah, I agree, man. it’s, like how specific it is because real estate is such a broad term and no markets are the same. I’m based out of Florida. So that Southeast darling, completely understand. as, but even in Florida, I’m just south of Jacksonville and Jacksonville and Tampa are not the same. And I’ve done deals in both of them, right? It’s so specific. And I love how you’re focusing on that particular spot because like you said, there’s so many gurus out there. There’s so many people thatMatt McCurdy (14:19)
Yeah.Micah Johnson (14:37)
talk about real estate as if it applies broad spectrum, but it just doesn’t. It is very specific to the area you want to do it and then what you want to do. So I want to tie back to something that you said, because you said you wanted to create a life intentionally. And I love that so many real estate entrepreneurs, they get into this game for financial freedom to create that life they want,but don’t end up doing it.
They create a job that they can’t get away from and that doesn’t ever do what they wanted, even though they may make the most money they ever have, quote unquote, it doesn’t create the life they want. So in particular, how did that shift to mobile home parks help with that?
Matt McCurdy (15:59)
Well, I don’t know that it necessarily helped. Quite honestly, it was probably the worst thing that I could have done from my time perspective. But the reason I went into mobile home communities was COVID and really analyzing myMicah Johnson (16:03)
OK.Okay.
Matt McCurdy (16:18)
you know, we’re five years off of that ⁓ COVID kind of lockdown, whatever forbearance you want to talk about.Some landlords have kind of forgotten about that, right? How the government just shut everything down and they said, ⁓ by the way, if your tenant can’t work or doesn’t want to work or scared to work, they don’t have to pay rent. that was something that we’ve never seen in our history. So the government overreach was really kind of concerning and ⁓ seeing how the government was reacting to what they have done, right?
I get it, I’m not here to be on the blue or red team, but I’m just saying, I think the government kind of overreached on where they should have gone with that. And obviously we have 2020 vision looking back on it. At that time, it was scary, right? We didn’t know what COVID would do, but it all came back to, okay, they’re gonna continue to print money, they’re gonna continue to overspend, they’re not changing anything, they’re just gonna continue to.
keep stacking this before it’s over our heads. And I keep looking at where’s the middle class going? It’s just poof, right? Right in front of our eyes is their print and stimulus checks. like, I don’t think that’s the right thing to do. It’s great start, but ⁓ I think the middle class is just going to continue to evaporate through inflation. ⁓ so I kept going back to the affordability thing.
Right? Just what I talked about Midwest. I love the Midwest for affordability. I really, I started thinking, okay, even my single family houses are, not necessarily affordable, but you know, they’re, they’re creeping up on rent. What’s the most affordable asset class out there? And you know, from a home ownership perspective, it’s mobile homes. And that, that was my, again, very simplistic way of thinking about it and saying,
Why am I not doing this? You know, am I just scared of the stigma? ⁓ or, know, why? So I started with the, kind of a test run with that 11 lot mobile home community, and then went, went in bigger the next year when I found that opportunity. So both of them are in Iowa. I love the state kind of where they’re at, ⁓ from a, a landlord, ⁓ investing, ⁓
perspective. I just, I think it makes a ton of sense. Mobile home communities are valued a little bit differently than, than duplexes and single family houses. Those are more of the market approach where mobile home communities are commercial assets. They’re based off of what you, you make on them, right? The income approach. And that was a little diversity for my portfolio. I think to answer your question on what kind of spurred this intentionality and say,
Micah Johnson (19:13)
Hmm.Matt McCurdy (19:23)
Okay, Matt, why are you doing all this was just just little things,I have a son that’s now seven and you know, in 2020 he was two and just seeing the small little shifts that he’s doing and changing. He’s in first grade now, you know, learning a bunch. Uh, there’s a lot of firsts that eventually become the last. So trying to ensure that
I am present with him and seeing all the first and the last together and not being regretful of, know, in 10, 15, 20 years down the road saying, man, I wish it would have been around to see those things.
And then I’m also part of an organization called Front Road Dads. They’re really, their tagline is the best tagline I’ve probably heard from an intentionality standpoint. They are.
family men with businesses, not business men with families. And it’s been a yeah, great mastermind ⁓ to really focus in on is all this noise out here worth your attention? Or what truly do you value and what truly are you giving your time to?
Micah Johnson (20:21)
Love thatIt’s so important. It’s so important to think about it that way because it’s easy to get caught up in shiny object syndrome in real estate. It’s easy to chase the next thing. And being type A entrepreneurs, we all think we can do it and we all know we can do it. So it’s not if we can, it’s just, we got to come up with good reasons not to, not good reasons to do it. that’s what I’ve learned. It’s a proclivity to action can get us in trouble sometimes.
We don’t have that problem, but that intentionally slowing down to put your life in a correct order. Cause if you don’t, it can just travel away. That’s what I went through with my, my, my daughter, she’s 12 now, but her first year I was in the medical field. I didn’t get to see her at all. I was always at the hospital or always at the office working. And it was just like, what are you doing? You’re missing all this stuff. So I love that. And I encourage listeners. If you’re feeling
Like you’re having to choose between one or the other. Take time to think about it. Take time to understand what it is that you want in life because that’s what the work we do pushes us towards. And that brings, I heard this term a while back, but it’s called the dignity of work. It returns that hard work to a place in our life where it’s actually good. It doesn’t drain us. It pushes us forward because we know it’s not just for a dollar. It’s not just for a car or just for it’s
for something, you’re doing it all for this reason, and it’s to live this life that you actually want. So kudos there, man, to actually like do it, to be one of the people out there that says, I’m doing this to have this kind of life. For someone that wants to do that same thing, what would you encourage them to do?
Matt McCurdy (22:24)
Yeah, well, thanks. I think it takes time, right? And you’re not going to change. You know, if you have this mindset epiphany, let’s say today through this podcast, like, wow, I need to change tomorrow, you’re not going to be this new person. Right. So being okay with with that turmoil, but doing something small every day to kind of shift that. Right. So maybe it’s, hey, instead of painting thissingle family house because I’m so good at painting, right? Like I’m talking about life experience here. I’m really good at painting because I did it one summer in college so I can do it really fast. Probably faster than a lot of painter, know, pro painters out there. But that’s something that I’m like, okay, that’s not that’s, you know, 20 to $50 an hour task. Where what should my hourly rate be right and starting
Micah Johnson (23:22)
Hmm.Matt McCurdy (23:23)
that in perspective, from there, I think you really start honing in on what is your true value to this business. So when you figure out is that $100 an hour, $200, $500, $1,000 an hour, whatever you come up with to say, this is what my hourly rate is, and stamping that on your business, then you start saying, okay, why am I doing these $50 an hour tests, right?Micah Johnson (23:50)
Yeah.Matt McCurdy (23:50)
can I start delegating some of that successfully? Don’t just ship it out the door without again intentionality to ensure that there’s a process and a solution that ensures success when you do ⁓ outsource that task.Micah Johnson (24:13)
Now, how did you come up with your value the first time? Like, what was that formula you used to be like, okay, so if someone’s trying to do this, they’re listening, like, okay, how do I come up with my current value so that I know where I’m at now? Because I’m guessing it doesn’t stop growing, right? You start at, you may be worth a hundred right now, but one day you will be worth that thousand dollars an hour as long as you keep going. What was that process for you?Matt McCurdy (24:36)
Yeah, so I was very simplistic on it. Again, that’s kind of my theme, right? Because that’s one of the chapters in my book is just keep it simple. ⁓ Because if you start getting too crazy about it, then you start forgetting your strategy. And then before long, you don’t even know why you’re doing the things you’re doing, right? Just keep it simple. And there’s so much value to that. So I just started looking at my net worth and my portfolio value and saying, okay,If I started just annualizing that revenue, what does that look like from a dollar value perspective? And then I would just kind of play with it to say, okay, does that even make sense if it’s like, you know, $500 an hour, right? Like what kind of task could I do that’s $500 an hour? And then all of a sudden you start looking at it you’re like, wait a minute, if I am truly like trying to find ways to infill some
mobile home lots, for example, ⁓ and I feel like 10 of them this year, and I spend, I don’t know, 80 hours in that year, what’s that dollar value? And we can look at it from a cashflow perspective, and then you can back into it on like a cap rate, because every dollar that you make on revenue, ⁓ minus your of your gross ⁓ expenses, you can come up with a ⁓
a value impact to that mobile home community that if you ended up selling it later, you know, there’s some value to right. you’re looking at cash flow and an equity position. And that’s a beautiful thing. So ⁓ I don’t know that I have like a streamlined approach to come up with my dollar figure. came up with what is it and then I challenged myself to right like coming up with a way to say, okay, is it
Micah Johnson (26:13)
Yeah.Matt McCurdy (26:33)
$100 an hour? Well, there are some contractors that will try to charge $100 an hour. So it’s like, okay, am I really that that valid valued that little to be, you know, turning a wrench or a screwdriver, right? To save that $100? Well, probably not. Because then if you paid the $100, you have that as an expense, $100 an hour, you have that as an expense that you can ultimately write off on your revenue.So really I’m only getting paid what, know, 50 to 75 bucks an hour ⁓ in true savings. And then now that’s not worth that to me. So I always say, okay, when you first kind of go through it, maybe you’re like, $50 an hour is a lot of money. You know, I’ll do everything there. Or I would say at least double that.
you know, go up to 100 bucks or maybe you’re at like $100. You’re like, Oh, well, that’s, that’s kind of expensive to be spending that much. Okay, what could I what kind of value add tasks that I’m not doing today? Could I be doing if I was valuing myself at $200 an hour, right? That’s really where it’s not about the cost savings. It’s about shifting your mind to that.
Micah Johnson (27:49)
Bingo.that other thing, like using your infill example, if you fill eight lots versus painting eight houses, what you’re getting in return on that is way, way different. It’s exponentially different, but it does take that, it takes that mindset of what am I gaining, not what am I losing? Because when you switch that to there, that’s powerful, man. That’s really powerful. think that
I think that can help a lot of people that get stuck at that place in their business because you do start to feel like there’s so much on your plate, but it’s all saving you money. And you may know how much money you’re saving, but you have no idea how much money you’re losing because of that mindset shift not taking place to what could I actually be doing if I would just pay somebody to do this? And like you said, it adds in the other savings, the write-offs that you can do, all the other pieces that start to plug in where
Matt McCurdy (28:33)
youMicah Johnson (28:52)
you get to that $500, $1,000 an hour value when you break it down because you infilled eight lots.Matt McCurdy (29:00)
Yep. Yeah, I mean, it’s a simple definition of the difference between a scarce mindset and an abundant mindset, right?Micah Johnson (29:08)
Right. And in my experience, the investors that I’ve met that have done the best and especially the ones at the top, they have the abundance mindset. All you got to do is show up each day in this business and you will be successful if you do it. And that’s the key is showing up what task is today. Cause what I liked what you said there was you can’t decide today and completely change tomorrow. I’m a big journaling guy. I loved a journal I have.almost 1400 days in a row written down and what that and I go back and read them and what that shows me is how long change actually takes. Cause that’s what I’ll document things I’m thinking about what I want to adjust in life and then I’ll document it until all of a sudden I notice I don’t even think about it anymore. just naturally do the thing I wanted to change, but that distance in the pages literally of time going by you start to see, Whoa.
This takes quite a bit of time. And this, the process, what I’ve also noticed is the process actually repeats it kind of feels the same way every time when you find that thing you want to change and then you go to work on changing it. And then all of sudden you don’t even notice it’s changed anymore. And the new thing kind of pops up. That’s super powerful. I’m a big personal development guy, intentionality person. That’s that those things. If I say, if you want to be a good human, get good at being human, right? Like learn how to be a good one of us.
Matt McCurdy (30:18)
Yeah.Micah Johnson (30:32)
because there’s techniques, there’s skill sets to it.Matt McCurdy (30:36)
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. That’s, that’s beautiful because exactly what you said. Once you start journaling, whatever tool you use, I personally am not a journaler, but I use business plans and then you have something staked in the ground. And from there, you can look at, see what you were thinking two, five, 10 years ago and see where you’re at now. Right. And what does that do for your mindset? It just.turbocharges everything you’ve been doing, right? It validates that you’re on the right path. You’re doing what you need to be doing. You are making headway when, you know, especially in this world, it seems like through social media or the news where we just have negativity, right? So how can you be an advocate and a positive advocate for yourself and show, hey, what I’m doing is positive. I am making some head, you know, headway here and, and, ⁓
making an impact for myself and my business.
Micah Johnson (31:40)
And showing it objectively, there’s a quote I like that said, I can’t remember who said it, but it’s without data, it’s just an opinion. Right? When you have data, when you can go back and look at the hard information that gives our brain this chance to just log these milestones, to remember, it’s fascinating to me how much I forget. That’s what journaling showed me is, dang, I didn’t remember any of that. I wouldn’t remember it unless I wrote it down.And that’s how much, or that’s how valuable to me it is. even however you do it, however you like to get that information in front of you, business plans, whatever, ⁓ it’s valuable because it gives you that, one, as you grow, and even as a man, that feeling of accomplishment, that look at what I did, I put this in the ground and I did this work and now I’m here. it’s not, there is no external validation. It’s internal. I did this. I got this done.
Matt McCurdy (32:21)
Yeah.Micah Johnson (32:38)
And then you get to take that into the next thing. That’s what I love is the compounding effect of it. Whereas you keep growing. It’s not just your portfolio that’s growing. not just your mobile home parks, you, the human you are is growing. And for that father, first business, second mentality, that’s what I try to show my kids is it’s, if you get good at being a human, you can create whatever you want. You can do whatever you want, but you got to grow in proportion to what you’re doing.Because if you don’t, you just end up on the, you just spinning a wheel. You start to feel lost in life. And I hear people say that and it’s kind of the indicator when you feel lost, take a beat. It’s time to pause. need to think about where you are because you didn’t feel lost always. You felt like you were on track for something. And when that feeling hits, Hey, what is that? Why is that doing that? It’s life kind of setting you up. One, you’ve grown a lot. You’ve done a lot. Where’s it going next? That’s powerful.
Matt McCurdy (33:26)
Mm-hmm.Micah Johnson (33:36)
So man, as we wrap this up, if folks are trying to find you and get a hold of your book, what’s the best way?Matt McCurdy (33:36)
Yeah.Yeah, basically Investor Edge Real Estate is my brokerage firm. I have a link to my book out there on the website and you can find it on Amazon or any audiobook retailers. It’s out there on Audible, Spotify, Apple Books. You can also contact me through investoredgere.com is my website and it has my contact information out there as well.
Micah Johnson (34:15)
Awesome, man. Well, Matt, I appreciate your time today, your story, your perspective. I love what you’re doing. I think we need more people in the space that are thinking about it this way and approaching their life this way. I think that can have huge effects on individuals and our country as a whole, honestly. It can have that whole mindset shift for us. So those of you tuning in, if you enjoyed this, please make sure you hit the subscribe button for us and like this episode. We’ve got more conversations coming up with operators just like Matt.who are out there building real businesses and really changing their lives, not just talking about it. So thanks so much and we’ll see you on the next episode.
