Master Leasing for Veteran Housing: Rental Cash Flow Without Buying Property

Lovell Jones (00:00)
you don’t have to own any property to do this. You don’t have to have any special licensing to do this. You can go and find a house that’s for rent through a private landlord, discuss what you’re trying to do, and if they’re okay with it, you can use that house to help veterans.

And make money while you’re doing it. The model is a three-bedroom house will hold and house six veterans. And so you do a what you call a master lease with your company with the landlord. You agree to manage it. There’s no extra steps for the landlord. We manage it. We place the veterans in the house. We pay you exactly what you’re asking for.

Meghan Escobar (02:12)
Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Real Estate Pros Podcast, hosted by Investor Fuel. I’m your host today, Meghan Escobar, and I have the pleasure sitting down.

With a unique individual by the name of Lovell Jones, who is the founder of Vet Affairs LLC. Little little bit of a a a different spin on today’s show, as we, you know, typically have service providers and investors in this world as well he is a a service provider for sure in the real estate industry, but with a very specific niche. And I’m gonna let him tell his story. But just so you guys know before I bring him on, he is helping vets

here in America, find housing through different government assistant programs and helping the individuals who own those homes create a significant income while providing a safe space for vets in the in the world. So I’m excited to have you on here, Label, thank you for taking the time out of your day to be here.

Lovell Jones (03:09)
Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me.

Meghan Escobar (03:11)
Absolutely.

And for those out there that are listening who might not know who Lovell Jones is or what Vet Affairs LLC is, can you give us a thirty thousand foot view on what your main focus is these days and what markets you’re operating in?

Lovell Jones (03:25)
Okay. So we operating currently in the Atlanta, Georgia metro area, but it’s a model that works nationwide. We have students who are mentored by us and they set up their own businesses to help vets and their you know collective states or cities that they’re in nationwide. We’re helping vets nationwide. I’m based in Atlanta, Georgia. So Vet Affairs LLC was founded a couple years ago, and what we do is we help

veterans, displaced veterans find stable housing here in the Atlanta metro area. We also teach, as I mentioned, other landlords or people who don’t even own homes can do this and help veterans find stable housing through shared rooms in each each house. it’s a model that you know we’ve come to kind of tweak

And our basic model is a three bedroom home will basically fit six veterans in shared space, two per room. the funding here in the Atlanta metro area varies in different areas. They’ll pay twelve hundred dollars per veteran. So if you have two veterans in each room and a three bedroom, two bathroom house, that’s seventy two hundred dollars worth of income, which is substantial if you’re a landlord.

they’re going to give you also another seventy two hundred dollars for security deposits. So that’s fourteen thousand four hundred dollars for starting a home to place displaced veterans in. And that’s you know, that’s pretty much a business model.

Meghan Escobar (05:51)
Yeah, that’s that’s wonderful. And you know, one thing that caught my attention when we were chatting before we hopped on here was you’re a man that wears many hats and you’ve been in the industry, you’ve got quite the experience, you’ve got former musician experience as well. And you know, and and you found this niche, this you know, program. And I I’m curious if you could talk to us a little bit about, you know, what

What took you or led you into this direction?

Lovell Jones (06:21)
Okay. Well, I have many members in my family who serve the United States as far as in the military. My father was a veteran, he was in the Korean War. he served in the army. I have a partner who helped me form this business and who’s helping me with grant writing. She’s she served in the army for years and years and she’s a she writes contract for the military. So we put our minds together. We you know, here in Atlanta we have

a large homeless veterans population. And we decided to put our heads together to see what we can do about it. There are programs and there’s funds available to different local charities, through veteran services, through VA hospitals, but a lot of people don’t know about them. A lot of people who are in real estate don’t know about them. There’s a lot of landlords who are having problems filling their homes or maybe getting their rent on time.

This will be a perfect model to fit for them. the funds are backed by the government. you know, you don’t have to worry about your rent not getting paid. there’s vouchers and there’s government funding to help these veterans find stable find stable homes. So, you know, you’re killing two boys with one stone, you’re operating as an entrepreneur, as a landlord, and also you’re helping the vets and serving them who served us.

Meghan Escobar (07:43)
That’s an amazing match. I mean, you you hear you hear what he just said, folks, right? Like there’s a large population, not just in Atlanta, Georgia. I mean, it’s throughout, and there’s a lot of opportunity with landlords needing to fill the spaces. There’s government funding available that most people aren’t aware of. I mean, your average veteran, I think you mentioned the HUD-VASH program.

Lovell Jones (08:08)
VASH program.

Meghan Escobar (08:09)
Right. And that’s the more popular program that

vets are familiar with, but there’s private funding and programs available that, you know, Lovell can

Lovell Jones (08:19)
Absolutely.

Meghan Escobar (08:20)
you to and and help you help through that process. Awesome. And every operator and entrepreneur that I’ve ever had the opportunity to sit with, they have a moment where things got real. And I think it’s important to talk about these situations instead of just highlighting all of the good. So

Lovell, in your entrepreneurship journey, it doesn’t necessarily need to be with Vet Affairs here, but like just a moment where things got real for you or a moment where you had to pivot really fast. Would you mind sharing one of those?

Lovell Jones (08:54)
Absolutely. after coming out of the entertainment business, I became a loan officer, learned the business from the inside out, and I wanted to branch out and do my own thing after learning the business. So I started a brokerage in northeastern Ohio and became one of the largest mortgage brokers in northeastern Ohio. Had 120 loan officers up under me. the name of the company was United Mortgage Group. we were doing great. We were in the golden era.

of mortgages, refinancing. It was a huge boom. And as you all know, in 2008, everything changed in the business for real estate pretty much forever. It changed the game, restructured how lenders lend, how appraisers are praised. it just touched every aspect when that bubble, real estate bubble burst. when that bubble burst, I had probably a sixty thousand dollar nut that

just to run my office and I had to worry about how I’m going to feed and pay officers and keep business and business was just drying up. We weren’t even allowed to close loans in certain states. And I was in Ohio. Ohio was one of the states that had the was leading in the foreclosure and had the most foreclosure. So a lot of lenders didn’t want to even touch. So we had millions of dollars in the pipeline of loans that we were on the verge of closing that all of a sudden they didn’t want to close it.

So it was very bleak. I I remember the day they stopped doing loans in Ohio, I just went out to my car for a minute and I sat there for about an hour and I had people come check on me. It was that bad.

Meghan Escobar (10:32)
Yeah.

Lovell Jones (10:33)
because not myself, I was worried about all my employees. and I ended up not taking a a paycheck for almost a year just to make sure the people that we did can afford to keep got paid. And, you know, I would come home from work and

come home from the office and my wife would look at me like I was crazy and you know and I said, Hey, I gotta take care of these people. You know, they took care of me. They you know, they allowed us to live like we’re living in the beautiful home and, you know, but we had to pivot. We had to downsides. We had to sell. We had real estate that we had to sell and, you know, we had to reinvent ourselves. I got more into the credit side and

flipping fixing houses and that’s what turned me into fixing and flipping for several years and we we flipped and fixed over a hundred a hundred different houses from Ohio all the way down to Georgia.

Meghan Escobar (12:07)
Amazing.

So is it safe to say that in that dark time of your life where you, you know, had to accept the fact that like this is probably isn’t gonna be my forever if the things were going so well, like yes, and then you found this new passion. So I I think it’s important just just

highlight some of those things because a lot of our listeners, they are either very green to the entrepreneurship world or they’re just, you know, vets in the game who might be going through some similar situations. And with living in a highlight world where we only we only see the success, it’s it’s I think important to point out not everything is gonna go in a linear line, you know, we’re gonna have those days

Lovell Jones (12:54)
Absolutely. It’s a roller coaster. the one thing that helps you if you’re passionate. This is it’s it’s more than a job. You know, when I got into real estate, I was just as passionate about real estate as I was in music. I’m an artist and I’m I was so passionate about the music and I feel the same way about real estate, no matter what facet it is, whether I’m fixing or flipping, or whether I’m helping veterans you know, secure housing.

It’s a passion that you have to have. You have to have a fire that burns in you that keeps your purpose alive because there will be ups and downs. You know, we were and I owned millions of dollars worth of real estate. my company was worth millions of dollars and overnight it was pretty much turned to ashes. And so you have to be able to pivot. everything else is material. As long as you have this, you can come back. You know what I’m saying? you have your health and you have your mind.

you can survive and c come back stronger than you were when you started.

Meghan Escobar (13:57)
Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you for sharing that. I think this is the stuff most people don’t talk about enough and it definitely is. What separate what separates folks who are in the game long term, no matter how many times you have to reinvent yourself or how many times you’ve what does Denzel Washington say, fail fail forward.

Lovell Jones (14:18)
Absolutely. That’s a lot of that.

Meghan Escobar (14:21)
Yeah,

of course. And let me ask you this, like what’s the next big move for for you personally or professionally? What are you looking to solve or scale next?

Lovell Jones (14:32)
So we’re trying to scale the Vet Affairs business. we’ve taken it nationwide and not only for landlords, this is very key point,

you don’t have to own any property to do this. You don’t have to have any special licensing to do this. You can go and find a house that’s for rent through a private landlord, discuss what you’re trying to do, and if they’re okay with it, you can use that house to help veterans.

And make money while you’re doing it. The model is a three-bedroom house will hold and house six veterans. And so you do a what you call a master lease with your company with the landlord. You agree to manage it. There’s no extra steps for the landlord. We manage it. We place the veterans in the house. We pay you exactly what you’re asking for.

In a lot of cases, we offer a little bit more than what they’re asking for because that gets their attention, you know, and we let them know: hey, this is.

It’s backed by the government, so you don’t have to worry about your rent. We manage the property. we set up cameras, we handle any issues that come to us, no extra steps for the landlord. And so let’s say here in Atlanta, the Avenue, you know, have a three-bedroom is about $18,000 to $2,000. So let’s say your expenses is $2,000. You’re expensive in charge of paying the utilities and the upkeep of the house. So let’s say you have another six hundred dollars.

inexpensive. So that managing that house costs you let’s say twenty six hundred bucks a month. So you take the seventy four hundred seventy two hundred dollars you’re getting a month and you subtract that twenty six hundred dollars. That’s your profit. The average landlord only profits, you know, they’re lucky if they profit three or four hundred dollars a month. You’re profiting over four thousand dollars a month on each property. And so just managing two properties puts you over a hundred thousand dollars a year.

And you when you think of what it would take for you to build a career that you’re making six figures, you either have to go back to school or work know, a couple of different jobs. Not everybody makes six figures in this country. I don’t even think ten percent of this country is, but the path to six figures is not that far away and that’s what this model teaches you.

Meghan Escobar (16:44)
That’s amazing. Sounds like a really great opportunity. And one thing, one last thing that I like to talk about is networking. You know, a lot of like I said, a lot of our people listening in, they’re very green, they’re just getting started. And then we have our, you know, vets in the game that are always looking for the next best thing. And, you know, for you.

We talked a little bit about how you’re constantly networking, you’re in the rooms, you just spent a weekend at a networking event. So when it comes to building relationships, Lovell, as an entrepreneur, what has made the biggest difference for you?

Lovell Jones (17:21)
networking, you’re one person away from changing your life. And as cliche as that sounds, that is the absolute truth. No matter what your dreams or aspirations are, what you’re doing, you need to get out. You need to meet people who are like-minded, who are passionate, people who can help you achieve what you’re trying to, you know, what you’re trying to do. This is a roadmap. You know what I’m saying? You have to have a roadmap and a destination and

You’re gonna meet people along your way to further you along your journey. And that’s what networking does. We just c got back from InvestFest and we met other likewise investors, people who are in real estate, sharing our model that they didn’t even know existed, people who own multiple properties and that are struggling to, you know, get regular rent. And so we introduced this model. we met everyday people who were working nine to five. And

let them know that hey you can achieve this too. You don’t need a license. You don’t need to own real estate. You can rent a property and do this and still ha make a really, really good income while you’re helping veterans. we teach nationwide on our network, on our Skool community page. it’s called Earn While Helping Veterans, Earn While Helping Veterans at you know on the Skool page. Or you can look up my name, Lovell Jones, or you can join

our Skool community where we mentor you, we take you step by step. We have classrooms to show you how you can do this with no money out of your pocket.

Meghan Escobar (18:49)
Wow, that’s incredible. And you know what we’ll do is we’ll drop those links below so that way anyone listening in, they will be able to just click away. Like you said, it’s one person away from completely changing your life. And I cannot agree with that more. As somebody who has, you know, been an entrepreneur now for the last five years. I still feel very green and always looking to get into the rooms of you know people that are doing better. Right. If you want to do better.

Surround yourself with people that are doing better. thank you so much for your time. And I appreciate your perspective that you shared here with the audience today. More and me as well. but we definitely need more people in this space who are doing things the right way. Lovell, you have an incredible business model and a and a real passion for what you’re doing. And I I think it’s great. So anybody listening in.

If you got any value from this show today, please be sure to hit like and subscribe. We’ve got more conversations coming in just like this. And if you want to be the next person, building the real business with real people in real time, continue watching the show and keep connecting. We’ll see you on the next episode.

Lovell Jones (20:01)
Thanks for having me.