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Show Summary
In this engaging conversation, John Harcar interviews Matt Latham, a Master Arborist, about the significant value trees add to properties and the broader community. Matt shares his journey into arboriculture, emphasizing the importance of mentorship and practical experience. He discusses how trees can enhance property values, the environmental benefits they provide, and the innovative consulting approach he has developed with Arborist on Demand. The discussion highlights the often-overlooked role of trees in real estate and urban planning, making a compelling case for their preservation and care.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Matt Latham – Master Arborist (00:00)
The residents there had a fit and they didn’t know what to do. Believe it or not, there’s politics in trees and a lot of money floating around in trees. And so they wanted to widen the sidewalks, the bike lobbyists showed up and we said, look, trees are good for humans, not just in real estate. I you and I talked about, they add value and we’ll go into more detail on that, of course, but not only that, they’re so beneficial for humans. There’s studies that show that cancer patients recover up to 20 % more.John Harcar (00:16)
Right.Matt Latham – Master Arborist (00:29)
⁓ more rapidly and 20 % more frequently, give or take. Crime rates in major metropolitan cities go down when you’ve got mature trees. They actually go up when you have small baby trees, by the way.John Harcar (02:21)
guys, welcome back to our show. I’m your host, John Harcar and I’m here today with Matt Latham and what we’re going to talk about with Matt besides his journey into you know, what he’s doing as an arborist. ⁓ He’s going to focus on something that is unique. It’s different that I’ve had on the show ⁓ and how the value of trees can affect the value of the property. ⁓ So I’m super excited to talk about that. Matt. Welcome to our show.Matt Latham – Master Arborist (02:48)
Thank you, thanks for having me, John.John Harcar (02:49)
Yeah, very cool. ⁓ And I’ve never thought about that, right? Like you said in our, know, before we got on here, you know, most guys are investors with maybe just bulldozed trees and put in new ones. So I want to talk a lot about that. But before we do that, introduce yourself, tell us about your journey. You know, what got you to be an arborist? What got you to look at the value of trees in real estate?Matt Latham – Master Arborist (03:14)
Yeah, no, I appreciate that. So I started in Treecare in about 2003, so 22, 23 years ago. And I kind of fell into it. I was working as an outside sales rep for another company. Company folded, I’m out of a job. I don’t know what to do. What do you want to do when you grow up? Well, a buddy of a buddy of a buddy kind of thing had a Treecare company and he paid me eight bucks an hour, eight whole dollars an hour to go drag limbs for him basically.John Harcar (03:29)
Yeah, right.Matt Latham – Master Arborist (03:42)
You know, I really loved it. I’m a guy. I like being outdoors and I grew up outdoors as a kid. Fortunately, I was on the tail end of your generation where we actually did that instead of just screens all the time. And so I loved it. I enjoyed it. One day the boss man asks me, he’s like, hey, you want to climb? I’m like, ⁓ sure. I think he was maybe not feeling well that day or whatever. And so I got up in a tree and I literally held on for like 30 minutes. I was terrified. ⁓John Harcar (03:53)
Right.Hahaha
Matt Latham – Master Arborist (04:10)
It was just, mean, I’m like 10 or 15 feet off the ground. It’s not even significant. Well, you know, and looking back on it now, it’s silly. ⁓John Harcar (04:13)
Yeah, that’d be, yeah, that’s scary, dude.Yeah, now you go up
80 feet and you’re like, eh, this is nothing.
Matt Latham – Master Arborist (04:21)
Plus or minus, yeah, the highest I’ve been is about 130. And that was up in New Jersey. And we spent a little time traveling over the years and all over the US and got to experience some really, really neat stuff. ⁓ so anyways, I got done with that tree, the first one, and made the cut. There were like four cuts. It wasn’t even significant. And got down. It was such an adrenaline rush. He asked me, hey, you want to do it again tomorrow? I’m like, great, let’s go. And you know.John Harcar (04:25)
Wow, that’s huge.Yeah, can I go higher? You
got a bigger tree?
Matt Latham – Master Arborist (05:38)
Yeah, yeah, little bit harder and a little bit higher each time and, you know, the rest is history as they say. I went to work for a guy, realized he didn’t know what he’s talking about.But I started learning some things, started following some guys in the industry that really knew what they were talking about. They taught me some neat tricks and again,
John Harcar (05:49)
Okay.Matt Latham – Master Arborist (05:58)
You know, here I am a family man. I got to come home to my family every day. It’s like, how do you do this all day, every day, play with chainsaws at height, you know, 54. Yeah. And make it home at the end of the day, not to a hospital morgue, whatever. And, and so anyways, I really grew passionate about it. went to, I lost my company in 2008 with just about everybody else I know. And, ⁓ you know, I went to work for this guy who he happened to hold the same credentials. You can see him in the background there.John Harcar (06:02)
Yeah.Carefully.
Sure.
Matt Latham – Master Arborist (06:28)
that I hold now is a board certified master arborist. He was number eight in the world and he was one of the few registered consulting arborists. That’s that blue and green one if I can get my fingers to work here. And ⁓ it turns out he was a living legend and I had no idea. He actually fired me because I realized this guy knows so much more than I do and I would just stay after work and pick his brain and he had this like wall of fungus where he’d collected on the job site and I’d have, hey, I saw that today, know, Rick, and what’s that one? ⁓John Harcar (06:51)
⁓ Right.Matt Latham – Master Arborist (06:58)
But it really started a process where I started to realize, man, trees are pretty cool. The way they function, the way they work, they’re actually living, breathing, eating organisms just like you and I. They don’t think like you and I. They’re not sentient, by the way. Don’t let anybody confuse you. They do bark a little. ⁓ know, but up, whatever. But they, yeah, I grew passionate about it. I realized, man, the science behind this, I love it. And one thing led to another. Next thing I know is…John Harcar (07:08)
Mm-hmm.Right. Right.
Matt Latham – Master Arborist (07:25)
Now I’m getting certain certifications that this guy that taught me did. ⁓ It became a passion project of mine as my career turned into my hobby.John Harcar (07:33)
That’s awesome.That’s awesome. you and you and to kind of maybe correlate it to maybe some of our viewers that maybe in associate to the real estate journey of maybe starting and learning. You know, you didn’t have any experience in trees, right? You joined a guy that you needed a job and you did you go to school for trees? No.
Matt Latham – Master Arborist (07:44)
Yes.No, no, I was a proud
college dropout. I’m very pro education, but that was part of my thing is as a kid was I, you know, I asked my economics professor one year, I’m like, you know, what, what practical experience do you have? And he’s like, no, I just went straight into teaching. And I’m like, that doesn’t make sense to me. I think I want to learn from somebody who’s been there and done that. Yeah, exactly.
John Harcar (07:55)
Yeah.Mm-hmm.
Yeah, the mentorship, right? You had that you had
the mentor mentorship and that’s kind of the point I was getting at is that, you know, you know, when you have the ability to learn from someone that’s, know, where you want to go or has the knowledge that you want, uh, and you seek that out, that’s the accelerated growth path as opposed to just kind of YouTube you whatever that might be. So that’s very awesome. So you learned from this guy, uh, what were, and you know, what were some of the biggest challenges for you in the whole?
Matt Latham – Master Arborist (08:33)
IJohn Harcar (08:39)
arborist worlds.Matt Latham – Master Arborist (08:40)
Really was was getting to know how to do that because you know most people think Landscapers are tree guys and you know that somebody made a joke They said you know hiring a landscaper to do your trees is like hiring your dentist to do your tree or your brain surgery Or your heart surgery. It’s like yeah, they probably got the tools that doesn’t mean they should But you know it kind of Learning how to do this on like a master level and we used to joke we take these guys out I grew up in Dallas area and I’m in Houston nowLong story short, we went all the way around the US and all that. In Dallas, I used to compete climbing trees. Believe it or not, that exists. For a while there, I did really well. Then I got old and kind of gray bearded and fat a little bit. I don’t do that anymore, but it was so cool. We’d take these guys that knew nothing about climbing trees or taking care of trees properly, and we’d go find the biggest, baddest tree we could find.
John Harcar (09:20)
Yeah, I’m sure.Mm-hmm.
Matt Latham – Master Arborist (09:36)
and we’d set up little stations where you’d practice and we’d practice our skills climbing trees. yeah, like for me it took, what was that, 10 years, 15 years to get good at what I did because I didn’t have, I had that one mentor who taught me the science side of things but I never really had a climbing mentor. But I got involved in the competitions and I’m watching these guys just smoke me, just make me look like an amateur punk kid who knows nothing about what I’m doing.John Harcar (09:41)
That sounds cool.Yeah, right.
Matt Latham – Master Arborist (10:39)
And I started hanging out with those guys and they taught me, well, we’d go out and like I said, we do these recreational tree climbs and practice for competitions and we get guys that knew nothing about it. And we take that guy that knew nothing and we’d make him a proficient climber in six month, in a six month timeframe and really good in like 12 to 18 months. And everybody we’re hearing is like, yeah, it takes three years to get three to six years to get good at climbing trees. And we’re watching it happen in 12 to 18 months.John Harcar (10:58)
That’s cool.Wow.
Matt Latham – Master Arborist (11:09)
Sothat accelerated learning program you’re talking about, it works. That’s exactly right.
John Harcar (11:11)
Yeah. Yeah, it’s people showing you the shortcut, you know, the the easy,the easy way to do things. So it may be just to give a more context to what an arborist does for our ⁓ viewers. What is a master arborist? I mean, and how do you become a master arborist?
Matt Latham – Master Arborist (11:25)
Yes.So there’s a group called the International Society of Arboriculture and they kind of set the rules for, they’ve done research, that’s really kind of the baseline, if you will, is certified arborist is, essentially means I know what I’m talking about about trees, or at least I say I do, and I was able to pass the test. So there’s about, right now there’s about 39,000 certified arborists globally, and just to put that into perspective, there’s about 450,000 attorneys in the US alone.
John Harcar (11:46)
Mm-hmm.Matt Latham – Master Arborist (12:01)
So that shows us our priorities, of course, here on the Western side of things. ⁓ There’s about four.John Harcar (12:03)
Yeah, I know,We complain about the air quality,
yet we go kill trees.
Matt Latham – Master Arborist (12:10)
Yeah, well, welcome to Houston. ⁓ It turns out…John Harcar (12:11)
Well, I mean, I’mBoise, Idaho, so I got a ton of beautiful, beautiful trees. But I also grew up in Orange County, California, where they’ll cut any tree down they can to build up.
Matt Latham – Master Arborist (12:17)
Yes, I do.Yeah, yeah, and it’s the same here in Houston. And that’s, I’ve been on a few passion projects of mine that they didn’t pay me at all, but it’s like, this is the right thing to do. And if you want to have a little fun, look up Save Montrose Live Oaks. And we actually won a competition essentially for, let’s preserve the trees. They were gonna bulldoze about 284 mature live oaks on Montrose Boulevard here in Houston. Major cut through between the city. And… ⁓
John Harcar (12:30)
Yeah.Yeah.
Matt Latham – Master Arborist (12:50)
The residents there had a fit and they didn’t know what to do. Believe it or not, there’s politics in trees and a lot of money floating around in trees. And so they wanted to widen the sidewalks, the bike lobbyists showed up and we said, look, trees are good for humans, not just in real estate. I you and I talked about, they add value and we’ll go into more detail on that, of course, but not only that, they’re so beneficial for humans. There’s studies that show that cancer patients recover up to 20 % more.John Harcar (13:06)
Right.Matt Latham – Master Arborist (13:19)
⁓ more rapidly and 20 % more frequently, give or take. Crime rates in major metropolitan cities go down when you’ve got mature trees. They actually go up when you have small baby trees, by the way.A little side note there. yes, they do. ⁓ Mental? ⁓ We don’t know exactly, but they’ve done a dozen or more studies in, like Portland is one example, where they’ve shown that neighborhoods that had the more mature trees, that it stuck around for decades or even centuries.
John Harcar (13:32)
Really? Why is that?Matt Latham – Master Arborist (13:49)
the crime rates were significantly lower than those in newer bills. The gentrification, I’m sure, the term you’re familiar with.John Harcar (13:56)
Yeah, that’s gottabe one else thing that two people think like, ⁓ these people are new to the area, easier targets.
Matt Latham – Master Arborist (14:01)
yeah. And then the other thing too is actually mental health goes up when you have mature trees. ⁓ Even just a windowed view of a ⁓ mature tree. ADD levels go down and symptoms go down. Depression symptoms go down. Overall well-being goes up. So maybe that has a lot to do with the crime rates and all that.John Harcar (14:10)
Hell yeah.Yeah, I mean, that’s that’s kind of a reason why we move we move to Boise is yeah, the trees and the the the environment the seasons, know, honey to be or California Vegas, you know, the areas I grew up with or grew up and lived in we didn’t have those seasons. So let’s talk about real estate. Right. How does and I’ve never thought about that in any of the transactions I’ve ever done like that she going to lose me 10 or 20 grand or what is it?
Matt Latham – Master Arborist (14:26)
Yeah.it’s beautiful.
Yes.
John Harcar (15:25)
How does trees play into the whole real estate appraisal fact?Matt Latham – Master Arborist (15:25)
Yeah.Yeah, that’s great question. there’s, and there’s again, a lot of research. This is not just me saying this. This is way smarter guys that came before me and figured this out. They basically found that a single tree can add between seven and 15 % property value. And it goes up from there up to 22%. And so for ⁓ multiple trees, obviously, but there’s actually, there’s a group called the Council of Tree and Landscape Appraisers. ⁓ And…
John Harcar (15:47)
Mm-hmm.Matt Latham – Master Arborist (15:56)
They basically, they’ve codified what does it take to appraise a tree? And we go off of kind of universal standard appraisal standards ⁓ to baseline that. ⁓ But there’s multiple different ways to appraise a tree. One is what does it take to get a baby tree to the size of the tree that you lost? So let’s say for example, you’re coming in for a ⁓ a gentrification home. Let’s say you’re bulldozing the 100 year old town home or whatever.and you’re putting in a little three story high rise, whatever. And you’ve got a mature tree on there and it’s way easier to get rid of that mature tree. Well that mature tree may hold 20 or 30 or 40 or $50,000. The most I’ve put in appraisal on a tree was about $120,000 on one that was about six, a live oak that was about six feet in diameter. We estimate about 400 years old. you know, obviously that’s a relative statement because some people,
don’t want trees, right? And if that’s the case, humble opinion, move to the suburbs. You know, there’s plenty of new-build developments where you got little baby trees in the front yard, that’s fine. There’s a place for that.
John Harcar (16:55)
right.So
what makes a tree value of $40,000? mean, just picking a random number. does it, how I could maybe see the value of a tree is, know, a mature tree with the shade can cut down the electricity costs potentially of running the AC and stuff because I can see how that can translate into that intrinsic value. But like, how do you go and say, hey, that tree can save me 40 G’s?
Matt Latham – Master Arborist (17:10)
Mm-hmm.Yes.
John Harcar (17:32)
Or is Worth 40, you know what mean?Matt Latham – Master Arborist (17:32)
Yeah, that’s a great question.So, and there is an annual return. So you’ve got carbon sequestration, you’ve got water runoff sequestration. You know, we started using the term infrastructure when it came ⁓ to trees because they actually provide for the community, not just for your home, but they’re providing many, many benefits for the community as a whole, both on an isolated individual scale and scale it up to the whole city. If everybody thinks in terms of preserving the trees and keeping the canopy.
John Harcar (17:50)
Right.Matt Latham – Master Arborist (18:02)
then that can be a huge benefit. But then of course there’s the intrinsic, the property value is most people, not everybody, again, some people want no trees, but most people in most places prefer a treeed home. One with a significant canopy that you’ve got, like you said, the shade benefits, you’ve got cooling benefits, you’ve got mental benefits, you’ve got aesthetic benefits, an intrinsic value, some people plant trees in memory of people.And so all of those things add up to what is the tree worth? And again, we’ve got some formulas, we’ve got some math we can do to put a number on that and a dollar value. Some of that’s based
John Harcar (18:42)
So where do you line itemthat though? Do you line item under landscape?
Matt Latham – Master Arborist (18:46)
Yeah, yeah, that would be landscape. ⁓ It’s actually considered a part of the property. yep, it’s considered a part of the home. So if you lose that, that’s losing a part of the value of the home. Exactly.John Harcar (18:50)
Okay, wow.It’s a value in the home. Yeah,
a man. never, I never really thought about that. And you don’t really, you know, when you’re talking to people, you don’t really have that, you know, Hey, all the features aren’t, don’t necessarily include like a mature tree all the time, you know? So who is your customer? Like, do you market to builders? Do you mark? mean, like who, how, who, who do you work with? What is your, you know, business model look like?
Matt Latham – Master Arborist (19:09)
Sure. Well, I’ll give you.Yeah, great question. ⁓ I am a consultant at this point. I don’t climb trees as much anymore, although I do for fun sometimes. ⁓ I work with lot of builders and developers. I work with a lot of municipalities. I work with a lot of ⁓ volunteer organizations like the one we were talking about. One of my favorite things to do, and this is just my personal flavor, is I really love expert witness and litigation work, is let’s say a neighbor has a farm.
John Harcar (19:29)
HaOkay.
Matt Latham – Master Arborist (19:50)
and they come in and they crop spray, round up on everything, and you’ve got a wind that day and it drifts over into the neighbor’s value. We call that chemical trespassing. Let’s say it unalives a tree. Well, that’s a problem because that family loved that tree. And we have to figure out, first of all, how did that happen? Why did the tree die? Why is it no longer living? And if we can tie it to that chemical use or whatever, that’s great. ⁓ But sometimes you get even vandalism.And so what we’ll do is we’ll go in and figure out what happened, did the neighbor prune the tree or cut all of the roots on their side and now it’s liable of falling over, now it’s lost its value because it’s structurally compromised. So that’s the kind of stuff I love. We call it forensic arboriculture. yeah, figure out who done it. I work with a lot of insurance groups.
John Harcar (20:36)
Very interesting. Very, very interesting. Yeah, that’s that this is a conversationI never would have thought I would have had. I’m not going to lie. But this is great. That’s why
Matt Latham – Master Arborist (20:44)
Welcome to my world.John Harcar (20:46)
why we have these. Well, but also to like you said, not many people really take account and realize the value of what the trees or that type of stuff can bring. And I didn’t know that there was a master arborist. So congratulations on your master arborist achievement. If there’s any folks that are listening to this thatMatt Latham – Master Arborist (20:48)
That’s right.Yeah. Thank you.
John Harcar (21:07)
Question about the trees on their, I don’t know. How do they get in touch, man?Matt Latham – Master Arborist (21:09)
Yeah.Yeah, great question. So I have started a little company called Arborist on Demand and think of Doctor on Demand, Telemedicine for Trees is essentially what we do. ⁓ Yeah, I realized a long time ago, first of all, driving around Dallas, you’re probably familiar with the area. The joke is it takes an hour to get from Dallas to Dallas and Houston’s no different.
John Harcar (21:15)
Okay.Yeah. that’s cool.
Yeah.
Matt Latham – Master Arborist (21:32)
⁓As you know big cities or whatever and you’ve got a long distance between I would drive an hour and 15 minutes hour and half sometimes 30 even two or three hours. Yeah, depending on what time you leave to you know traffic can be brutal in both places and So I kind of and it was probably 2016 or 2017 I just said you know what I don’t want to drive two hours to get to your house The joke is of course tree doctors make house calls
John Harcar (21:40)
Yeah, especially especially Dallas Houston area.Right.
Matt Latham – Master Arborist (21:59)
But I tell my clients, hey, why don’t we jump on a Zoom chat? Let’s see if we can figure this out on the phone. If we can’t, great. I’ll just charge you to come out there and we’ll just proceed as usual. ⁓ what I found, and I’ve kind of checked this with the industry, 80 % to 90 % of the time, we can get 90 to 100 % of the way there. ⁓ And it’s kind of the same with telemedicine. You get on the phone, yeah, they’re not checking your reflexes. They’re not sticking probes in your ear to look inside and all that.John Harcar (22:08)
Make sense?Matt Latham – Master Arborist (22:27)
But what they can do is ask you questions. can have you say, well, you know, raise your right arm like that. Does it hurt? You know, that kind of stuff.John Harcar (22:35)
Yeah, right, of course.Matt Latham – Master Arborist (22:36)
And we can do the same with trees. turns out, hey, bring a screwdriver, jam it in the ground. You have compacted soil. You know, that’s a big issue in construction is it creates an anaerobic condition in the soil. Well, that’s great. If we can resolve that, that’s going to get rid of 90 % of the stress. Now the tree’s on par.John Harcar (22:45)
Yeah.Matt Latham – Master Arborist (22:54)
Let’s say we have a fungus that we’re dealing with that’s growing on the trunk of the tree. Well great break that off Where’s your what who’s your local agriculture extension send that off to them for lab diagnosis? Let’s figure out exactly what this is We’ll do a follow-up call and we’ll set to we’ll start figuring out a good care plan for this tree moving forward Nine times out of ten. It’s I just take away the stress from the tree. I’m like a tree shrink or a tree masseuse I don’t I’m not even aJohn Harcar (23:14)
Man, that’s cool.That’s
awesome.
That’s awesome.
Matt Latham – Master Arborist (23:24)
They’re living organisms,you know, they’ve got immune systems, they’ve got respiratory systems, etc.
John Harcar (23:27)
Alright.Yeah. All right. Well, cool, Matt. Well, then I appreciate you coming on here. Great conversation. ⁓ Guys, I hope you enjoyed it. You know, like I said, if there’s any folks that, you know, want to reach out to Matt, we’ll put all this information in the show notes. And, you know, Matt, appreciate your time again here, Yep. You have a great afternoon, guys. We’ll see you on the next one.
Matt Latham – Master Arborist (23:45)
Thanks a lot, John. We’ll see ya.
