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Chris Larsen is the founder and Managing Partner of Next-Level Income, through which he helps investors become financially independent through education and investment opportunities. Chris has been investing in and managing real estate for over 20 years.  He began syndicating deals in 2016 and has been actively involved in over $400 million of real estate acquisitions.

In addition to real estate, Chris has invested in equities, oil & gas, and small business lending, as well as being active in Venture South, one of the nation’s Top 10 Angel Investing groups. Chris lives with his wife and two boys in Asheville, NC where he loves spending time with them in the outdoors and enjoying the food and culture that the region has to offer.

Episode Highlights:

- The best way to build real wealth is by combining both passive and active real estate investment strategies such as wholesaling combined with syndication investments.

- Seeing your house as an investment is a common fallacy. It’s typically cheaper to rent. While it is good to build equity in your house, the problem is the return you’re earning on this capital locked in your house that you can’t access is typically always going to earn a lower return than what you could earn in other vehicles.

- Paying down your mortgage early in large chunks actually increases the risk that your bank will call the loan due immediately when the next market downturn hits. This is because the bank knows that there is a much higher chance they will earn back all of their loan principal amount, plus additional profit if they’re able to take the house from you in a foreclosure. By doing the counterintuitive thing of not paying extra principal amounts, you are keeping the leverage over the bank because the bank will know if they foreclose on the property, they might not recover all of the outstanding loan principal in a fire sale.

- Utilizing a dividend paying whole life insurance policy, as mentioned in prior episodes, can be a powerful tool that creates a wheel of wealth. Typically dividends on the policy pay you 5%. You then borrow at 3% so you’re still earning 2%. While you’re earning this 2% you can reinvest that money into syndications and other investments. Typically any excess cash you earn from real estate deals or other activities should be invested into your policy first before putting into the bank because you will always earn a higher return. At the same time, the policy is contractually obligated to grow every year no matter what you do and is growing tax efficiently since all funds are after tax dollars and not a part of your estate.

- If you’re a W2 worker, investing in oil and gas syndications allow you to offset your W2 income dollar for dollar for any loss generated in the investment from depreciation. This differs from traditional real estate investment syndications, which prevents W2 earners from using passive losses to offset active income as a result of the tax reform act passed in 1986. 

- The oil and gas syndication deals that Chris is able to refer his investors to are comparable to value add multifamily deals in which the sponsor invests in wells that are already producing, improves the operations, then sells for a higher profit.

Helpful Links:

https://www.nextlevelincome.com/

Best Way to Contact Chris:

chris@nextlevelincome.com