Brett:

I’m excited about our next guest. She's an international speaker number one best-selling author, and she is a business strategist and attorney licensed in both the US Tennessee and Canada, and Ontario. She is an active AILA American Immigration Lawyers Association member and she boasts a stellar track record of success. She's also recently recognized as one of the 2017 Super Lawyers by Attorney at Law magazine and so much more. Please welcome the show with me, Lauren A. Cohen. Lauren, how are you doing?

Lauren:

Good. How are you, Brett? Nice to see you again.

Brett:

Absolutely was great to be on your show and get to know you a little bit here. when I was on the show, and looking forward to getting to know a little bit more here on the on my show. Let's dive straight in. Could you give us our listeners a little bit more about your story and your current focus?

Lauren:

Well, first of all, if you ever wanted to be an auction person, you definitely have the voice and your cadence is super fast. Faster than mine. I thought Greg was fast. You're fast. I am Lauren Cohen, originally from the amazing but now getting very cold city of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. I currently live and work from my lovely location in Palm Beach, Florida in Boca Raton, I was going to say palm trees, and there are palm trees outside. There are none of those where I come from. I am an international lawyer, realtor, and cross-border expert and I help people create strategies to invest in creating wealth across borders, both in Canada, the US, and literally all over the world.

Brett:

That is fantastic. we're gonna be talking about all the things investing in real estate across borders. Let's dive right into that. What's the number one secret Lauren to helping investors invest across borders?

Lauren:

To have them work with me? I love that answer. It's kind of kitschy. But anyway, the truth is, the number one secret is not to do it alone and to build your team and to have a strategy. I don't know if that's one or three. But it's kind of all intertwined. If you just haphazardly go about investing without a team, and without a strategy, you're going to fail. But if you build a strategy for short and long-term success, and you build the team around that strategy, you're going to be successful.

Brett:

Very good. That's first step one, having success and building that dream team. Maybe getting with someone like Lauren A. Cohen, who's an expert in cross-border investing. Let's step number two?

Lauren:

Go back to step number one. Step number two, so actually, I created a 10 step process to help people invest in real estate and create strategies to expand their businesses across borders. The first step in that strategy would be figuring out what you're investing in, which is, of course, part of the strategy. We've got to figure out what you're investing in, where you're investing, how much you're investing in you're investing with partners, do you need tax advice? Most likely, yes, almost everybody does even domestically. But as soon as you go international that expands and exaggerated further. Then we have to create a strategy to get you the right entity structure. Because of course, not everybody is going to be able to qualify for 1031 with their investment properties. if and this is especially true for Canadians, if there's any chance of qualifying, you have to set up the right structure. that's really important, even if you're going into the DST that Brett offers because your structure is going to dictate what you do with the initial property and how you move the money. It's really all about following the process properly and working with a trusted advisor that can take you from point A to point Z or in Canadian point Zed.

Brett:

Very well said and so entity team vision for what you're buying what you're going to be buying, making sure you're he's laying the framework like if you're building an apartment complex, you're gonna start with the foundation. You want to make sure that's correct so that you're eligible to do and take advantage of certain tax deferral mechanisms such as the 1031 exchange. Is that a fair summary so far?

Lauren:

It's interesting because I created a program a little bit ago you don't know about this called scale-up checkup and scale-up checkup was designed to help businesses uncover risk and analyze deficiencies and figure out a strategy to both repair those deficiencies and address the risk and scale their businesses. The most important thing when I used to speak on this topic was would you build your house on a sinkhole? Or do you want to have that strong foundation and that foundation is built from that strategy and the team combined together? Now, of course, need a little bit of money? Well, maybe not. Because it really depends on what you're investing in. if you have joint venture partners, or if you're using other people's money, but you just need to have the wherewithal to understand that you cannot do this alone, there is no I in the team and you need, especially when you're going into a new country, new territory, considering tax issues, considering visa issues, don't do it alone, you need to make sure that you're working with a team of experts that can truly help and guide you through that process.

Brett:

By the more, you can learn more about Lauren A. Cohen at RealEstateAcrossBorders.com. That's RealEstateAcrossBorders.com. You've established your dream team, you're building your solid foundation, you're making sure the right entity structure is in place and making sure you're looking at working with local professionals. What after that, I imagine you started to take some action, starting to actually fly and tour into the properties or walk us through that. Are you having some folks from Europe? Are they buying properties without seeing them? Or give us kind of a maybe a replay of a recent deal that you did for someone investing across borders?

Lauren:

I think that most clients these days are investing without actually viewing properties, at least my clients because they are from other countries. even though that borders have opened a little bit, that it's still very challenging to travel, definitely much more challenging, with all the testing and everything. People are choosing to take the risk of investing remotely. that puts a little more pressure on us as the people that are finding the opportunities because we have to make sure that we're properly vetting them. But I'm even helping people invest remotely from me like I have people investing in Arkansas and Texas and California, and Arizona. As long as we have strong partners and partnerships that we build, we can rely on those people in those local markets to help us to vet the properties properly.

Right now I'm looking at it 1031 Exchange for a client and they're not here. they're way far overseas, and literally another country on the other side of the world.it's really about building that relationship of trust with the guide, or guide guides that you are working with, and making sure that they have your back because not everybody does some people are just looking for the quick buck. They see 1031, “oh money, oh, let's find them a property, oh, we're gonna close fast” because they don't know about what you're offering. They don't know about these other options. they're just anxious to get that buck in their pocket. That's not always best for the client and having this. This DST option available is just amazing. It opens doors that really, clients don't even I mean, don't know about and it's a matter of bringing them options that are viable, whether it be a direct 1031, if that's what they choose, or if it's more passive one through an option that you're presenting to them.

Brett:

Thanks for sharing that. we call that the shotgun wedding. When you got to get engaged in 45 days and married and 180. sometimes in a highly-priced real estate market, which I would, I would think most people would agree that we're in, it's not the best decision for the client. are they want some diversification, they want some liquidity. They want the ability to time the real estate market go back in when the market makes sense or ground-up development. It's not equal or greater value, we have a client excellent $2.6 million business and he's building with the funds all tax-deferred 70 multifamily units. what people used to think was impossible because of the 10 300 restrictions, it is impossible to 1031 to do certain things but with something called a Deferred Sales Trust. It's no longer impossible, you can do these things. it's really remarkable so I appreciate you you sharing them by the way you can learn more about that’s CapitalGainsTaxSolutions.com, that's CapitalGainsTaxSolutions.com The next step is then like you said, to get a team of professionals trusted professionals. You mentioned the network, and having those trusted, vetted professionals that you've built up over the years. You kind of has a home base with Lauren. Then you can move out to other opportunities, different places like Phoenix, Texas. Talk about the value of how you've been able to network with eXp why you joined eXp and how you're able to serve more clients in a manner that's very efficient.

Lauren:

Honestly, there's just no shortage of the opportunities that exp has brought my way. May I share my screen I should have asked you ahead of time, but may I show.

Brett:

You can try. I don't know if I'm savvy enough on my end but if you want to kind of walk us through one slide? Looks like you can.

Lauren:

This is too confusing. Let's skip that, I should have planned that ahead of time. What he has done for me is, I've had my real estate license for 14 years. Now, I'm a lawyer, first and foremost, and I always will be, that's my number one thing, and coordinating and, helping guide people serving as their strategic, either trusted advisor, but to having my real estate license was something I wanted to do. From the time I got to the US. as soon as I had my green card, I got my real estate license. I really haven't done any transactions until now. Why? Because I had my license, and it was just parked at a broker. Nothing was really happening. At the time, I was in developing a relocation business with my uncle, and I met my business partner, and he's like, You need to look at this. I'm like, I don't know why to bother, that typical thing that we get now, I'm okay, I don't need to. then I looked at it. I've been with exp now for two years. I'm the chair of the International Investment Committee. I absolutely love being a part of this company, being on the leadership, being able to meet people like Brett, being able to have people like Brent, on my podcast, Brent Cove, who has a team of I think 17,000 Now under him, and he is just literally bat baking in the sun. the ability to bring value to people that aren't necessarily real estate producers. I currently have 27, I think referral agreements out there. some of those referral agreements are starting to pan out. we're making offers and these are not things I even considered. I was in the EB-5 space for a long time. still, all these deals were passing me by it didn't even faze me until I joined eXp. What the opportunity was, it was right in front of me. It's collaborative, it's collegial, we all help each other, we want to help each other. We want to be there because, at the end of the day, we are all shareholders. We all have a stake in each other's success. it makes a huge difference.