The Entrust Group is a vendor partner of Champions DFW Commercial Realty, and they offer a different form of investing for their clients. Patrick Hagen and Jeremy Ransom joined Jim Kelley and Ron Taylor in this edition of the Champions DFW Radio Show and Podcast. Here’s an excerpt from their conversation, and be sure to listen to the complete conversation in our free podcast.
Patrick Hagen of Entrust Group: We’re at the firm called The Entrust Group. We’re kind of a niche business that focuses on what we call real estate IRAs. We have clients that take their IRA and 401K money and, instead of buying stocks, bonds, and mutual funds, they buy things like real estate, LLCs, or their alternative assets. I’m a regional director with the firm. I’ve been with them, off and on, about 12 years. Jeremy here heads up our Texas market, and I’ll let him introduce himself, but he’s been with us now for just under a year.
Jeremy Ransom of Entrust Group: I actually grew up in the Dallas area, grew up in Lake Highlands, went to the military after, served five years in the Marine Corps, got out, got my degree in personal finance, and shortly thereafter found The Entrust Group. It’s a great organization. As Patrick said, I head up the Texas market along with the markets just north of Texas, so Oklahoma, North Dakota, South Dakota, Kansas, and Nebraska. I am working out of our Austin, Texas office, but I do work, obviously, in the Dallas market as well.
Jim Kelley: Excellent. Thanks for the intro. I am particularly excited, guys, because one of the primary things that we get inquiries and interest is from investors, “How do I get involved with commercial real estate? I want to invest,” maybe they have a 401K, and I think your products are going to address a lot of needs to our listeners and I hope they will keenly listen to what you have to say today. Patrick, if I could turn to you, give us a quick update on Entrust, when it started and all the services, and then we’ll get into some of the services that you do provide.
Patrick: Absolutely. So we’re a company that’s been doing this since 1981. Our industry as a whole kind of flies under the radar. Most people think IRA, 401K, they think stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. They think about the brokerage firms and wealth managers that sell those products. What we do is we basically pick up any investment that the IRS permits, that other companies like brokerage firms don’t hold, namely real estate, private placements, LLCs, private notes, things of that sort. What we try to encourage people to understand is that these investments have always been permissible. This isn’t a new concept. The IRAs came on the scene in 1975, and since 1975 you could buy real estate within your retirement plan. The missing component or components, I should say, is two things. One is the understanding that it’s an option and two is finding an IRA administrator to work with.
Most of the big boys, they like to sell stocks. They don’t like to do real estate. Real estate is a totally different animal. It takes on a different investment structure. And when you really boil it down, it comes down to how is the firm going to be paid. We get paid to hold things like real estate, alternative assets, whereas brokerage companies are going to sell product. They sell stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. So for, again, over 30 years now, about 34 years, we’ve been that quiet voice in the background saying, “If you want to buy mutual funds, you have plenty of companies to do that. But if you want to buy real estate, you can do that as well.” We’re more, in my opinion, educators. We bring awareness to this. Then, obviously, if somebody wants to self-direct their retirement fund, say, buy a piece of property or going on a commercial project or something like that, we’ll provide the required IRA administration for that.
Learn more about The Entrust Group…Listen to the entire conversation in a free podcast download here on our website or on iTunes.
Learn more about Jim, Kelley, here.
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