Women & Money: The Shit We Don't Talk About!
Women & Money: The Shit We Don't Talk About!
What I learned After Losing $90,000 in Real Estate with Kayla Hamrick
Getting scammed out of $90,000 will change you. Or it will break you.
This week on Women & Money: The Shit We Don’t Talk About, we’re joined by Kayla Hamrick, real estate investor and founder of Money Match.
Kayla shares the real story behind losing $45,000 in a real estate deal and another $45,000 in legal fees trying to recover it. No sugarcoating. No hype. Just the truth about what went wrong, what she learned, and why private money lending can feel like the wild west.
We talk about why contracts don’t always protect you, how enforcement is where deals actually fall apart, and why women are often taught to stay small when it comes to money conversations.
Kayla also breaks down what private money lending actually is, the documents that matter, and the exact questions women should ask before saying yes to a deal.
🎧 This conversation is honest, practical, and empowering in the real way. The way that helps you move smarter, not smaller.
Want to take this conversation one step further? Join us for our next Money Talks, a free 30 minute live session where we’ll tackle “Budgeting for Businesses”. Click here to register for FREE and bring your questions!
Want to take this conversation one step further? Join us for our next Money Talks, a free 30 minute live session where we’ll dig into a question we hear all the time from women business owners: Budgeting for Businesses to Offer Benefits. Click here to register for FREE and bring your questions!
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People are signing contracts thinking they're protected and it can mean nothing. And there's no one regulating that. There's no one saying, you can't put that in that contract, unless you're paying thousands of dollars to a lawyer before you close. So many people just make deals on a handshake or on paperwork hoping that it holds in court, and it may or may not. Gloria Steinem once said, we will never solve the feminization of power until we solve the masculinity of wealth. Barbara Provost and Maggie Nielsen are the team at purse strings that will help you navigate the ins and outs of financial independence so that you can be financially fearless. This is women in money, the shit we don't talk about. All right, today we have Kayla Hamrick on the pod. I'm so excited to share the story with our audiences. I think, this will just be a nice one that hits home for everyone. So, Kayla, before we dive into all the questions we have for you, share a little bit about who you are and what you do with the audience. I am Kayla Hamrick, and I do a lot of things, but right now I am launching a platform for investors to do real estate deals faster. It's a jungle of craziness in the real estate world, and so I'm matching people seamlessly so they can do deals faster. Awesome. And you're in California, right? Right. Yeah. All right. Any other fun facts we should know about you? Ooh, oh. I'll say I love volleyball. I love running on the beach and I love anything to do with helping women. So I'm just, this is the perfect spot to be and I'm grateful to be here Awesome. Love it. I wanna go play on the beach in California. Not here in the frozen tundra of chicago. Yeah, yesterday Caleb was trying to be like, oh, it's 72 degrees, and she was wearing a coat. I was like, Ooh, it's 30 degrees here, and I shouldn't even complain. Oh my gosh, it's colder here. I win, I win. It's gonna be like below zero tomorrow, so Ah. You are a strong one. Well, let's just jump right into the juice. You lost about $90,000 in a real estate deal. 90,000. Can you walk us through what happened and what you felt like in that moment emotionally? Definitely disbelief. I was raised in a very like strict, honest family. And so I was just still in that bubble, assuming that people like did honest deals with each other. And so what I did is I lent money. Like you were saying, Maggie, on a real estate deal for a fix and flipper, and it was pretty clear cut. You give me this, I'll flip the house, I give you that all good. And instead of that happening, he just didn't actually complete the deal and just walked away and ghosted me. So emotionally it was more like just shock and whiplash. It was good though because it woke me up to protecting myself. So Kayla, what was your role in this transaction? How did it work? It was a man, a gentleman. We'll call him a gentleman for now, but, he's a man. So what was his responsibility and what was yours? Great question. This was a private money lending deal. So in the real estate industry, there's always a project that needs financing and most banks or lenders will finance about 70% of the deal, and that's it. Because that keeps them pretty low risk. So for fix and flippers who need to close these deals or have multiple deals on the table, that could be tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars. They need to have skin in the game. It's a lot, and a lot of people don't have that. So they go and find remaining financing from private lenders like me, you, their friends, family, dentist, whoever they want. So my responsibility was bringing in remaining financing that he needed for this project, and his responsibility was to complete the house flip, and then upon sale, he was going to pay me out of the proceeds. So this was your personal money you were lending him. Yeah. And then did you have a contract or an agreement in place? We did, this is why I thought I was "safe" is because I did X, Y, Z, like what the real estate gurus say to do. In hindsight, I look back and these real estate gurus are the ones borrowing. So they're gonna teach you how to lend that favors them. There's no maltintent here, but that's their perspective they're teaching from. So I was like, 'oh yeah. I have the paperwork. It says, here's the promissory note. You owe me this much. And you also want to have more than that 'cause that's just a note. That doesn't mean anything unless you have more documents to protect you. So I also got a lien position on the property and I thought, 'hey, I'm covered, right? Like if you sell it, my name is on there as someone who's owed'. However, I did not process this through a title company and unfortunately the notary stamped it wrong and the state of California refused to recognize that as a valid document. Oh, did you know about the title company process. My first deal. Okay, so I was gonna ask, have you done a deal before? This was kind of the first one. I was all fired up, ready to have financial freedom, and I definitely did all the wrong things. So how does somebody like him, the man, how does he walk away and get scot-free from this? Yeah, Barb wants to know how to get $90,000. You think you're doing all the right things and it sounds like you were, how can someone just walk away from that? Right. So, this happens unfortunately too much which is why you have to have the right docs in place to not allow that. He has a note, so technically he can't walk away 'cause the promissory note binds him to this deal. It's the enforcement of the note that is the difficult part. And that's what lets him walk away because he knows if he can just get me tired enough through the legal system and use up my money on lawyers, he can get away. So it's really about waiting out the enforcement part is what he did. So it sounds like he was pretty keen, and maybe he's done this before. Serial scammer. Oh, bummer. And he is a realtor still practicing in California? You can't report him to the Board of Realtors Yeah. I reported him to the DRE and they said there's insufficient evidence. What happened to the property? You know, It's so funny because you would think I would be like, all on top of this like a daylight show, but I believe he sold it off at loss. So when you realize the money was gone, the legal fees were stacking up, you know, what was kind of that hardest part to process? You know, the money, the broken trust or kind of like how you felt about like, you're gonna dive in, do this big investment, you know, and now it's like, can I trust myself? Oh my gosh. Yeah. I am proud of myself for not getting too emotional about it and being emotional is a gift. So I'm not saying that, that doesn't have a place, but in the regards of investing and finances. For me, going into a deal, you don't wanna be emotional about a deal. And that's exactly why I got in trouble is I got all excited about the flashy returns. It was, you know, like,'Ooh, this is my first deal, I'm gonna do it'. I should have been way more neutral and calculated. So to answer your question. I was actually pretty unemotional about it and I was very kind of like action oriented. Like, okay, this happened. Hell no. Am I gonna let that happen to me again? I also was like, I'm not letting other people go through this. And so I learned as much as I could. I started talking to attorneys. I talked to like more seasoned lenders, like private money lenders, talked to friends in the industry and started like picking up skills that would allow me to be protected the next time around and the next time around. And unfortunately, I, I think it's like with any industry, I'm a nurse practitioner actually. You can learn and learn and learn, but it's like when you really go through something is when you really learn it. And so I think. To, to summarize it, I didn't get emotional and and I learned what I could, and I think that was very helpful because I didn't play the victim card. I think that would've kept me in a unproductive mode for a while. And so I just picked up, moved on because really what was my alternative? Just like cry about my money. Like, no, I am gotta go make that back. It's risk reward, right? And you know what they say? Fail fast, right? Fail fast, learn from it, pick yourself up, get that behind you. And now you're that much smarter. But you know, a lot of women, they go straight to this whole blame situation. Did you experience that? And if you did, what helped you move through it instead of letting it kind of define you because you did move ahead. Yeah, I would say not so much like self blame, but just responsibility. Like, wow, you know, you probably should have gone slower. Probably should have vetted this guy better. So many things I didn't do, but I didn't know what I didn't know. So I think it was just more like personal accountability, but without the weight of judgment. It's like, okay, it happened. And I think that was really productive for me. Yeah, you were able to just kind of write it off and it is kind of like, well, I could sulk on it, you know, I could pay four times the amount and legal fees, or I could get back at it and make the money. Like it's not gonna make itself, right. and I know when we were talking, you're kind of like, that's the debt I paid to the universe. And it's gonna come back, which I think is just a great perspective. And there are some things I don't know, that we've all kind of written off. Like it's gonna come around sometime, right? Like he's gonna get his karma. I'm gonna get, you know, a random windfall or something. It all comes around. When, couldn't tell you how, don't know. And let's be clear, when you're making deals like this or you're an entrepreneur, it's all about risk, right? We're on a skinny limb most of the time. We have a passion. We're trying to make the best decisions possible, talking to the best experts, and sometimes things are not gonna work out, and you're gonna lose. Sometimes things are gonna work out and you're gonna win. So, you need to be thick skinned. I think when you're in these types of situations and you need to buck up and say, ha heck, I'm learning from this. It's only money. You know what I always say? No one's dying. And we're gonna figure out where we went wrong. We're going to recalibrate and move on. So for listeners hearing this for the first time, can you explain a little bit about this private money lending in simple terms and why it even exists? So real estate deals across the country is a $5 trillion business in just investments. And so these deals, like I was saying earlier to buy land or to buy the, you know, apartment complex. Most banks are not going to go above 70% of the purchase price. So if someone wants to buy, we're just gonna keep it so simple like a home that is in disrepair and they're going to fix it up for profit. Most people are familiar with fix and flips these days. So, most banks will only finance, you know, 70% of the purchase and maybe 70% of the construction costs. And these are, when I say banks, it's usually, it's called Hard Money Lending. It's these private companies who have lots of cash from insurance companies and big hedge funds. They get this money and they disperse it for fix and flip loans. But they are very smart and they're like, we are not going over 70% of the total cost of the the property 'cause they know that if things go wrong and this person disappears off the face of the planet, well, now we have this junky house and now they can sell it and not lose money. So what do people do when they have a million dollar house that they bought? They're only getting 700 K to work with, you know, that's 300 k they have to figure out, right. And so some of it's gonna come from their savings or all of it, or they can't have the deal. So what they'll do is they'll go out and find again, like people like me and you, and they say, you know, I know this is a higher risk deal. And so they offer higher interest rates. For sure starting at 12% annualized. But I mean, I was telling Maggie, like, I have a, borrowers that give me 30 and 50% returns. I've been getting that regularly, but I don't wanna paint that picture as like, all private money lenders get those types of returns, and you can, and that's what I love about this industry is, is that anything's possible? It just depends on the negotiation and every deal is different. So back to why this is here. This is how investment, we call them operators like investment real estate investors get deals done. It's called OPM, and I'm sure you guys have talked about that on your podcast. Other people's money. Using that allows you to scale your business in, I'm sure many different industries, but especially real estate, allows you to take on more projects and scale. I know you kind of described it as like the wild West right now. Tell us more about why it's the Wild West. I mean, there's so many things with money and you think about buying a house and you know, there's all these processes and legal papers and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that you have to go through. So that seems from an outsider's perspective, pretty locked down. That's a great thought. I will say like buying the house, you know, is it goes through a title company. A lawyer will process it often, and that you're right, like the standard buying of a house is very regulated, however, private money is not. And so when a deal goes through the title company they're just processing the paperwork that you signed with this borrower so it could say anything on it. And they're like, okay, if that's what you want, you know, like we will record it. But I learned I can say whatever I want in the contract and make an agreement with the borrower. And I've had conflicts where I've talked to the attorney in that state that I did the deal in, and they said, that doesn't hold any water here, or that's an excess fee that you can't charge this borrower. And I'm like, well, they are the one who said it. You know, like they offered these really high penalty fees what do you call late fees? I just agreed and said yes, and they're like, ' that's not gonna work.' So my point is, people are signing contracts thinking they're protected and it can mean nothing. And there's no one regulating that. There's no one saying, you can't put that in that contract, unless you're paying thousands of dollars to a lawyer before you close. So many people just make deals on a handshake or on paperwork hoping that it holds in court, and it may or may not. And also just the legal process. If something goes wrong, can truly be exhausting and like an expensive. And so, when I say Wild West, it's just people are just doing deals right and left talking to people. Everything's word of mouth. There's not a centralized place to really do deals and do them efficiently and cleanly and know that you're, you're protected. So I, feel like you need to have a really good real estate lawyer in your back pocket who specializes in this kind of thing? Because I mean, it's just like we talk about, you know, having a very specific divorce lawyer, having a very specific business lawyer. I mean lawyers, once you get it, it's like health, you know, like you don't know all the body parts, you know, there's some doctors who do it all, but otherwise it's so specialized and this is like so niche. And you've gotta know those nuances. Absolutely. Yeah. And so I am building this platform to be that centralized market so people can find deals easily. But also that's just the very beginning, right? Like you heard my story, I would never want someone to go through what I went through. And so that's why I have this platform that refers people to good real estate attorneys. Educates on like. Red flags, green flags, you know all the docs that you want to request. So I'm cleaning up the wild west. Awesome. So before we dive into that, 'cause that's a whole nother piece I wanted to really explore. Let's talk about where you are today 'cause you had this terrible deal and you pulled yourself up and I'm sure you've made other deals since. So you dipped your toe back in the water, or maybe you dove right back in. I don't know. So how many deals successfully or any problems you've had since then, what's your track rate? That's a great question. I did up to, I wanna say around 20 deals in the last three years, either with my own personal group deals or capital raising for someone else's deal. So personally I have three go bad, and the one that we're talking about is still in litigation. And I actually put pause on it 'cause I was telling Maggie like it just was such an energetic drain and I have such higher things to focus my energy on that, I really consider that experience as like my deposit into the universe and it will come back and I'm not worried. And other two deals, one did pay me back and it actually actually worked out really great because of all the late fees. And like, I absolutely wanna work with the borrower, but this guy was like, such a jerk. I was like, yeah, I'm gonna collect every single late fee. And he was the one that set those terms too, so that worked out fine. It was just incredibly delayed. And then the third one is actually in litigation as well. And these, the ones that are all in litigation, the two are from my very first set of deals. And so I've definitely tightened things up since then. And so if a woman is listening and someone you know, pitches her this great real estate opportunity, what are like two to three questions she should always ask before saying yes. Yeah. I would first say, do not just ask two to three questions, but the, our most, our most important things are I love to just straight up ask, how are you gonna protect my money? That tells me very quickly how educated they are and how important it is to the borrower to protect their lender. What's a good response to that? They need to know what documents are helpful and they need to know multiple ways to to do it 'cause there's multiple ways to skin a cat. I hate that phrase, but, Yeah. and so they have to have a couple of options on their mind. And to be more specific, there's some foundational things. You need a promissory note, a lien position on the property which is called a deed of trust. You also want something called a personal guarantee, and that means that 'hey, if everything goes wrong, you can go after me personally to recover the loss'. Because if you just loan to this person's LLC, they can walk away and say, well that was my business and my business failed, and sorry, right. So personal guarantees lets you go after the individual. So those are some solid, like non-negotiables. So I would expect them to say that the additional things is, you know, adding the lender to the insurance policy of the home getting title insurance, meaning that if the title company messed up and you know, there's like, three liens in front of you that the title company isn't responsible for that because, you know, you were lending on a deal where you thought you were next in line to get paid out. So these are some things that you would expect a borrower to be knowledgeable on. And if they aren't, then that, for me is not necessarily a red flag, would it means they're inexperienced and you just have to factor that into the deal and some people are okay with it, some are not. I probably wouldn't, but, it's not an immediate no. So that's my starting point. The other questions to ask are, you know, show me the docs, show me your experience, show me this purchase agreement, the appraisal of the house. So I can really verify that what you're saying is true. You want to not just like, if they say, oh yeah, I'm gonna put 50 K into repairs and then we're gonna sell it for 250 K, whatever. I want to see that contractor bid and I wanna make sure that contractor is very experienced and licensed and insured 'cause the, one of the ones that went bad it was actually the contractor that ruined everything. He was freaking psycho and he went and destroyed his work and stole equipment off the site and it stalled us for months. I mean, I could tell you stories all day. so I would just say, verify, verify, verify, verify, ask for the docs. And often lenders feel bad.''Oh, it's so inconvenient. I know this is a lot of work'. It's like, no, we are helpers. To do our job and to make sure everyone's safe. These are just the steps. it is, what it is, what it is. If you want money, these are the steps that we have to take done. And so I think women hate inconveniencing people. Many of us are taught to stay small. Don't take up a lost space. Don't question this question that that'll make them feel bad. It's like mm-hmm. And so it's a really good exercise and like really coming, stepping into your power and remembering like, it's my money. Like you said Maggie. Like, so if you don't like this process that I'm taking to keep us safe, it's okay. Go to another person, right? I would say those are the beginning things. And then lastly, I would just say like what's your backup plan? What happens if everything goes wrong? There's gotta be something well thought out. They cannot just say, oh no, this is clean and, and easy. Mm-hmm. That doesn't do it. That's a lot of people to talk to. I mean, between vetting the person who's gonna do the work, the contractor getting on the insurance. I mean, all the things, it turns into a full web. It's not just like, here's some cash, let's, let's get started. I mean, not like I thought it was, but you know. When you see it online, it looks sparkly and easy and oh, 20% returns. Bada bing, badda, boom. Yeah. Exactly. And that's why I got into the trouble that I did because these gurus make it look way too easy. So simple. Let's go. No. However, these are the steps I would recommend anytime and all the time, and when you have relationships with good borrowers. I have two that I keep recycling my money with over and over again, and it's wonderful. I will be honest, I don't do that full due diligence anymore because they have proven themselves and they have a good track record. I am not saying that, like, Hey, follow me in that way. This is just my situation. I have a friend who did four deals with someone, and then the fifth one he defaulted and just totally ghosted her. So, you know, track record doesn't protect you. It's a fantastic strengthening quality of a deal. But in the end, your own due diligence is what saves you. Because these are so many pain points and so many friction points in this industry. This is why it started what I did, because I'm cleaning that up too. Like I want private money lenders to have software to just look at a deal, underwrite it quickly, and be able to assess deals faster, which is what I'm doing as well. let's dig into all of that. Tell us what it is, how it's used, why you created it, and how people can leverage it. Yeah, so my platform is called Money Match and we are in beta testing right now and it's an investment accelerator. So people who are operators, as we talked about earlier, they can post a deal on the platform and it's a marketplace where my platform will bring that deal to you if that's in your lending box. So Lending Box means this is how much money I have, this is how long I want it out. These are the type of deals I'm interested in. Like if you only want to lend on apartment complexes because you want long-term equity, or if you just want to be in and out of a fix and flip in six months, that's your prerogative. So you specify what you want, and then my platform will bring you deals that fit that criteria. And so it's going to speed up the process of finding deals 'cause right now. It is wild, wild west. You go around Facebook looking for the right deal and oh, that deal's gone and that deal never worked out. And okay, this one's available, but we gotta close in three days. It's a mess. These are simple deals you can evaluate cleanly. And so what we're doing right now is we're we're in the process of getting software to underwrite every deal that hits the platform so that lenders can more easily be protected and, and vet deals. But in the end, I always recommend your own human due diligence. What I'm providing is just less friction and more ease, and so I'm excited for people to try that out. I didn't realize that people were like just finding these deals on Facebook, I mean, it just seems like you have to talk to someone who knows someone, but does it matter, like as like state to state? Like do you typically do'em in your state more locally to you, or is it like, you know there in Manhattan I can do, sure. Right. I've learned all over the country. But I would say that probably lending in your own town is very smart because you know where the property is, you can see it yourself. Because one of the deals that went bad, it was in Atlanta area and what the pictures showed was definitely a fix and flip. But it was only on realtor.com and then the real life pictures were a war zone. And I was like, oh my gosh. Like this guy did not raise enough money. He should have never, like, it was terrifying. I was like, oh, this is not gonna get covered with the money. Like me and a another partner came in with a hundred K, like 50 K from me, 50 K from the partner, and I was like, a hundred K is not even gonna, not even gonna touch this. And it, it went bad. And we found out too that it was in a historical neighborhood and in those neighborhoods, you have to get a permit to do anything right. And so like, we're like, didn't see that coming, didn't know that that was gonna delay this project. And so, anyway, my point is had I started, and again, this was one of my earliest deals, just mistake, mistake, mistake. And so, had I seen it and walked it, I would have been like, thank you, but no thank you. So I do think it is wise to start locally, but you don't have to. You can be better than I was, and you can say, let's do a video, walk through this property. I wanna see it. You can have multiple talks if you want. I review the appraisal closely, which I didn't. So, anyway, you can lend everywhere is my, my answer. There is that technology of like, just FaceTime me through the house. You know, I'm not gonna fly in, just FaceTime me and just take advantage of the technology. As long as they're at the right house. Right. And I've actually had that where I was like, you're filming the address right now. You know, like I wasn't rude, but I was like, I want you to walk from the sidewalk and I want you to show me the address and you know, show me the street sign. So I have done that. Yeah. I do have to ask this one question. How does a nurse practitioner pivot to creating a real estate app? Like what was the, what was the bridge? Yeah, I actually talked to a financial planner five years ago, and he looked at all my finances and my goals and he said, you have a 7% chance of achieving your financial goals. And I was like. It's higher than I thought. I was just like, it was such a great meeting because I was like, what I'm doing as a nurse practitioner is not working. And I think a lot of us realize, like we get these jobs thinking that you know, your nine to five is gonna work out and nurse practitioners make okay money, you know, average, average or higher. And if that wasn't even working for me, then I had to do something else, right? Like, if plan a doesn't work, then something's gotta change. So I dove into real estate investing. I got all fired up, made these stupid mistakes. But in the grand scheme of things, it needed to happen. It needed to show me to gimme clarity on what's totally wrong in the industry, so I can clean that up. So I'm so grateful because I wouldn't be here if everything went to plan. I would, I mean, I'd be making good money, but I feel like this platform is going to change and disrupt the industry in all the best ways. I love it. It is so exciting. Yeah. Just to see, I mean, we've all gotta learn, right? Which is really why I wanted to bring you on, is like we tell all these stories, you know, but like, they're not all glamorous and shiny from the get go, But you've learned so much and then you've changed for others. So really built that path, which is so exciting. So, you know, you rebuilt that as after a loss. You're founder and now an investor. So I've gotta ask, what does financial freedom mean to you? Great question. I would say that it's time freedom. Financial freedom means you have enough wealth to allow yourself to dictate however you wanna spend your time. I'm just curious about when and where people can find your app Yeah, so we're in beta testing this month and you'll find us on the Play store in the app store in about four to six weeks. So that would put us at about March 1st, and we can't wait for people to use it. This is just the tip of the iceberg. We're gonna keep, we have so many visions for it, so it can protect people and do what it's intended. So I'm excited for people to join the journey. I'm excited to watch your journey progress and learn from it. And, you know, March 1st is a great time because it's Women's History Month and it's a time where we're really celebrating those women who have stepped out for women. Financial literacy and empowerment in terms of money, and you're one of them, Kayla, I mean, you're, you're a disruptor and you're doing something fantastic in the realm that you've seen. You've seen an issue and you're doing something about it. And now look how easy you're gonna make this for people. Sure. Still a risk, but much, much easier on your new platform. So congratulations and we can't wait to watch it progress. Thank you. I so appreciate that. Yeah, I just want and be a helper. So I'm very excited to do that. Thank you, Barb. Yeah. I encourage everyone go check out the app. You know, let's keep this conversation going and I can't wait to see where it grows. So thank you Kayla, for coming on today and sharing your story and just being vulnerable and sharing your new platform. We're very excited for you. And yeah, we'll talk to everyone again soon. You've been listening to Women Money, the shit we don't talk about. 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