Welcome back to another episode of the IRA Cafe podcast! Join Kyle Moody, Business Development Manager at American IRA, as he hosts an insightful discussion with Steve Kelly, Vice President at MLG Capital.

In this episode, Kyle Moody and Steve Kelly explore how self-directed IRAs can be used to invest in private placement real estate funds, diving deep into MLG Capital’s nearly four decades of history, unique fund structures, and tax-efficient investing strategies. Steve Kelly shares his journey from wealth management exposure through family ties to dedicating his entire professional career to MLG, explaining how he educates and supports investors, and detailing MLG’s transformation from a local, diversified real estate firm to a nationwide leader in multifamily, industrial, and diversified real estate funds.

The conversation covers the evolution of MLG's investment approach from syndicating individual deals to launching diversified private funds and explains how MLG helps investors gain access to passive, diversified portfolios without the headaches of direct property ownership. Listeners will also gain valuable insights into the realities of today’s real estate market, the intricacies of tax planning (including UBTI and REIT blockers for retirement account investors), and the minimum requirements to participate in MLG’s offerings. Whether you’re a seasoned pro or just curious about stepping back from hands-on real estate investing, this episode is packed with practical guidance and actionable education.

Key takeaways:

1. MLG Capital's Evolution: Steve Kelly outlines MLG Capital’s growth since its founding in 1987, from managing various real estate services and syndicating one-off deals to shifting focus on diversified private funds that offer nationwide exposure especially in the Midwest and Sunbelt regions (06:00 to 10:20).
2. Passive, Diversified Real Estate Investing: Through their private fund structure, MLG allows investors to participate in a portfolio of 20–30 properties, providing diversification by geography and asset type, which helps mitigate risk compared to direct ownership or single-property syndications (08:04 to 14:18).
3. Self-Directed IRA Compatibility: Investors can use self-directed IRAs to access MLG’s funds, with special attention to mitigating UBTI through REIT “blocker” structures that convert rental income to dividend income for better retirement account tax treatment (18:10 to 22:01).
4. Real Estate Market Insights: Steve Kelly provides an informed look at multifamily market trends, including the impact of recent record-setting new construction, ongoing strong rental demand, and why localized, granular market analysis remains crucial to successful investment management (28:19 to 32:23).
5. Accessibility and Investor Requirements: Participation in MLG’s private funds requires accredited investor status with a $50,000 minimum investment, and while the investments are illiquid, distributions and liquidity events are staggered as individual assets are sold over a 10–12 year fund lifecycle (32:39 to 35:13).

Whether you’re looking to diversify away from the stock market, want to free yourself from hands-on property management, or just want to understand what’s next in the real estate investment landscape, this episode is an essential listen for anyone interested in maximizing their self-directed IRA’s potential.

On this episode of the IRA Cafe, we sit down with Steve Kelly of MLG Capital, who's going to give you some history of the company and how they operate with private placement funds. Learn how you can use your self-directed IRA if this is the way you're looking to invest. Come on into the cafe. Hi everyone, and welcome back into the IRA Cafe powered by American IRA, wherever and whenever you get your podcast. We are We're so glad that you're spending some time with us here to get another bit of education on how you can use your self-directed IRA to invest in items that you may already be using. And if you're not yet investing into general funds, this is going to be some great information where you're going to learn from one of the greats out there. Steve Kelly with MLG Capital is joining us today, and we're really glad that he could spend some time with us. And I'm really looking forward to our conversation.

I think it's going to take us right through great information on where Steve started. He's going to give us great information also on MLG and how it has grown over the past 3 decades. And then we're also going to learn how you might be able to invest with your self-directed IRA and some things that you might want to know moving forward. So again, thank you so much for joining us. Remember, American IRA is your one-stop shop for everything self-directed. Remember, American IRA is your one-stop shop for everything self-directed IRA, everything from all of the investment vehicles out there, all of the investment assets. So take a look at our website at www.americanira.com. Visit all of our blogs and feel free to give me a call as well.

Again, Kyle Moody, and that is at 828-412-8123. Guess what, folks? That's going to come directly to me. And if you'd like to send me an email to schedule some time with me or just let me read over your scenario to see if this is going to be a good fit, don't hesitate to email me at [email protected]. That's [email protected]. Without further ado, let's go ahead and bring in Steve Kelly again with MLG Capital. Steve, thanks so much for joining us today.

Thanks, Kyle. Good to be here. Appreciate it.

Absolutely, man. Absolutely. So thanks so much for the, for the time, and I'm really looking forward to this. So Steve, tell everybody out there a little bit about you, your background, what led you into this type of work, and whether it's from the cross-country days in college and how all that has transcended into your vice president role at MLG.

Yeah, I appreciate that. So by way of background, I've been at MLG about 9 years, a little over, and focus my time right now primarily on working with our investors, educating them on the offerings that we have and walking them through how private real estate works and operates so they can have confidence investing in it. And by way of background, I had actually spent my entire professional career at MLG, so been doing this for a while. I've been with MLG a long time. And what's interesting though is MLG has evolved a lot over the years. So over the last 9, 10 years since I've been here, there's been a lot of growth and a lot of changes and been an exciting thing to be a part of, and I think we're doing well by a lot of our clients. That's affording us the opportunity to grow. But prior to MLG, you know, I had had some experience in the wealth management space just by way of, you know, my family and things like that.

Some exposure to what I'd say was traditional wealth management and planning. And during my summer internship at MLG during college, I got exposed to this alternative investment industry, and it's things that aren't your typical stocks and bonds. It's real estate, private equity, venture capital, et cetera. All these different ways that you can invest that I found very fascinating, just very different than what you hear about in class or even just in traditional finance roles. And I got really excited about it. Real estate's a very interesting asset class to me. It's very physical. It's easy to understand it's a good physical representation of supply and demand.

You can see cranes going up and you can see where people are moving to and from. And I think that makes it really tangible and something that I really enjoy talking about. So that's what's gotten me into the industry. And again, been with MLG my whole career so far and have played a couple different roles at MLG over time. But really nowadays what I focus on is working with our investors, raising capital for our series of private funds. Whether that's individual investors that we work directly with or through their wealth management firms as well. So a couple different ways we partner with investors.

Well, fantastic. And folks, you just heard it right there. Steve really hit the nail on the head. Remember, you can actually invest this way, and you're going to learn a little bit better how shortly. But remember, when using your self-directed retirement account, We don't specialize in the stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. Rather, we invest— we specialize in those alternative investments. And whether that is going to be real estate or whether it's going to be private equities, here it all comes together, and you're going to see how they all really meld here shortly. Steve, give us a little bit of a history.

You and I talked last week, and I enjoyed hearing how MLG started, and then it has branched out, if you will, to some different sectors. So give everybody listening a little bit of a flavor on where MLG started to where it is now.

Yeah, predating my time with MLG, there's an extensive track record. The company was founded back in 1987. When we established the firm, it was a very diversified set of services that MLG offered. We had an investment arm, which is the primary source of our business now. We had property management. We had a commercial brokerage arm as well as some land and subdivision development. So very broad set of services as a firm, and that's evolved over the years. So nowadays we focus a little bit more of our time on the investment side, a little bit less on development, and we've since sold off the brokerage side of the business.

Still maintain some property management in there as well, But the way the investment platform has changed over the years has been interesting. I mean, starting back in 1987 up until 2012, we just did deals on an individual basis. We would syndicate out investment opportunities to our network of investors. A lot of it was friends and family in metro Milwaukee where we're headquartered. And so we'd find a deal, find a multifamily maybe industrial or retail property that we like, get it under contract, talk about it with our investors, and then the investors would participate in just that deal. And that worked really well for us from 1987 till about 2008. We had a really great track record, hadn't lost money on a single deal, but in the 2008, 2009 timeframe, we had a couple deals that didn't turn out so well. And what the lessons learned from that was, is for the investors that were in the 2 or 3 deals that maybe didn't go as well, they were feeling a little bit more pain than the investors that were in all of our deals, well diversified, and had a really good batting average over a long period of time.

So when we went back to our investors and talked to them, some of them were eager to go in on our next deal. And that was kind of the light bulb moment for us to consider doing our investments out of a fund. And so in 2012, we started launching a series of private funds where instead of investing in one deal in one location, you're diversified across a bucket of about 25 to 30 different properties. It's diversified geographically as well as by asset type. So geography's important in real estate. You know, the next economic cycles can hit one region of the country differently than others. So obviously that's important to be diversified. And then it's also diversified by asset type.

We do primarily multifamily. We also like industrial, and then on occasion might entertain a retail or office property, but vast majority of what we do is in the multifamily space. So since 2012, we've launched a new fund roughly every 2 years, starting with Fund 1 and currently working on Fund 7. And so it's been a good growth trajectory for the firm. We've been able to I think performed very well for a lot of our investors and continue to earn their trust each time we launch a new fund.

Great. So are you guys, is MLG just really centered there in Wisconsin or with all of the different branching out? Are there offices elsewhere? Are you guys just in one building?

Yeah, great question because what's unique about MLG is we have a very broad scope, a very broad footprint in terms of assets that we're acquiring as well as offices that we have. So the headquarters is here in Metro Milwaukee where I'm born and raised, and a lot of folks out of this office are as well. But we've always maintained an office in Dallas, Texas and in Sarasota, Florida. So initially in those 3 states was where we acquired most of our properties. Since then, we've opened an office in Denver pretty recently, And our investment platform has expanded beyond just those 3 initial states. We acquire across over 20 different states now. We have a presence predominantly in the Midwest and Sunbelt regions of the United States, and a lot of it is secondary markets that aren't the largest markets. Some large markets, but a lot of secondary markets in the Midwest and Sunbelt regions that we think are a great fit.

A lot of areas that have had a lot of growth and places that we want to be investing because real estate is very local. A lot of times when you invest in real estate deals, you know a local real estate guy in your home market and he's buying a deal that's down the street that you know and are familiar with, but that loses some diversification. So you want to be able to invest with a group that can get you diversified across just the market that you might reside in. And so that's what our platform allows investors to do.

No, that's great. I mean, it actually makes it look like where those are strategically placed, there's those multiple markets out there. And then I'm guessing your clients are nationwide at this point, right?

That's right. Yeah, we have investors in all 50 states. I'm so excited to say that. And then a lot of what we did start it in our home markets. You know, the original principals had relationships in the community with investors that participated in all these one-off deals. Since, you know, we launched the private funds, there's been some ways that make investing in private real estate a lot more accessible, different ways that firms like MLG can market ourselves more generally. And that's been a beneficial thing for us to be able to partner with more investors across the country. A lot of other states where we have investors in New York and California that want to invest in private real estate, but they might not want to invest in New York or California.

Our funds can provide some diversity beyond just those couple states.

You know, I get calls all the time and people will, they'll tell me, you know, I'm really trying to get a shape of what they're looking to do, We find out what kind of retirement account they've already got, whether it's going to be a 401 from a previous employer, well, 401 from a current employer. And then, you know, how can you use those funds? Are they rolling something? Are they going to do a transfer of funds? Are they going to, you know, be able to continue making their contributions? And then we really get into what they want to do with their retirement account. Of course, one of the things they say, well, I'm getting ready to jump into a real estate deal. Okay, well fantastic. Tell me a little bit about this. And they'll start talking about it and then they'll say a couple of things. It's like, well, I don't think you're really looking at real estate here. It sounds more like lending.

Are you actually going to be lending your money? Well, I'm actually going to be giving my money to this company or this entity and then then I think the real estate's going to be purchased from there. And I'm like, oh, okay, now I'm starting to see what's going, uh, what's going on here. You're looking to invest into the private entity. So tell, uh, tell us really quick, Steve, when someone is investing with MLG— and I think you know where this question is going here— are they investing directly into the real estate? Are they investing into a fund that invests into the real estate? Is there a smattering of both? Or really just Yeah.

What happens when someone makes an investment in one of our funds is they're participating in a fund that in turn owns several other real estate properties. And the way the fund is structured is in a partnership structure. So the properties, all the distributions from all 20 to 30 different properties flow through to the fund and then to the investor. And so when you participate in our fund, you get exposure to all the properties that the fund might own. And it's technically structured as a private placement offering. You're not a direct title owner to the real estate. You own units of an LLC similar to if you had business partners that all chipped in to start a partnership. We do that kind of at scale where we have several hundred or a thousand investors participate in a single fund.

And each one owns individual units of the fund.

Let me ask you, while we're now using the word fund, and again, I know that this might be something that is— we've got a lot of probably seasoned pros on here that do this. For folks who might be saying, I think I'm going to take a step back from the boots on the ground real estate myself, Maybe put my money places and let somebody else do the work on the real estate. Now, obviously it sounds like the dividends are coming back in. They're letting their account work for them more instead of them really having to do a lot of due diligence oversight, let's say, on the real estate itself. But talking about fund this and fund that, I believe there's a couple of types of funds that someone might see if they went to your investing portion of your website. Tell us a little bit about the MLG Private Funds and MLG Legacy Funds. Are they similar? Are they, are they different? If, if somebody was really looking to get into using their self-directed IRA to make an investment one way or the other, what's something that they might need to know about either one?

Great question. So one thing to mention, just high level about MLG and something that I think makes us very unique as a real estate manager is our sophistication on the tax side. So I mentioned our track record, almost 40 years in the business of owning and managing real estate and being vertically integrated operators. What we add on top of that management expertise is a layer of tax sophistication. We have an ownership group of 10 principals, 5 of them either current or former CPAs, and about a dozen CPAs across the entire organization that focus on tax-related strategies related to real estate. And when you ask about our product structures, I mentioned that just because I think one of the unique things about us is how we structure our funds to take advantage of some of the tax efficiencies of owning and investing in real estate. So 2 core offerings that MLG has, one being our private funds. And the private funds are the one I described earlier where we're raising capital for about 2 years.

We build a portfolio of about 20 to 30 different properties and investors get exposure to that fund. They last about 10 to 12 years roughly. They're illiquid, so their liquidity is tied to the underlying real estate, and we'll sell assets over series of several years until we sell the last asset and complete the fund. It's a great diversification tool, helps you get outside of the public markets. A lot of people's retirement accounts are very heavily weighted in the public markets, and this is a way to diversify, reduce some of the volatility, gain some diversification, and become passive. Sometimes people, like you were saying, want to relieve themselves of managing real estate. They want to find some other way to invest. Well, they can participate in a fund and get a lot of the same benefits of owning real estate without having to take calls from tenants at 2:00 AM or deal with the next maintenance or capital expenditure.

So it's an easier way to do that. A little more hands-off, actually a lot more hands-off than owning real estate yourself. So that's the private fund. It's a fit for investors who want to participate with a taxable account. There's some tax benefits that we pass through in the form of depreciation that can be useful. for those investors, but the self-directed IRA investor can also participate. So we have an offering within the private funds that can help accommodate retirement accounts in a tax-efficient way. One of the main considerations investors have when they're investing in real estate with a self-directed IRA is UBTI.

We have a REIT entity, a REIT blocker entity that helps mitigate that risk for retirement account investors. Happy to get into that a little bit more if you got questions, but that's the core offering of MLG Private Funds. And then the Legacy Fund is a different offering. It's an open-ended evergreen fund meant to go on into perpetuity, but the target investor profile's a little bit different. The target investor profile of the Legacy Fund is someone who currently owns and manages real estate, and they're looking for some way to exit their holdings in a tax-efficient way. There's a lot of wealth built up in private real estate and a lot of families that are thinking about how do they transfer this to the next generation and how do they do it tax efficiently. The Legacy Fund helps them do that, where there's a couple different ways we can transact, but ultimately investors can be able to go from owning and managing a physical asset, and maybe they have it with partners or family members, and they all have to agree on what to do with it, to ultimately having a passive diversified position where you can make decisions about your own investment on your own account, no longer tied to a complex partnership or something like that. So some great benefits in terms of tax deferral, but also consistent cash flow and, you know, value growth potential once you're in the fund.

And Tax efficiency's the key. A lot of people kind of get to a point in life where they're sick of owning and managing real estate. They want to enjoy time with their family, travel, play golf, whatever they love to do, and they don't want to be bogged down by the properties that they've owned for a very long time. And so we help them find an efficient way to relieve themselves of that burden.

One of the things you're going to be highlighting, well, depending on when someone is catching this podcast, whether they saw it live or whether they're going to catch it at a different time, you're going to be talking about or highlighting the dividend fund. And I think if I'm not mistaken, that kind of parallels one of them. Would that be the private fund? Is that the one that that's going to parallel there? Do you want to talk about the dividend fund a little bit, or has pretty much what you've already talked about, has it Have you already explained that or is there something that sets this one apart?

Yeah, there's more to talk about on that. So Legacy Fund is for owners of direct real estate, not as much a fit for the retirement account investor. But when you get into our private funds, the way it's structured is there's really 2 entrance vehicles into our private funds. One is kind of the traditional way where investors participate on a taxable account basis, so outside of their retirement accounts. But someone who comes to us with a retirement account is ultimately participating in what we call our dividend fund. And both parallel offerings roll up into the same portfolio, have the same targeted returns, same relative fee structure. The difference just comes down to the tax structuring, because if an investor participates in a real estate investment that's backed with debt, their gains are subject to UBTI. And that can eat away at returns for retirement account investors.

But what we do in the dividend fund structure is we have a non-traded REIT entity that is inserted between the investors and the fund itself, and the distributions flow through that non-traded REIT and convert the income from what would normally show up as rental income on a K-1 into dividend income. which is taxed differently and helps mitigate that UBTI risk. So some technical structuring nuance there, but all that to say, the dividend fund structure is a better fit for investors participating with retirement accounts because we can mitigate the UBTI risk.

But really the economic benefit or the portfolio that you're investing in is the same as Now, one thing that you had mentioned earlier, while we're here on UBIT really quick, is that you guys have what sounds to be a small army of either accountants, former CPAs, whatever. Does that mean that they're really just there on an educational base to answer factual questions, or does a part of your team actually give tax advice?

Yeah, we're not a CPA firm. We have some very talented tax experts that work on our team. However, what it comes down to on the tax team is really structuring offerings in the most tax-efficient way. And we do our own fund administration as well. The way the funds are structured in a partnership, is a little bit more complex than if our fund was structured as a REIT or some kind of other real estate investment. So the complexity comes down to the partnership structure, and we have a dedicated team that works very hard to maximize those tax benefits for investors. And we take a lot of the complexity of investing in partnerships on internally to make it easy for investors. So A lot of entities we manage, a lot of funds and filings and different tax nuances that we need to keep up on to make sure our investors are taken care of.

And so that's what our tax team focuses on as it relates to the private funds.

You know, one of the things we always tell folks, they'll say, well, Kyle, gimme your opinion on what I should fill in the blank. Kyle, what's my tax liability on, again, fill in another blank. And that's what they're going to feel like they're going to get with me is drawing a lot of blanks because we're not permitted to give any tax, legal, or financial advice, suggestions, or opinions. Now, it sounds like when someone's working with MLG, no, they're not a CPA firm, but they do have folks that really like what we do when we're answering questions or just giving you that education. They can give you so much. If someone is coming and they do want to really look at their tax landscape, I always say, look, you're really going to need to consult. I mean, I encourage them, consult with your CPA, consult with your tax professional, consult with your tax attorney. What is something that you normally will see folks have a concern over that they really do need to consult with their CPA before investing with MLG or any private fund for that matter?

Yeah. And I will disclaim that we're same position. We're not, we don't see the whole picture, right? We are just a real estate piece of the total portfolio, so we can't advise clients on their individual tax strategies and defer to the CPA firm that they work with on a lot of those aspects. But oftentimes what you see people coming to us with is, they have maybe a passive capital gain that is coming up in their tax picture. Maybe they're selling a property and they're looking for some sort of tax-efficient way to mitigate that. That's a common scenario we see, or investors in some of our prior offerings in Funds 1, 2, or 3 that were selling properties. And, you know, if we're selling properties for more than we pay for them, which is ultimately the goal, we'd be triggering some taxable gain. And there's ways that if you continue to reinvest and generate passive loss allocation, you can create some efficiencies long-term.

So what we'll do is we'll kind of talk with them, educate them on what is happening in our funds and what, you know, a new investment with MLG could do for them. But ultimately have to defer to some of those bigger picture things. in their total tax picture to the CPA, just as the way it works. The other common scenario we see is people who own real estate directly and they're looking for a tax-efficient exit solution. We have some strategies and planning that we can kind of help them collaborate with their CPA on as it relates to potential liquidity or deferring that gain.

Earlier when we were first talking, you talked about the history of the company and what happened in 2008 and 2009. And I know what it was like back in my real estate days, and that's before I even branched into property management. We always say in the stock market days when the market's getting a little weird, well, that's when our phones are blowing up. People now say, hey, now it's my time to diversify, ready to go ahead and get my self-directed account going. And then, hey, lo and behold, if the stock takes a little bit of a drop one day, but my tenants are still paying rent on a couple of houses, couple or 3 houses inside of my self-directed IRA, I'm sleeping okay at night. But even times it feels like they're changing just a little bit, Wars, high gas prices, food. I mean, you name it, right? I mean, there's so many things out there that all of us are contending with. And then meeting with some, an investor association that I'm part of this past week, talking to some owners of a property management company and things that they're noticing.

Any influence of what's going on out there right now in the fund What are y'all seeing that, you know, on the real estate that you're invested in and how does that play, you know, good, bad, or otherwise influence towards the investors?

Yeah, we, you know, we've been talking a little bit about tax here and we love talking about the tax side of it. It's a lot of fun for us. It's our, it's something we'd like to add on top of what should be the primary focus, which is making smart real estate investments, managing the fund well, and then after that, doing great tax planning. So happy to talk about what we're seeing in the market right now. Being a predominantly multifamily owner and operator, that's usually, I mean, that's our core focus. We've seen some pretty big changes in the multifamily space in the last 5 years. If you rewind the clock, you know, a handful of years, you were seeing in 2020 to 2022, a period of very low interest rates and a ton of capital flowing into private real estate and a lot of capital flowing into development. And so during that time period, you saw a ton of new apartments being constructed predominantly in the Sunbelt and Mountain West regions of the United States.

And that's had a big impact on sponsors like MLG and others' ability to manage their funds because When you have a huge wave of new supply that greatly exceeds where multifamily demand is, that can reduce occupancies. It can increase the amount of concessions you might have to offer, a month or 2 free of rent to keep a unit leased. And that has a negative impact on operators. And that's been playing out in the market the last several years because those projects that were financed in 2020 to 2022 have been delivered between 2022 and 2024. So to give you some context, prior to 2022, there hadn't been a single quarter with over 120,000 apartment units constructed. And then since then, there were 10 straight quarters of over 120,000 units constructed. And so some very record levels of new delivery, including the peak, which is 2024, of about 600,000 units across the country. So that much new supply coming on very fast is challenging.

However, the outlook for the future, I think, can be pretty strong. I mean, what we're seeing right now is pretty consistent apartment demand. People are renting longer, getting married later, starting households later, And the demand for multifamily housing is strong. People's rent-to-buy delta has never been a greater margin in the cost to own a home versus the cost to rent. So I think that supports the multifamily investing thesis. But what we're working through right now is a period of excess supply where the new supply going out into the future and what's getting constructed right now is far off of our peaks from 2024. The next couple years we're probably looking at 200,000 to 300,000 units a year being constructed where the multifamily demand is greater than that. So if that continues to happen over the long haul, what you'll see is we'll be able to absorb the excess supply that's been impacting the market today.

Occupancies can rebound, concessions could burn off, and then if that continues further, you could see rent growth as a result of that because demand may exceed the amount of supply available. So those are some broad brushstrokes of what we're seeing in terms of supply and demand for multifamily. It's such a very local game. And so when you're making investment decisions, what we have to do is look at some of the macro, but ultimately look at a very micro lens of, okay, we're buying in this specific submarket. Here's the 3, 5-mile radius. How many apartment units are planned to be constructed in the next few years? And what can be reasonable to expect in terms of our ability to continue holding occupancy or rents or execute some kind of value-add renovation strategy? You really have to take a look at a micro lens to be able to make smart decisions.

Is there a minimum investment amount and does someone need to be an accredited investor? And then, you know, is there, does it top out? Anywhere on the investment amount?

Yeah, do you need to be an accredited investor to participate in a fund like MLG? And then the minimum investment's $50,000, and that applies whether you are investing in a taxable account or a retirement account. And the benefit there is it's a bite-sized piece where a lot of individual deal syndications could have $50,000 minimums, and then you got $50K in one deal in one location and you hope it goes really well. But you could get that same amount of capital invested across a broader portfolio of 20 and 30 properties. And I think that's a benefit of what MLG offers. And we see a lot of investors coming in at the minimum, see if they like us and ultimately add on in the future. And there's really no maximum. People can invest large amounts. That's great too.

We love that. But yeah, $50K minimum.

Okay, great. And what is your typical investment cycle?

Yeah, I'll talk about the private funds. So the private fund timeline looks a little bit like this. We raise capital for about 2 years, so we're out talking about the fund, raising commitments and getting investors in our queue. And then at the same time, we're also investing capital. We're building the portfolio for the first couple years. So Fund 7, for example, started in 2025 in the spring, and it'll be open through the summer of 2027. And during that time, we're raising capital and building the portfolio. We currently, as it stands here in August of 2026, have 8 deals in the fund.

And so over the next year and a half to 2 years, we'll get more deals in the fund to increase some diversity. From the beginning of the fund till the end of the fund typically is about 10 to 12 years. It's technically a 10-year term on the fund with 3 1-year extension options. And ultimately what that does is puts us in a position where we don't want to have to be forced to sell assets if it doesn't make sense in that amount of time. Each property has a little bit different life cycle within the fund, so it's not like 10 to 12 years happen and we sell everything all at once. We'll sell assets as it makes sense. So starting in maybe years 3 or 4 of a fund, you might start to see, you know, a couple property sales and then stagger liquidity events in the fund until we sell the last asset where yes, it's an illiquid investment, but your capital's not 100% tied up for the duration of the fund. We'll kind of chunk back capital as we have different liquidity events.

So some deals we do maybe make sense for a 3 or 4-year hold. Some might make sense for a little bit longer, 7, 8, but it kind of averages out somewhere in the middle.

Oh, great. Well, listen, man, for anybody who's been listening today or has tuned back in on this, you have definitely heard a wonderful treat. Steve Kelly with MLG is an absolute wealth of knowledge on every level of it. You know, MLG is a company that's been around just slightly longer than American IRA. And then you got, uh, what, what feels like the old-timers, Steve and I, who have been at our respective companies, uh, for right there, uh, the same amount of time. So we're both knocking on the door of a decade and, uh, you know, seen some, uh, some, some changes, but some really great continuity and, um, just really great, uh, really Really privileged and thankful that Steve reached out, that we were able to get connected up. It was great to have a wonderful conversation with him last week, just one-on-one, and now to be able to share all of that with all of you who decided to tune in and listen to us. So Steve, thanks again.

And I know that when people listen to this, we may have already done the live webinar. And if— If this comes out before it airs, I really encourage all of you to tune in when we all get together with Steve in September. Again, whether that has happened or not. So Steve, thanks again. Look forward to further conversations and seeing what some of the new funds are out there. So the best to you and everybody over in Wisconsin.

Thanks so much. Yeah, anyone has questions, feel free to reach out. I'd be happy to help. And it's been a pleasure talking with you. So thank you very much, Kyle.

Absolutely. We'll talk to you again soon. For all the rest of you out there, as you're winding down on your drive or getting ready to pop those earbuds out and do something else with the rest of your day, I would be remiss if I didn't thank you for spending your time with us here inside the IRA Cafe. Again, Powered by American IRA, your one-stop shop for everything self-directed. Remember to find us online at www.americanira.com. If you are on YouTube from time to time, find us on our YouTube channel, American IRA LLC. And then also, if Facebook is your thing, you'll be able to find us there as well and like us. You'll always be able to tune in for all of your education and investment needs.

We're always welcoming you in, looking forward to getting you started where you can meet your investment objectives with your new self-directed IRA. I'm never too busy for a call with you, an email with you, or for any of your referrals. So for all of us here at American IRA, I'm Kyle Moody signing off. Thanks again.

American IRA, LLC, a North Carolina LLC, acts as American IRA is a third-party administrator for New Vision Trust Company, a state-chartered South Dakota trust company. As a neutral self-directed IRA administrator, American IRA does not recommend or endorse any investments, individuals, or entities, including financial representatives, promoters, or companies. American IRA and the IRA Cafe are not responsible for others' statements, representations, or agreements, nor do we evaluate the quality or profitability of any investment. American IRA does not endorse guests on the IRA Cafe podcast. Guest opinions are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of American IRA, its subsidiaries, associates, or custodian. Participation in the podcast is voluntary and no compensation is provided. American IRA is not a fiduciary and cannot offer financial advice. Please consult your CPA or another professional before making financial decisions.