Realty411 Magazine Featuring OCG Properties - Part Two | Page 11

California Life
Tennessee Rentals
L
by Ginger Macias | photography by Sam Green
ast year, while working as a pan-
elist at a local real estate invest-
ment club in Los Angeles, I had
the pleasure of meeting Mathew
Owens, a certified public accountant and
owner of OCG Properties. I was so im-
pressed by his experience and work ethic
that I invited him to partner with me on
syndicating real estate projects.
Having worked closely with him for al-
most six months now, I can say that he’s the
real deal and you’ll be in for a treat if you
get the chance to work with him. Mathew
has many strengths that make him a great
partner: integrity, organizational skills,
and real estate and investment proficiency.
Plus, he’s very likable.
I have met a lot of people in this business,
and I expect great things from him in the
coming years.
I recently sat down with him to ask about
his real estate investing strategies and the
current projects he’s working on out in Ten-
nessee. Mathew has purchased, renovated,
and sold or held more than 100 investment
properties in the last three years alone.
Below is a partial transcript of the inter-
view I had with him.
Ginger: Mathew, in your own words,
what exactly does OCG Properties do?
Mathew: In a nutshell, we help people in-
vest in real estate. At OCG, we sit down and
go over our client’s financial situation and
resources to help them find the best ways
to invest and meet their individual goals.
With good in-house management in place,
you can hold for long-term growth and re-
ally get a great return on your money. On
top of that, the price points are low enough
that you can buy with cash and not even
have to deal with financing. Talk about low
risk!
We help our clients achieve great returns
on their money while doing all of the due
diligence on every investment. We bring a
ton of real estate experience to the table and
help our investors every step of the way.
Realty411Guide.com

Ginger: What did you do before you
became a full-time real estate investor?
What is your background?
Mathew: Let’s see, I grew up in the tiny
town of Los Angeles and graduated from
the University of California, Santa Bar-
bara, with a degree in economics and an
emphasis in accounting. Afterwards, I was
able to achieve one of the accomplishments
I am most proud of, passing all four parts
of the CPA exam in one sitting, a feat only
10% of candidates have been able to do.
After passing the exam, I worked as a
CPA, auditor and business adviser, help-
ing my corporate and individual clients
increase their bottom line, helping them
find fraud risk factors inside their business
systems and auditing their accounting re-
cords.
I guess that is why I am so good at do-
ing due diligence on real estate transactions
now. The accounting and due diligence
skills are a perfect match for a real estate
investor, I just had to adjust my personality
to be more outgoing and personable, which
most CPAs are not known to be. Being in
the real estate industry as a full-time inves-
tor, I am finding it is rare to find a CPA who
understands the tax and legal implications
of investing and the real estate investment
side in detail.
Ginger: So tell us, how did you get your
start in real estate?
Mathew: I started investing about five
years before I decided to take some real
estate education courses and quit my cor-
porate job cold turkey. I found that the skill
sets I gained from working at CPA firms
were hugely valuable, and I still hold the
partners of those firms with the upmost
respect for what they taught me, the eth-
ics they instilled in me and the guidance
they gave me. However, the skills that I
have developed running my own company
are unparalleled to anything I would have
ever expected. While working for myself,
I started flipping and holding properties >
PAGE 11 • 2010

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