Looking for a smarter, safer way to invest in real estate—without picking up a hammer or managing tenants?
This week on the Exit Strategies Radio Show, host Corwyn J. Melette sits down with Merriah Harkins, Chief Sales Officer at Lucrum Capital, a private real estate lending firm structured as a REIT. With more than 20 years of experience in raising capital for alternative investment funds, Merriah breaks down how accredited investors can earn steady monthly income (7%–8.5%) by passively investing in short-term, first-position loans secured by real estate.
She explains the mechanics of Lucrum’s conservative fund structure, how their low loan-to-value (LTV) model offers downside protection, and why their REIT structure provides additional tax advantages for investors—especially those using retirement accounts.
📌 Whether you’re a high-net-worth individual, working with a financial advisor, or exploring passive income through a self-directed IRA, this episode gives you real strategies to make your money work for you, not the other way around.
Key Takeaways:
- 0:05 How Lucrum Capital’s fund pays out monthly returns (7%–8.5%) backed by real estate.
- 4:33 What makes private lending funds different from owning rental properties.
- 10:14 Who qualifies as an accredited investor and why this matters.
- 17:02 The tiered redemption fee structure—and why long-term investing makes more sense.
- 20:01 Tax advantages of investing through a REIT, including a potential 20% tax deduction.
- 22:55 A no-stress path to real estate exposure using self-directed IRAs or non-retirement funds.
- 25:56 Why short-term, first-position loans in high-demand markets reduce investment risk.
💬 “There are no guarantees in investing—but real estate-backed funds like ours offer consistent returns and less volatility than the stock market.” — Merriah Harkins
🎯 Remember: Information without action is just entertainment. This episode is your guide to turning passive investing into powerful legacy-building. Tap in and take notes—then go take action.
Connect with Merriah Harkins:
- 🌐 Website: www.lucrum.com
- 📧 Email: merriah@lucrum.com
- 📞 Phone: +1 (214) 998-4682
- 🔗 LinkedIn: Merriah Harkins
Connect with Corwyn:
- Contact Number: 843-619-3005
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cmelette/
Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/corwyn-j-melette/support
MERRIAH:
The structure of our fund is that we have a fixed income that you are paid on a monthly basis. It ranges from 7% to eight and a half, depending on how much you invest. We pay that on a monthly basis. When you want to get your money back, you get your principal back. And what we do is we take that money from investors and we loan it to people that are doing different things in real estate. We’ve got a nice diversified mix. And so someone comes to us and needs a loan for real estate. So it’s a first position loan. So there’s a lot of protection in that. There are typically six to 12 month leases. Our loan to value is really low. So that simply means that the property, let’s just say our loan to value average right now is about 52%.
CORWYN:
Good, good, good Saturday morning guys. Welcome to another fabulous episode of Exit Strategies Radio Show. Hey, I am your host Corwyn J. Melette, broker and owner of Exit Realty Local Group in beautiful, beautiful North Charleston, South Carolina. Hey, if this is your first time listening to this show, you sir, or ma’am are in for a treat because our mission here is very simple. It is to empower our community through financial literacy and real estate education. Guys, we are legacy building. That is what we do. So got to give a shout out to those faithful listeners, those who listen to us from Hollywood, what you know, no good all the way through monkeys corner. Y’all know my mama live out there all the way up to muddy Mullins, Marriott County. Guys, we love you. Thank you all so much for tuning in. Thank you for being part of the show. Hopefully, trustfully, you’re getting some amazing information and some content here. And I want to remind you all of something that I picked up, what I’ll say somewhat fairly recently, which is information without action, guys, is entertainment. And while we have fun here on this show, the purpose of this show is to empower you. It is to give you a purpose to fulfill, to push you, not your wife, because your wife should be bigger than what you get here on this show. But on this show, you should be taking in the information, the content. You should be strategizing from there on how you’re going to achieve that greatness, how you’re going to fulfill that promise that you’ve been given, that all things work for your good. So, guys, look, we have been having some incredible guests on this show. Now, today is no different. We went out and we got a leader in the space. We got a chief sales officer. That person is at the top there, right at the front of the line. And we have them here on this show today to talk about one of our favorite subjects, which is money. That’s what we’re going to talk about here, how you can grow and build wealth, guys. So, look, I want you to turn the flap jack over because we don’t want to burn. Want to turn them grits down, guys? And look here, we’re going to leave them eggs on crack for a minute so we can get to this information. We have none other today with us than Merriah Hawkins. Now, Merriah is the chief sales officer with Luke Wrong. Now, they are a private equity firm. Now, I like that money, that word equity, because I talk about money, right? And I talk about that gap between what is what was and what is now. That’s that growth. So we want to be talking about that here on this show. So, Merriah, thank you so much for taking time and being with us today. Welcome to the show.
MERRIAH:
Thank you so much. I’m really happy to be here. I am actually calling in from Seattle. And, you know, I know that people are listening in from all over. The company that I work for is actually based in Phoenix. And so I’m down there quiteuk a bit. So it’s quite a bit different in Seattle versus being in the desert. I joined Lukrom in January. So January 2nd. So I haven’t been there that long. But I spent the past 20 years of my career leading money raising for different alternative investment type companies. And so typically most of it was raising money so that people could passively invest in vehicles and funds that are backed by hard assets. And so Luke is a private lending fund, and all of our investments are backed by real estate. And so we play a role in which people need to borrow money. Typically, it’s short term until they get permanent financing. And we’re able to do very quick transactions where we can help people that have a need to either purchase real estate, improve real estate. We have a lot of folks that come in and they purchase real estate to flip it. So they need a short term loan. You can go to the bank to get a loan. It typically takes a long time to get that. And the folks that are coming to us, it’s a bridge until they get permanent financing to be able to do the things that they need to do as quickly as they can. And we pride ourselves on really great customer service, being able to do loans pretty quickly. We’ve had successful track records, so we’re happy about that. And then my side is we raise money from investors to be able to fund these loans. We do it mostly in the Phoenix metro market. We’re a Phoenix based company. Phoenix is one of the fastest growing metro areas in the country. So it’s a really great market for us to be in. And there are a lot of investors. We’ll talk about this today that want to invest in real estate. And sometimes they’re able to organize themselves to invest in real estate themselves. There are people that buy properties and they act as the landlord. There are people that choose to be in real estate and don’t want to invest a lot of money in it, but want to have exposure to it and do it in a passive way. And so there’s lots of different vehicles where investors are able to invest smaller amounts of money, still participate in the real estate industry, have the stability and the diversification in their portfolios by having that real estate. For some, it’s a way to get started, to bigger and better things, get their introduction to real estate. And for others, it’s just simply a piece of their asset allocation strategy to help to build wealth by diversifying across a lot of different asset classes.
CORWYN:
So what I just heard was you guys have it best of both worlds for an investor. So and I do have a question that is what I would say is a foundation, a basis for everything else that you guys do. So I want to make sure we get our listeners that understanding. But you guys offer funding for investors to do or assist with short term financing or funding for projects, whether it be fix and flip, whether it be larger developments is what I’m thinking. And then on the other side of it, you also people that aren’t ready for that, that aren’t doing that. You guys provide an opportunity for them to participate by essentially pulling funds from individual investors in order to do what we just talked about. Does that sound correct?
MERRIAH:
Yeah, exactly. So my side of the business is to raise money from investors. And we do that through a couple of different ways. So high net worth investors will come or, you know, mid to high net worth individuals will come to us directly. We also do a lot of work through financial advisors. So investors that have a financial advisor, whether it’s a registered investment advisor or someone that works for a broker dealer that helps advise, you know, an investor on all of their assets. They might add this as part of their asset allocation strategy. They might have 20 different investments for an investor or a piece of that. So on my side, we raise money from investors. The structure of our fund is that we have a fixed income that you are paid on a monthly basis. It ranges from seven percent to eight and a half, depending on how much you invest. We pay that on a monthly basis. When you want to get your money back, you get your principal back. And what we do is we take that money from investors and we loan it to people that are doing different things in real estate. We’ve got a nice diversified mix. And so someone comes to us and needs a loan for real estate. So it’s a first position loan. So there’s a lot of protection in that. There are typically six to 12 month leases. Our loan to value is really low, so that simply means that the property, let’s just say our loan to value average right now is about 52 percent. Oh, so if you imagine a property that’s worth a million dollars, somebody is borrowing five hundred thousand dollars from us. It’s a short term loan. It’s a six to 12 month loan. If we run into any trouble, you know, we’re really careful with underwriting and careful with who we lend to. But we are in a first position in regard to that real estate. So if a lender fails to pay their payments to us, their loan payments to us, we are able to step in to take that property. And that property may be worth a million. And we lent five hundred thousand on it. So if you can imagine, you’re able to get your five hundred thousand dollars back. And if you keep your loan to value low on the loans that you do, it prevents a nice conservative way in which an investor can participate in real estate backed investing without taking much risk and having professionals manage a portfolio while the investor collects a monthly income and then their principal back when they decide that they’d like to take that and do something else with it.
CORWYN:
OK, so we’re talking about. So let me ask you this question, Marat, before we get, I guess, down that road. But the investors that you guys work with. So, again, where you pull from, are they accredited investors? Are they just a mixture of all types of investors, various levels?
MERRIAH:
Yeah, see, that’s a great question in regard to the way that we do our fund. We can only accept accredited investors. But there are a host of other funds that are similar to ours. So for any type of investor, whether it’s an accredited investor that comes to us directly or comes to us through a financial advisor, we’re just one of many different choices that people can make in real estate backed passive investing. So there definitely are funds that are open that are similar to ours for any type of investor. If the investor is not accredited, there’s a home for them to be able to do that.
CORWYN:
So let’s define it, because I mean, some of our listeners, this may be something they’re working to, aspiring to, et cetera. But let’s define accredited investor.
MERRIAH:
Yeah. So an accredited investor has a million dollar net worth, not including the equity in their primary residence. So or they earn as a single individual, a two hundred thousand dollar income or as a joint partnership, they earn three hundred thousand dollars. And so that puts them into a realm of accredited investor. And there’s some things that are happening as far as that definition. So if somebody is in financial services and has certain licenses or is a professional in different ways in relation to financial services and don’t meet those criteria, they may still qualify as an accredited investor. And like I said, there are definitely funds out there that are structured. It’s not because we’re saying we only want accredited investors because we think they’re better. It’s just the way that we are structured and the way that we have filed with the regulators is that we are in a form of an investment that only allows accredited investors because of the way that we filed our investment. But again, there are lots of different ways in which folks can participate. We happen to do a private credit fund, and the structure is that you get the same monthly check every single month until you remove your money and then you get your original investment back. But there’s lots of different. Again, we do it for accredited investors. We do it mostly in the Phoenix metro market. So we really appeal to investors that understand that market or really understand fast growing metro markets because there’s just so much demand as real estate becomes a really important thing as population growth is really high. Unemployment is low. And so you see lots of real estate development in fast growing metro areas for others that want more appreciation. There is definitely ways that you can invest in passive real estate where you earn an income as the investment is producing income. That may vary. It could be high. It could be low. It could be nothing. But then at the end of the day, your hope is that fund and the real estate in it will appreciate so that when you take your money out, you get more than you put in. But there’s risk to that. So it just there’s lots of different ways to invest in real estate as a passive investor in a fund where you can take low risk and you can take high risk and its risk reward. So the higher you take, the bigger risk you have of losing money. But then you also have the potential to make more money. So there’s a fit for different types of passive funds in real estate for every portfolio. So if you are a more conservative investor, you typically go with a fund like ours. And if you are a more aggressive investor, you might go and take more risk or you may invest in both. Because really, for investing across lots of different asset classes, the more diversified you are, the less risk you have. Because we go through different economic situations and markets and different asset classes perform different in different markets. And today, I mean, I think there’s lots of people probably on the phone right now that are really worried about the stock market and the bond market and all the volatility that’s going on in those markets. And so having an investment that is backed by a hard asset like real estate provides some level of comfort, because regardless of what’s going on in the stock market and the bond market and the international traded markets, your real estate is insulated from that because it’s not correlated to that. It’s the economics of, you know, a fund that’s invested in real estate are very different than the traded markets and what’s going on today. So that diversification of having you may have traded stocks, you may have traded bonds, but lots of people like to mix in some real estate and hard assets so that they have a non-correlated asset to that. And it balances out the portfolio volatility that we’re experiencing right now.
CORWYN:
So I always say this thing, Merriah. I mean, it’s so it’s flat out true. God ain’t making no more dirt. I mean, what’s here is here. So people that invest in real property and real estate tend to have and going back to my real estate instructor days as well. And I learned it’s one of those things that is both abundant and scarce commodity that we know will be here. And if you can trade in it, it just makes more sense. So you guys really focus on. And thank you for mentioning the whole loan to value piece. You know, you guys are in that especially first position. You are extremely secure, which means that investor has to now do some other such stack, but either they bring in that full equity themselves or they’re having to do some other financial stack cap stack afterwards, which is quite interesting, especially if you cast her in the first position. So I can imagine that means that you have to have a strong borrower in order for it to make sense for somebody else to take for them or somebody else to take that much risk. So you guys, you say you provide a return again, monthly. Now, I think you may mention a number, but I want to make sure I heard it right. What does that look like as far as again, it’s a return on the investment and the investment is on hold until investment is still there until that person says, Hey, let me go ahead and cash out. So what does that return look like for the investor?
MERRIAH:
Well, so it depends on the amount invested. So the way that it works for us and we group family accounts. So if you have a number of family members that invest, the minimum investment in our fund is $50,000. But again, for anyone that’s listening and you want to put your toe in it, there are lots of investments that are a lot lower than that in this type of fund. So there’s for any type of investor, there’s usually an opportunity. It’s really important to do due diligence and making sure that you’re investing with a really good company with a track record. But in regard to ours, if you invested $50,000, you would earn 7%. And that 7% would be an annual rate and you would be paid monthly. And we do have redemption fees because for us, we’re doing loans that range from six months to 12 months. We really, you know, when we’re educating investors to come into our funds, whether through a financial advisor or directly, if you can invest in our fund for longer than three years, you shouldn’t invest in the fund because even though you have liquidity, most of these funds, just like ours, if you were to take your money out in the first year, our redemption fee is 15%. It’s so you would actually lose some of your principal investment. Cause if you think about it, you took it out 12 months later, you only earned 7%, but you’re going to lose 8% of what you invested in the fund. So not a good investment for someone that wants to go in for short term investment. There’s lots of other ways that you put short term money in places where you don’t have redemption fees or, or that are more liquid. If you were to take money out the second year, it’s 10%. But if you imagine you earned 14, you’re in 7%, the first year, 7%, the second. So you’re still making some money. The third year, it’s 5%. After the third year, there is no fee for you to remove your money. So you earn 7% a year. You decide in year four, you’ve got past the three years. You want to take your money out. You’re going to get your principal amount back. And you typically see this in a lot of different funds because it’s difficult for companies to run a fund and be stable as a company. If you’ve got money coming in and out, and that’s why you get a higher return on investments that are a bit longer term. If you were to pull investments, let’s just say you have five family members that decide that this really is a good investment. And you got to 500,000, the interest rate would then be 7.5%. And for those that, you know, are wealthier and have the ability to pull their assets with family, and it’s 2.5 million, it’s eight and a half percent. But the really great thing is there’s some advantages to not taking your money on a monthly basis. So even though you can take it, if you reinvested it back in, you’ve got the power of compounding. And then we’re also structured as a REIT. So we’re structured as a real estate investment trust that gives you some tax advantages. So you end up getting 20% tax advantage on the money that’s paid to you. That’s taxable. If it’s in a non-retirement account and you get some advantages to that. So that even increases your rate so that, you know, you’re going to range anywhere from about eight and a half to 10% if you’re compounding. And then you’re also getting the tax advantages. So every investment is structured a bit differently. A lot of people will put retirement assets. They’ll put this in their retirement accounts. Then of course, you know, there is no taxes because your taxes are deferred until you take your money out, usually in retirement, or you invest non-qualified funds and having some tax advantage instead of having to pay every year on the income you’re earning is really advantageous.
CORWYN:
Exactly. So I was over here doing some math while you were talking and I’m like, yeah, that makes sense right there. I mean, it’s almost set it up. Forget it. You have money and you know, we’ve been talking and we talk a lot on the show about various strategies. Don’t get me wrong. We’ve talked about self-directed IRAs and, you know, Roth traditional, et cetera, and that money. And just, okay, if I do self-directed, I could put some money from the self-directed IRA into this read and just let it just go while I do whatever else I’m doing. And it’s, that’s a no brainer because you guys, in my opinion, just to be clear, what I understood, Merriah, you guys essentially guarantee this return. Is that?
MERRIAH:
Investments are really, I mean, guarantee is a really difficult word in investments. Regulators will never let you say guaranteed, but I think it’s important to look at any. So I know you, you know, and I’ve listened to your podcast. There’s a lot of education that is provided for people that want to invest directly in real estate, meaning they want to go out and they want to. And we have a gal on our team, a couple of people on our team, actually that what they do is they move into a house, they fix it up. They then move into the next house and they rent that out with the hope that they fix that house up and they rent that house out and then they don’t move into their third house. Now they have two rentals and a residence. There’s a lot of people that do that. There are others that maybe don’t have the resources to be able to do that or they’ve got other professions and jobs and it just makes it difficult to become a landlord. There’s lots of different ways to approach real estate. There are some people that do lending individually, so they set up some sort of entity in which they can lend out on real estate backed investing. So there’s lots of different ways to approach it. But for a lot of people that want exposure to real estate backed investing and just are not in a place in their life where they are, they’ve got the time or the energy or the resources to do that where you are purchasing real estate to lease out and collecting that rent. This is a really good way for people to get exposure, to be able to have an investment in real estate. Whether, like you said, if you can put it in a retirement account, a self-directed IRA, it’s great because you’re not going to pay taxes until later on. It’s deferred, which are really great because typically with those investments, when you’re in retirement, your income because maybe you’re not working anymore is usually lower. And so you’re in a lower tax bracket. So when you’re taking your investments out, you’re paying at a lower tax rate. So there’s lots of advantages to making sure that you’re maxing out your opportunities in retirement accounts. And then if you’ve got extra money and you’re doing it in non-retirement accounts, having some tax advantages are always helpful because no one needs to pay Uncle Sam. And if you can reduce those taxes in an investment that provides you other benefits, it’s great. And I feel even in my own portfolios, the importance of investing in lots of different types of investments and asset classes, like I said before, that diversification across lots of different asset classes really provides you with more stability and less risk guarantees. If you are investing in a company where you’ve done your research and they’ve got a good track record, you understand and get to know the principles a bit so that you build trust that’s really important. And then you can take a lot of risk or you can go with a lower risk investment. So like our investment, we are in a first link position on every loan we do. The loans are six to 12 months. We earn about 12% on the loans because they’re short term. They like someone comes in and they need to do something fast and they can’t wait for bank financing. Companies like ours for a six month loan, they’ll be able to do what they need to do to put permanent financing in. That’ll be a lower interest rate for them. And because the loan to value meaning the properties were so much more than a loan that we’re doing, you’re really protected because if you run into a situation, even if you do great due diligence, you actually have the ability to get that property back and sell it. Make sure that you have enough money to cover the loan. And then you may even have some extra money and no one wants foreclosures. Pleasure is just a ad complication, but in a fund like ours, because we are focused on short term loans to high quality bars in a very fast growing Metro market with a lot of demand so that there’s always people coming to us for loans. We have more people coming to us for loans than we have the money to place with them. And that’s a good problem to have. But when you’re looking at first position short term loans with a low loan to value in a fund, you’re getting a more conservative, investment it’s structured to pay you a steady income. And then when you take your money back, give you your principal back. So guarantees, there are no guarantees, probably in any investment in life. But no, if you decide that you want to be more conservative or mix in a conservative with a more risky, that’s fine too. Just balances it out. So we are on the lower end of the risk spectrum for sure.
CORWYN:
Good deal. So Merriah, we’ve quickly gotten to this point, lot of point in the show, but I do want to make sure that we have your information companies, all that. So tell our listeners, where can they get in contact with you? Where can they reach you at? Where can they connect?
MERRIAH:
So our website is lucrim.com. So it’s L U K R O M.com. And you can essentially have contact information for our principals on there. You’ll see our management team. You’ll learn more about our investment. Me personally, you can reach me. My name is on the screen. It’s Merriah at lucrim.com. So it’s merriah@lukrom.com, L U K R O M.com. And then my phone number, if you wanted to reach out to me by phone is 214-998-4682. And I’m in Seattle. I’m also in Phoenix. So I’m back and forth a lot. It’s kind of nice. Seattle is one of those places where you’ve got the water and you’ve got the mountains and it’s cool in the summer. And then of course, Phoenix is the desert. So it’s really nice to be able to experience both those things.
CORWYN:
Awesome. So Merriah, I want to thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to be here with us today. I can imagine how busy you must be as a chief sales officer over at Lucrim. So thank you again for taking time out for being part of exit strategies, radio show family. We appreciate it.
MERRIAH:
Wonderful. This was really fun. Thank you so much for the invite.
CORWYN:
You’re welcome. So for our listeners, guys, look, y’all heard it. Do something with it. Again, remember that information without action guys is entertainment. While we have fun, it’s time to do something. So let’s go make it happen. Our listeners, you know how I feel. You know what I say, you know I always put the two of those things together and I give it to you this way, which is, I tell you that I love you. I love you. And we’re going to see you guys out there in those streets.
