The Altman Close

Chapter 4ALL IN WITH LA REAL ESTATE AND BRAVO TV

Right after college, Matt moved to Los Angeles. He felt the lure as many do. His first jobs were in the mailrooms of talent agencies. Soon he rose to become an agent with one of the world’s top talent agencies: Creative Artists Agency, or CAA. He was making deals for famous actors, actresses, directors, and screenwriters, and he had just graduated from college. Mom and Dad were proud. I had to beat him … or at least join him. When I graduated and joined him out West, he got me a job … in a music management mailroom.

Now, in Los Angeles, Matt and I were again a team. We scraped $5,000 each together invested in a condo in West LA. It wasn’t a great neighborhood then; we bought in before the influx of young movie stars who lamented about not being in walking distance of the bars, like they were back in New York. Months later, we flipped our first condo and I felt my first taste of the real estate market in the form of a paycheck. We had turned an actual profit.

From that point on, real estate had me for the rest of my life. I went from making $6.50 an hour in the mailroom to a $200,000 profit. We loved houses and we loved people. It was a natural transition. My hustle began. Only, it was working in a mortgage brokerage, with other people’s money. Instantly I was successful. The struggle wasn’t the business aspect; it was the set-up and follow through. But my family plus football had given me that strength in spades. Within a few ...