Today we’d like to introduce you to Lauren and Adonis Lockett.
Hi Lauren and Adonis, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
Adonis and I started our real estate journey’s separately and then ultimately began working together in 2018. Adonis, having begun his career as an electrical/mechanical engineer, started learning about real estate in 2009-2010 and in 2011 made more in one closed transaction than he did the entire year working as an engineer. This and his contentious relationship with his manager caused him to leave corporate America and to become a full-time real estate investor and create Lockett-N-Homes. Starting out only doing fix and flips, he eventually expanded the business to include credit repair services, wholesaling, hard/private money lending, and a real estate brokerage.
Lauren became interested in real estate in 2016 while living in Nashville, TN and had begun looking for rental properties as a means to diversify her retirement portfolio. After unsuccessfully finding a property with a well known retail agent, she decided to get her real estate license. During the timeframe of her studying, she randomly met Adonis at a day party in Dallas St. Patrick’s day weekend in 2017. Over the course of the year, Lauren became licensed in TN, then relocated to Dallas; and early in 2018, became licensed in Texas and joined Lockett-N-Homes. Once Lauren joined the business, we began to focus on growing our rental portfolio and fully automating the lending business.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Real estate has it’s own unique challenges, however, one of the biggest struggles has been building the right team to grow and scale the business. Due to his keen analytical abilities, Adonis initially struggled between working on the business and working in the business. As Adonis grew from a single operator to dozens of people, he often had to cycle between 3-4 people before finding the right person to do a job or lead a department. As Lauren became more ingrained in the day to day, she found her niche within the business and eventually led the real estate brokerage and property management departments while helping to automate and build systems for the others. Hiring and training the wrong people costs time and money.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Lockett-N-Homes?
Lockett-N-Homes is a National Real Estate Investment Firm, Direct Hard Money Lender, Real Estate Brokerage, Mortgage Brokerage, and Wholesale company. Lockett-N-Homes primarily specializes in helping real estate investors find, secure, and fund investment projects. The private lending division has a range of lending products, allowing funding for loans as small as $50K, major development projects up to $75M, and everything in between. All loan and asset types are open for funding, including SFR, multifamily, commercial, new construction, mixed-use, and hotels. To date, Lockett-N-Homes has deployed over $500M in asset financing and is steadily growing its customer base in 45 states throughout the US. Starting out as a Real Estate Investment Firm allowed Lockett-N-Homes to truly understand how real estate investors wanted their private loans structured and how to best procure properties, enabling the firm to create the perfect private lending model: “Lending for Investors by Investors”. This blended thought process enabled Lockett-N-Homes to become one of the industry’s most competitive lending and brokerage firms.
What do you like best about our city? What do you like least?
Dallas is a true melting pot! We both relocated here (Adonis from NY and Lauren from Nashville) and have met and befriended people from all over the country, including Dallas natives. There are so many amazing people here that we can do everything from business to brunch without changing our circle of friends. A special shout out to one of our favorite networking spots, Tower Club. What we like least is that there is not a beach nearby… we love the ocean. 🙂
Contact Info:
- Email: Lauren@LockettNHomes.com
- Website: www.LockettNHomes.com
- Instagram: @LaurenYourAgent and @AdonisLockett
- Facebook: www.Facebook.com/LockettNHomes
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHK1PcXUXiIP-ip-iZi1SpA
- Other: www.myRE360.com
Image Credits
Marcus Romes
