Merrill Steven Jeffrey CEO CIO COO

Merrill's story: Merrill graduated from Washington University School of Law in 1999 where he subsequently joined Gardere (www.gardere.com) as a national and international corporate bankruptcy and restructuring lawyer. After 4 years of extensive experience in some of the largest bankruptcies and workouts in the history of our country, Merrill left Gardere for a boutique firm that had a significant focus on commercial real estate restructuring and workouts. In 2008, Merrill became a sole practitioner where his primary focus was corporate, real estate and creditor representation. Additionally, in 2008, Merrill co-founded Longhorn III Investments, LLC (www.longhorninvestments.com). Longhorn III Investments, LLC ("Longhorn") quickly became the premier hard money lender on non-owner occupied single family properties in the state of Texas. Two years later, Merrill co-founded Trident Realty Investments, LLC, a 506 Reg D fund that pooled mostly accredited investors and became the new lender/private bank for Longhorn. Trident grew to approximately $25 MM in capital approximately $22 MM in credit facilities to assist to fund its growing 400+ private loans annually. Early in 2012, Merrill was contacted by a real estate fund name Building and Land Technology ("BLT") (www.bltoffice.com). He was asked to co-venture a business that would buy, rehab, lease and property manage single family rental houses in Texas. In 2012, Merrill formed Longhorn IV Investments, LLC to become the co-venturer with BLT. Starting with just two employees, Merrill began buying distressed properties in the Dallas/Ft. Worth, Houston and San Antonio metro areas. After hiring 30 more employees, developing proprietary acquisition and construction software, Merrill amassed over 950 properties for BLT. During this process, Merrill developed a unique platform, along with his own property management company, LS4R, LLC dba Lone Star 4 Rent (www.lonestar4rent.com) to lease and manage almost 1,000 homes he co-ventured with BLT and other third party owners. Two and one-half years later, the portfolio was sold to a large private Canadian real estate group. At the time of sale, the portfolio was valued at $105MM. Merrill and his team were able to achieve over 95% occupancy and less than 1.5% delinquency. The portfolio was sold in April of 2015. In April of 2015, Merrill decided to leave Trident and create his third fund to leverage the platform, proprietary software and more importantly, his team, to create one of the largest single family real estate funds in the Southwest. Merrill continues to have a thriving law practice which primarily focuses on corporate structure and multi-family and commercial real estate syndications. Merrill and his team continue to provide consulting services to other real estate funds throughout the United States. Merrill graduated from the University of Texas in Austin with a B.A. in Sociology in 1992. Subsequently, Merrill worked his way up the corporate ladder in retail management until commencing law school in 1997. Merrill graduated with a J.D. in 1999 from Washington University School of Law. Merrill lives in far North Dallas with his wife Kim and has three children: Victoria, Mikayla and Zolomon.