What's going on everybody.
So in today's video, we are going to be doing a day in the life of a real estate investor,
a house flipper.
So I'm going to be showing you what I do exactly on a day-to-day basis.
What's going on everybody.
So we've got a lot on the schedule today.
First up, got a couple of properties I'm going to show you there.
One is in the initial stages of the rehab.
The other one is almost done.
So you kind of see different stages of rehabs going on.
Then we got a meeting with an investor.
Then I'm going to show you guys some of the background stuff, some of the stuff you don't
always see, behind the scenes stuff as far as marketing goes and different factors like
that.
So let's get going.
So with house flipping and real estate investing in general, a lot of people think that you
have to learn various trends in the market and things like that.
And that's important, don't get me wrong.
But the bottom line, when it comes down to it, is you got to have leads coming in.
So if you just learn marketing, I could take a good marketer and make them the best real
estate investor, probably pretty quickly.
If you just have leads, marketing to the right people.
So people ask me all the time, "Do you prefer one neighborhood over another one?"
Basically what I tell them is that, "Look, I'm going to go where the deals are."
If there's a deal in the best neighborhood, I'll do that.
If there's a deal in the worst neighborhood, I'll do that.
It's all relative to what the other properties are selling for.
So let's say it's in a quote, unquote, bad neighborhood.
Maybe the seller only wants $50,000.
If there's no comps at like $150,000, $200,000, I'm not going to buy it.
I'm not just going to buy the property just because it's the cheapest one, there has to
be actually sold comps.
So I pretty much keep my radius within...
I try to keep it 30, 45 minutes driving distance from where I'm at.
And that's kind of what I look for with my properties.
It's not necessarily, I need this neighborhood, I need that neighborhood.
It's more just, "Okay, what is it?
What can I buy it for?
What can I sell it for?"
And then if it's a riskier neighborhood, where maybe properties don't sell as quickly, I'll
take that into consideration.
What I love about being in a city, an urban area, there's really good neighborhoods, there's
really bad neighborhoods, there's different types of properties, there's everything in
between.
So if you get your marketing right, you're good.
I try to send out about 5,000 per month.
So if you send out 5,000 targeted letters every single month, you should be getting
an absolute minimum of 50 leads per month.
If you're sending out postcards, all it takes really is about 25 or 35 leads to get a deal.
I like to say 50, kind of to round up a little bit.
But generally speaking, if you're more experienced, you just need to learn how to make your phone
ring.
That's going to be the most important thing I could tell you about real estate investing
and house flipping in general.
And then the best thing about that too, is if you just learn the marketing, you can do
that for any business.
It's not necessarily just real estate.
That's why I said you could take a good marketer and turn them into a real estate investor
pretty quickly.
Okay, so we're here at the first property.
And this house, we actually found through a direct mail campaign, which like I mentioned,
if you're a real estate investor, you should be doing a lot of direct mail.
That's going to be your best source of leads.
A lot of times real estate investors think that you either need to just put carpet and
paint, or that you need to do some extreme renovation.
For this one, as you can see, there is a lot of work being done, but this is going to be
more of like a mid-level renovation.
We're not trying to set a record for the neighborhood.
Sometimes an extensive renovation can obviously take three, six, nine months.
I'll show you inside once we go inside, but we're going to be doing things like the kitchen,
floors, some windows, bathrooms, stuff like that, but it's not going to be a complete
gut job.
So let's check it out.
All right, so here we are.
Careful with the paint on the steps.
A lot of stuff's still going on, honestly.
The last thing that you always do in houses, typically, is finishing the floor.
So that's going to be the last project, because obviously some of these floors are actually
going to be replaced, aren't staying.
The kitchen is going in the next couple of days.
We're going to have that installed.
That's going to be brand new.
The bathroom, we actually still have the pink tiles.
The tiles were actually in really good condition, so we figured we're going to keep the tiles.
And we might do something about the pink, the colors not the greatest.
But we replaced the vanity, toilets.
It's basic stuff.
We got a couple of bedrooms here.
The master's actually a pretty good size.
So we're going to be replacing all the light fixtures, venting these toilets, finishing
the floors.
The windows are actually pretty good shape for the most part, so we're going to keep
the windows.
But yeah, this one.
We have these kind of interesting colors going on here.
And that's going to stay, I guess.
There's a vanity for it.
And luckily, The roof for this property was actually in really good condition.
We have to replace the HVAC, which is about a $5,000 expense, but roofs can be a big expense,
HVAC.
We got to do some plumbing work, some electrical work, but for the most part, we're trying
to keep this renovation under $50,000.
All right.
So we're about to head to the next property.
This next one is actually a much smaller house, but we did a full gut renovation on it.
So the kitchen's almost in.
The floor, I'd say it's about 80% done.
The kitchen needs to be installed.
A couple of vanities need to be installed.
But the next one is much further along, so you can see what it's going to look like once
it hits the market.
All right.
So here we are at the second house and this property we actually found through online
marketing.
So as a real estate investor, you always want to have multiple sources of leads coming in.
So the first property we found through direct mail.
This guy actually found me, because he was typing in Sell House Fast, We Buy Houses,
that type of thing.
He looked me up, called me.
Made him an offer.
Really, it was within about an hour, I got the property under contract from the time
he called me.
And that's a big factor.
As a real estate investor, you need to move quickly.
Secondly, I actually paid a little bit more than I wanted to for this property, originally.
Just for the fact that this area is so good, that the properties usually sell within a
week.
So if you're in an area where maybe you're not so sure about, you have to be more conservative.
However, the opposite is true too.
If you're in a really hot area, sometimes you can pay a little bit more.
And maybe you'll make little bit less, but you just know they're going to sell quickly.
And actually, after I put this property under contract, there was three other properties
that sold all above the price I was looking to get for this one.
So it turned out to be a good decision.
All right, so here we are.
Did new drywall.
This house was pretty much gutted.
We're almost ready to go to the market.
Floors were just done.
Got a big room right here.
Actually, the good thing about it, the seller actually replaced the windows before I purchased
the property.
So I didn't actually have to replace the windows, which was good, because windows are super
expensive.
So over here.
This is actually the kitchen.
So originally, there was no kitchen here.
It was just a dining room.
The kitchen was actually in the basement.
Right here, there was what's called a dumb waiter, which is basically an elevator type
system like they had in, I guess, historic houses.
So we got rid of that.
That's going to be where the refrigerator is going to go.
And this will be the new kitchen.
That will kind of be like a dining room, living room area.
And then we've got the powder room right here.
Two bedrooms, one bath upstairs and then a full bath downstairs, that we just put in.
We got a bathroom right here.
Full bath.
He's going to install the vanity.
The good thing about this area is that these rooms are a lot bigger.
For a normal townhouse, the rooms would be much smaller.
This is a good size room.
Go on in, it's all right.
Master bedroom.
We have a fireplace, we got four closets going on, so that should be a big selling point,
once we're ready to list it.
All right, we're going to head downstairs.
There's no lights, so I'm going to try to use my little cell phone light and see what
we can get.
Watch out for the wires.
All right, so this is going to be a big basement.
You got tall ceilings.
We redid the lighting.
And then the best thing about this house is that we created a full master suite in the
basement.
So this used to be the kitchen.
Believe it or not, it was downstairs.
We're going to put new floors in here.
This is going to be a master suite.
And then we have a full bathroom down here with a closet.
You can't really see it too well.
Then we have the furnace and utilities.
So as you can see, there's still a couple of things left with the project.
Almost wrapped up.
The spring mark is probably about three or four weeks away, so we still have a little
bit of time.
I'm about to go meet with an investor.
The thing about real estate investing is that there's different exit strategies.
So sometimes I might wholesale a deal, where I don't have to bring any money to the table
and I can just basically pass a deal off to another investor, who has the capital and
is ready to do the renovations.
Other times like with this property, sometimes it makes sense to purchase it.
So sometimes I use hard money, sometimes I use private money.
Always looking for investors to buy, to work with these undervalued real estate deals and
we bring them up to the market level.
So I'm headed over to Old Town right now, to meet with an investor and get some lunch.
I'm going to tell them about some of the projects we have going on.
Let's see what happens.
All right, so a key tip for real estate investors out there.
When you're buying houses, you're driving around and you go into a lot of different
neighborhoods and you're also working with contractors and different people, so most
of the time you don't want to have some type of flashy car.
You want something that can just get you around, not too flashy.
Because let's say you pull up, you're doing a project and the contractor sees you in like
some Lamborghini or something.
If you had $10 million, he's probably going to charge you more.
Just having a flashy car kind of stands out more and not necessarily in a good way.
If you're like a luxury real estate agent, that's one thing.
You want your clients to see that you're successful.
But for the most part, I just have a pretty standard car.
I have a Prius.
I actually know this real estate developer, when I was first getting started in DC.
This guy owns probably a hundred million dollars worth of real estate.
He drove the most modest car and the reason being, he didn't want to set the wrong impression
to his employees.
He's got a couple hundred employees.
If they see him driving a nice car, hey, they're going to ask for a raise.
They might try to do lawsuits.
You're opening yourself up to a lot of liability, if you drive a really nice car.
So I would have a dependable car, like a Prius, or just something normal that can get you
around the city, no problem.
So I'm going to meet my investor friend right now.
We're going to talk about future projects, current projects.
Try to get him on board and see if he would be interested in going in on some more deals,
because obviously real estate's very capital intensive, so you've got to have money for
these projects.
So let's go check it out.
Hey, [inaudible 00:11:13].
Long time.
[inaudible 00:11:13].
So basically, we're going to list it as soon as we can.
We're going to finish up by doing some repairs and then it's going to hit the market.
We're going to get it staged.
It should most probably sell within a week.
So the investor meeting went well.
I'd always say you should always try to be building your investors, your real estate
agents that you know.
Pretty much always building your network.
And I'm about to hop on a call in probably about 15, 20 minutes.
It's going to be for about an hour.
I work with a group of real estate investors, basically across the country, that do the
same thing I do.
And we share ideas, we try to push each other to be better than we currently are, because
it's hard to find like-minded people in the real estate investment industry.
So if you can, you always want to have some type of network when it comes to real estate
investing, because there's a lot of people that don't always give the best advice.
If there's mastermind groups you can get into, any type of networking group that specializes
in real estate investing, that's definitely something I would try to do.
And I've had a lot of success with the one I'm currently in.
So check it out.
Hey, so thanks for watching this video.
And if you're looking to become a full-time real estate investor, or maybe you're just
looking to do a few deals here and there, I actually put together a real estate coaching
program.
So there's a free webinar link below, so you can watch that webinar and see if it makes
sense to work together.
But either way, thanks for watching this video and I'll see you on the next one.
Bye