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Posted about 7 years ago

Flip With Us: Contractors & Mentors

I have seen post after post from people like me wanting to break into real estate but terrified to their core on pulling the trigger. Sometimes even finding the trigger can feel daunting. Overwhelming. That's the word I would use to describe jumping into this industry. Especially at this point in the real estate cycle! I'm laughing at myself for even pretending like I can speculate on our position in this cycle, like I know anything! Because I don't factually know anything. But I do listen and ask a bunch of questions to smart people and though I do get varying responses the one consistent truth is the market is saturated. Be it easily accessible information on the web or the 24/7 flipping tv shows, good deals are hard to come by. It takes effort. It takes persistence. It takes persistence in performing a system of tasks.

And that is daunting to us new investors, isn't it?

Combine that with having to find contractors and estimate rehab costs with little to no construction experience and how in the world can you ask a sane human being to pull the trigger.

And that's why I'm beyond thankful for this place. So thanks, BP’ers!

Which brings me to this post because today is our last day of the inspection period and we have been super busy getting bids from various contractors. And a few days ago I saw a post with someone mentioning Thumbtack and since then I’ve been using it to source bids and it’s been the most comforting tool I’ve used in a long time. Contractors scare me and having a free community where people can leave reviews and the customer experience is cherished helps a ton! I have already found a few that I am going to use and several more I might.

This has been our first inspection period as a company and it’s been a mixed bag of emotions. At first it was very stressful because everything became real. We all woke up the following day after going under contract laughing about how little we slept. “Oh ****, things are getting real now”!

But when things get stressful is when I thrive because my mind goes into organize mode and that’s exactly what I did. I sat down, evaluated where we were at, where we needed to go, and how to get there.

The first thing we did is decide what we are going to do to the property. From there we made a budget for each room and now we are finalizing our scope of work. Since we will be subbing everything out I knew we needed to have a very detailed scope of work outlining which trade comes and when. This has definitely been the more difficult part but the books by J Scott have been tremendously helpful. I started using them as gospel, and largely that hasn’t’ changed, but there are some aspects of our particular rehab that we will do at different times than J outlines. I would imagine he would agree with that statement to some degree. Big shout out to J Scott I’m not sure I would have known where to start without your books man. You rock!

One thing that I’m doing now is getting bids from, again, Thumbtack on GC’s and having them come out to the property to give us bids for the entire job just to see how accurate our budget is. When I budget I take conservative to a whole new level. Corey and Kyle, my partners, get mad at me because if the flooring cost $1.75 sq./ft. I will estimate $3 sq./ft. and add another 30% for unexpected costs haha. I’m not kidding Corey and I were almost $35k in difference in cost between our two budgets. I’m hoping it’s closer to his but I’m thinking somewhere in the middle is a safe bet. Either way we are good to go on this project.

I know I hit upon this last time but so many doors are being opened right now it’s hard not to notice the work the Lord is doing in our life. Just the other day we were spending time at Home Depot and we met one of the Pro Department ladies and she started asking us a bunch of questions and sure enough she puts us into contact with two investors in town who have done 56 BRRR’s! That’s the aspiring investors wet dream if you ask me! And those two people are about as nice as you can imagine. They met with us and have already become mentors to us, asking nothing in return. It caught me off guard to be honest and I kept waiting for the catch but they are just phenomenal people who have done and continue to do some great work and just want to give back. Shout out to Victoria and Fred! But it’s the right doors opening at the right time that have me believing I’m walking the right path. And if you knew anything about me you would know how hard it’s been for me to believe that I can do this. Self-doubt is thy enemy and I fight it everyday but I’m working on it!

It’s funny, whenever I start one of these blog posts I start so slow with no idea what I’m going to write about. By the end of it I have just gone on some tangent and realized I need to stop haha!

Go get em people and thanks for hanging out with me and my thoughts today! 



Comments (2)

  1. That's awesome, you got a great mentor (a pair of mentors actually!) and at the perfect time. 


  2. I really enjoy following your journey. Thanks, and keep it going!