Flipping Junkie - Danny Johnson - For Those Addicted To Flipping Houses

Doug was born in Colorado Springs, CO and raised in Carlsbad New Mexico. After high school he ventured west to the sunny coast of Southern California.  It was there he met his beautiful bride Andrea, who happens to share his entrepreneurial spirit!      As newlyweds, they ventured back to Colorado and started Mountain High Concessions, a Kettle Corn vender for special events and sporting/concert venues.  Mountain High Concessions became the first Kettle popcorn vender for the Denver Broncos at Mile High Stadium.  They were itching to get back to So Cal and they sold the concessions company and got started in Real Estate!   16 years and 3 kids later, they are the proud owners of one of Southern California's largest wholesale real estate purchasing companies!  They operate the business together along with our incredible team!  Over the past decade he has worked as a California Certified Residential Appraiser from 2003-2010.  Since 2008, he and Andrea have purchased and sold over 250 properties in Southern Calif

Danny Johnson is the host of the Flipping Junkie podcast and today he shares with us incredible tips for driving for dollars in a world where technology has made things so much easier.   In this episode, we discuss:   What driving for dollars is When to drive for dollars Where to drive for dollars How to drive for dollars What to do after you get the addresses Common questions about driving for dollars How to outsource driving for dollars   Check out the show notes page at http://flippingjunkie.com/43 to download a pdf of all the points talked about in this episode so that you have a roadmap for driving for dollars more efficiently.

Justin Colby is the Co-Founder and President of The Science of Flipping, Omni Investment Group and Phoenix Wealth Builders. The Science of Flipping is a free Podcast on itunes, Omni and PWB are both professional real estate investment companies specializing in purchase, rehab, and flipping of distressed property in the Metro Phoenix Area.   In this episode, Justin shares his story of getting started and struggling through 9 months to get his first deal.  He simply didn’t have any money to get started and had to door knock and do things that cost very little.   In starting out this way, Justin was forced to learn the most efficient ways to get deals.  This continued as he began using direct mail to generate motivated seller leads.    He shares with us that he had just sent out 47,000 direct mail pieces.  So he’s grown over the years but knows what it takes to get started with very little money.   An important fact that he shares is that most direct mail response rates are below 1%.  This fact tends to be ignor

Joe McCall has been investing since 2006 and has an excellent podcast called the Real Estate Investing Mastery podcast that he does with Alex Joungblood.  He’s doing deals in multiple markets across the us while traveling for months at a  time in Europe and traveling the us in an RV.  He’s been teaching and coaching investing since 2011. In this episode, Joe goes into incredible detail on how he set up and runs his direct mail marketing for motivated sellers leads.  We talk about the lists that he targets and how to get them. He even shares when he sends postcards and when he sends letters. A funny story during the interview was when Joe realized that he had been sending a postcard for years that he got from FlippingJunkie.com and didn’t put two and two together until that moment. Bonus: get that postcard here http://flippingjunkie.com/41 Joe focuses on absentee owner mailings using postcards.  When there is a lot of competition, he focuses on high equity owner occupied houses. He gets his list from Listsourc

Nick Baldo started investing in real estate in 2011 with a focus on flipping houses in the Buffalo, NY area. He has since expanded his business to focus on value-added rental investments. Nick created and manages the real estate educational site, Income Digs to help aspiring real estate investors get started. He has a focus on leveraging technology to create an investment business that is both efficient and scalable.   Overview of Strategy: Tell everyone what you do You never know where good deals can come from The more interactions you have, the more you are working in the industry, the more that will come to you   11 Actionable Tips for getting yourself out there and finding deals   Tell your friends Facebook Email blast Social Media bio You don’t have to spend thousands of dollars You want people to see your brand and ask more questions Simple business cards, shirt, signs Set up brand REI Meetings/ Investor meetups Neighbors get excited about flips They often have people in their lives who need t

Lamar Cannon is a real estate investor who loves to travel the world.  He set up his business to allow him to do deals no matter where he is on the globe.  His strengths are strategy, marketing and a strong mentality.  He enjoys experiencing new cultures, trying new foods, reading, writing poetry and playing basketball.   In today’s episode Lamar and I talk about how he goes about determining which part of a city to focus his marketing on.  He’s been investing in a lot of different cities outside of his home city of Austin, TX.    Investing in other cities forced him to develop a data-driven system to determine where to focus his marketing.   As a wholesaler (but almost equally as important for rehabbers), he wanted to determine which zip codes have the most action.   What he does is goes to ListSource.com and generates a list based on the following criteria:   1. Entire City (and surround areas) 2. Single-Family Houses Only 3. Last Sale Date within last 6 months 4. 99-100% Equity (shows most likely was cash

Melissa and I generate all of our deals almost entirely from marketing to motivated sellers.  When I got my first call from my motivated seller marketing I froze….   I actually threw the phone to her for her to answer!  She fumbled through it but we learned a heck of a lot from that first call.    It takes time to build up confidence when talking to motivated sellers.  These 15 questions that I cover in this podcast episode will help you trim the time to develop awesome motivated seller talking to skills.   It’s important to go into each phone call from a seller with these 4 goals in mind:   1. Determine if a deal is even remotely possible (focus on what is owed… not what their asking price is) 2. Determine how motivated they are 3. Build rapport 4. Schedule an appointment immediately   The 15 questions talked about the podcast episode are presented in the order they should be asked.  There is a reason for their ordering.   The biggest focus is on building rapport and getting information about their situation

Chris Jameson started investing in the San Antonio real estate market in 2011 and soon after entered the private financing market. He has facilitated over $60M in loans and acquired over 60 units for his personal portfolio.   In this episode, Chris and I talk about the ins and outs of hard money loans and how to work with hard money lenders.    One of the biggest benefits for new investors is that hard money lenders can help keep you out of trouble.  They usually won’t lend if the deals isn’t likely to make you money.    There are some hard money lenders that Chris calls “Loan To Own”.  These lenders are more interested in creating the loan with the intention of getting the house from you when you default on the loan… usually after it’s already partially or mostly rehabbed!   Check out the show notes page at http://flippingjunkie.com/37 to download Chris’s hard money lender checklist, hard money lending exposed pdf, repair estimates guide and his contact information.   In this episode we answer all of the fol

Don Costa, is a married father of 3 incredible kids.  He has been in the real estate business for over 10 years.  He started Knocking on doors and wholesaling properties, and then quickly moved to flipping houses.   He took some time off during the crash and jumped back in 2012.  Currently our office is on track to do a 100 flips this year.  He loves what he does and he loves helping others get into the business.    Don started flipping houses when he was unemployed.  The unemployment check only covered his living expenses and so he had to find a way to find deals, get funding for them and to fix them so that he could sell them and profit.   He got a notice of default list and began going door to door to try to buy houses from the people about to face foreclosure.    To buy and fix up the houses, he worked out a deal with a money partner to joint venture.  The money partner would put up the funds.  He would find the deals and manage the fix up and they would split the profits 50/50.   Not all deals are 50/50,

Jason has been on the show now 3 times!  It’s because he’s awesome and doing great things in his real estate investing business in Houston.    We have in on the show today to talk about finding and working with private lenders for your house flips.  Now, if you’re new to real estate investing, you probably want to start with working with a partner to fund the deal and split the profits or use hard money until you have a proven track record of several successful flips.  This will make it easier to build relationships with private lenders. In this episode we talk about: What a private lender is How they are different than hard money lenders What criteria Jason uses to determine good lenders from ones he’d rather not work with How to find these lenders during networking events   Jason really focuses on the “working” part of networking events.  I think most investors in general just don’t fully appreciate the power of these events if worked properly.    When negotiating with lenders on terms, Jason likes to frame

Learn how to flip houses through this free house flipping training course.  Weekly podcast episodes show you how to get started and go from newbie to pro. In this episode, I talk about what we've been doing with this series of podcast episodes that is meant to be a sort of weekly training that follows a specific path to take you from absolute beginner real estate investor to master pro house flipper extraordinaire.   

APIA is an investor friendly insurance company owned and operated by Gloria Kelley in Castroville, TX. Gloria has over 42 years experience in the insurance industry and services a niche market-unoccupied, vacant, or "distressed" properties. She got her start providing insurance for large financial institution's Real Estate Owned (REO) portfolios and has been employed by various large insurance companies over the course of her career.  She has experienced all types of claims in her ever-growing knowledge in the insurance world.   Gloria shared some great tips and gotchas that all real estate investors need to be aware of when it comes to insuring vacant houses.  As investors, we have a lot going on and can sometimes make decisions without knowing all the facts.   I’m willing to bet that 90% of real estate investors don’t properly insure their investment properties.   In this episode we talk about the importance of understanding insurance policy vacancy clauses.  This is a super important clause because it can

Andy McFarland is a self-made real estate entrepreneur who started with nothing and currently makes seven figures a year in his real estate business.   After getting fired from his last W-2 job in 2004, Andy went into real estate full time and has never looked back. Andy currently focuses on wholesaling properties in three different states; Utah, New Mexico, and Indiana. In 2015 alone, Andy did over 150 deals.    Andy has been married for 10 years and currently resides in Farmington Utah with his beautiful wife and three amazing children. Andy enjoys being around family and friends and continuing to grow and learn every day. You can follow Andy on his real estate journey by going to his website: www.iloverealestatestories.com or on his YouTube channel by searching for I Love Real Estate Stories.   He was also with us on episode 19 where we discussed ‘how much do you really need to know before getting started flipping houses?’   In today’s episode we talk about how real estate wholesalers operate and how to be

Mike Arch is a founder of Alamo Home Source and is partners with Erik Saengerhausen who joined us for episode 27.  Mike has been flipping for many years and has flipped hundreds of houses.  He currently focuses on creating and selling real estate notes.   On today’s episode, we talk about how to find the “right” real estate agents, attorney, title company/closer for your house flipping business.   This biggest take away from this episode is that taking the time to find the team members that care as much about your business as you do is paramount.  There are agents out there that always work with a sense of urgency and are great for real estate investors because you cannot steal in slow motion (meaning not to steal, but to get the great deals :)).    We discussed the best way to find agents doing great things in the areas you are investing or want to flip in and how to approach them so that they know who you are and can send you great deals.   It might surprise you to know that many agents that list a lot of

Robert Nickell is a national speaker, published author and one of the most successful real estate investors in the nation. Robert is known for his unique ability to teach, train, and run successful virtual businesses. Robert co-created Investor Virtual Assistant Services, LLC (IVAS) with the purpose of sharing his knowledge, experience and success with fellow investors around the world that are looking to take more control of their time while increasing productivity and reducing costs. Are you a solopreneur?  Most real estate investors are.  We try to do everything ourselves and think that it’s very hard to find someone to care about each task as much as we do. It’s what keeps us mediocre as real estate investors.  If you want to really kick butt as a house flipper and real estate investor, you simply need to learn how to delegate and have other people do the busy work. If you don’t, you won’t make as much money and you won’t truly get the freedom you started doing this to get in the first place. Virtual as

Brandon is a painter, extortionist,  exorcist, and lover (not a fighter.)  He' would also like everyone to know he is not a robot, despite claims to the contrary.   Little known fact: He’s the VP of Growth and Communications here at BiggerPockets.com.   Brandon joined me on the Flipping Junkie podcast way back in episode 2 of the show.  He’s very busy and I really appreciate him taking the time to be on the show again.  I enjoy talking with Brandon and consider him a great friend.   On this episode, we cover over 22 actionable tips for beginner real estate investors.  Even though we say these are tips for beginners, I think we can all say that even experiences house flippers do not do all of these things.  If we all would work at putting these tips into action, we’d all make more money and have more free time.   The important thing to always remember is that this is a marathon, not an all out sprint.  Do not try to go out and do all of these things this next week as you will burn yourself out and half-ass all

Matt Theriault, a fifth-generation California native, Desert Storm Veteran (US Marine Corps), has worked as a full-time real estate professional since 2003. After building a small real estate empire (100+ income units) with hardly using one dime of his own money or one point of his own credit, he discovered that he had a knack for simplifying the complicated, implementing systems and producing desirable results for both himself and his investor partners. His “knack” has manifested itself via consistently better-than-average market returns for both himself and his investor partners, a thriving online real estate investing academy (EpicProAcademy.com), as well as one of the more popular Real Estate Investing Podcasts (Epic Real Estate Investing) on iTunes.   On this episode we talk about how Matt got started. He had made a fortune with his own record label and then lost everything when Napster and everything in the music industry changed.    He ended up going from being a millionaire to bagging groceries at the

Erik Saengerhausen has been developing his owner financing real estate investment company for over 6 years.  He and his business partner, Mike Arch, run Alamo Home Source.  They buy houses, fix them up and sell them with owner financing.  Then, they sell the notes to investors for incredible returns.   They currently flip more than 75 houses a year and are working up to 100 houses.  That’s a lot of fixing up of houses!  They know a thing or two about finding and working with the right contractors to be able to do that kind of volume consistently.   In this episode, we cover the definition of the “right” contractor for the typical real estate investor.  We also talk about what negative aspects to look for when trying to find the “right” contractor.   Erik has a different model for paying contractors than I do.  He has guys that he pays on a weekly basis rather than per job.  I hire on a per job basis so that the contractor is paid per job rather than for the amount of hours worked.    That’s an important thing

Marco Romero is a real estate investor and a licensed real estate agent.  In this episode, we talk about the pros and cons of getting your real estate license.  There is no cut and dry answer to this question as it's more about your specific situation and goals.  We take an in-depth look at all possible scenarios so that you can make an informed decision on which way you want to go. 

Justin Williams has grown a very successful real estate investing business that flips hundreds of houses every year.  He does this all while having the time to teach other investors and help out in his community.    The reason he has all of this time is that he focused on creating a team that runs his business so he only has to focus on what he wants to do.   In this episode we talk about how Justin hired his first person to take over some of the tasks in his business and how she grew to run his entire operation.  It’s a very interesting story that all of us investors who spend way too much time working on our business should pay close attention to.   Have you thought about bringing on people to do some of the day to day for you but worried that they might learn from you and go off on their own?  Don’t do it!  In this episode Justin explains the fallacy in that kind of thinking.   Enjoy the episode and be sure to subscribe on iTunes.