Flipping America

Ignore the click-bait wannabes. They have routinely declared the housing crash is imminent every year since 2017. Perhaps eventually they will be correct. But not this year. Interest rates are worth watching and I predicted the current uptick in the rate of foreclosures (Covid-related). This will go back to pre-Covid levels in early 2023. Other indicators show a continuing strong demand for not-yet-enough supply.

Ok kids, it’s time to open the mailbag and answer some of your questions. Today we are focusing on questions concerning rental properties.

Mortgage rates are up, therefore home payments are up. Does it make sense to buy or should you rent? The answer is never as clear cut as you might think. Today I will sort through the issues and help you understand the best answer for you and your situation. One of the questions we get quite often is a variation of “should I rent or should I buy?” The person asking will usually fill us in on some of the details of their situation which means our recommendations are not always the same. I spent more than half of my life so far thinking that it is never better to rent - always better to buy and build that equity. About 15 years ago I realized I had never challenged that assumption, but it took me a couple of years to get around to devising a way to evaluate the options. Even then, I did it only for my own situation, but I will tell you this: once I took a clear minded look at what it was actually costing me to live in my very nice house, I sold it in pretty short order. I’ve been a renter ever since. I know it

Since 2015 it’s been increasingly difficult to find good deals on flips in our own backyard. So since the cheese got moved we moved along with it. We’ve done flips in every state that touches Georgia and we’ve wholesaled properties in a total of 28 states so far. Today I have a very special guest. Helen Ishii is one of my mentoring students who is now managing her first out-of-state flip. We are going to talk about the process, lessons learned, and some pitfalls.

It’s one of my most favorite times of the year - the beginning of the college football season. I can barely tolerate the political posturing and virtue signaling of all professional sports these days, and I find watching baseball or golf is just an inducement to take a nap. So as the years go by I’m increasingly stoked about the start of the college football season. How does this tie in to real estate? Stay tuned for a minute and you’ll see. I’m going to be joined today by one of my partners, Ari Weinberg, who is the developmental motor behind the soon-to-be-released all new Flipping America Network AKA “The FAN.” Full confession: we tried to release the FAN a year and a half ago and realized we had a LOT of work to do to make the app function and easy to use. So we pulled it and have been steadily working to make this thing great. Spoiler alert - we are going to talk about real estate and the FAN for 2-3 minutes today and the rest of the show is a preview of the upcoming college football season. So the answe

A lot of talk, several books, and valuable minutes of nearly every self-help seminar conducted in the past 10 years have been devoted to the topic of “Knowing Your Why.” It’s a trend for a good reason. It’s important to know your Why and it’s important to get beyond trivial things like “money” and “the stuff you buy with money.” I value and salute the idea of “knowing your Why.” But today I’m going to balance that with not a competing, but complementary idea. “Know Your Why Not.”

The first thing we tell you is “don’t quit your day job.” But you just won’t listen to me so the next thing I’ll tell you is “how to quit your day job.” Passion is overrated. Job stability is underrated. Financial security is a big plus in life. Your real estate career will take off and blossom if you can stay in your job while you get started. You’ll enjoy financial security and the luxury of easing into offer-making. This is clearly the best way to do it. So who cares if you stay at a meaningless or boring job for another year or two? I assure you you will prefer the boredom over the anxiety of not being able to pay all your bills. Today I’ll give you a glide path that takes into consideration everything you’ll need to think about as you make this big life transition.

You’ve got questions? We’ve got the internet, er, we’ve got experts, um, we’ve got the Realty Bluebook. Seriously, today on Flipping America, we’ve got a pile of answers coming your way. Hopefully some of them will connect with your questions. Here’s your reminder that if you have questions about real estate or real estate investing, you can send them to questions@flippingamerica.net. Or you can call 877-55-ROGER (877-557-6437) ext 1 and leave your question. We answer every question that comes in, usually within 24 hours, and some of them make it to the show. There is an exception to the promise of answering every question. We are not going to do your homework for you. We can’t run comps on your potential property and we can’t really tell you if a particular deal is one you should do. We couldn’t possibly know enough about any particular situation. But if your question is more broadly useful to others, it’s ideal for our use. So keep on sending them!

It doesn’t matter how many times you get knocked down. As long as you get back up. Everyone listening to my voice has been down. Some of you are right now. Today I’m going to help you get back up. Adversity is baked into the human experience. Bad things happen to us beyond our control. Bad things happen because of our choices (those can often be worse on our psyches). Sometimes, we feel bad. Sometimes anxious We get rejected. Our plans fall apart. Our kids make mistakes. We lose things. We lose people. And we go down. Today I am going to Talk it up, so I want you to Listen up because I’m going to ask you to Toughen up while you Lighten up at the same time. Then we are going to Light it up, then Follow up and last, but probably most important I’m going to ask you to Look up. If you do these things, you’ll get back up. I can’t promise it will be easy. I’ve been down and I know how hard it is to come back. If you are feeling depressed from self-blame, angry from blaming others, or both at the same time, I get yo

Have you ever wished you could just type an address into your computer and let it tell you whether or not it would be a good investment? That day has arrived. For years I've wanted to speed up deal analysis. I've written formulas, created spreadsheets, even built my own relational database. I have tried every product out there, spent thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours just trying to save time in the day-to-day chase of that next deal. Thanks to a partnership with our new friends over at House Folios, we are ready to introduce Flipping America GO. HouseFolios created a fantastic user experience with several ideas I only WISH I had thought of. I've been able to share with them my formulas, rehab and profit assumptions, and even my step by step checklists for the various phases of an investment property. All of this is being incorporated into GO. GO allows you to sift through thousands of single family properties and find the best deals fast. GO is built for everyone, whether they are brand new or a seas

If I handed you $1000 what would you do with it? What if I could show you how to turn it into $10,000 in less than a year? That would be great right? In this episode, I describe TEN different ways to do this. That’s “great” times ten, right? Is this a fantastic show or what?

Zillow published a quiz recently that asked questions about the NFL, certain celebrities and real estate. The sad fact is, Americans know more about the Kardashians than their own property. What can we do? We take a couple of steps in that direction today on the Flipping America show. Bill Gross is a licensed real estate broker and probate expert from Los Angeles. He’s going to join us in a few minutes to talk about the Zillow quiz, the lack of financial and real estate literacy and the failure of the American media to challenge incorrect notions put forward by our elected officials. Then we are going to answer William’s questions about the foreclosure auction and auction process.

If you’re going to be in the real estate investing business you need an accountant who knows real estate. I have one for you today, on Flipping America. Matt Lents is a CPA from Jacksonville, FL and 40% of his clients are not in Jacksonville. Wherever you are, Matt can probably help you. We will talk to him in a few minutes, but first, we have some questions from you we need to answer.

No one knows everything, and no one knows what they don’t know. Fortunately, success in real estate doesn’t require you to KNOW that much. Today on Flipping America we will talk about what you MUST KNOW to be successful in this business. Look around online for training and education in real estate investing. You’ll see a combination of complexity, jargon, and pseudo-intellect mixed with a healthy dose of hype. Let’s cut through that. I’ve boiled this entire business down to 5 things you MUST know. There is a lot more to learn, but you have to nail down these items first. Without any one of them, your business will suffer.

Death and taxes - Life’s twin unavoidable realities. We are not going to talk about death today and not even taxes so much. But we are going to talk about something that will help you at tax time - better records. Learn how to use Quickbooks Online today with Nick Baldo. Nick Baldo is a cool guy with quite a portfolio of real estate in Buffalo NY. He is comfortable with a lot of the tech we use in our businesses and has developed informative courses about using them. His website is incomedigs.com and today he’s going to talk to us about using Quickbooks Online.

Today we consider one of the most overlooked and underappreciated asset classes in real estate. 17.7 million Americans Live in Mobile Homes which is about 5.6% of the American Population. Frank Rolfe and his partner own about $700 million worth of mobile home parks. He has streamlined the process, refined the methods, written some books, and developed some courses. He will join us in just a few minutes in an interview we recorded with our Flipping America REIA recently. I won’t be able to play it all for you, but at the end of the show I’ll give you a link where you can listen to it in its entirety.

I’ve made nearly every mistake in the book. And over the years I’ve watched other people make all the other ones. Today we are going to talk about the Top Ten Newbie Mistakes and hopefully we will help you avoid them. This show could save you $100,000 in mistakes. It could keep you from bankruptcy, it could also ensure that your real estate career is successful. Wow. Or, it might be just another way to fill 30 minutes on your morning commute.

We continue the conversation today with our panel. Moneeka Sawyer, Kim Kesterke and Mark Dolfini are millionaire single family investors and in this portion I ask them how long it will take to become a millionaire while owning single family rentals.

One of the standard and most common methods of real estate investing is the purchase of single family rentals. Today I’m going to visit with three single family investor millionaires who have a wealth of insight to share. I’m joined today by Kim Kesterke from Atlanta, GA, Moneeka Sawyer from Sacramento and San Francisco, CA, and Mark Dolfini, from Lafayette, IN. We enjoyed a fascinating conversation with the Flipping America REIA group. I thought it was worth a replay to a wider audience and there is no way we are going to get it all in today. So this will be part 1 and we will conclude on the next episode.

What’s the point of all this anyway? I’d say “Financial Freedom” is most of it. Flipping houses can be lucrative, but passive income is where you want to end up. Today Chris Miles is going to start us in the right direction. Chris is the founder of Money Ripples and has an interesting take on financial freedom. I know you’re going to enjoy the interview in just a few minutes. I promised we would take questions from listeners today and we got a monster question – ok, maybe not a monster QUESTION but it might be a monster ANSWER. Darla, from Manchester, GA asked, “I am thinking about flipping some houses, but I’m a studier. I want to know what I’m getting into. What are the biggest risks in flipping houses?” My answer to that led to a little essay that is probably going to go up on YouTube and will likely be the only question I get to today. Don’t worry! Keep the questions coming and we will get to them all. I promise. Send them to questions@flippingamerica.net.