Out-of-State First Flip Profit of $70k for Rebecca Smith

Unknown Speaker  0:01  
You're listening to the flip houses like a girl podcast where we educate, empower and celebrate everyday women who are facing their fears juggling family and business, embracing their awesomeness and wholeheartedly chasing their dream of flipping houses. Each episode delivers the honest to goodness tools, tips and strategies you can implement today to get closer to your first or next successful house flip. Here's your spiky haired breakfast taco loving host house flipping coach, Debbie DeBerry.

Unknown Speaker  0:39  
Hey, how's it going today? Thanks so much for hanging out with me. You know, I love to share the stories of everyday women who are out there doing the thing out there flipping their first house facing their fears, right. They're terrified, and they're still going and doing it. That's what lights me up. That's what inspires me. And those are the kinds of stories that I'm going to continue to share. Unlike most other real estate, investing podcasts that are all about the host, or the same guest that just keeps shuffling around to all the real estate investing podcast, right? Let's just keep on going against the grain just as I always have, and sharing stories of women inside our coaching program, who are having amazing success, feeling terrified and doing the scary things anyway. Today, we're going to listen to Rebecca Smith's story of her first flip. And it's awesome, because they ended up flipping out of state. Right? So they live in California. They're flipping houses in Oregon. Yes, it's possible. And she and her husband also have small children. And Rebecca has a whole other business she's running and her husband is a full time employee somewhere. They're doing this successfully. You can do this successfully, too. But you got to face your fears. And you've got to jump. Alright, let's dig into Rebecca's story of her first slip. And she's going to tell us all about her other projects that are going on now too. They're totally making things happen. All right, you're gonna love this conversation. Here we go.

Unknown Speaker  2:26  
Do you want to just introduce yourself and like who you are, what you're up to in the world where you are and that sort of thing. I am Rebecca Smith. And my husband and I live in Northern California. We have two little girls. He works full time. I own a business other than house flipping, and the two of us have always been really interested in renovating and making, you know, tacky spaces pretty making crappy spaces, solid.

Unknown Speaker  2:57  
And and so we've just gotten really excited about real estate investing over the last year. So when you

Unknown Speaker  3:07  
you guys had fixed up houses you lived in, right? Like I remember seeing pictures of a house that you were living in that you showed some things that were done to it, right? Yeah. So when we bought our house our first house was we had not even seen the inside because California is real estate market even in 2014 was insane. So we wrote an offer sight unseen walked in and had less bedrooms, and it said reeked of cigarette smoke. It was disgusting and dirty. And I cried happy tears because we finally got a house. Oh my gosh. And wow, polished that thing into the most adorable little house you've ever seen and loved the whole process. Yeah. Meanwhile, people were like, oh, if you don't do these repairs before you have kids, they'll never get done. And we're like, watch me. I love it.

Unknown Speaker  3:56  
So we and we did it all like really inexpensively. Yeah, it was my I was like, how do we make this look really cute for you know, $25 on Amazon, so right, right painted cabinets and put on hardware. We kept the floors. We kept the like laminate counters, they looked fine. We It was like we smoke and mirrors that and then did the stuff that needed to be fixed. And we're like, oh my gosh, what a cute house. Right? So we're like, Okay, this is something we're into. We love fixing up houses. Yep. Then we moved into another fixer upper. That was like a 90s cardboard box that was basically melting off its frame. And again, we're like, this is what we can afford. It's perfect. I love it.

Unknown Speaker  4:39  
So we like we do you know, roll the equity into that one and then started working on that. And basically we were like, Hey, we're like kind of good at this. So what if we, but we were like, but we can't afford anything in California. So this is impossible. That was sort of the roadblock that we had hit. Yeah. Until before we met you. Okay. Okay, so then

Unknown Speaker  5:00  
You decide All right, let's do this program. And walk me through because you ended up investing in a different state. Yes, yep. Yeah. So we, I mean, we're pretty like as far as mindset, I am, like, let's make it happen. It's totally possible. It's fine. Don't worry about it kind of person. And he's like, impulsive enough that he's like, okay, I trust you. I love that. So we just we start shopping, right? And like, literally the first I think within a week of signing up for the program, we found two houses in Marin County that were, you know, million dollar houses that were like, Oh, my gosh, the numbers work on MLS, we found these two houses. Wow. And then we're like, we got to find the money. We got to find the money. We like spend a week kind of freaking out. And then we have this thing where we're like, you know what?

Unknown Speaker  5:48  
We don't i don't know if we can find the private money. We don't really know what we're doing yet. I don't even think we could get our offer accepted. We totally backpedaled Okay, and we didn't pull the trigger. Okay. In hindsight, both of those properties would have worked. Both of them would have made us like a stupid amount of money. I watch. I watched the terrible flip that somebody did on one of them. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, right. So, so that happened first and then we're like, okay, now we can't find anything in California. Like, oh, what the heck. So I started looking around. I've always been a little bit of a Zillow nut. Like, what what do I do for fun after the kids go to bed? I scroll Zillow, the new 30 something thing, apparently. But I found this house in Oregon, where I used to live. That was this adorable little 1930s house for 225. I'm like, we just been running numbers on 700 800 million. I'm all to 25. Right? Easy. Like, was like done.

Unknown Speaker  6:45  
This too. I know, we can figure out Yeah, give me three. Exactly. And so I called an old friend. I actually had called her months before when I first saw this house, and was like, what's the deal with this house? And she's like, first time buyers are trying to get a note. She had a total mindset issue, then it was like, okay, fine, not the time, you went back on the market. And it was like cash only. So I called her gun. I was like, just write the offer. Just write an offer. And she did and we got it accepted. And so we're like, okay, we're six hours away, and we're buying this house. Cool. We better find a contractor.

Unknown Speaker  7:23  
Better figure it out. Exactly. But all I knew was that my spreadsheet said this one works. And we have an offer accepted. So like, let's do this. Yep. And and the one that mean, one of the million things are so great about your program and your group is that, you know, Austin, my husband is a worrier. He's like, well, how are we gonna do? I'm like, well just ask Debbie, that's fine. We'll figure it out. We'll just ask Debbie. She'll tell us what to do. And he's like, okay, okay.

Unknown Speaker  7:52  
And that's been the case. It's like lunchtime. I'm like, do we write that it's cash. Do we write this? Do we? What about that? Should we negotiate this? What about the end? Like, you guys are like, yes, no, okay, we could try this. What are the numbers say, and you just, you don't have to know what you're doing. We've got this army of experts in our corner who don't want us to fail, which is just so reassuring. Awesome. Awesome. I'm glad I'm glad it helped Austin. And there's always like, that's the perfect balance, right? The one who's like, we'll figure it out. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. And then the other one is like, Yeah, okay. And but then what about this? Like, we should probably consider this. Yes. And then our running joke was, it's fine. If it goes awry, we'll just have to move into it. Right, exactly. We just got to move to Oregon. If it doesn't work out, right. If that's the worst thing that happens, it's not a terrible thing. Your house will survive. Living lower. It's fine. Exactly. Did you have do you stop family there? Is that what they do? Or Okay, my dad lives there. And I sold real estate for four years there in the early aughts. So I knew the neighborhood's really well. And I knew this was a solid neighborhood. Awesome. And I just like so that's the neighborhood. I'm like, this is the one I want. Yeah, adorable old houses that need some love. But there's some really nice quality homes sprinkled in with some like it's just a really nice place. Yes. For a young family to live, which is basically who we find ourselves making houses for. Yeah, totally. Totally ourselves. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Okay, so you jumped? You got that house? And when did you guys end up closing on that on this purchase? We did a three week close through hard money. And we had we had 50,000 leftover from our previous house sale. So we use that as our portion down. Got it, which made it really easy. We use the pictures before and afters from our previous houses and we're like we're experienced. Yeah. Kind of and they're like, sure good enough, and they gave us the loan

Unknown Speaker  10:00  
closed it in three weeks. It was a mad hustle. Austin had set a goal that he wanted to buy a house. By the end of the year, we literally closed on it on New Year's Eve. That's amazing.

Unknown Speaker  10:12  
Yes, New Year's Eve at 4pm. We close the loan. We closed it in three weeks at the holiday. So my hard money lender was like, could you no wrong? Wow, we were done with this. That's amazing. And yeah. And then we were like, okay, we've we've got we found two contractors, we got referrals for two contractors. We got two bids. One our my spreadsheet was like this needs to cost 100,000. We got two bids. One came in at 265,000.

Unknown Speaker  10:38  
How is that possible? I know you can build an entire right house for that. Yeah. And then the other one came in at 100,000. For like you're hired. Yeah. Okay, so you found to contrast contractors hired the guy that came in at 100 versus 360?

Unknown Speaker  10:54  
And how did that go? Like, how was your experience doing that? First flip your six hours away? you're trusting a team that you're building there, you know, in in another area? How did it go? How was that process? So this contractor is like an angel. I mean, he is he's literally a pastor at a church. He's the most trustworthy, honest guy I've ever met my life. Well, the fact that we somehow ended up with this guy is like, I'm just I'm so grateful. He is also he's got an eye and a passion for design. So basically, he and I went and like nerded out at the carpet store. And I and he's the kind of guy who I know a lot of contractors be like, whatever, tell me what you want. That's fine. Okay. He was like, I you know what, I think this is good. And I was like, tell me about the people around here. Tell me what the, you know, what are people doing here? Because I know California, but you know, Oregon, right? So we really collaborated. And I think he really enjoyed that whole creative process. Yes. That I brought him in and was like asking his wife like, Okay, what do you think about this hardware. And so we really have this cool symbiosis of like, we're all working together, you want to make this beautiful vision that you're gonna want on your website that we're gonna want on our website, and it's going to someone's gonna fall head over heels for this house, and he was all about quality, but was able to do things. You know, our original budget for our original needs was met. It was the extras that drove it over. Oh, so those extras.

Unknown Speaker  12:30  
So when we bought the house, we knew that there was an oil tank in the ground interesting. And it's the it's like an Oregon thing. older homes have submerged diesel tanks in the ground that they ran their heat off of.

Unknown Speaker  12:44  
We knew it was there. It was in the disclosure, we tried to get 10,000 off our price. Once we found out once we read the disclosures, they gave us five and we're like, okay, hopefully this will only cost 10. And it ended up costing 20. Oh my gosh, because they they have to remove this giant tank. Like I can't I don't even know the dimensions. It was just the whole front yard. Basically, it was dug up this giant tank out of the ground, then they had to bring in this, like rock drilling rig from Eugene, like this and dig down to take soil samples and they had to keep going and then the ground was dirty, so they had to clean it out and fill it and then we had to do a new driveway. So it was about $25,000 after the driveway and then we were already gonna do sod but like it wasn't like we had to then do sod because there was a hole in the yard. 25 grand.

Unknown Speaker  13:40  
But now we have a $20,000 barrel binder. We're all good. Oh, wow. Okay, yeah. That came up. Geez. Then One really cool thing about having done this last year was that the market was going up like crazy, right? So as we were doing our project, our original ARV we bought it for 225 original ARV was for 25 we're gonna put 100,000 and we're gonna make 40 grand, then the market starts just going up. I'm like, Oh, this is great. Right, then I guess I've sort of made the mistake of well shoot, if this is a higher end home, we have to do higher end things.

Unknown Speaker  14:20  
Like we weren't gonna put a garage door on but I'm like, well, we have to do a garage door we weren't gonna landscape the backyard is like well, we have to landscape the backyard. We weren't going to build a deck. We built a deck we I started to be like, if this is a $500,000 home, it needs to be a $500,000 home it needs to be like I'm I have high standards for what I would want. And so we ended up after all of a sudden done after their inspection report and a couple things needing to be fixed. an electrician not doing good work with he didn't remove the knob and tube in the walls. He just sort of like patched around it. And then even though it was specifically in our contract that it needed to be removed and oh

Unknown Speaker  15:00  
So we ended up paying an extra, you know, 5000 for that, and another 5000 for H back because they didn't, there were no ducts to the second floor and the HR people didn't ever tell us that and the inspector was like, there's no heater air on the second floor. And we're like, What?

Unknown Speaker  15:15  
Why? Why do we pay $10,000 raged back? And there's nothing on the second floor that like, don't you think someone would have been like, do you want to run some ducks up there? So right? Basically, our original budget of 100 ended up being 150.

Unknown Speaker  15:31  
Which is a little ouchy. Oh, that is

Unknown Speaker  15:35  
very ouchy. But the market went up by almost $100,000 in a year. So we ended up still making 70k on the property.

Unknown Speaker  15:45  
And giving a beautiful, perfect home for a young family. Right. Right. We feel really good. Right? That's that's the thing, right? Like you. Even though

Unknown Speaker  15:58  
if those houses were selling at 500, like the same house that was selling it for 25 started selling at 500. It's still the same house, right? But I get that in your mind. No. $500,000 house is different than 425, especially in Southern Oregon. Like that's, that's expensive. It actually ended up going over asking and selling for 515, which just like, shocked the pants off of me, oh my gosh. But thank goodness, because of those extra things so that I write the big takeaway, I am ever the optimist. I'm like, Oh, it's fine. We don't need a buffer. It'll be great.

Unknown Speaker  16:32  
And it and it did. So.

Unknown Speaker  16:36  
That's awesome. So as I go into my next projects, and like, I really want to just be so optimistic, but I don't always have a market that's going up fast enough to catch me. Oh, my gosh, oh, I know, when my realtor said he wanted to elicit at 500 I was like, Okay, sure. Well, I was thinking 465, maybe 450. But I also come from California, where it's like you price it for $5. And people pay 5 million they like you price it low, you get a crazy feeding frenzy. And it goes for 150,000 over asking Oregon's not the same. So I had to really rely on the experts there. You have to say no, no, no, no, no, you max it to the very top of what you think it can get. Got it and then you'd be willing to reduce got it. And and if you get lucky, you get full price or a little over in the first week, which we did. First day. Yeah. Were there comparables at 500? Or where was your house like, really a $600,000 house priced at 500. It there was nothing comparable. And I knew this from the moment I started looking at Medford Zillow, like, Oh my gosh, everything has oak cabinets and white carpet. The whole town has oak cabinets. And

Unknown Speaker  17:44  
if we do anything nice, like a little bit of design, right people, people are either gonna love it or hate it. So I was like, I'm bringing a little California bring a little Joanna Gaines, like palatable and not crazy out there as possible so that it'll have broad appeal. Yes. And and it did and like and but of course the people who bought it are like this cute like photographer, husband and the Enter nurse and they have this little baby on the way and like I look at her Instagram, I'm like, Oh my gosh, they're so cool, right?

Unknown Speaker  18:15  
Of course, they're not the kind of people who would buy Oh, cabinets and white carpet. Totally. They didn't get well that market didn't have it. Like that's what the market had before you arrived. So it was it was head and shoulders above anything else on the market. And I saw how you know, our realtor knew that this couple that offered on a different house, which was one of those old cabinet white carpet like bad 90s remodel and an older home. And then they went to ours and they jumped up 100,000 and what they were willing to spend because it was just it's amazing how that happens. Yeah. You all of a sudden find, yeah, so it's hard to as we're moving into our next projects. I'm like, Oh, well, obvious, their house is worth 100,000 more than

Unknown Speaker  18:52  
I'm like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, Rebecca.

Unknown Speaker  18:56  
Just calm down.

Unknown Speaker  19:00  
I remember thinking the very same thing when I first got started because nobody like it. Nobody was doing any design. Like in late, like 2008 2009 2010 there was a design it was what's on sale at Home Depot, right? What's the cheapest thing we can do? Let's go grab it and yeah, and get out. Right? And I was like, I'm gonna do things a little bit differently. And that's how that was my mindset, like, well, I'm just gonna add, you know, 50 $60,000 on top of what other people are getting because

Unknown Speaker  19:30  
Yeah, well, that's the hard thing is like, I'm not willing to do a crappy remodel. I'm not willing to do like the house that I saw that million dollar house in San Rafael. Yeah. That I was like, Oh, it's so ugly. Yeah. Brown floors and white. Yep. And I'm like, Where's the genesis of this house? And I you know, and I see those like Lowe's special vanities with the like the bowl that comes out the front. Yep. And I'm like, I will not do that.

Unknown Speaker  19:58  
So I know I have to like, visit

Unknown Speaker  20:00  
This is something luckily like we're, this is something we're doing to build wealth for our family. Yeah, it's also something that we want to really enjoy and feel great about. Right. And so I'm like, Yeah, okay, right can make 25 grand by putting, like, a bunch of lows into a house and having it like, you know, like, it's okay. And like, you know, the roof is probably gonna go bad at some point. Like, don't tell him about the electrical. Yeah, I'm not interested in that. I would rather wait for the right house that's like the right price like and do the right job so that I can feel really great about the house that I'm providing for another person. Dude, I'm telling you. I can't imagine doing it any other way. And losing sleep. Like I don't know how people sleep at night. When they're putting out something that's just like, mad right? Like they're not doing it like they're not doing right by the buyer by

Unknown Speaker  20:53  
not just doing the design stuff, but fixing the things that like are hazards that should be taken care of. I don't know. I don't know how people call that the boring stuff. Yeah, right. It is. It is like this house on Main Street. It was six months of boring followed by one month of beautiful That's right. Oh, it was so boring is like really it still looks like this after this amount of time. And I think I remember you asking about the finishing like the like the detail stuff, right? The ending stuff right taking a while that oh my gosh, I know. It's like it's Oh, it was like months weeks. It felt like it was forever. It's so frustrating. It's so frustrating. Yeah, it's like just do it. Just go just finish the details. Put the handles on the things I can move on with my life. Thank god. Oh, it's always the finishing touches that takes so long.

Unknown Speaker  21:46  
Okay, so purchase to sale. How long did you have the house? We have seven months. Exactly. And during that time

Unknown Speaker  21:58  
I feel like I know you bought another property soon after you bought this one. Yes. And I feel like you worked on like you shifted and worked on that one for a while and then we that's probably last us a month. Okay, so we found another house both of these we found on MLS this other one look just like our first house. It was like it was a little jewel. That was just very tacky. Yep. So we were planning on flipping it but the profit margins weren't that great. It was gonna be like a $25,000 profit on it. We had this like, okay, no, you're not supposed to be sentimental about houses that were like, Oh, this houses This house is just so like I can see the vision so easily. Yes. That I know. No one will see because we've already done this exact house we literally painted cabinets white put put hardware on it was a different house. Yes. So we went in and then you got like the rental spreadsheet, which Yep, I gotta tell you, I'm a total numbers phobe and your spreadsheets are amazing. And they're not scary. And I love them and they make everything make sense to me and love it. And I love to hear that from the non number of people. Yes, I know you're a numbers person, but you've transmitted Enough of your knowledge that I can make good decisions, basically where we go, Okay, well, I know we like this little house and that's all it's Takis at splendor. And we when we ran the numbers as a rental, and we called a local property manager and went, Oh my gosh, if we just take a HELOC out of our house, put the money down, we're gonna make 700 bucks a month on this house.

Unknown Speaker  23:24  
And we got in at a great deal because again, it fell out of escrow. They had done a bunch of foundation repairs. So buyers were scared off there are cracks everywhere. Because of it re Yeah, resettling. When they fixed the foundation, windows were crooked, or like the foundations done with a 75 year warranty. So we did new windows, we patched cracks. We just we took the cracks out which were just buyer scarers away, there's red.

Unknown Speaker  23:50  
And then we rented it and it's an amazing solid little rental. That's also gone up $100,000 in a year, so we're just sitting on it. That's awesome. We both were like crap. Can we get them to move out? We're gonna sell this thing.

Unknown Speaker  24:03  
Holy.

Unknown Speaker  24:05  
Like, calm down. Rebecca. This is why I can't do stocks. Well, those are like sell it. Wait, don't sell it.

Unknown Speaker  24:11  
Like houses make much better sense.

Unknown Speaker  24:14  
impulsive, excited people. I know. I know. I totally can relate. 100% Oh my gosh. Okay, so you guys worked on that one.

Unknown Speaker  24:25  
You're holding it, which is fantastic. I love to hear that. And then you went back and started doing this one again. Okay, so you focus back on so that that pulled our team off the house for a little while because we're like, we just want to get this one knocked out in a month or two. Get a renter and then we can go back to because we knew we wanted to sell in the summer anyway, and our original time frame had to sell in in March. So we're like we have some wiggle room. It's okay. Oh, gotcha. Perfect. I had told him originally that I wanted the contractor done April 15. And he ended up done, you know, July 26 when we closed but that's okay. Right outside

Unknown Speaker  25:00  
We originally had planned six months and so seven months I feel like is not too bad. Okay.

Unknown Speaker  25:07  
Great. Now,

Unknown Speaker  25:10  
you talked already about the surprises along the way, which were like the electrician stuff and having to deal with the tank in the ground. Were there any other big surprises? You know, the only other thing was just that our wonderful contractor is not the fastest because he he had, he was coming up against a labor shortage in Southern Oregon. So he it was basically him doing the whole project in his one guy. So that was the thing was that, you know, so I've got these expectations. I'm like, well, do three supposed to just be done? And like, why is it? Why does? Why does the house to look like this? Where's the kitchen? What's going on here? So part of it was I don't really understand I have very unreasonable expectations. Like I looked at my husband, I'm like, Can you just redo our railing, like weld something and make it look really nice? And he's like,

Unknown Speaker  26:06  
yes. But like, would you know what that's actually going to take? So I was like, this should be done. And it maybe could have been if you had five guys, but he didn't. So that's the thing that we're as we move into our next project, we've got a really conservative timeframe, because we're assuming it's going to be the same situation. He may be able to hire another guy or two, he may not. So we're assuming that he won't, basically Yeah, so we actually have an eight month timeline on our next one. Okay, which will carry us into the spring for resale rather than having to sell in the holidays. Oh, yeah. So okay, so you have two under contract right now. One, we already closed on a coke as well. That's right. One you closed on. Wonderful one day today. Yes. We're as long as the tenants get out. We will not record until the tenants are out. Yeah, good that yes. Yeah. Good. Um, how did you find these two deals? So the one another one, the one we already closed on was MLS as well. That was another one that fell back out of escrow. So all three of ours had fallen out of escrow. And me. Thank you, thank you to my Zillow obsession had found them immediately when they hit the market because I have little alerts for all middle searches. Yes. And I every single one of them I call my realtor. I'm like, give me the scoop. Go like show me this house. Look. Yeah, offer? Yeah, so I'm like, obsession put to good use. Is it found it and and your impulsiveness is important? No, it is because we're not scared to jump on a deal. Yeah. Also, we leave and out. So we've had actually two other escrows that we've pulled out of three, because that worked on a spreadsheet based on my certain estimation of repairs contractor went in repair estimate went up. Yep. They wouldn't come down on price we built boom. And that's the beauty of it. And that's hard. It's hard. It can be hard at first be like, Oh, I'm a failure, because I'm backing out. No, you win because you backed out. And it was hard because I was literally looking for more houses the entire time. Yeah, the entire time. We bought a house in end of December house in February. I was looking constantly. Yeah, I was writing so many offers. Yeah, we're not getting accepted. Finally I get into escrow. I'm so excited. And then we have to bail. Same thing happens again. And I'm just writing offers writing offers writing offers. I'm like, Oh my gosh, this market is killing me. Yeah. And then we get to accepted on the same day. Because now I'm like, I might as well just write them all at the same time. Right? To get accepted, right. This one that we just closed on an Ashland is a cute little tacky right now but gonna be cute mid century house. And then this other one that we actually did a bunch of mailers. So we sent out a bunch postcards. This guy called us tired landlord had been a landlord for 25 years. It's this adorable Craftsman house. That that's got a 90s remodel inside of it. Oh, God, they broke it. I know. So we're gonna just, we're gonna fix it. We're gonna make it an adorable little farmhouse. And then we've got our mid century on the other on the other town. And yeah, they've accepted the offer on the same day. So cool. Okay, we better find some private money because we also had not sold Main Street yet. So we didn't have any cash. We put our HELOC into the one house, we put our cash into the other house and now we're in escrow on two houses that we have zip in the bank. Nothing.

Unknown Speaker  29:26  
And you're gonna figure it out. Exactly. The numbers work, we will figure it out. Hey, that's right. If the numbers work, you're gonna make good deals. always find the money always, always, always back. So okay, how did you find the private money?

Unknown Speaker  29:41  
So when we originally were looking in California, we called everyone we knew. Everybody said no.

Unknown Speaker  29:47  
And then we were like, shoot we can't do it basically was sort of our initial reaction. Then people saw what we were doing. People saw us on Instagram. People saw our Facebook. I did a post on Facebook.

Unknown Speaker  30:00  
That was modeled after one of the ladies in the group who had done this really great post. And I was like, Hey, guys look like, this is our new project. This is our COVID project. And then at the end, it was like, PS, if you want to invest, we're always looking for investors. And I had one woman reach out who I know, I know, but I don't know that well. And she said, You know, my dad, I found out when he passed have been doing these little loans. And so she was like, I would love to do that sort of that so and Amash to him.

Unknown Speaker  30:29  
So she was like, let me know. And she was on the hook for both of those houses that we fell out of escrow on, but she's like, it's okay. It'll happen when it's right. She was really cool. And then we got into this house, and she's like, yep, I'm in. And I just showed her the numbers. And she was like, Yes, I like what you guys are up to. And then the other one was my husband's coworker, who he just was talking about. He's like, what are you doing over there? What are you up to with this house stuff? and Austin talked to him. And he's like, I got 50,000 on that, okay.

Unknown Speaker  30:57  
You have to talk about it. People are so scared of talking about it. But if we don't tell people what we're doing, Look, everyone wants to flip houses. They don't necessarily want to be the one like, on the hook for managing everything. But they want to be involved in it. It's the coolest thing. Right? It is cool. It is. And so letting people do that, by telling people what you do is so important. So I love that. I love that. That's how you happened into it. Like, yeah, if people don't know what you're up to, there's no way they can support you. And you're making them money. This woman's making 1250 a month, you're making money.

Unknown Speaker  31:37  
You can't make that on a rental property with that kind of downpayment. Like that's good money. It's risky, of course. So like I get it and right. And I'm like, we know, like, we know what we're doing. Okay, we have Debbie in the background helping us figure it out as we go.

Unknown Speaker  31:51  
But I feel confident that we're going to be that we're doing a good job. And we're doing, you know that we are taking care of these people's money. So the last these two purchases have been with zero of our own money. Awesome. Which is very cool. Because now I'm like, Oh, my, as long as we can find the contractors, we can do as many of these as we want, in as many areas as we want. Ding ding ding. Yes, exactly. And and like having a team locally is, is, you know, we sort of dream about Oh, wouldn't it be cool, but honestly, if it was local, I would never see my husband again. He'd be in there micromanaging and doing all this stuff, right? And this is forcing us right to not do the work to allow to scale a team essentially be like, I show up for one weekend, we pick out fixtures, and then I disappear. And then we come about once a month and just see how it's going.

Unknown Speaker  32:41  
It's actually a business. It's a business, right? Not a hobby or a project or a second job. Exactly. It's a business. Yeah, that's awesome. It's huge. And I appreciate that. I appreciate people that are hands on and, and want to do some of the stuff. It's awesome. I totally get that. And also

Unknown Speaker  33:02  
try to build something that doesn't require you constantly being there in order for things to get done or being there at some point. You know, it's been really nice though, that we can go visit my dad once a month. Like this perfect. And now they they've actually moved they still have a house there so we can go hang up their house and it's night. We love it there. So it's fine to go visit once a month. Six hours away. You said six hours. Yeah. Okay. So are you those two that you're purchasing now? Are you just using private money? Are you using a combination of hard hard and private hard and private? Got it get hard for the purchase? And then yes, we got it. Okay, huh? Yep, the private money was the down payment. And then the hard money is the first Yeah, got it. Awesome. That's so exciting. Oh my gosh. Okay. Very cool. Have you posted pictures of the midcentury and the Craftsman in the group. I don't know if I've seen them. I think just like the listing pictures, and I just bought a bathtub last night. clawfoot tub. Oh my God, my crafts. Love it. As like my two little girls are like pushing this 400 pound tub on a dolly and like taking pictures. Like we got to put this in the group.

Unknown Speaker  34:11  
The stuff that I love is like going on Craigslist and finding the cool old thing that's going to make it feel like it never had a 90s bathroom. You know, that was my next question. Like what's your favorite part of this? Or what are your favorite parts? Because there might be a lot of favorite parts. But what what are some of the things you love about this? Something that blurted out of my mouth the other day as Austin I are on a date and we're on a FaceTime with our realtor looking at a property He's like, this is what you do on a day to mom money is my love language, Brian, don't worry about it. And I'm like, Wait, is that good? That sounds horrible. But

Unknown Speaker  34:45  
I love that we're building wealth for our family. Yeah, I but I also I love the creativity. The it's like I don't know there's big hits along the way of like, I got one. It's like you go fishing. You sit there and sit there and you finally get the fish.

Unknown Speaker  35:00  
Yes, like I love that part about it. I love like when I fill out the spreadsheet and I'm like, it's close enough to the asking price. Oh my gosh, we can offer like, I love that part of it. I love the hunt. Really? Yeah. Trying to find the houses. That's really exciting to me. And then of course, you know, having all these Pinterest boards that I can finally put to use.

Unknown Speaker  35:21  
You know, I love like, the way my mind works is I'll just scroll me like, nope, nope, nope, no, yes. That's exactly what belongs in this house. And then like the contractors like, yes, that's exactly. And then we and like, and then they do it. Right. They do they do that part. And then I get to like, you know, fade out fade in houses done. Yeah. make a profit. What was your profit on the first one like 8070 7070 70k? That's amazing. That's awesome.

Unknown Speaker  35:55  
All right. What's Austin's favorite part? What does Austin enjoy?

Unknown Speaker  35:59  
You know, he cannot sit still, that man cannot sit still. He has beautifully productive add. So when he's when his when his like energy is aimed at something productive he is. So like, he's just so capable. Like I literally found a picture of a metal railing on Pinterest. I was like, can you weld this? He's like, I think I can. And he figured out how to do it. And like, I think the sense of accomplishment when he is like in the line at the grocery store showing random women his picture of his railing he made. That's his like, he feels I think so proud. He'd have to confirm this. But I think he's got to feel so proud of what he's creating. Yeah. And, and his expertise. He's just a total perfectionist. So he's basically going in and doing quality control. And he's making sure that it's a great house. He's the kind of guy I'm like, I don't even care if the wires are safe. I want my house to be beautiful. Right? Yeah, that's nice.

Unknown Speaker  36:56  
Also, he I think it's a lot out of knowing that it is a very safe and solid house. Yeah, a lot of accomplishment from being like, I did that. Yeah, that. Yeah, that's awesome. That's huge. What's yours? What else goals with this business? do you have? Or do you have long term goals with it? Or do you have any short term goals with it? So I mean, I just want to keep doing it. Yeah. It's like, I came to a realization in my personal business, that I had hot all these, like, I want to be a million dollar CEO by the time blah, blah, blah, all this stuff. And then I was like, You know what, I want to be with my kids, I want to raise my kids, if the world shuts down, I want to be able to be home with them and not be resentful about it. Because it can't work. Like I want to be able to have a business that supports me having a lot of balance in my life. And then I was like, and if I make more money, that's a bonus. And that's wealth building. That's the nest egg. That's the college. That's, you know, like, that's the kind of thing that, like, my parents were able to give us a down payment for our first house. I want to be able to do that for my kids. Yeah. And so I think it's a it's a combo of the safety and security that comes from just knowing that there's like padding, that we've got this little income over here from this rental and we've got this, you know, like we can go to Disneyland because we've got like this extra cash coming in and just so nice to be like, yes, kids, yes, you can, like no, we're gonna stay on, we're gonna stay at Disneyland. Like, you know, the, like, you talk about the bagel, or the latte like the big land, the latte, bagel and the latte?

Unknown Speaker  38:32  
Oh, it's it allows us to have that Austin's going Oh, is to just spend more time with his kids. And he has this really great job with great benefits. So it's really hard to want to walk away and be self employed full time. Sure. So that's, I think, sort of like a, it's out there that if we could retire him early and get enough rentals with enough cash flow that it would cover that.

Unknown Speaker  38:55  
It'd be amazing for him to be able to do this full time he would love it and be incredible at it. So that's, that's like the long long ish, medium ish term goal. Yeah. I love that. Or are you trying to hold a certain number of properties a year? Or are you just kind of going with what comes up?

Unknown Speaker  39:19  
You know, so I, I had this big aha, this year, where I had this whole whiteboard, I have a whiteboard above me at my desk that has all these numbers and all these goals and all these. And I realized just after the pandemic hadn't been home with my kids that I was, like, you know, I have everything I need. I have everything I need.

Unknown Speaker  39:39  
And so what I'm gonna keep doing is just do what is what I love, you know, and, and so I'm not I would rather do fewer houses, do a great job, feel good about it. Have fun, then do more make smaller profit going volume like that? Yep. So we have like a certain number like we don't want to have a rental as less than 700 a month cash flow like closer to 1000

Unknown Speaker  40:00  
So that way, there's a really decent buffer gets us some savings, I'd love to be picking up a rental a year I work part of our processes, like for every flip will hold one will basically take that profit and put it down on a rental, the cash flows. And so if we're doing that, you know, once or twice a year would be amazing to then have, you know, 15 rentals in 10 years, right. And Austin can retire at 48. You know, that would be incredible. Wow. I love it. I totally see it for you, too. And I, you know, I love the I'm with you on that whole striving. And you should want this, you should want this massive operation, you should want all of these moving parts he should. And that's great for some people. And it does work beautifully. For some people. I'm more of a lean, like, let's keep it let's keep it as lean as possible. So like manageable, right? manageable enough, where I still have time freedom. And I still like because I only get my son half the time. So when he's around, it's like, I want to be 100% in that 50% of the time, you know, so I totally get that. And I can completely I completely relate to it. And I appreciate that. That like the way you see that is like yeah, I'm the same. I'm the same. But that's not the messaging that's out there. No. And so I actually had felt like this last year I was failing because I wasn't reaching these crazy high goals in either my either business. But then I was like, Wait a second. I am home with my kids. And money is coming in. Right? I am thriving, right is amazing. So I had to really go like okay, as soon as I can be an acceptance of like what I have is already got enough. Yeah, everything else is bonus. And I'm doing it because I want to there's no need to there's no mass. There's no need to prove things to anybody which I got caught up in and oh three in real estate. I ended up buying a bunch of properties, losing them all to foreclosure. Bankruptcy divorce, like the whole thing in? Oh, oh, 708. We have very similar words in our backgrounds. Like I learned some really valuable lessons. I'm like, No, we will use a spreadsheet and we're not going to just buy it because it's available. And because it will make me look good. Because now I own more properties. Right? That's not what I'm interested in. Yes. I love that so much. Yet those kinds of really hard times. definitely give us a perspective.

Unknown Speaker  42:33  
not want to feel that again. Yeah, I can I relate to that, too. I know you had that in your background. So yeah, interesting.

Unknown Speaker  42:52  
This has been a blast. I've loved like just connecting with you. I love hanging out with you, Debbie, I know I love to connect with you and hang out. Um, it's so fun. And I've loved just that. You've done it like not just that you've done it. But you've also like I you know, I suggest, hey, send out some letters. And you sent out some letters. A lot of people don't just send out letters, right? It's like, and then they're like, Well, why aren't I finding anything? Well, you got to do stuff. Well, are you obsessive? Looking at Zillow, and texting your realtor everything that looks good and making him write a weird offer on it? Right? Well, then, if you're not gonna do that, you got to do something, right? Because if you're not going to go fishing for the all the things that are right there, the MLS and wholesale, if you're not going to fish there, you got to fish in another pond. You got to do it. Yeah. So I appreciate you for doing it. Yes. And I appreciate you for making this all possible. This has been a dream forever for decades. And just to be able to like successfully do it is really amazing. It's huge. You've definitely successfully done it like you're doing it and I'm excited and want to see pictures of the next two. So if you started rehabbing the third, this third property Did you guys start it's probably not

Unknown Speaker  44:08  
based on contractors having a baby in like 10 minutes. Basically, he's got a bit his first babies coming. So he's ordered windows. He's getting the kitchen measured. Okay, he's doing we were like, because of the COVID supply chain, order. Everything right now order it now. Yep. So that's what's happening is he's ordering everything. Then he's taking two weeks to be with baby and then he's gonna go full time until it's finished probably around Christmas. Okay, great. Well stage it and see if it makes sense to throw it on the market at Christmas. Or if we want to like hold it a couple months to get a better price. We'll see kind of what Yeah, you never know until that moment. Right. You got to see what's happening. Well, I'm excited. Thanks for hanging out and thanks for sharing your story and your journey with us. I'm so glad you're here. So glad we thanks for making it possible. Absolutely. I love it. I love I love the space.

Unknown Speaker  45:00  
And I love the women that keep being attracted to it. It's been so special, please definitely. Thank you, Debbie. Oh, thank you for everything. Thank you. Thanks for letting me be part of your journey. Yes. Okay, bye bye.

Unknown Speaker  45:16  
What a fantastic conversation. Thank you again, Rebecca, for hanging out with me, and for sharing your story because it will absolutely inspire other women to get off the sideline and do this thing. If you stayed on the sideline, because you think you have to have all this extra free time.

Unknown Speaker  45:37  
Rebecca just proved you wrong. If you are still on the sideline, because you think you have to flip locally where you live.

Unknown Speaker  45:47  
Rebecca just proved you wrong.

Unknown Speaker  45:49  
If you are on the sideline, because you feel like you have to figure all of this out on your own. And do this by yourself. Then I've got awesome news because you don't. All right, and it's way more fun to flip houses with friends, right? With a community of women supporting you, and guiding you and advising you and coaching you, then it is without. All right. So if you want to see if we're a good fit to work together, if our coaching program can help get you through your first flip in a way that makes you want to go to a second one, then go to her first flippa.com and you can see if we're a fit, all right. Okay, until next time, go out there. flip houses like a girl. Leave people in places better than you find them and make it a great day. Bye, y'all.