BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 130: Ten Smart Tips for Making $1M+ Flipping Houses with Will Barnard

Episode Date: July 9, 2015

Will Barnard recently closed on a seven-figure profit house flip (that’s right… over $1M on one single house!) In this episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast, Will shares the story, as well as 10 specific and actionable tips for anyone looking to rehab a property. Be sure to grab a pen and paper for this show… you are going to need it! In This Episode We Cover: How Will’s doing since the last time he was on the show The famous 7 Figure Flip All the details you want to hear about that flip! The 10 things you need to become a better flipper How to know your market The importance of building a team before you buy The members you need on your team How to find quality contractors The importance of negotiation as a real estate investor The two numbers that you need in order to make an offer The ins and outs of using leverage How to build a reputation by taking care of your investors The importance of learning how to manage efficiently How to know where you can save (and where you shouldn’t) in flipping houses And SO much more! Links from the Show Diary of a Seven Figure Spread (Forum Thread) BiggerPockets Flipping Calculator BiggerPockets Forums Will Barnard’s First BP Podcast Interview BP Podcast 120: How to Find, Analyze, and Finance an Incredible Real Estate Deal! The Occupants from Hell (Forum Thread) Books Mentioned in this Show The 10X Rule by Grant Cardone The Book on Flipping Houses by J. Scott The Book on Investing with No Money Down by Brandon Turner A Million Bucks by 30 by Alan Corey Trump-Style Negotiation: Powerful Strategies and Tactics for Mastering Every Deal by George H. Ross Rich Dad’s CASHFLOW Quadrant by Robert T. Kiyosaki Tweetable Topics: “You really need to get the boots on the ground to know your market.” (Tweet This!) “Trying to flip from afar is really asking for trouble.” (Tweet This!) “Everything you do in the real estate field — everything — pretty much is a negotiation.” (Tweet This!) “Listening to people negotiate is really helpful.” (Tweet This!) “There’s no right or wrong answer here. It’s a matter of finding out what do you want.” (Tweet This!) “You can’t be scared to fail because you’re going to fail.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Will Will’s BiggerPockets Profile Will’s Company Website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast. Show 130. And I did net just slightly above a million dollars. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, without all the hype, you're in the right place. Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from BiggerPockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. What's going on, everybody? This is Josh Dorkin, host to the Bigger Pockets podcast here with my co-host,

Mr. Birthday Boy himself, a big, fat, giant, three zero years old. That's right. He's 30, ladies and gentlemen. He's finally growing up. The men, the myth. Yeah, he's a myth. It's Brandon Turner. What up, B? What up? Do I sound older and wiser? You still sound like a petulant little child. Well, that is because I'm still 29 because we were recording this a few days before my birthday, this intro. We recorded the interview, what, a month, the month and a half ago with Will, but yeah, my birthday is in a couple days, and I'm going to be the big three-o, which means I get 30 spankings. Do you remember that? Like with your kid? I don't remember that, but that's what you and your wife do for fun. You know, that's usually our third question. This is not really an interview

about you, but, you know, I mean, if that's what you're, it's cool. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm not going to judge you, Brandon. 30 shades of gray. 30 shades of gray. It's all right. Yeah. Do what you got to do, brother. I mean, you know, whatever makes you happy.

And listen, you seem to be pretty happy. So I'm a happy guy. Pinch to grow an inch and a sock to grow a block. Isn't that? I don't know what you're saying. That's what everyone says. That is like a thing, right? Happy birthday and a pinch to grow an inch.

I don't know what that is. Okay, that might be what's a Minnesota thing. Anyway. So what up? Happy birthday. You know, things are good, man. You know, it's summer. Summer's going well.

and it's your birthday and, you know, listen, I'm happy to have you here on this very important day and, and. Very important. They should make it a national holiday, really. They might. They might because you are that important in an individual. You know, I don't want to say it, but since you brought it up, I am. All right, enough about you. Let's get into this show, man. We got a, we got a cool show today with one of a prior guests. And so before we go there, let's get today's quick time. Hi, today's quick tip is it actually comes from Grant Cardone's book, The 10X rule, which I did not know when I started this process, but it totally makes sense now. The idea of

setting big goals. And here's why I bring that up. When I was like 21, I read a book called A Million Bucks by 30 by guy named Alan Corey, who's a real estate investor on Downtown. If you're listening, Alan, what's up? Because I know he listened to the show. Anyway, read his book when I was like 21, 22, and it was called A Million Bucks by 30. And I said, that's my goal. A million bucks by 30. And so I said this month. monstrous goal. And I don't think I quite hit it unless I want to be really, really liberal with my property values on what they're worth. And maybe if the market heated up a little more, I could push it. But anyway, the point was, even if I didn't make my goal, I got close to my goal, maybe, or even

partway to my goal, doesn't matter. The point is, hey, the point is I had a big goal. I worked towards that goal. And even if I didn't hit the goal itself, I'm still way further than I would have been had I not set that monster goal to start with. So the quick tip today was no matter where you are, go set a monstrous goal and then work towards achieving that goal. Even if you don't hit it, if you fall short, if you fail at that goal, you're probably better off. I love it. The not so quick. They're not so quick to, quick tip. But it's important, I think. Yeah, no, I think it's great. I think, listen, you're getting old and you tend to ramble when you get older. That is what happens. That's what just happened to you. It was awesome.

Yeah, I got my walker now. I've been using, because, you know, now I'm 30, you know, it's geriatrics and all that. Right. Right. Yeah. You are, you are, you are, you are pissing off more and more of our audience every single day. I'm glad that it's not me anymore. It's a beautiful thing. I'll take one for the team. There you go. I have an uncomfortable question for you. If your rent collection drop to 80% next month, how long would your cash flow hold up? What about 70% for the next three months? Would your cash reserves cover it? I talk all the time about scenario planning. Smart investors don't just model the upside. They also pressure test the downside. This is even more important in a down market. And that's why I like Stessa's stress test

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Just go to Indeed.com slash rookie right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. That's indeed.com slash rookie. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. All right. Let's get to the show. We've got a guy today that was one of our earliest interviewees. And his show was all about flipping luxury real estate. And today we're going to actually talk about how this guy went and did a million dollar flip. And then he's got 10 amazing tips for you guys on how to make a million dollars in real estate. So let's welcome Will Burr. Bernard, who's been one of the most active members of the Bigger Pockets community for the past probably half a decade, if not longer. It's really great to have them back.

So let's get to this. Will, welcome back to the show, man. It's great to have you. I'm happy to be here. It's for having me again. Yeah, yeah. It's been a while. What show were you on the last one?

It was in the 20s, right? I think it was like 32, something right around there. Okay. It's been a long time, actually. It has been a long time. time. Oh, we should have probably had you on like the 100th, you know, after episode, but whatever.

This is 130, which you can get to the show notes, people, at biggerpockets.com slash show 130. There you go. Check out all the notes and you can leave will messages and comments and all that fun stuff. Yeah, yeah. Well, well, so you're back. It's been a while and really quickly, you know, we've got kind of a different show today.

And before we get into it, what do you've been doing the last year? What's been going on? well you know pretty much more of the same just been renovating homes and flipping them you know i'm in the luxury markets so i'm flipping multi-million dollar homes i've been continuing to do that uh i am looking this year to make a switch back and start doing the you know under 100,000 flips again i need to keep that rolling i kind of got away from that for one reason or another and i'd like to get back into that and although the competition is fierce there and the profit margins are slow summer. I'll make that up in quantity. And with my experience, I've got ways to make it work.

Nice. And you're in Southern California, right? I am in Southern, sunny Southern California. Nice. I'm jealous. Nice, nice, nice. Yeah. As you should be. We have the best weather in the world. It's miserable here. It's raining. Denver's supposed to have 300 days of sunshine and we're sitting here in like two weeks of rain. It feels like Brandon. Yeah. We have 300 days of rain every year. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. You don't know what sun is, do you, Brandon? I heard about it one time. I saw it like through the clouds and everyone was like, that's the sun. And I was like, I thought they were talking about like I had a son and I was confused and it just got weird. Sweet, sweet.

All right, man. I can get confused there. Hey, Will. So let's get back to this because we'll just start BSing. Last time we talked about this famous seven figure flip. If that puppy isn't done by now, I don't know what the hell's happening. So the seven figure flip, what's the story, man? Is it done?

What are the final numbers? give us the lowdown. Sure. Well, I had a thread on bigger pockets, and it was called seven figures success stories. And I started out. It was a purchase of a large 7,200 square foot home with about eight acres. Forced property, it was in Agora Hills, California. And when it was all set and done, that actually closed and sold last April.

So we're just over a year since I closed that and got paid. And I did net just slightly above a million dollars. Wow. So, it was my best deal ever by far. Wow. How long did I think you beginning to end? Beginning to end. I think it was, well, depends on what you call the beginning.

The beginning as far as when I closed escrow and purchase to when I sold it, it was about 18 months. I've checked the records on that. It was a long time, but it was a huge project. Before that, though, it was like a year and a half in the process of getting the original contract to actually close. because I had so many problems with the seller, which was a bank. Yeah, yeah. And we talked about that, I think, a lot on the previous podcast. So you did end up netting a million bucks.

That's unbelievable, man. Yeah, I can't complain. I know. My best flip ever was like, I don't know, 30,000 or something like that, maybe. Yeah, so you're doing a little bit more than I'm doing. That's good. And that's actually why we wanted to bring you on the show today. Exactly.

Because I want to pick your brain. I mean, like, as I'm kind of getting a little bit more back into the flipping mindset, I kind of went away the last couple years and did a lot of rentals. So today, I'm being completely selfish and I want to pick your brain on how to be successful at flipping houses. Oh, it's all about you. It's all about me. So that's why I do this show is just so I can become a better investor.

And, you know, that's it. Yeah. Fair enough. Happy to help. All right. So I asked you to prepare 10, like, things to become a better flipper. And hopefully you at least grabbed a few of those or maybe you can come up with them on top of your head if you didn't.

And we're going to go. go through 10 different ways or whatever we want to call it 10 tips for being a successful flipper. Is that cool with you guys? Absolutely. Let's do it. Let's do it. All right. All right. So, number one, what do you got? Number one. Are we counting backwards or forward or does it not matter? Let's start from the beginning. Okay. Going forward. So number one, know your market. No your market. Fair enough. Why is that important? Well, let me explain what know your market means first of all. Knowing your market, there's a lot that encompasses that. First and foremost, you have to know the areas. So you got to know what streets are bad, what neighborhoods are bad,

what neighborhoods are good, what neighborhoods are selling and what neighborhoods are sitting. That only comes from whether, in my case, when I first started flipping, I was flipping in an area where I was born and raised and grew up. So I knew every street. I knew half the people in the city. It was easy for me. If you don't know that, you've got to get out there and drive neighborhoods. You've got to do research. And just looking on the internet isn't enough. You really got to put boots on the ground to know your market.

Secondly, inventory levels. That's of vital importance. You need to know what is actively listed on the market for sale today. Of those active listings, you need to know what are REOs, what are short sales, and what are standard sales and probates. And then you need to know what those inventory levels were three months ago, six months ago, 12 months ago. So you have something to compare to. And by analyzing all that, you can see where the market is going.

And how do I find that? If I'm not a real estate agent, so how do I find that data about my market, like how many properties are on the market and all that? How do I get that data? Leverage other people. And that would be your real estate agent. So if you're not an agent, get your agent who's on your team to pull that data for you. And they should be feeding that to you every three months.

Got you said you said kind of driving the neighborhood. So is that what people are calling driving for dollars? Is that the just cruise around and look at houses and figure it out? Well, driving for dollars is a little different in that. You're driving neighborhoods. So you are accomplishing what I'm talking about. But that more specifically is driving neighborhoods looking for vacant houses or houses where the weeds are growing 15 feet high in the front yard. You pretty much know it's vacant. You're going to want to send a letter to the owner and see if you can purchase it. that's driving for dollars to try and find leads on deals. In doing so, while you're driving around for dollars, absolutely.

You should be going in these areas and looking at these houses, seeing what neighborhoods are looking good. You're in one street. You see a bunch of hoods sitting there drinking 40s on the stoop. You may want to stay away from that street. Unless you want to flip that house, right? Well, if you want to flip that house, that's fine. But the problem is, who's going to want to buy that?

You're going to have a lower buyers pool trying to sell to a buyer. who doesn't want to live next to, you know, a bunch of hoods. So that's why you want to buy in good neighborhoods when you flip it. I mean, they may want to. They may be drug dealers that, you know, are looking for suppliers and, you know, there's buyers everywhere, right? You know, everyone's a, no, I'm just giving you a hard time. No, that's great.

So the key is get out there, explore, get to know the neighborhoods. And by doing that, what you, it almost becomes, automatic, you know, you can see a property and know kind of what it's worth, right? Yeah, exactly. Once you know your neighborhoods, once you, and you walk in, you kind of know, okay, this area, this three bedroom, two bath, 50 hundred square foot house, and you know, this one's worth 400,000. And if you're in this area, it's worth 600,000. If you're in this area, it's worth 250,000. So it's knowing those areas. And even more importantly than that, there's really specific information. For instance, in one of my cities, I know that if I'm

on the left side of this one boulevard or just north of this boulevard, I'm going to pull higher price points than I was if I'm on the south side or on the east side of these other two boulevards. So, I mean, literally, the two houses could be an eighth of a mile apart. And so anyone who didn't know the area looking on Zillow or just looking on the map can see, oh, okay, that's same size house, same area, that's a calm. But in reality, because I know that neighborhood, and one is on one side of the boulevard, one's on the other. I know that one's going to be higher price than me. That's where knowing your market really comes in a plug. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I, you know, I, I'm selling my house right now,

and the neighborhood I'm in is literally, I think it's like six blocks by four blocks. And so that's, that's one neighborhood. You cross over one street, one direction, another street in another direction, and you're in a completely different price point, and the same, same goes on the other way. and to an outsider, you'd have no idea. You'd look and say, oh, you know, all the houses look the same. Well, you know, you cross this side of the boulevard, you're in a better school district. You know, it's not, there's nothing wrong with the street. There's nothing.

It's just the school district. Well, that school district is commanding more money, so the houses are higher priced. The other way, it's, you know, it's a dividing line where proximity to a specific park is. And so you cross that line. Now you're closer to that park in a different neighborhood. even though it's the exact same neighborhood and the price changes. So yeah, and, you know, that's one of the reasons everybody gives me grief and, you know, I'm out here always talking smack about places like Detroit and I don't know, Toledo. Let's let's get some other enemies. But, you know, the reason is you

can't possibly know those dividing lines. You can't possibly understand those neighborhood divisions from far away without really getting down and dirty and walking or driving or at least, you know, doing a lot of homework and evaluating the neighborhoods. Am I right? That's correct. And that's why I always suggest don't try and flip from afar. I mean, if you can buy and hold from afar is difficult enough. Trying to flip from afar, you're really, really asking for trouble. I mean, unless you have a partner with boots on the ground, you can do that, certainly. You have to have somebody with boots on the ground doing that work for you. Yeah. Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly. I think that's smart, smart. Moving on. Let's go on to number two.

two, what do you got for us? Number two is build your team and have it in place before you buy. And your team is going to be consistent of your escrow company, title company, insurance agent, attorney, got to have a real estate attorney. If you don't, you're trying to cut corners and it's going to cost you more in the future. So definitely have that. And of course, the highly important part is your contracting team. So all your contractors and your subcontractors, have these guys in place before you.

you start buying because if you buy and then you start shopping around, you might need to close and not have your team filled in and times your enemy. So if you start wasting time, you're eating up profits. Yeah. I just did that actually on the house that I'm renovating right now. You know, I bought the thing and it was kind of a drama to buy it and there's a whole longer story that I'm not going to get into now. But by the time I finally got it, like I realized I never actually like, I never got a contractor lined up beforehand. And like I knew I was supposed to, but I was just so busy with everything else. You're trying to, you know, rehab a house or whatever. I just didn't do it. And so now I'm looking at it. I put me a good week and a half behind schedule. And then the

first contractor ended up being terrible that I hired. So I had to fire that guy. Now I got a second guy in there. Now, yeah, again, I'm way behind schedule now. And there's all those things you got to remember to do. And especially now this one's going to be a rental in the end. And so, you know, I'm not as needing to, you know, I'm not like you holding hard money on this property or anything like that. But still, like, it's two weeks or whatever of my love of this property that I lost and that's still holding costs on that and everything else. So in the flipping world, I mean, time is vital importance. And you're flipping a house like mine where you have close to $30,000 a month in holding

cost that week is going to cost you, you know, seven grand. There goes seven grand just for wasting that week. So I buy seven grand. Yeah. Can I ask you what contractors? Like what kind of contractors are you getting? I mean, you know, like there's like Jay Scott once, I think he wrote in the book on flipping houses or maybe maybe it was on BP.

Anyway, there's like three levels of contractors. He divides them. And, you know, there's the under table, under the table kind of crappy guys. And there's the middle guys and there's the high end. You kind of go by those categories as well. Do you define them a little differently? Or how, who are you working with? I don't really have a defining point of that level.

But what I do work with is I have a general contractor that I will go to. And I've gone through a multitude of general contractors, believe me. And then mostly, though, I have my own team. So I have a bunch of subs. So I have my own tile guy, my carpet and stuff. dollar, you know, my painting crew, my landscaping crew, et cetera, et cetera. So I have all these individual crews and then I also have backups too. So like if my one drywalling guy is, is busy another job site and I need them this week, then I'll call my backup drywall guy. So I have all of

these subs and I act as the GC as the owner builder of the property and then I go from there. And having having the main subs and then your backup subs is important. And if you don't have the backup subs, that's okay when you're first starting out because it takes time to get these guys. But you're over time, you're going to have backups and you're going to have to get rid of and exchange one for another because somebody's going to screw you or someone's going to mess up and you're going to have to fire them. Hey, so what's your best tip for finding these guys? I think we talk about it anytime we talk to somebody who's doing flips. But, you know, I think one of the hardest things on the planet is to find a quality contractor. So any

tips we can get or are always going to help. And even if it's one that you gave us last time, you know, we're all about it. So what's your best tip on finding, you know, high quality contractors? Uh, my best is probably going to be referrals. Of course, that I got to, there's a little bit of problem there because if, if I have an excellent contractor, I'm not going to just give them out to you, Brandon, because then he's going to be on your job site when I need them. I don't want to give my good guys away. So there's a little problem then when you go to another investor asking him for his guys. Now, that being the case, there are some bigger like GCs that have crews where they can do your project and my project, and that's not a

problem. But as far as the individuals hiring the subs, man, those little word of mouth, hey, can you give me a dry water? Can you give me a pain or whatever? Asking for referrals and talking to others. I've talked to real estate agents for referrals. I've talked to other contractors. I've bumped into people at Home Depot and lows. That's always a good place to feel. find some contractors because they're buying gear, buying equipment and materials. Jay Scott always made a comment one time saying that a good place to get them is to go there in the morning because that's when the hustle guys are there. If you're going there in the afternoon, maybe those guys aren't hustling. Now that you could have a guy going to come in right back because, you know, they missed

something. They ran short on something. So it doesn't mean he's there in the afternoon that he's no good. But generally speaking, that was his principle. Nice. Nice. And really quick, I'm going to plug the book. Jay Scott wrote, which is the book on flipping houses. And we also have the companion book, the book on estimating rehab costs, bigger pockets published. You could check them out at biggerpockets.com slash flipping book. I get more information on those there. All right, well, so we've got our team. We know our market. What's our next point here? Okay. So tip three would be become an excellent negotiator. Everything you do in the real estate field, everything pretty much is a negotiation. From negotiating with the real estate agents to get the

commission from six to five or four and a half to negotiating the property itself, getting the asking price from 300,000 down to 250 to contractors negotiating with them and getting their prices down or getting their timeline speed up. Everything is a negotiation. And if you're not good at it, you're going to not make as much money. That's the bottom line. So how do you get good at it? practice is one, obviously. Two, reading books on negotiations are key, because they'll give you a lot of insight and a lot of good ideas from people who have been down that road

and you can take their experiences and then apply them in your own world. Gotcha. And so, I mean, do you have any favorite books that you'd recommend on negotiation for anyone listening? Well, I've always recommended Donald Trump's attorney, Mr. Ross. He wrote a book on negotiations. Forget the title of it. I actually have it here. That's a George Ross.

Yeah, George Ross. Trump-style negotiations. Okay, okay. Cool. Any others that stand out to you? Not really. That's the first one I read, and that's the one that really got me going. And then talking to other people, one of my real estate agents, a good friend of mine, he's just a really phenomenal negotiator. And I've sat in rooms and listened and talked on the phone, listening to talk live with other people. And listening to other people negotiate is very helpful.

good real estate agents are good negotiators. Not only do they negotiate the other party, but they negotiate with you. They try and calm you down when the other party's firing you up and you're about to, you know, murder somebody because they're being a pain in the ass in the transaction. Oh, slow down, man. Did you just admit, you know, there's only a couple hundred police listening. It's okay. I didn't say anything specifically, Josh. You can't prove anything.

Oh, geez. Nice, nice, nice. Yeah, no, I think you're right. I mean, you know, a good agent is absolutely going to do that. And, you know, the funny thing is, I think a lot of new people think, hey, when I, you know, get further in my career and I've done, you know, lots and lots of deals that, you know, I don't need an agent anymore. Well, I will tell you an agent down the line is just as valuable for that very reason. You know, no matter how many deals that you've done, you still have emotion, period. And, you know, if you can count on somebody else being there to kind of, to help you, you know, keep the emotion out of it, keep you calm, keeping your eye on the ball. You know, I think a good real estate agent is really going to be an important partner, no matter what you do. And, you know, I just, you know, I strongly recommend people be good to their agents when they find a good one because, you know, good agents are going to really, you know, help you out. They're going to help find you deals. And they're really going to do exactly what you said.

Keep your calm. They get to know you. I mean, I know, Brandon, your agent sends you text messages. is you guys close contracts via text. I mean, you don't even have to communicate anymore, right? Yeah. Yeah, we do a lot via text and email. I don't talk to them that much, which is nice. I like you just do it quickly throughout the day. Yeah, that's a beautiful thing.

That's awesome. A lot of people, I will say it is a good idea to get your real estate license, but not so much so that you can, you know, list your own properties, although that's an advantage, but more so that it gives you a lot of the tools and the resources and the ability to an acquisition, maybe feed somebody a referral fee or get a referral fee. Extra income is huge.

All the access is huge. So I definitely recommend having a license. But as far as listing your own properties and selling them, particularly when you're doing properties like mine, I just don't have the time, the resources, the ability to do what they do. My time is better spent going out and managing the project, finding the deals, contracting them, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm leveraging other people's time.

So I'm going to leverage my agent's time and have him do that job. Hey, well, what was the best negotiation you've ever had? You know, for you, you know, whether it was price or, you know, usually that's pretty much what we're talking about. But, you know, whether it was a contractor or an offer, what was like your biggest negotiation win? I've had quite a few of them, but I'd have to say one of my most recent ones was about a year and a half ago. I had a property that I'm actually an escrow on the cell right now. But when I was negotiating, they were asking $3.7 million for the property. I negotiated down to $2.7 million.

So I got them down $1 million, which was huge. But more importantly, I got him to carry an owner finance note for $2 million. And then when we went into escrow, I had all my documentation in order, and the seller tried to pull a chandelier out of the property, which is attached as part of the property. He tried to pull a statue from the property. tried to pull a tractor that was in the paperwork from the property. And what I was able to do is I negotiated to have the agent pay me for that chandelier. I negotiated to have him give me $10,000 credit for that statue he took.

I had him return the tractor. And on top of that, they had a termite report. And it had about $10,000, $12,000 worth of items on it for repairs, of which costs me, maybe a couple, two, three grand to fix myself. I got a credit for the whole thing and then saved all that money. So all these credits and all these negotiations into one really added up and helped tremendously. So how do you do that? I mean, you know, how do you get somebody down a million dollars? What was your, what was your leverage? I mean, how'd you do it? It was a back and forth with a number of counters. I started at like 2.3.

So I was, I was at a million and a half under what he was asking. I went back and said, said, hey, here's where I'm coming up with this pricing. And here's, I'm trying to give evidence to establish why I'm at the price I'm at. And then we got up to a certain point and he finally came down to a certain point. I was trying to actually get it for two five. And the reason I settled on two seven was because he carried the note for two million at six percent interest. Instead of me paying 10 or 12, over a year and a half's period, I just saved over $200,000. So I'm actually in the plus by paying $200,000 more, giving him what he thinks he wants, and yet still having the net result be the same for me.

It's brilliant, really, really smart. Love it. Love it. All right, we could probably spend a whole show on just negotiation and we probably should today, but let's move on to number four. Okay. Probably one of the most important and my favorite, I preach this all the time, is know your numbers inside and how, those numbers are knowing how to calculate your ARV and how to

calculate your renovation costs. If you don't know those two numbers, you will fail. It's impossible to make an offer without knowing those two numbers. So what is ARV? What is what is that and how does it work? So your ARV is your after repair value. That's what you're going to, or your anticipated sale price of the property. So if you're looking at a house and they're asking $200,000 for it, you have to know that after you renovated, that there's comps supporting that it could sell for X amount of dollars. Let's say thousand. So if you're going to buy it for 200,000 and your estimated ARV is 300,000, and then you know your repairs are 25 grand, you're all in for 225. You sell for three. You have a $75,000 gross spread. You have to know that you have a big enough gross spread to account for

your acquisition costs, your holding costs, your resale costs. Do you use any of those like, you know, 70% rule or anything like that when you're doing numbers? Absolutely. I know a lot of people are not fans of rules and again people need to realize that these are not rules they are guidelines or rules of thumb they're not set in stone and they are not silver bullets so and what works for me in my market may not work for josh and his or you and yours brandon or it may not even work in my market next week or next month so you always have to change uh and adapt i use the 70% rule and a variation of that it's usually the 75% rule depending on what property I'm talking about. But I use it. It is not an end-all-be-all. It's just one tool in my toolbox. Can you

explain real quick what it is for those people who don't know? Sure. So the 70% rule says that your acquisition price, let's say 175, and your rehab cost of 25. So you're all in for 200. That is 70% of the ARV. Okay. Okay. So another way of saying it would be you take your after repair, you multiply it times 0.7, and then you subtract out your cost of repairs, correct? Correct. Same way to get to that. They're in the same number. Cool.

And yeah, and that's why it makes sense. Like, you know, on a property, like if I'm going to go in my area, my average purchase prices, you know, I don't know, let's say $100,000 after repair value. And I would do 70% on that. And then let's say it needed $20,000 with a work. You know, that might work out okay. But now let's say that after repair value was $50,000. 70% of $50,000 leaves no room for spread.

Oh, real. Now you've got to use the $65 or the $6. 60% rule. Exactly. Yep. And just the same, 70% is a little tight on 100. I've always said that if you're over 125, you're okay at 70% typically all day long, unless you know, you make some major other mistake.

Yeah. But typically if you use a 70% rule and your exit values 125 and above, you're okay. Now, again, if you're going to get into a $2 million, then you can't use the 75 or the 80% rule. You just can't. But if you're in that 300 to 400,000, you can buy if you're good enough, you can buy it 80 cents on the dollar and still make a decent profit if you're doing enough quantity. Yeah.

And you have the right teams. Right on. Right on. Again, those rules are valuable, but they're not the, okay, yes, I'm going to buy because it hits the 75% rule. It's no, it hits the 75% rule. So check box one. Now I want to check my cash on cash, check box two. Now I want to check my internal rate of return.

I want to check all of these math figures and make sure they're all hitting my targets. right on. All right. Well, number five, it's about leverage. What's the, what's the, using financial leverage wisely. A lot of people are going to want to use leverage, of course, but you have to use it responsibly. If you over leverage, I see so many investors getting themselves in trouble. I'm just helping somebody on BP who made a loan to somebody. I will keep the names off for privacy purposes, of course. They made a loan in third position to a rehab, who took down an acquisition with a hard money loan, took a large second out probably to finalize the acquisition. So he's got 100% financing. Then he'd take a third loan out from this poor guy to probably do his rehab. And now the house is sitting there. He's upside down.

And this guy's in trouble. So this investor over leveraged. And you just can't do that. So you have to use leverage responsibly. Yeah. And when you say leverage, you're essentially talking about loans. right? I mean, like, this is the idea of getting a mortgage on something and not going crazy with the mortgages, right?

Correct. Yeah. Leverage is borrowing money. And borrowing money can be from conventional financing through banks. You can go private money, people you know, accountants, family, friends who don't have time to flip, don't want to flip and want other options other than the stock market so they can invest in your projects. Those are private money lenders. And then you can go as far as hard money lenders where that's their business is to make loans to rehabbers. and they're going to charge more interest, they're going to charge points and fees. It's going to be more expensive. And there lies the problem. So if you're going to utilize hard money lenders, make sure that you have enough spread and that you get in and out quick because time's your enemy.

Yeah. Hey, Will, so you made a million bucks on this flip. And we're talking about leverage. I think a question that a lot of people are wondering, you know, you probably have had some cash, you know, sitting around. Now, are you still going out there and, finding lenders to help you finance your projects or are you paying cash for them now? You know, what's the advantage to both for you?

I am absolutely and still utilizing private money lenders to leverage every one of my deals. So when I first started, I actually leveraged 100% of the acquisition and almost 100% of my rehab on my first California flip that I did. But I got it at such a great deal. and in the market was so perfect in the timing, it was safe. So I had a huge amount of equity, how I bought it, and I had buyers lined up when I sold it. So it was safe.

As I built up capital, then I borrowed money from private money lenders and combined that with my own money so that I can keep that loan to value low and keep those lenders safe. Makes sense. Yeah, I love it. One thing that illustrates a lot that I say a lot,

I think it's in like, I say it all the time, but the idea that like creative investing is not about being broke, right? Like trying to to get loans and like, you know, I wrote that book on no and low money down, right? There's my plug. But so in that book, shameless. I know, shameless. A lot of people like look at that. They think it's like, you know, it's that concept of creative investing is for people who are broke or completely out of money or, you know, like late night TV. I got, you know, I got no life and this is going to make me millions of dollars. But like I like to say, creative investing is not about that. In fact, the more sophisticated you become, the more likely you are to use leverage wisely, like you are, even though you might

be able to afford to be able to flip houses without, you still do it because it enables you to do more houses and if you expand your business. That's correct. I also want to point out that if you're in this business long enough, even the best of us are going to have projects where we've made mistakes. I make mistakes every day. So don't think that just because I have a decades plus worth of experience, I don't make mistakes. I do. I've lost money on deals. Quite recently, I'm going to have a deal that's going to be closing. It's in escrow. I'm going to lose six figures on the project.

That's pretty sad. Wow. It's frustrating, but you've got to take your licks. The thing is, is that I have leverage on these properties, and every single lender on these projects is getting paid back 100% their principal and 100% of every interest they were promised. And I think that's a vital importance to point out. If you don't take care of your investors, you're not going to be in business.

for too much longer. You're a great bad name for yourself. Hey, Will. And I'm guessing you make it very clear to your lenders that you're taking a six-figure loss and they are getting every dollar back to remind them that, you know, you know what, despite the fact that I'm bleeding through the pants, you guys are going to be taking care of and I'm assuming they're going to come and give you money again for the next one, right? They are well aware of it already. They already know my position. They know the troubles I've had on this property. And I've had pretty much, everything that can possibly go wrong, go wrong with this property, which is hence why I'm losing so much, but they're well aware of it. Yeah, I want to say that I just banked private lenders

for life. Treat lenders like that. And they know you're taking it in the shorts, six figures, and they're getting all their money and they made money. They made more than they even anticipated because it went longer. So they even made even more interest. They're going to be stoked as all help. Right on. Yeah. That's so important. I mean, that goes to like ties into the reputation thing. I mean, just how much your reputation matters. And I mean, like, especially like during the real estate crash. And I know like life was tough for a lot of people and a lot of investors lost money. Maybe people listening here, you know, so I'm not saying like you're a terrible person. But those people like who despite losing money, make sure that

everyone gets paid off. I mean, it just builds your reputation in such a way that is just very powerful. So I guess that's a bit of encouragement for people listening is, you know, do what you say you're going to do and do it right every time. No matter whether you win or lose or not, just make sure that everybody who gives you money wins. Yeah, don't screw those people over for sure. And, you know, it's such a small industry. I mean, there's millions of people in it, but word spreads fast. I mean, real estate is local.

If Will screws over his local lenders, you know, every, all the local lenders are going to know that he screwed him over and it's a wrap. I mean, he's not going to have access to cash anymore. So that's right. My reputation is everything. And I've, you know, spent decades building it. why would I want to ruin it over, you know, screwing somebody out of a hundred grand? It's not going to do it.

So. And the same goes to what you got to do. Same goes for a new investor. You know, I don't get to press upon this enough. But the new guys who kind of come out and are like, hey, you know, I'm going to be a wholesaler. I'm going to try this and I'm going to do that. And like, you know, it's okay if I kind of screw up a few times and like, you know, burn a few people or steal deals or whatever it is.

Like, that will destroy you. It may work once. but over the long term, that's not going to work out. If you do crappy work, you name it, like, you know, anything you do follows you. The contractors who aren't quality aren't getting recommended. The investors are screwing up, aren't, you know, getting referrals aren't working with other people because they just, you know, you can't screw people over. Your reputation means everything in this business. Sure. No, no. Right on. Most investors spend more time chasing deals than reviewing their insurance.

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All right, number six, time. Yeah, time is your enemy. I've already referenced that several times already on this podcast, but you have to stay on track and make sure that your deal is flowing properly. If you don't, you're losing, you're eating up your profits. So every day that goes by that you waste, you're having taxes, insurance, utility, interest, maintenance, et cetera, et cetera. And these things add up real fast. So your time is your enemy. So when you need to get that acquisition, the day you close, you should already have the dumpster there, already locked and loaded, ready to go.

Get your dumpster, your crew in there to demo out, everything you're going to demo, and start moving forward. And just move forward, move forward. You're going to have some setbacks. That's going to happen. but where you have setbacks, you try and make up in other spots and catch up here. You know, maybe the drywall team was going to have three guys hanging drywall, and instead you need to save a few days, so you have them bring in five. You know, I'm trying to bang it out extra fast.

So wherever you can save that time, save it. Yeah, you know, I think one of the biggest reasons that new flippers screw up is they failed to account for the time value of money. And, you know, it is one of the reasons we built the flipping calculator on, on Bigger Pock. People could check out at biggerpock.com slash flipping calc. But yeah, I mean, you know, I think people see these TV shows and they're like, yeah, okay, well, this isn't that hard. We just go and, you know, buy it for X, make repairs and suddenly sell it for Y. What are these holding costs? You know, why would I have to think about the cost of a loan over time, the cost of utilities,

keeping the electric on, all these things? Those are the things that you don't think about that just kind of suck you dry, aren't they? No doubt. And a lot of those shows, they don't go into that fine line detail. They make everything look glamorous and easy and everything's, you know, dramatic. They got to argue with their contractor and all that BS. But when it's all said and done, they leave out a lot of the important factors that go into managing rehab. And that's one of them. Yeah. One more thing just to add to that is, you know, this is something that I've been hit with, you probably been hit with as well. When a flip goes so long, especially in a market that's changing, you know, like the market doesn't change in a positive way, if it changes in a down way,

Like the longer your flip goes, the more uncertainty you have. You know, if it takes you a year to flip a house, a lot can happen to a market in a year, and it's not always a good thing. Maybe you get lucky in that market goes up, but maybe not. Right. No, you're absolutely right. And that is a huge factor. And that's why if you need to know your market, so you need to know where your market's going.

And if you know that there is a possibility that in six months, you could have a market correction, it could change from going up to down or from up to flat or from flat to down. You need to know that. and so that you know that you get out. And the other thing is, is in price, knowing to price your property right. And if you're having trouble selling it, it's better for you to lower that price from 300 to 280 instead of 300 to 295. Go ahead and take that $15,000 loss right off the back because if you sell it, you know,

a few days after you lower the price, the time you save will eat up a lot of that $15,000 loss. And supposed to drop in it $5,000, then another $5,000. then another 5,000. Now you're back to that 285, and yet you've wasted another month and a half. Yep. I did that once on a house. I started at 170, went to 165, 60, 55, 55, 55, 50, 45, and sold it at 25. And I just dropped it to 140 or one, you know, like from the 170. I probably would actually sold it there, but I let the market just kept going down. And I just, I was, I dropped into 125. You had multiple offers. Exactly. Yeah, been there, been there for sure. We all have, and it's one of those things, so others listening to this podcast can learn from it and hopefully not repeat our mistakes. Yeah.

Yep, there you go. Right on. All right. Next one. Number seven. Number seven, know each phase the renovation project and in which order things should be completed. I don't know how many times I've walked into another rehab project and seeing things going on. I'm like, why are they doing this when this isn't even done?

So, and this is only going to come from experience. So if you're brand new, you're really not going to know what order to do things in. So you're going to have to rely on contractors who are experienced to tell you that. And if you don't believe somebody, then get a second opinion. But make sure that you stay in line and do things in the proper order. I mean, it's terrible if you go in there and you put in your cabinetry and your flooring and you do that before you've gone and painted all the walls, because now you've got to mask everything off.

I'm not saying you're not going to ever have to mask because you will. But what I'm saying is you have a nice, clean palette. It's so easy to just prime the whole house be done. Then you can come in and set in your cabinetry and then you can do your fine line painting after. It's just those simple processes to do in the right order. It saves you time and it saves you money. Plus, if you do things in the wrong order, you might end up having to rip something out and then wait. That's awesome advice.

Yeah. Yeah, I don't think we've actually talked about that in 120 shows. The order of things. order, yeah. It does matter. So yeah, great, great bit of feedback. Well, and if anyone, if people don't know the order, like you said, you know, ask another contractor or just jump on bigger pockets. Hey, I've got this rehab. This is, you know, I've got these three or four subs that I'm trying to figure out how to coordinate. What should I do? And people will jump in and help you out, you know, so definitely don't hesitate to utilize the resource. No question. Yeah, the BP forums are a viable

resource for that. Great, great, great. All right, moving on. Number eight. Number eight, dealing with contractors and subs can be difficult, so you have to know how to manage them efficiently and productively. And this is something that I am not very good at, so Will tell me how to become better at it. Yeah, how does anyone do that? You know, that's a good question. Even today, I have a project in Beverly Hills ongoing, and there's just always something. We talk to the general contractor on here who has subbed out to a stucco company. And the stucco company, we were supposed to put stucco in this portion.

of the house and there's going to be some wood facia in another portion by the entry. So we told him, okay, here's what we're due. Told it the general contractor. He's supposed to pass that on. Supposedly he has. I'm there yesterday and the employees of the stucco company are coming up asking, where is the wood going? Where is it stop?

Where does the stucco start? I'm like, man, this is stuff I've already gone over the GC with. He should have gone over the stucco. I appreciate them asking me instead of just doing what they think. so by all means ask but the point is is that now I've got to step in and make sure this is being managed properly and that's frustrating but it's part of your job

so get in there and do it make sure that you're on the job site and if you're not on the job site make sure you have a project manager on the job site every day because if you don't things are going to get done these subs are going to do whatever they think is best and it might not be correct

so I mean and I think this is why we always talk about rehabbing a property flipping a house is a job. This is not, you know, this is not something you can do while, you know, working in nine to five, four hour work week. Yeah, what? Oh, yeah, I'm going to go flip houses for, you know, I mean, you could do live in, right? I mean, that's, but let me, let me throw in one caveat with that, Josh. You can have a nine to five and flip houses, but you're going to do it with a partner. So you're, you're probably the money guy. No, I'm saying you can't personally do it by yourself. You're right. You can. It's,

just your timelines are going to be crazy. If it's just night and weekends, I mean, you have people that you're trusting that you probably aren't ready to trust, unless you've been doing this a long time, you know, starting out and saying, hey, I'm going to flip a house just for fun on the side. I think we'd probably all caution you against, wouldn't we? I agree. I couldn't agree more. And then you said they live in the house while I flip it and fix it and all that stuff. I guess great idea if you're living there yourself and so you're getting some use out of it. And if you live there for two of the, you know, five years, you sell it, you get that big, huge tax deduction from that to avoid capital gains. However, you're talking about doing one flip very slowly,

and you're losing the time value of money. Rather than do that and trying to do everything yourself and swing this hammer and hang this drywall so you can save $1,000, spend the $1,000, get in and out an extra three weeks or four weeks or three months faster. I don't know how many times I've heard of guys saying, well, I did it. I did all the work myself. I saved $10,000. Yeah, but it took you nine months to finish the project. What would have took me three? In those other six months, I could have flipped three more houses. So they've lost money. Hold on. And I hear where you're coming from, but let me stand up and defend those guys. Those guys probably don't have the $10,000 to hire the guy to do the job for them or they may just want to not, they may not want to be flipping three or four houses at once.

and, you know, they may want to be casual. Like, you know, at the end of the day, there's no one correct path, right? I don't ever want to be a full-time flipper like you. Not there's anything wrong with it. I think it's great. I would love that I could do it. It's not something that I, that's not me, right? So, you know, I may want to be flipping one at a time while I'm in it and kind of working on it.

So, you know, I think its situation is going to be different. Yeah, there's no right or wrong answer here. It's a matter of what do you want. Do you want to just do this on a casual basis and flip one house a year? that's fine, whatever floats your boat. But if you want to run a business and you want to make it profitable and you don't have to flip three houses at a time, what I'm saying is flip one house at a time, but do it in three months instead of nine, then go to the next house and flip that one in three months and go to the next house. That way you're doing four a year instead of one a year.

That's what I'm saying. So you have to make the decision. Do you want to flip houses and make money? Is that your desire? Then make it a business and treat it like a business. I love that. I think that a huge distinction there. And I talk a lot about that about the business thing on my blog post, every blog post I talk about business. But, and a lot of it's just to the lessons I've learned. Like back on, what was it, show 120? I told my story of how I bought that, that huge house that I started at 170 and dropped the price down to 125.

I fixed, I flipped that house myself. My wife and I did all the labor ourselves. And, you know, I could have probably hired contractors to go in and do that entire flip could have been done much better than I could have done it, you know, probably and they would have been done in a month and a half, two months or whatever, versus me taking a year to fix it up. And then the market changed and then all the drama happened. And, you know, it was two years of my life that I lost on that property. And in the end, I lost 10 grand in cash. And just because I didn't treat it like a business. That was just, you know, it was my hobby of flipping a house. That'd be fun. I

watched the TV shows. It didn't work out. So anyway, I like that story because it was tragic. But I'm not, I like that story because you lost and no. No, just kidding. That's awful. It's awful. I'm a terrible person. That story will save thousands of people, thousands of dollars on you. That's why I tell it all the time because I know that it sucks and it happens. But all right, moving on. Number nine. Number nine, yeah. Put your rehab money in all the right places and know where you can save and where you can't skimp.

How do you know that? How do you know where you can save and where you shouldn't? So it's pretty common knowledge in our industry to know that the best money is spent in kitchens and bathrooms, particularly the master bathroom. But kitchens are huge. If you redo kitchens, you're almost can't lose. When you redo kitchens and baths, you're adding major value. Painting is a huge thing.

Fresh coat of paint and fresh flooring is always a huge bonus and is a great spot to invest some money because you're going to get your capital back and likely with return. The other thing is curb appeal. Front yard, backyard, landscaping, making the front entry look nice. That stuff helps sell houses and putting that little bit money in that curb appeal goes a long way. So it not only does it add value to the house, but it helps it sell it quicker. And that's value to you because times your enemy. Yeah. Yeah.

And that's true for, I think, for landlords as well. I mean, people got rental properties. Like, there's little things that you can do that make such a huge impact. Like, I went to Home Depot the other day to buy a front door for the property I'm working on. And, you know, picked out the front door. And I had a choice between the $307 one that had like the Knights Oval round glass in the middle and it looked really, really good. Or the $150 one, which was just flat. flat, right? With no, nothing. And so like for an extra 150 bucks, I mean, you know, it's a big chunk of money, but that's one of the things. That's the first thing a tenant will see. If I was selling the house, it'd be the first thing that a buyer would see. When I go to sell it someday, because it's kind of a long term flip. I'm going to sell it in five years from now, hopefully. You know, I won't have to fix, flip, you know, replace the door at that point. It's already set for that. So there's those little things that like that, that curb appeal or that help a property stand out. Yeah, sure. Even if you got five bucks a more month and rent because of that door, you know, the life of that. property you've made out and when you resell it maybe you're going to get a few bucks more for it so it's money well spent in that curb view so you're talking about places to spend money where shouldn't

they spend money money where did novice flippers tend to put money where they go above and beyond and they may not need to you know it's not so much going above and beyond of course that is a mistake i don't see that as much like if you're in an area where it's a low-end houses and none of the other houses have granite countertops, then you shouldn't be putting granite countertops in either, unless you got some smoking deal where you got some, you know, leftover slabs and you were able to do it for, you know, a few bucks more than what it would have cost for tile or, or for mica or something. That's okay. Where I'm talking about where most investor rehabers make mistakes is in shoddy work. I'll go in and I'll look at this. I'm like, what the hell were they

thinking. And it's just, it just stands out like a sore thumb. So when they're, it's, what they were doing is they were trying to cut corners. They're trying to cut corners here and they've left this just god awful thing. And that shows to buyers. So when they walk through and they see that, I'm like, well, this looks pretty crappy. I wonder what else they skimped on. And when once the buyer starts thinking that, you might have probably already lost it. Yeah. Yeah. A good example of that. I'll just, again, throw another example in here. The house I'm working on right now, the one of the walls, like the previous owner, somebody tried to patch a bunch of holes, probably, you know, like nail holes that it is, took spackling and smackled it all,

speckled all over the wall. It looked terrible. You know, like, you know, some people might take a rattle can and quickly cover it over or, you know, just leave it and just paint it and hope nobody notices. But, you know, those things stand out, I think it's like a little thing. But to do it right and not try to skimp on, you know, something like that, I think just goes a long way. It costs me an extra few bucks. But in the end, I think it'll make a big difference.

Yeah, exactly. It's those little things, too. Nothing bothers me more than walking into a freshly rehabbed house and I look down at an electrical outlet and it's got the old, you know, ivory looking stuff instead of clean white. Or it's got a big gap between the thing you can see through the wall because they didn't drywall and all the way down far enough. The little stuff like that is just doesn't cost you much to fix. And yet it makes such an impact to some to buyers. Right on. The other thing I want to point out is the layout of a house.

So many times I've walked into a house. and just the layout or the kitchen was confined and it sucked. And all it took was opening up a wall or, you know, getting rid of this doorway and opening this doorway or moving this wall, making the flow better. When you change the flow of a house from a bad flow to a good flow or enlarging the kitchen by opening up a wall or taking down a whole wall so the kitchen is kitchen and family room are all like in one big room now because that's hugely popular today, that adds so much value and it's demo work. It's it's nothing. The cost are minute compared to what you get.

So some of the biggest things that you can do in a rehab project are fixing bad, bad rooms, bad layouts, bad design. That's great. That's great. Good stuff, Will. All right. Final point here. Number 10, the big one. A big one. Yeah. Well, you know the same. You make your money when you buy, but you get paid when you sell. So pricing, staging, marketing and having the right agent is crucial for a quick and profitable sell. And it just goes without saying if you're in a nice area and you're doing a higher end home, if you're not staging it, you're not going to get full price for that property. And it's just not going to sell us quick.

So staging is key in a majority of those houses. I'm not saying you need to stage every single house because there's the 1100 square foot three bedroom two bath, cookie cutter. Everyone already knows. Here's a living room. here's a diner room. No big deal. You don't need to stage that. It does help, though, to throw in some towels, some soap dishes, make it look, you know, a flour in the kitchen, stuff that doesn't cost you much at all. That's just that light staging. Highly recommend doing that.

What I like to do a lot on those properties, I even do them on rentals occasionally just to make a property look nice there. I'll go to like Ross or Marshalls and they always have curtains you can buy for like $2. And they're like nice curtains, but they're like, you know, rejected from bedbath and beyond or whatever. Anyway, I'll still get like six or seven panels. of these curtains and go up and put them in like the living room. I think curtains will soften up a room like almost better than anything else that I can think of. Yeah, and it also cuts down on your echo, which helps to. Exactly. Yeah, because you walk through an empty house and to echo, it just, it makes people think cold and not inviting. Yeah, I love the curtain thing. One more tip that I've done

that worked really well for me. I went to like, you know those rental places you can go rent furniture, like rent to own furniture places and like generally lower income people use. So I went to them and just said, hey, I just want to get this better or this living room set delivered to the house. And he's like, okay, no problem. So I just rented it for two months or whatever it was. And they picked it up. I mean, they delivered there, set it all up, an entire living room and dining room set and brought it back. And the whole thing cost me, I think, $75 a month or something like that for it for all that furniture? Yeah, for all of it. Yeah, I think it might have been on top to say a total a month. Yeah, fantastic. And it cost me hardly nothing. That house sold in like a week

it was the fastest I've ever done because it just looks so good. Exactly. That's great. That's great. Awesome. Awesome. All right, well, listen, I mean, these have been some really great tips. What final, you know, words do you have for those people who, you know, might be thinking

about jumping into the flipping space? You know, what pearls do you have to offer here? And then we'll jump into our famous four. Okay. I'd say that a lot of people struggle with a very common feeling, and that's fear. I'm scared to do this or I might lose money or don't know if I can do it. And they allow fear to stop them. And once you do that, you've already lost.

So you can't be scared to fail. You're going to fail. And it's, you know, try, try again. Somebody knocks you down. You get right back up and you keep on fighting. So you've got to get out there and take a swing. Because if you don't, you'll never know. And in my book, you've already lost.

So you really got to just get out there. But don't go out there and wing it. Have a plan. create a plan. And if you can't do that on your own, get some help. You've got a ton of people in bigger pockets that are wanting to help you. Yeah, I love it. Awesome advice, man. Really, really good. Cool. Cool. All right, let's move on to the famous four. All right, the famous four. These questions we ask everybody, and we asked you last time back on the first time you were on the show. But let's see if anything changed. So question number one, what is your favorite real estate book?

Oh, God, I forgot all these questions, and I am unprepared. Or do you have a recommendation, I should say, but you don't have to remember your favorite, but do you have a good recommendation of a real estate book? My favorite real estate book. Well, you know, there's always the cliche Robert Kiyosaki, but more so I recommend that they don't just do the first one, rich dad, poor dad. I recommend that they get into the third one, which is cash flow quadrant. I think it really goes into a lot more detail and really sets your mind on how to think

like a business owner instead of an employee. And once you get going on that, it really helps you in your business, particularly when you're starting out. So I would highly recommend that. You know, what's funny about that is, like, I read, you know, Cashful Quadrant back right after I read Richard that port ad. And I didn't get it. I mean, I thought it was fine. But like, I never read it again. I didn't really care about it that much.

I mean, it was fine. It was a book. But then I was talking to somebody the last week on the phone. And I spent an hour talking to this guy, I know a good friend of my name Jaron. And in the process, I realized everything I was saying was from cash flow. quadrant. I was talking about the four, you know, quadrants. And all of a sudden, it clicked in my head in a weird way, like seven years after reading it the first time. All of a sudden I was like, I get it. And now like I'm like, I'm going to pick that up as on my next, when I finish the

current book I'm on. I'm going to read that again because now it actually makes sense to me. Maybe I wasn't prepared at the time or whatever. So anyway, I, yeah, I get that. It's good that you took it in and you actually applied it without even realizing it. I think idea. I think I just never realized like, like, yeah, some books are just like that. you just read them and internally you process them and it just wasn't as flash as rich dad poor dad but I think it's just as important so cool nice nice all right what about uh what about what about you I mean should I just disappear I mean should I'm take your question what about business why don't you just stuff it let me talk here busser you stuff it all right but okay will

now now boys business books brand you know Brandon's getting greedy these days I am I'll take it all business book what is what is oh we're you're not going to answer until he says it. Are you guys in cahoots? We are in cahoots. Is that what's going on here? Will, what about business books? Oh, business books.

Brandon, why don't you ask again? Maybe he'll answer it. Yeah, yeah. Hey, Brandon, what do you recommend for business books? Ah, you know. All right. It's been fun. It's been nice having you on the show.

Until next time, I'm signing off. Will, business books. I'd probably go back to what I recommended earlier during the show is the Trump's style negotiations by Ross. I think that is, doesn't matter what business you're in, if you can negotiate, they're going to be a good business. That's great. That's great. What about hobbies? What are we doing these days for fun? You've got your fam. What else you got going on? Still playing ball, still play softball. I've got my travel ball team. We just got back from Vegas.

We won that tournament. I just played last night in my league. We won the championship there. So I'm still doing that. I love that. That's my extra. and then the balance is, you know, with my kids, my son plays ball as well, so I'm coaching him. He's got a game today, last game the season before playoffs, so it keeps me really busy with that. So between me doing that and then spending time with my kids and the rest is with fam, so going out to dinner, going on a movie. Right now. Going out on the boat.

Go Mets. I can't concur on you with that, but okay, I'll let you have. Go Mets! All right. Final question. What do you believe, Will, sets apart successful real estate investors from those who give up, fail, or never get started? I would say the determination to succeed separates. Those that say, no matter what, I'm going to make this happen, I'm going to make this work, and they go out and do it, and they apply it in the real world.

They're the ones that succeed. You see the people on BP, the ones that have been there for years, that's not just by accident. it's because they made a decision to succeed and they went out and implemented it and did it. And you see a lot of people that were on there and then they're gone. It's because they didn't have that same commitment. So you've got to make that commitment to yourself. And it's not to anyone else. It's to yourself.

Hey, Will. I love it. You've been on bigger pockets for a long time and this is not part of the famous for, but, you know, have you noticed? I mean, clearly you've noticed the staying power typically means somebody on, you know, who's been around BP for a long time. and, you know, they're probably still in the biz for the most part. As one of the top posters, and we actually just put out an article where I believe you were one of the folks interviewed, and we had talked about some of our top users of the site, what tips would you have really quick for anyone listening on how bigger pockets can help them,

not just kind of be successful up front, but really, you know, maintain some kind of staying power? Well, you have to realize that it's a commitment of time. So you can't expect to get under your pockets, create account, make a post, make a profile, make one post or two, read a few posts, and be done. It's not going to happen. You have to make the commitment knowing that when you log in and you make that profile, you're logging in for years to come. And if you've got to stay active, you've got to be on the site and not just reading, but engaging the community. You have to make posts. By making posts and asking questions or answering other people's questions, you're creating an expose.

for yourself and you're building your credibility. That can only be done over time. You can have a great answer to a question and it could be exactly right. If you don't follow that up and do that and repeat that, your credibility hasn't really gained much and your exposure hasn't gained any. So you've got to make that commitment and spend the time on bare pockets and stay active. From me doing that has gotten me friends, private investors, business partners, you name it.

And it's just, it's from my commitment to staying on BP actively. It doesn't have to be every day, even though I'm on bigger pockets almost every day. But at least once a week, you've got to be on there. So make that commitment to get on there and stay on there. Awesome. Awesome, man. Hey, so where can people find more information about you besides obviously bigger pockets? Other than bigger pockets, you can go to my website at bernard enterprises.com.

That's B-A-R-N-R-N-R-D. Enterprises is spelled out in plural.com. Awesome, man. Hey, listen, thanks so much for coming back. We really appreciate it. Lots of good advice, lots of good feedback, and much success to you going forward. Thank you, Josh. If I may, one more thing, the listeners may want me to talk about this. The last time we were on in the podcast, which is a couple years ago, we were talking about my occupants from hell. Oh, yeah.

And I just want to let the listeners know that a couple years later, I know one of the members. I forget his name. He had a son born basically the same day I closed on that property. His son is several three or four years old, four years old now, and this still is ongoing. I have a court date later this month. So should finally wrap it up. Hopefully I win this may, once I do. I can start the eviction process. But it is still ongoing. And what a nightmare. I mean, you can't imagine how many things can possibly go wrong have. And the thing is, this goes back to what I said earlier. I had a private investor. second position on this property. He was a bigger pockets member as well. And I borrowed $80,000 from

him with the expectation of throwing out in the rehab and getting it done. And I was never able to do it. He extended the loan, extended the loan, extended the loan. And finally, it was so long. And graciously, he did that. But at the end of the day, I just took profits from another property, paid him off, all his principal, all his interest. I lost a lot of money on that. But the key was that paid him back. And so he's happy. And, you know, he made money. and I will eventually hopefully maybe get my money back. Who knows? Remains to be seen. Well, hopefully.

Well, if people don't know what we're talking about there, this will just give me a plug, we'll end it with. Go back and listen to the Will's first show. I mean, you'll learn a ton about Will's story where he came from, how he got started. And that is at biggerpockets.com slash show 32. Again, biggerpockets.com slash show 32 for that one. But of course, today, this is the BiggerPockets show 130, which you can get at biggerpockets.com slash show 130. We'll have links there and you can get in touch with Will asking questions. pick his brain, all that right there in the show notes in the comments section. So with that,

Josh, you want to take us out? Will, thanks so much for being on board once again. Thanks, guys. That was fun. Thanks, Will. Thank you. All right, guys, that was Will Bernard. Thanks again to Will for some amazing tips, some really, really good advice. We definitely appreciate it. And of course, congrats on that million dollar flip. Not a lot of people can say they've gone and flipped a million dollar property. So big props to Will on that. Otherwise, guys, guys, guys, thanks for listening. Please be sure to leave us ratings and reviews on iTunes. That is really helpful to us. We really appreciate it when you do. Otherwise, get in there, get together with

guys like Will, connect with him, learn from him, partner with him. The way you do that, get involved in our forums. It's free. It costs you nothing. And all you got to do is devote some time. Commit yourself. Say, I'm going to spend five minutes a day. I'm going to spend an hour a week, jumping in, helping people out, getting involved in the conversation. By doing that, you build up credibility within the community. People who don't know you get to know that you know what you're talking about and are likely to want to work with you. So jump in there, make moves, make it happen, get involved.

And otherwise, if you're not already, you know, please follow us on Facebook on Twitter, on Gplus, on LinkedIn, Pinterest. We even have an Instagram account. Get out there. Support bigger pockets by following us. and help share what we've got. Share our content, share our community through these social media platforms. We do appreciate it. That's all I got for you, man. One last happy birthday to you before we go, Brandon. Thank you. I see the wrinkles, man. I mean, in the last like hour plus or minus,

I mean, you're really starting to look haggard. Yeah, I was going to go get my mothballs out of storage and put on some penny loafers. Excellent. Excellent. You just pissed off another 10,000 people. Nicely done. No problem. Happy birthday. birthday, my friend. Thank you. All right, guys. This is Josh Dorkin. Signing off. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, without all the hype, you're in the right place. Be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from BiggerPockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. Thank you all for listening to the Bigger.

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