BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 181: Finding Deals & Scaling in a Competitive Market with Lauren Hardy

Episode Date: June 30, 2016

Let’s be honest: It can be tough to find a great deal in today’s competitive real estate market. If you find yourself in that situation, you are going to love today’s show! Today we hear from Lauren Hardy, a house flipper and wholesaler in the highly competitive Southern California market who overcame a rough beginning to scale her business to several deals a month. You’ll love Lauren’s honesty about quitting her job too early and her straightforward approach to finding deals, evaluating a market, and creating systems that allow her to work and live a full life. And grab some scratch paper — this is definitely one show you are going to want to take some notes on! In This Episode We Cover: What to do when you hail from an expensive location How Lauren got started in real estate Her very first deal Why she loves condos Things to consider when investing in condos How she quit her job — and failed How she spent $25,000 — and got no deals Lauren’s tweaks to her direct mail marketing How she scaled to 2 to 3 deals a month How Lauren’s business works How she uses Podio to make her processes easier How she estimates rehab costs What exactly cash for keys is Flipping shows vs. flipping in real life How she funds her deals with hard money and private money lenders Where is she going with her business How many hours she works in a week And SO much more! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Webinar ListSource REISource Google Earth Darren Daily BiggerPockets Udemy Course Books Mentioned in this Show Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki Tax Strategies for the Savvy Real Estate Investor by Amanda Han Building Wealth One House at a Time, Updated and Expanded by John Schaub The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy The Entrepreneur Roller Coaster by Darren Hardy Tweetable Topics: “I love what I do, so it doesn’t feel like work.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Lauren Lauren’s BiggerPockets Profile Lauren’s Facebook Profile Lauren’s Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 181. Maybe at six months, that wouldn't have been smart to go, okay, Lauren, this is not working for you. You need to change something. But instead, I waited all the way to nine months. But, you know, I'm not a quitter. 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. House to the Bigger Pockets podcast here with my co-host, Mr. Brandon Turner. What's up, man? Not much. It's been a good week. It's been a good real estate week this week.

Not that I bought anything, but I just hired a full-time contractor in-house. Yeah, that's a big step. It's you fancy pants. I know. I got tired of having a good estate week. contractor, you got your racquetball partner kicking your butt. We don't want to talk about that. That was really fun, by the way.

I caught Brandon in the car because he was late for meeting, and his record ball partner was driving him around. It was a rough morning. I think I won one game and he won nine, eight. Yeah, he won eight. And the one that I won, I only beat him by one point. By the way, he's like 83 years old. Okay, he's like 43.

He listens to the show, though, and he's an interesting. investors. So, you know, now he's going to be mad at you for 20s 83. I give him crap on the phone. That's, you did. All right. Anyway, so, yeah. It's more crap to you than it is to him, which is awesome. Yeah, I just can't beat him. That's great.

Anyway, so what's me with you? You know, just same old stuff, man. Working on building out, I spoke at this conference yesterday for a National Association of Realtors up in Boulder talking about podcasting of all things to real estate agents, which was, it was interesting, you know, getting. It's always, always need to talk to a new group of people about something that we're passionate about. So that was kind of fun. Nice. Nice.

Did you mess up at all? How'd your speech go? Yeah, I started crying. Okay, good. Yeah, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was bad. No, it was great. I mean, you know, what can you're natural? Look, I, you know, even if I screw up, I could care less.

I wouldn't know any difference. There you go. All right. Well, speaking of having a good week, this is a great episode today. I'm excited. I introduce everyone to Lauren. She's awesome. And she is a flipper and a wholesaler. It is a little wholesaling. But most of we talk about flipping today in Southern California, crazy competitive markets. So if you guys are listening to this and you're having a hard time finding deals or you're in a competitive market where it's really, really hot, you're going to love this year to get a ton out of it today.

Yeah, she's got some interesting strategies that are working for her. And, you know, they certainly can work in other markets, but definitively for those tougher markets, I pay attention. Yeah, there we go. But before we get to that, We should probably cover. Let's get to today's quick tip. Today's quick tip is, I don't know if you guys are aware of this, but actually, if you recall a few months back, we released a digital version of the book on tax strategies for the savvy real estate investor.

And about a month ago or three weeks ago, we actually finally released the physical version of it. So if you've been waiting for the physical version of that book, you can get it by going to biggerpockets.com forward slash tax book or get it on Amazon. Perfect. Cool. Before we move forward, guys, if you're regular listeners to the show, please do. girls. Did I say

guys, just guys? Well, guys was all inclusive. Guys and gals. Guys and gals. Come on. We're a PC company here. I apology. I apologize. I apologize. I don't speaky very well. I have a tough time. So please jump

on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play Store, wherever you're listening to the show and do leave us a rating review. Those do help us out. We do appreciate it. So leave us some feedback. Also, if you are also looking to learn, you're listening to the podcast, you're here to learn and become a more successful investor, hear other people's stories. Another great way to do that outside of Bigger Pockets and our blog and everything else is our weekly webinar. We actually put on a webinar every week. We actually put on multiple

webinars a week, some for business users, others for just investors in general. And you should check out BiggerPockets.com slash webinar to find out what the next webinar is, and definitely show up and check it out because there's tons of great information there. There is. All right. Cool. There are two kinds of real estate investors, those who have reviewed their insurance, and those who think that they have. Most don't realize their coverage wasn't built for how they actually invest. Vacancy periods, rehabs, short-term rentals, or LLC held properties. These gaps surface only when filing claims. That's why investors work with NREG. They specialize exclusively in real estate investors, understanding portfolios, risk at scale, and cash.

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Why don't we dive in Lauren Hardy, real estate investor in Orange County, focusing on the Southern California area, rehabber, wholesale. Let's bring her in. All right, Lauren, welcome to the show. It's good to have you here. Hey, thanks for having me. Yeah, this should be fun talking about flipping houses, right? Is that right?

You flip houses, wholesaling, all that good stuff? Yes, I flip and I wholesale. Very cool. You're in the very inexpensive market of Southern California, Orange County, correct? Yes, yeah. I live in Orange County, which is in Southern California, and it is a pretty high-priced area. Right, right, awesome. And the reason I bring that up is because one of the chief complaints

chief issues that we hear from people about, you know, investing in certain markets is my market is too expensive to work in. You can never do deals in Southern California. You can't find a deal in New York City. You can't find a deal. Blah, blah, blah. So it's great to have somebody who is in one of those markets every time we do to say otherwise. So, you know, definitely excited to hear your story. And I guess the first and most obvious question is, you know, how did you get started in real estate? What was it that got you interested in real estate and how'd you get into it? Well, I always had interest in real estate. My father owned several rentals in a small town called Urexville, Ohio.

I was where he grew up. So he taught me a lot about, you know, owning rentals, just growing up. I, you know, I used to go to his rental homes in the summer. And he taught me how to like, you know, I don't know, just kind of the basics of property management and that sort of thing. So when it came time when I was graduating college, I knew that I wanted to get into real estate. I just didn't know exactly what I ended up falling into commercial real estate. And I was doing leasing in sales of like, say, retail buildings, office buildings, that sort of thing. And it was the recession.

So it really was not a great time to go into that industry, especially for myself. So I ended up taking more of a corporate real estate path. I worked for a development agent for subway restaurants, and I got to sell franchises and build new stores and negotiate leases, fun stuff like that. So that's my start in real estate. Cool. So tell us about your first deal.

What did that very first one look like? Are you talking my first flip project? Sure. Yeah, I mean like kind of about her transition. Yeah, transition from working the job. to having a business. Yeah. So I had a full-time job, you know, kind of typical eight to five schedule.

And I had my brother who was already in flipping, he was flipping for a few years. And he had taught me the business and taught me a little bit of the nuts and bolts and said, hey, if you find a deal, we'll work on it together. I'll find the money. We'll fund it. I'll do everything. We'll just split at 50. 50.

The only thing you need to do is figure out how to get deals. and find a property to buy that it has the right number. So I eventually did what I got started in direct mail. I learned a lot about direct mail through your website, bigger pockets. Nice. You guys, you didn't pay me to say that. That was an honest answer. I did a lot of research on direct mail.

I read blogs and listened to, you know, some of the podcasts that you guys had up and figured out, okay, I'll get like a basic absentee owner list and just start mailing letters and answering calls and making offers. And after a few months, I actually got a condo in Laguna, Nogel. And the numbers were really good. My brother said, yeah, let's do this. And it was at a time where the market was, we were right at the end of the recession, and the market just shot up.

So when we were holding this property, I think it went up like 10% in value just in the whole time. So it ended up being a great first deal. I thought, man, the sky's the limit. I had like, you know, all the hope in the world that this would just really work out for me. I ended up buying subsequently another deal right after that in Laguna Hills. It was another condo. I got started really with condos. And that one, again, market was going up.

It was just a crazy time. And I did really well. I had saved up enough money to quit my job. I made my salary on the side. So I thought, gosh, this is cool. I'm going to quit my job. Awesome. That's awesome. So, you know, you went from condos and now you're flipping houses, correct? Yeah, I'll still, hey, I'll still take a condo, though, especially in Orange County. Condos in Orange County are pretty expensive.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. So what's the difference? I mean, you know, we've talked a bit about buy and hold on condos and things to look out for, the dangers of HOAs and stuff like that. what are the considerations above and beyond those that you think about with a regular home that you need to think about differently when you're flipping a condo? Well, I really like condos, actually. A condo eliminates, as far as repairs go, it eliminates a lot of things that come up that are huge, big-ticket items. Like, you don't have to worry about a foundation, right?

You're not going to have to worry about a roof. You're not going to worry about exterior because the HOA handles the exterior. So with a condo, I usually just budget just interior, just everything within the walls, which is a lot less than when you're doing a single family property. Other things, though, that you would want to consider with a condo is when you're looking for comps and you're coming up with the after repair value, you really want to make sure you've got a model match condo. You want to look at the whole neighborhood. Say it's a condominium complex of 200 units, but maybe there's three or four. different models and maybe one plan A comes with a one car garage plan B has an attached two car garage and then plan C is a car port so you want to make sure that you're looking for garage

and like for example carport parking versus two car garage attached which is detached you want to make sure that the HOA isn't having any issues like it's not being sued or anything like that. You want to find out if the condominium complex is FHA approved, which would mean that the future buyer can get an FHA loan. And what else? What else am I thinking of with condos? Mainly it's just getting a model match unit upstairs versus downstairs. Yeah, I mean, a third floor condo is going to be worth a little bit more than one on the first floor that one on the third with a view is obviously going to be a little bit better than, you know, the exact same condo two or three floors down, right? Right. Sometimes.

and sometimes not. I just try to always find, though, comps that are exactly the same, and then if I can't, I just find what's the next best thing. But I find with condos that the most important would be garage. Really?

Interesting. So I've always told people, I mean, when people ask me about condos, I always tell them I've never invested in them, I've never flipped them. But it makes sense in my head that condos would be pretty cool to flip because you have a lot better idea of the ARV

because they're so similar. There's so many. Is that true? Am I just line to people? Okay. Yeah, I like that idea because like you said, you're only doing interiors. The ARV is easier to figure out. So as long as you can get the interior budget correctly, it's a little easier.

On the downside, though, condos tend to swing more with the economy. So when the economy drops, like it didn't know, 07-08, condos were the first ones that got hit. How do you prevent against that? Do you do anything? Just make sure you have enough margin or? Yeah, I just make sure I have enough of a margin. I mean, you know, you can't predict anything. And, you know, I think that if there was some sort of catastrophic market,

decline. And, you know, I think we would all kind of be in the same situation. But I do try to buy safe deals and deals where there's enough comps to support my numbers. So hopefully that won't happen. Yeah, yeah, hopefully. Yeah. Hey, quick question. You had talked about making sure there's no lawsuits or anything like that on the HOA. How would somebody find that information? You can call the HOA. Okay. So you would just call on and ask them, say, hey, do you guys have any outpending lawsuits? suits. Yeah, yeah. They'll let you know. It usually comes up sometime during the escrow process. If you didn't do your homework, you'll usually eventually find out about it while you're in escrow. Got it. Perfect. Yeah. Cool. Okay. So going back to your story, you quit your job. You did these

condos, quit your job. You're making all this money. You know, successful with these flipping. Did everything just go, I mean, good from then on out? Have you just been on an uphill climb since then? Yeah, no. Terrible, actually. Quitting my job was like it was not a great idea. Yeah, it did not go as planned. How so? Well, okay, so here I am. I was doing direct mail. That was the only way I knew how to get property.

I wasn't buying property any other way. I was mailing letters, getting calls. I was mailing letters in Orange County. And as the market was changing, the market was just super hot in Orange County. Hey, really quick. Just because you've talked about the recession a few times, There have been quite a few recessions in the past 25 years. I don't want to age you, but I kind of want to know what years we're talking about here for perspective.

To the recent last one. So you're talking, this is 2008. Yeah, this is, well, no, this is 2012. Okay, got it. Thank you. Like about, yeah, 2012. So right towards the end. Because you learned direct mail based on our podcast and website.

So it was most recent. It was around right, like 2012, probably, when you guys were. kind of kicking it off. Cool. Okay, so you started this condo thing, quit your job, things didn't go so well. So tell us about that. Well, so I quit my job. I had, it was at a time where I just had my second daughter and I was on maternity leave and I just didn't go back. I thought, well, hey, I have like a whole salary here. You know, for the next year, I felt let's, I'm going to, I'm going to gamble on this and see if I can make this business work for myself. So the primary way I was buying these properties, it was direct mail.

It was the only way I knew how to buy property at the time. I was mailing letters to absentee owners, you know, answering calls and making offers and hoping to get a yes. And what was happening in Orange County was that the market, you know, from this last recession, the market just shot up that year. And my seller calls in that year started changing. Keep in mind, I was mailing to Orange County. County, which is a very competitive, high-priced market. People want to live here. And houses were in great demands at the time. So when I was mailing throughout that year, I noticed that my seller call started to change. From the beginning of the year, it was, oh, I'll consider that offer.

You know, say I'm on the phone with the seller. They'll consider it, okay? Towards the end of that year, it was, ha, are you kidding me? That's like 30% below. market. I mean, my neighbor sold their house for, you know, 300,000 and you just offered me, you know, 175. Are you out of your mind? And like, I was like, huh? You know, I didn't understand what was going on. I was, you know, too green in the, you know, in the market to really understand what I needed to do and what I needed to change to stay competitive at that time. So I, I, I just kept doing the same things. I wasn't changing anything.

I just kept mailing to Orange County and getting yelled at every single day. And I was just dumping money. I mean, I felt like I was lighting money on fire in direct mail. I think I had gotten to where I spent about $25,000. Wow. And I had not gotten a deal from it. And I'm going, yeah, I was stressing out.

and eventually I decided I need to get help. I really need like one-on-one coaching. I can't, you know, I can't survive. I either need to quit or get like help. So I found a couple other investors in my area that offered the one-to-one consulting or, you know, they had, you know, some programs where maybe they consult several people kind of at once. And I signed up for two different programs, got some great advice, figured out what I was doing wrong, made the changes, and it's been great from then. But that whole struggling

process, it was a solid nine months where it was almost a year. Yeah. So what did what did you actually change? Because at the end of the day, direct mail works in a crappy market or a great market. So, you know, there's deals to be had regardless of the market. Was it just your approach with the seller or what exactly did you change? The thing I changed, I think that made the biggest difference was I changed where I was mailing. Orange County just was it was not a time to mail the Orange County anymore. I needed to go to less desirable areas. So in Southern California, if you know the area well, there's like the inland empire, for example, like Riverside County, San Bernardino County.

It's hot, Africa hot. Yeah. Right, right. And it's, you know, it's great. People live there. It's an affordable place to live. There's jobs there. It's a solid real estate market. It's great for rentals, but it's not as expensive as Orange County. And there's a little bit more distress there than Orange County. People are just not in distress in Orange County. So when you brought up that there are people to say,

oh, you can't invest in a high price market. Well, yeah, it's going to be hard to do deals in Manhattan. But is there somewhere within an hour? that is, you know, maybe less desirable. There's more distress in this certain area that you can invest in and just get in the car and drive an hour, you know? So that's what I did. I just changed my market.

And I did change some other things too. I know we can get into that as far as direct mail goes. I did make some pretty key changes that I think have made me competitive. I mean, I'd definitely love to hear it because, you know, we talk a lot about direct mail here. And one of the difficult things that every business owner faces is when do you persist? You know, I mean, we asked that question at the end of the show. You know, people always say persistence is the key to success. But when you persist and when do you pivot?

And when do you, you know, it's tough, right? And it was tough for you. After you spent 25,000, you had to spend 25 grand. Yeah. Is that when you say I'm done? Like, do you wish you would have done it earlier? And then, yeah, what did you end up changing besides that? Well, as far as how long do you go?

I would say nine months, it was a little long. I probably should have changed things up after three. If, you know, with direct mail, you do have to test it out. It's not going to work after a month. It's not going to work after two. You have to test it out. I always say when you do a campaign, it should probably be a six-month campaign and analyze it after six months.

That would really be giving it a fair shot. I do wish that I, at three months, I got maybe a little bit more nervous and kind of clued in of why is this not working. Maybe at six months, that wouldn't have been smart to go, okay, Lauren, this is not working for you, you need to change something. But instead, I waited all the way to nine months. But, you know, I don't, I'm not a quitter. So I would say that maybe is a fault. It could be a fault or a good quality I have. Well, I would assume you've made more than 25 grand since then to make up for that. So we'll probably assume you've flipped more than one house.

Well, at the end of the year, it was by the time, it was about August. And I had to figure it So by the end of the year, I did end up making, I mean, I broke even that year. So I made the money back that I had spent at least. And I felt good about that. I thought whatever. At least I broke even. Yeah. But it was a great learning lesson and a great year of learning.

I paid for my education that year. There you go. You said you made some tweaks to the direct mail, some key tweaks. What were those? There were several that I could definitely get into. And I think that, you know, these are the things that kind of helped me be competitive. In my market, a lot of people are doing direct mail. In fact, when I talk to a seller, they usually tell me they get five, six postcards a week.

So I have to stand out amongst those five, six postcards a week. So the first change that was huge was the market. What I learned to do with the help of just listening to different podcasts and different, you know, real estate experts out there is to look at where your competition is buying houses. And a way to do that is you can pull a list from, like, say, a list provider like list source or REI source. I don't know, wherever you guys pull your lists from. But you can pull a list of absentee-owned purchases in the last six months. And I like to take it a step further and say absentee-owned purchases, corporate-owned only for the last six months because that shows like the LLCs.

And those are the people that are flippers. And so say, say, I'll take a county. I'll say, okay, L.A. county, absentee owned, corporate, or absentee owned and corporate owned only. And I get, I sort it by zip code.

And I look at the zip codes and I figure out what are the zip codes that the most purchases are being done out. And you'll learn that it's actually good to chase your competition. There's a reason that there, that all the purchases are in that kind of area. Like, for example, right now in L.A., it's Lancaster.

and those are like the further up north it's los angeles county but it doesn't really feel like los angeles county it's a little weird over there no offense to anybody that like those in because i'm gonna get lost half our audience yeah that's it i know i'm gonna get a bunch of angry comments but it's you know a less desirable area to live more distress and so i learned to change my market area based on where my competition is going so they weren't going to orange county they were not in where I was. So that was the first thing I learned to do. I did that in all the counties. So you were looking over a specific period of time. Like right now, it looks like there's very few corporate purchases, corporate owned or properties in O.C. So Lancaster, you saw that there was

just a considerable amount more. And so you shift there, start researching it to see what's actually happening in that market. Correct. And I shift every six months. I don't change my list a lot. I not compulsively. It's about every six months, I do the same analysis. I refresh it and I go, okay, all right, it looks like I should spend my marketing dollars here in this part of L.A. or in this part of Riverside County. Like in Riverside, for example, it's Palm Springs, Palm Desert. I'm not going out there. But that is where, you know, the numbers look the best. It's where most investors right now are buying according to the research that I've done. So that's the first thing I changed would be changing your market area.

Okay. And I would say I did other things as far as my processes, how I handled the calls. That helped as well, that were game changers. I would say, I didn't, you know, mail piece, I did change my mail piece. I changed to postcards. I instead of letters, because letters are pretty expensive. So I decided to go with postcards, but mailing to more piece. people. So larger list size, but with a cheaper mail piece. So I can reach more people. Another thing

that people, I notice people really mess up on with direct mail is they don't do repeat mailings. They just mail once, they just shoot it out there, and then they just hope they'll get a deal, and then they don't, and then they get real upset that it didn't work and they felt like they wasted a bunch of money, but direct mail doesn't work that way. You have to do repeat mail. Like I would say every six, four to eight weeks, whatever you can afford. Gotcha. I want to go back a quick second. Changing the market every six months.

I mean, I like your, I like how you've gone to identify markets. I think that's kind of an interesting technique. I had not heard that before. What concerns me is obviously it's working for you. But what concerns me is, you know, changing up your markets within that, I mean, you're not looking at a small farm here. Orange County and Riverside counties are like looking at, you know, multiple states for many states. You know, I mean, that's the state of Iowa and Nebraska and, you know, North Dakota combined.

Right. Probably. I'm just pulling that out. But so changing markets every six months, you know, shifting within this really huge, huge, vast metro area that frequently, I wonder if there's any negative that comes along with that. I mean, now you have to relearn that entire farm. You have to relearn that. No, no, no, no. Okay, okay. So that's where I, that's where I've probably confused you. Okay.

I mail in L.A. County, Riverside County, San Bernardino County, and Orange County, but a little of Orange County. Not all, not a, I don't spend that much in Orange County. Right. The zip codes that I choose, they're often this, they're often the same every six months. Like, for example, two years ago, I still had Compton on my list. if that makes sense, right? So it doesn't really change,

I don't change my market so much. It's, am I mailing to, like, let me like give you an example. Like, am I mailing to Long Beach or am I mailing to Lancaster? Should I spend more money in Lancaster or Long Beach? It's still L.A. County. Right.

You know, or I don't know, like, Rivers, City of Riverside versus Corona. That's actually a very good example. Because, like, as property got very, very expensive in Orange County. Buyers were going to like Marietta, Temecula. These are like nicer,

the nicer areas of the inland empire. So at one point, Marietta and Temecula was on my list. And then it kind of moved more to like Riverside and like, I don't know, Highland and kind of like these little bit more in the boonies kind of cities.

So no, I don't, I have a very large market. I was, that's what I was going to say. Yeah, my market is not, I mean, I can drive two hours to some of my house. Right. Yeah. So, and that's my point.

You know, I think the reason I ask it is because we have a lot of people who've never done this before. And, you know, I would caution somebody who's never done this before to do what you're doing. I think what you're doing probably requires a little bit more expertise and experience. I mean, picking as vast a swath as you're picking. Again, I personally, I, I, I think. think it's a bit big. I'm not here to pick on you at all because obviously it's working. What? But for somebody new, I would say, you know, like, hey, Orange County, you know, stick to Orange County, you know, smaller areas versus L.A. Orange. I mean, these are monster

areas that you're talking about here. Well, I think this is a California, Southern California specific thing because many investors here are, they have a very large territory because it is so competitive. We do not have the luxury here to say, I only buy houses in these three cities. If you were like that, you would do one deal every four years. Like, that's how competitive it is here. That's one of the mistakes I was making. I was only doing Orange County. And I was getting killed. I wasn't buying, I went almost a whole year. I didn't buy any houses. And then what I realized is my competition, the guys that were buying, you know, 50 to 100 houses a year, they were everywhere. They were in L.A.

They were in Riverside. They were in, you know, deep Riverside County, driving two hours to get to their houses. And that's what they had to do to get deals. That is not what you would have to do if you lived in like Utah or something or Idaho, where you really could just pick like one county and just like stay there. Yeah. So I'm glad you actually are picking on me because that would come off really confusing. I was thinking from my area.

I'm not going to mail to Seattle, Spokane, Portland, because those are totally different markets that I don't need to. But like you said, Southern California, and other areas are just different. Every area is different, right? That's why this is kind of a fun game because you relearn it everywhere you go. Right. And this is a, my technique is a very California-specific technique. And it's because California is a very competitive.

We're full of investors over here. There's a lot of money. So that's what we've had to do to survive. And a lot of my competition or their buying houses all over, you know. Sure. Yeah. For sure. For sure.

So I want to talk about like what came next thing because you started out buying a couple condos here and there, change your marketing and then you started scaling up, I'm assuming, correct? So how many total deals have you done now or at least like, you know, how many are you doing on a regular basis? What's kind of your- On a regular basis now I'm at about like two to maybe three a month. Wow. Okay.

So definitely you scaled up from the couple of the first, what was the couple of condos the first year? Yeah. A couple of condos the first year. I think I did three, like, the next year. And then, like, the next year after that was, like, 15. And now I'm kind of at a consistent, like, two or three a month. Wow. That's awesome.

Nice. Congratulations. That's awesome. Thanks. So what do you attribute that to? I mean, what really, was it just a direct mail? Or what do you attribute your just growth to? Gosh, a lot of, a whole lot of things.

Just changing everything that I was doing and doing the right things instead of the wrong things. There's just working harder and, you know, setting goals and the direct mail, the changes I made in direct mail that helped with, you know, my success. I also, you know, I beat the bushes, I guess. I guess I would say, you know, you have to beat the bushes and really, you know, try to get these deals any way you can. Okay, right on. There are two kinds of real estate investors, those who have reviewed their insurance and those who think that they have. Most don't realize their coverage wasn't built for how they actually invest. Vacancy periods, rehabs, short-term rentals, or LLC-held properties.

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highlighted on our notes here, but this idea of, I want to know your business, like how your business actually works. Like let's dive into that if you don't mind. Like, I mean, specifically, who answers phones? I mean, who's going to look at the properties? Are you driving to every property? How does that all work? Walk us through like a typical like life or day in the life of your company. Day in the life of Lauren.

Okay, well, first I wake up looking fabulous and I get a cup of coffee and, you know, no. I wish I was that lucky. Yeah, I wake up with my two screaming kids and I hauled them off to daycare and then I come back. I have, so I have an assistant that's helping me field the calls and filter the calls because I'm getting, I just get too many that it's too hard. I can't be, I was a one woman show for a long time and now I'm a woman and assistant show. So I have the calls. They get directed to a cell phone that my assistant has. He answers them live the best he can. And we also have Podio as my CRM. And it's very tailored to the real estate investment industry, a lot of investors are using Podio. So you'll see a lot of investors use the same CRM as I do.

And these calls get filtered into Podio. So if, say, my assistant misses a call, the lead will still go into Podio as a new seller lead. So it doesn't get lost, if that makes sense. Yes. All leads, no lead gets left behind. All leads get filtered into Podio. And it's my assistant's responsibility to ask a series of questions that help me determine if this lead is a motivated seller or more of a tire kicker. And from there, my assistant, by asking those questions, my assistant filters those people out. And he also assists with determining the ARV for me and coming up like a ballpark offer price. So it helps me out. It just, it takes some of that work off of my back. And then I, at that stage, I look at all the offers that go out at this point. I would

love to not have to do this, but at this point, I am approving all the offers that go out. And we send offers. And I send it like through podium. So it's pretty quick. And we just, yeah, that's, that's, I'll go on. Well, is that you're making offers. Do you make offers before you look at the properties or do you always go look at them first? No. I couldn't do that. I'd be driving all day because my big market area. Yeah, I don't look at the properties. We just, I have the MLS. I have MLS access. I have my license. So I have MLS. I find comps using the MLS. In California, there's a lot of master plan communities. So it's very easy to come up with an ARV when, you know, most of the comps are like it's, you know,

almost the same type of house. So, and they're not very old. I know in other states, you've got houses that were like built in the early 1900s. I mean, in California, it's more like 1960s, 1970s, 1980s built. So it's, I'm not so concerned about the repair budget at this point. I kind of do like a per square foot number. We asked the sellers, is there anything additional other than cosmetic that we didn't need to know about, like, for example, leaks in the roof or broken air conditioner or foundation problems?

And we just budget. We just budget from there. And I come up with an ARV by, you know, looking at the ML1. I use Google Earth to look at the property. So I get an idea of what the property looks like. I can look at the whole neighborhood if I want to through Google Earth. And we just come up with a ballpark offer price and we just shoot them out. That's the name in the game is get as many offers as we can out.

Yep. I love it. So how many times has not going to look at a property actually bitch you? It hasn't. I eventually look at them. Just not initially. So at that stage, when I make offers, you know, if they say yes, I try to encourage them to sign my contract because I really don't want people to waste my time. I really don't want to drive an hour and a half to hem it and then find out that she's been talking to two other investors and I'm meeting two other investors there and she's just playing us all against each other.

That's happened to me. So what I do now is I really encourage that they sign the. contract. So at least I've got something to hold them too. And then at that point, I'll go look at the property. And if we are really off on the repair budget because of something that was unforeseen, then we just ask for a price reduction. I have a contingency, just one contingency my contract that allows for an inspection. Yep. Yeah, I do almost the exact same thing as you do. I mean, like, I don't want to, like, I'm a busy guy. I don't have time to go look at 10 properties a day. So I, I should have offers. Now, I don't actually generally make them sign it,

because my market is 20 miles, right? I'm not driving 200 miles or whatever. But yeah, the same thing. Like, I don't want to waste my time. People ask me that all time. How do I go make offers all the time if I'm, you know, that's all I would be doing. And you don't necessarily have to do it. So, yeah, I want to at least get a ballpark number of where they're at before I go step foot in their house.

Like, I don't want to waste time. Right. Right. You want to make sure you guys are on the same page. Yep. You know, you don't want to. And you want to make sure that you're the only investor that are really talking to. I don't like competing at all. Like, if I get the idea.

that I'm competing. I'm kind of like, eh, you know. Yeah, because, yeah, I totally, totally feel you there. So what about rehab costs? You said you kind of estimate them a little bit, you know, based on what they're telling you, I'm assuming over the phone, and you can adjust later. So how do you do your rehab costs, both in terms of before you look at it and after you look at it?

Do you have like a system for that? Or do you just, are you just really good with knowing rehab costs because you've been doing it a while? I'm not that good. Okay. I wouldn't say I'm that good. I do a per square foot number. Like, I'll do about $25 per square foot.

Okay. And then if they, if they say, you. that, oh, like, if I could see on Google Earth that, like, the house is, like, really beat up looking, or if they, like, let me know that say it needs a new roof or something like that, I'll just add, like, so I'll do $25 per square foot for, like, cosmetic. And then if it needs a new roof, I'll add, like, seven grand, you know. If there's no exact science to it, it's just kind of, you know, I just add me five grand here, seven grand here.

If they say it needs new windows, for example, five grand, okay, whatever, you know, I just kind of. and then I maybe round up. So if we're at like $36,000, I'll say, okay, $40,000 rehab to come up with the offer. Because, I mean, really, you're, you know, you're coming up with just like a ballpark offer. You know, they're always going to negotiate it up anyway. I feel like every offer you give them, they don't normally say yes. You know, they're normally, they start negotiating anyway.

So that's what I do at that point. And then when I get a signed contract, I just send my contractor down there. I have, you know, purchased houses where my contractor looked at it for me. versus myself because in the end I mean he's more of the expert than I am yeah so I usually when I get the bid I'll look okay was I off was I not and

make the decision from there yeah so so how I know you said it's never kind of really bit you which is good so let's take an example of a house let's say it's a 300,000 house and you estimate whatever you estimate you know 50,000 and repairs

up front you go in and you find out it's you know a hundred 150,000 to actually repair it. Right. What happens then? You know, I have a little sit-down chat with Mr. Seller and let them know that their property is in pretty bad shape, worse shape than they described over the phone. And it turns out that your property needs $100,000 worth of work.

And it's more than just cosmetic. And so with this kind of property, Mr. Seller, I'm going to have to reduce my contract price. to this. How many times have properties actually fallen out of contract because of that? It happens. Yeah. I mean, it happens. Is it a lot?

I mean, is it like... I'm not a lot, though. Not a lot. Most of the time, the sellers are pretty honest over the phone. I've had some situations where the sellers aren't exactly forthright with things. But, I mean, it happens. It happens.

I had recently, the one that's coming to mind is I had a seller, forget to mention that the tenant was on a year-long lease, and he had actually said it was month-to-month. And there's a big difference in that in the state of California. So we went toward and the tenant pulls out this lease. Like, nope, I'm not moving until like November or something and we're going, what? So we had a, we actually got the price, we got a pretty significant price reduction to deal with that problem. And we ended up getting the tenant to sign a cash for keys agreement. So it worked out. For those who don't know what that means, can you explain how you did that or what that was? So the tenant in that situation could have stayed till let's just say November.

And in, you know, in the state of California, even though the properties change hands, I have to honor their lease. Well, we don't want to do that. I don't want to hold a property until November if I'm a flipper. So we go approach the tenant and say, hey, we'll give you $3,000 if you move out in 60 days. How's that sound? And then they usually want more. Yeah. We ended up, I think that tenant ended up getting around six grand.

But in the end, it really came from the seller. Then we asked for a price reduction because of that. So it ended up working out and the tenant signed the agreement. And hopefully they will move out in 60 days. Like they had signed on. Nice. Nice. Hey, so on your flips, we talked about acquisition.

We talked about negotiation a little bit. on the flips you had mentioned you've got a contractor what role do you play in the actual construction rehab portion of the flip itself i pick up the phone and ask when we're going to be done role i guess you'd say that's about it right in writing checks so you have to have a contractor you can trust quite a bit for that and they have like i mean there's kind of like a design plan I mean, are they coming up with that or are you coming up with that? A little of both. My contractor does a lot of flips.

I found him actually through referral. I think that's the best way if you want to look for a contractor is ask fellow flippers in your market for a contact. So I found that contractor actually through my hard money lender. So that's another direction. If you're looking for a good contractor, ask everybody. I mean, even your hard money lender might have a really good contact. And so that being said, this contractor does a ton of flips.

He's got wholesale prices on certain things, certain items. And we just stick to the basic stuff that he's putting in all his jobs. I do get to be a little bit creative if I want to. I don't often find that I have the time to, unfortunately. And that is the fun part of this job. And I wish I did have more time. I hope that I get there one day where I can be a little. little bit more creative with, you know, designing these homes. But for now, that's kind of the irony of

flippers, though, is that, like, you know, on TV, we see every single TV flip is completely different and always unique and amazing. But most flippers, I know that are successful in doing volume. Yeah, everyone, it looks the exact same pretty much. Right. Yeah. Right. I know. It's a shame that they, I guess the TV shows, though, wouldn't really be that interesting if they, like, just took, like, video of me answering calls. All day. That would literally be like my like flipping show would just be me like at my desk answering phone calls.

Yep. Yeah. That's funny. Actually, I was talking to somebody about a TV show the other day, just some lady who was trying to put together one and talking about bigger pockets members that she could use. And she's like, well, she asked, you know, do most flippers do their own work? And I'm like, actually, most of them I know don't. She's like, well, for TV we would want them to.

And I'm like, okay. I know, right. Like, very specifically, we're going, we know they don't. Oh, we know they don't. Yeah, we're going to, we want them to. And so we would have to have them act that way. Okay. Right.

I know. I love, like, on the shows when they're like laying tile. Yeah. And I'm like, you don't do that ever. Like, you don't really do that for real. Come on. I know. But again, it makes for good TV.

It does. It does. All right. So you mentioned hard money lenders. Is that how you're funding your deals today? Yes, partially. Hard money. and private money lenders.

What's the difference? Hard money lender is, you know, like a company that actually this is what they do. You know, like you guys mentioned the Norris Group in our area is a hard money lender. I mean, they're like company that this is what they do. They essentially raise money from private money lenders and they give their private money lenders a certain interest rate or percentage or whatever. And then they probably get maybe a couple points above that and then they lend money to people like me.

So I do get some hard money. Hard money is pretty expensive, mainly in the points. It's expensive, but it's the cost of doing business. So I am thankful for my hard money lenders. And I do private money is more like friends and family, and private money is more flexible. You kind of make up your own terms. It's whatever works out for you all.

So I've got some great private money lenders as well. Okay. And how does our listeners, how do they start getting private money? They just go and call up their mom and dad and ask them. Call dad. That's what I did. You know, it's friends and family. It's talking about what you do, getting the message out there,

letting everybody know what you do and that you're looking for more partners would be maybe a good way to say it. Rather than I'm just looking for money. I'm flipping houses. I'm doing really well. I'm looking for more partners. Anybody interested in doing this with me? And I do post a lot on Facebook.

I post photos and updates of things that I'm doing. I'm doing. And I get people that will occasionally private message me that are interested. So just talking, opening up your mouth and talking about what you're doing, what you're looking for. That's actually how I know you is from Facebook. Somehow we became Facebook friends. And then I think I follow you on Instagram.

And I'm always seeing your progress of like this new project and here we're in the middle of it and got a new one under contract. I'm always like, man, she's like crushing it, like doing so much more than I am. So like you inspire me to do better just like watching that. So keep it up. Thank you. Yeah. That's awesome.

Hey, before we kind of turn over and move on to the fire round, my quick question is, where are you going with this? Are you going to be doing two flips per month for the next 20 years? I mean, what's your ultimate goal? Are you picking up buying holds as well along the way? Or is this really for the purpose of that short-term cash and use that as kind of like a salary and income? Well, for now, I would say, yeah, short-term cash for salary and income is where my business is right now. A future goal would, I'm really interested in like larger scale syndications. So maybe like, you know, buying a trailer park community or something or an apartment building. I think that's where I'd rather I'd like to form maybe a syndication company and do bigger deals. For now, though, this is a, this is fun. I'm enjoying it.

And I think I'll always be flipping houses, but I would like to kind of step out more into that one day. Awesome. Awesome. That's great. Yeah. Great. All right.

My last question before the fire round is I ask this question a lot, and I try to ask it more often because I really am interested. How many hours a week do you work? Like, what's your typical week? Are you 40 hours a week? Are you just part-time? Gosh, I know. It kind of depends on the week.

I would say 30 solid hours. I would think, you know, it's maybe not all at once. You know, sometimes I, for example, in the middle of the day, I might go for a hike. But, you know, on the weekend, I might work a couple hours. So, you know, I would say about 30 is an average week. Okay. And I probably don't. And I think I work more than a lot of my friends in this business.

I don't know. I mean, I love what I do. So, you know, it doesn't feel like work. Sure. Sure. I was actually just talking about that last night on the Bigger Pockets webinar. I was saying now one of the benefits of real estate over having a job is that like you really love getting up in the morning. Like everybody I know that does real estate loves doing real estate.

It's one of the few like, I don't know, passions that you actually can make good money at. Yeah. No, I do. I always say I wake up every day excited and terrified. Yeah. So that's kind of like I would say in a nutshell describes flipping houses. Yep. I love it.

I love it. Well, cool. Well, hey, let's shift gears a little bit and head over to the second. of the show we call our fire round. It's time for the fire round. All right, let's get to these questions in the fire round. These come directly from the BiggerPockets forums, and people can go there, biggerpockets.com forward slash forums to ask your own questions to get the community

helping you out. But these questions come from people in the community. Number one, what are the best tips for someone who has young children when they're first starting out in real estate? Put them in daycare. Okay. I like it. Lock them up. Lock them up. Yeah. All right. Nice. Nice. All right. Here's another child related question. When investing with children, do you find yourself with more time for your kids or does that come after a few years?

I do have more time with my children than I did when I had a full-time job, a 40-hour-a-week corporate job. Absolutely. I can go to the school events. I can volunteer. I can go to the Christmas party. I can take them to soccer practice because I can always work when they go to bed. So I do have much more time. Cool. Number three, when switching over from my full-time job to solely investing, what should someone make sure that they have in place? Money in the bank. All right.

There you go. Some reserve salary. Yeah. Cool. And try not to spend it on direct mail. It's not getting you. Stop after six months or so. Yeah, maybe stop after six months.

Which transitions perfectly to the last question, which is for somebody who's just getting started in direct mail, what advice would you give them? What kind of strategy would you advise them on? That question is hard because there's so much. Don't give up. Repeat mailings. Don't give up. Okay. Good advice. Good advice. for sure, for sure. All right, let's close out this show with the, my favorite section, the world famous. Famous for.

All right, these questions are the same we ask every week. And so I'm sure you know what's coming. Number one, what is your favorite real estate related book? Well, I think I'm going to be different and not say rich dad, poor dad. There's actually a pretty good book out there. It's called Building Wealth, One House at a Time, by John Shob. Yeah, I like that book. It's a pretty good book.

I think it's helpful. Yeah, I really like that one. Awesome. How about business books? I really like Darren Hardy and everything that he comes out with. So my favorite business book. Yeah, I love Darren Hardy. I really love the compound effect.

And he has another great one that's the entrepreneur rollercoaster, if I love as well. I just listened to an audible and it was fantastic. Oh, yeah, I love it. Yeah, do you subscribe to his daily text. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, every morning. like five, I'll get these texts. Hello, look at me in my courtyard.

I have advice for you, everybody. I feel like I'm watching Stuart Smalley. I'm good enough and gosh darn it. People like me. I want to get Darren on the show. We need to get Darren Hardy. Oh my God. I would die.

That would be amazing. Can I be like a semi co-host on that way? I'm going to fight to get Darren Hardy now. My last name is Hardy. We can say we're related. You can say that. I like it. Perfect. That's how we're going to get him.

All right. By the way, that thing is called, what's it called? Darren Daly. If people want to look it up on Google, Darren Daley, it's great. Just more five-minute motivation. I cannot figure out how to unsubscribe to it. I had to unsubscribe. It's good, but it's just like. It's like a five in the morning. I get woken up at five and morning.

With a text every morning. Yep. Yep, me too. Yeah. Yeah. All right. What do we do for fun? God.

When you have two little kids, you do nothing for fun. I don't have hobbies. Brandon, pay attention. Yeah, pay attention, Brandon. Back to my advice of send them to daycare. Yeah, no, I would say, you know, being a busy mom and two kids, my hobbies do surround my children. I am, you know, 100% there for my kids. And I do like to be active and go hiking or work out at the gym.

So, yeah, that's about my, that's about all I've got time for. Cool. All right, my final question. Lauren, what do you believe sets apart successful investors from those who give up, fail, or never get started? I would say the ability to, you know, read, listen to the podcast, buy those courses, take the courses, and then actually do them. Like, do what they say to do. There's this big disconnect between like the reading, listening, and then the doing. Somewhere in the middle, people just get real lost.

So I was actually, so we have a course on Udeme, Udeme.com. We have like an ultimate beginners course. We also have the same version on Bigger Pockets. It's a free course. Anybody can take, right? But I looked at the stats and it's like 95% of people who start it never finish it. It might even be worse than it. It's like 98% now.

Like it's just people never actually do what they're going to do. Or the same thing with books. People start books. They never finish them. Oh, I mean, that's totally me. too. I totally don't think. I'm preaching to the choir here. I know, yeah. I totally try to read like think and grow rich and I was like, I'll just read the chapter names. So. Oh, that's funny. Funny. All right. Before we let you out of here, where can people find out more

about you? How can they link up with you? Obviously, you're on bigger pockets. Yeah, I am. I am pretty active on Facebook and Instagram. And I hope to, one day have enough time to start a blog, which I have the name for it. My Instagram name is This Mom Flips, and I have the URL for my blog, but I haven't started it yet. So one day, maybe one day. But yeah, find me on Instagram or Facebook. It's Lauren Hardy and This Mom Flips on Instagram. Fantastic. Lauren, thank you so much for coming on. We really do appreciate the time. Awesome. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Stay around. All right, everybody. That was Lauren Hardy. good information for those flippers out there, especially those in the larger metros,

definitely some new tactics and ideas to think about. And I love the advice on just, you know, don't just, don't just listen, don't just, you know, go to a listen to a podcast and then not do anything. Take action. You got to actually do the things you're hearing. So, yeah, just take one piece of advice you talked about today and go put it in your life and see what it does to your business. Exactly, exactly.

Execution is what matters. Yep. So make it happen. Cool guys. of violent. Execution matters. Execute them. Put them in the eye and made it.

What? Are you British now? No, that was a line from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. I never saw it. You've never seen Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure? I know. It's weird. It was like just beyond my age. Okay. Yeah, you should watch it. Maybe I'll rent it with Heather.

Yeah, that was a fun. Yeah, it's a fun movie. You should watch it. That was like Keanu as like he was first coming up and it was really quite fun. Pre- Matrix, Keanu. Oh, way pre-Matrix. See, I was like Matrix, Keanu. That was my first, like, rated-D-R movie I ever saw as a Matrix when I came out.

Like, I was like in like early high school, late middle school. Yeah. And, you know, pre-17. This was when like Keanu Reeves was the teen star. Nice. So, like, doing teen movies. Yeah. So probably like 40 years ago, 50 years.

Something like that. All right. All right. man. Well, you guys, thank you so much for listening. Please be sure to jump on BiggerPockets. And get, engage, connect, and interact on our forums at BiggerPockets.com slash forums where you can meet people like Lauren who can help answer questions that you've got. Otherwise, jump on the show notes without any questions about the show at BiggerPockets.com slash show 181. And we'll see you next week here on the Bigger Pockets podcast. I'm 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 Pockets Real Estate podcast.

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