BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 24: House Flipping and Deal Analysis with Michael LaCava

Episode Date: June 27, 2013

On today’s episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast, we talk with active house flipper and real estate investor Michael LaCava about flipping houses in today’s rapidly changing real estate market. Mike has been flipping houses since 2006, so he’s seen both the crash and the emergence of the market, and has a ton of great insight into building a scalable flipping business, analyzing deals quickly and efficiently, and (as a new feature on the Podcast) Mike dives into a “Fire Round” where he answers some of the most interesting questions asked by BiggerPockets members in the Forums. Read the transcript to episode 24 with Michael LaCava here In This Show, We Cover Finding and Working with Partners in your Investing Losing money on the first deal Mike’s view on the Hedge Fund problem Exit strategies … “What happens IF…” The $2.5 million dollar deal that fell apart When to use the 70% Rule and when NOT to use it Finding accurate comparable sales (Comps) The best way to estimate repairs Hiring your very own acquisition manager Tips for wholesalers The power of blogging for your business The flipping “Fire-Round” Flipping a “Murder House?” Finding deals in a competitive market Links from the Show BiggerPockets Deal Analysis Forum Books Mentioned in the Show Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill Tweetable Topics: “When flipping a house, you make your money on the front end. It’s understanding the numbers before getting into it.” (Tweet This!) “Relying on the experts and building your team is crucial to being successful.” (Tweet This!) “You need to create a plan, you need to write it down, you need to start taking action.” (Tweet This!) “Success isn’t about how much money you make – it’s about enjoying life along the way.” (Tweet This!) “Goals with no actions are just dreams.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Michael Michael’s Website HouseFlippingSchool.com Michael’s BiggerPockets Profile Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast, show 24. 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 over height, you're in the right place. Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from your home for real estate investing online. What's going on, everybody? This is Josh Dorkin, founder of BiggerPockets.com, and your host. of the Bigger Pockets podcast here with my co-host, Mr. Brandon Turner. What's going on, Brandon? You know, every time you introduce me, I always think of a home improvement. You remember Tim the Toolman Taylor? I do. Yeah, and he always, anyway, I'm Al Borland, I guess.

You're Al, and I'm Tim. Yeah, so you're calling me a tool? Yeah, actually, that was exactly my point. I'm glad you picked up on that. I'm clever like that. Yes, yes, sure. Well, what's up, man? We got a good show. we've got some cool stuff coming on bigger pockets. We've got this flipping calculator that should be out at or around the time of this show. If it's not out, we'll soon be announcing it. And everything is going great on the site. Why don't we just jump right in today because we got a great show ahead.

Why don't we do our quick time? Nice. I'm taking this one today. Good ending. Are you going to take the quick tip? I am going to take the quick tip today because this is something I actually do all the time. So today's quick tip is a staging tip. And I know a lot of people want to stage and they pay a lot of money for staging companies, which is cool.

But my tip is if you're interested in staging on the cheap, head over to like a Marshalls or a Ross or like a T.J. Max. And you can get curtains there for usually like, you know, three or four dollars. And you can get pictures that hang on the wall for like, I mean, just really dirt cheap. knick-knacks, everything. You can stage a whole house for like a hundred bucks using a store like, you know, one of those discount stores. So anyway, that's my quick tip. That's a good quick tip. Now, do make sure you change the pictures in the frames though. No, we want the, you know, the young family holding a little kid with a barcode going across their face. Yeah, that's, that's great. It looks stylish. Nothing sells a house like a barcode.

Yes, nothing sells a house like a barcode. There you go. Well, that is today's quick tip. Fabulous. excellent excellent well really quick before we go into things i just want to thank everybody we are now up to 292 five-star reviews for the show on iTunes and we've got 189 written reviews so 292 five-star ratings i'm sorry and 189 written reviews uh that's fantastic we're really excited about it uh we really appreciate you guys for taking the time to do that but of course we are now at 10,500 listens per show or so, which is amazing, meaning that a lot of you guys haven't gone in and reviewed or anything. If you can, please do.

It really helps us out. We do appreciate it. And that's pretty much it. That said, let's get into the show. On today's episode, we've got Mike Lakava. Mike is actually a house flipper in southern Massachusetts. who he's tearing it up in the flipping world. He's an active blogger on the Bigger Pockets blog,

shares loads of great information on our site, and he's out there. He does some coaching, and he's a full-time investor. He's got some fantastic tips to come, I believe, so I'm looking forward to hearing what he's got to say. Do you ever notice how every passive investment somehow turns into a very active lifestyle,

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Did you know your house gets bored when you leave? I can't actually prove that, but it probably misses out on the action, the footsteps, the late-night fridge raids. Yeah, when you're gone, your place is basically on unpaid leave. It's sitting there in the dark thinking, I could be contributing right now. Your side room wants a side hustle. Even your Wi-Fi is like, we could be networking. You're on vacation, spending money like it's a sport while your staircase at home is fully capable of sending your income upwards. Here's the twist. You can go on a trip and actually earn money. Airbnb makes that possible with the co-host network. If you're away for a while or have a secondary property, you can hire a vetted local co-host with real hosting experience to handle it all. A co-host can handle guest communications, it can manage reservations and keep things running smoothly so you don't have to check your phone between beach days. That means less stress and more time enjoying your trip. You can relax, knowing guests are taking care of.

of and your place is in good hands. You travel, your house works. Everyone wins. If you're ready to host but could use some help, find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. With that said, Mike, welcome to the show, man. How's it going? Hey, thank you, Josh.

I appreciate the opportunity. Hey, Mike. Hey, Brandon, how you doing? I am well. How about yourself? Very good. Couldn't be better. He's always well.

No, I'm well. All right. Let's move on and talk about you instead of beating up one another here. So Mike, how's flipping Mike here? Let's do it. How? Not even how.

What did you do? You're the house flipping guy now, but like you had something going on before that, right? How'd you get started? What'd you do before flipping houses? Yeah, I sure did. I was in the flooring business basically my entire life. I grew up in it as a young child, helped my dad during the summers, and basically did that up until.

about five years ago when I really started getting into the real estate business. Right on. Yeah, so basically with the flooring business is always good, did well in it. Just kind of lost my passion for it and tried to be invented a couple different times and just knew my calling was real estate and now I'm doing that real estate thing full time. Was there anybody that kind of inspired you to get involved or was it just as a result of you working in the flooring space? Yeah, no, I, early on when I basically just out of high school, I actually,

18, 19 years old, a friend of mine was going to one of those weekend real estate seminars in Florida. And he was able to take a free guest. You guys know how that works. I thought it was, hey, it was just a weekend trip, go check it out, and actually caught my interest. And I don't think I was even 20. I might have been 19 when we did our first door knocking on a house that was going to go

for auction. And I can still see it to this day. the guy, you know, screaming at us, telling us to get out. I think he may have threatened us. And I'm like, I don't know if this real estate thing is doing knocking thing is any good. So I sort of got in my mind in, you know, really literally over the next 20 years, I just, my interest for real estate was always there. But, you know, I had a business and I got married and I had kids.

And I just never took action quite honestly. But it was always like, you know, someday I'm going to do this. And that's kind of, you know, I'm. And then seeing the TV shows and things like that, watching the old houses get rehabbed, I sort of inspired me. I knew that's something I always wanted to do. So what got you to finally take that step and actually jump in and start doing it? I think I had a sort of reality check with my life and just talking about something that doesn't get it done, as you guys probably know.

So back in 2006, I was mentioning it to a friend of mine, like, man, look at all these people buying these houses and don't even really know much about it. flipping them making tons of money. I always say I wanted to do that and I just haven't done it. And he actually, I was a little surprised. He told me he flipped a few houses and had a few rentals. Basically said, hey, if I find something, do you want to, you want to partner up? And I didn't know anything. I was a floor guy. I didn't know anything about real estate, but I said yes. And lo and behold, a few weeks later, he got a deal and we partnered it up on our first deal back in 2006. Now, back then, did you do all your own, did you do your own work since you were coming from

the kind of construction side of things? We did pretty much 80% of the work as much as we could do that would allow us other than permitting stuff like plumbing and electrical and things like that. So we were hands on on that very first project, absolutely. So let me ask you because one of the big things that we owe every new investor on Bigger Pocket starts out with is, hey, I want a mentor, I want a mentor, yay, what do I do? Well, you know, you've got this good friend of yours who's doing it. You link up with him. How did that work out? Tell us about the relationship and about how financially and partner-wise you guys actually worked out the details between you.

Sure, sure. What I can tell you was by partnering with him, even though I knew nothing about the business, somewhat gave me that, I guess, I didn't quite know it at the time, but it gave me on a subconscious level, like it kind of took the fear out of it, or took the unknown out of it, knowing that someone else had already done it and I was just going to partner up with him. And I think that was really the real reason why I jumped in. now, like I said, didn't know anything about the business. I sort of trusted him and his background and what he knew. It doesn't necessarily mean that it was all right. And I can explain to you in a minute on that because when we did this, back then I didn't

understand the mortgage industry. I didn't understand the real estate industry. I didn't understand buys markets, sellers' markets. All I know is, you know, we had this flip. We were loving it. We were doing the hands-on renovations. And back then, as you know, anybody. could borrow money from the banks.

He had a relationship with the mortgage guy. And really real quick, the plan was to, he explained it to me, but I wasn't really listening. You know, borrow the money, 100% financing. Once we're about halfway through, we could refi out and pull our profits. And then once we were finished, we could sell the house and make the additional profits. Well, we happened to get in at the height of the market. And I think what Warren Buffett says, when everybody gets in, it was time to get out. So in 2006, all of a sudden,

we couldn't be five because that was when the subprime mortgage started to crash. And I didn't know what that meant when he said, we can't be fi. I got a little scared. So I said, all right, we got to finish quickly and sell quickly. Bottom line was when we sold it, which we did sell it, but we actually lost money on that first deal. Right on. In terms of the, even though you're, you know, clearly he didn't know everything himself at this time, what gave him the confidence to bring you on as?

somebody to work with beyond just your friendship? Yeah, I think knowing that I had some, I think just the labor part of it, being able to do the work with them, being that I owned my own flowing business, I was flexible at my hours. I had a well-run flowing business at the time, so I had the flexibility of running some of the contract is and helping out with that aspect of it, where he kind of handled the money end of it and assisted in setting up the LLC and things like that.

we had a good trust level there. We both put in, it wasn't with zero dollars, even though we had 100% financing. We both put up, I believe it was around $10,000 each into a bank account to have as like a reserve and have some money to have to use, which we end up having to use because we weren't able to refio quickly like I mentioned. Right on. And was that like a 50-50 thing? Yes, it was 50-50. We split the profits, but there was no profits, so we split the loss. Right on.

I've been there. I know how that goes. Hey, you know, you said something about when you got in this, you didn't realize and either did he really what the whole buyers versus sellers market was. And I think, I mean, most of us got caught up with that exact same thing, right? You know, like, nobody really knew that the market was going to crash. I think there were probably some smart people around that knew it. But, you know, I don't know, those of us who watched the flipping shows, we just got into it because it was cool. So here's my question for you is, what do you see today with the market today?

Do you see us repeating that right now? that's a great question i wish i could look into the crystal ball but what i can tell you is um you know there's some speculation that we might go down that road again specifically with uh some of the hedge fund deals and the way they're buying up all these bulk rios you know i've been reading some things like that's going to be the next crash uh my personal feelings are that i don't see these hedge funds manage thousands of single family houses very effectively and competitively.

My feelings are that I believe on the buy and hold strategy for single family rentals, it's always been a local business and is driven by the local landlords or owners to really get the best return on your investment. I don't know

if I'm going to be right or if I'm going to be wrong, but I can tell you I'll be there to clean up the mess if it does crash and try to profit from it down the road. There you go. I just read an article. Yes. Well, it was an article and a video, I think, from Fox News or one of those news channels. Anyway, it was about how their hedge funds already are starting to pull out in a few areas.

So I'm not sure if that's like beginning to happen or if that's just like, you know. I think like any business, Brandon, is that there's probably going to be some good hedge funds and there's probably going to be some bad hedge funds. Just like there's good investors and there's bad investors. And maybe some of the smarter, more savvy hedge funds that understand this business can really make it work. and then you'll see the ones that just are pulling all this money in and throwing money. I mean, they're overpaying for properties now. It's not as it's a seat. And I don't see it being sustained.

And that's, you know, where people that save their money for retirement and put money in their IRA and 401K and invest in some of these things, you know, are going to get rent in the end. Well, what are you guys as a flipping company doing to prevent if something were to happen, if the market were to drop again? What are you doing to prevent against that? Yep. You know, with every deal we go into, we like to have exit strategies. And we like to understand what happens if we don't sell it at this price. What happens if we don't sell it? So, and that's been really what I've used since day one, is that, you know, after getting, I guess losing money in my first deal and learning the hard way, you know, taught me a lot of things. And that's to prepare and have different ways to get out of deals if they don't work. So with everything we buy, we're always running our very conservative on our ARVs and run them as current as we can.

We try not to predict too much what's going to happen in the future, but although if a market's going up or market's going down may affect the way you buy. So exit strategies would be like, what's my drop bottom price before I want to go to the next exit strategy, meaning like what do I have to sell this for just to break even and move on? And then the next one would be, what if I can't sell it, then let's consider doing a lease option. and then from there maybe up your straight out rental. Yeah, that's great. You know, the really quickly, ARV is... Yeah, after repair value, Josh. That's basically what a house will sell for after you repair it.

And the best way to determine that is talk to your special real estate, a good real estate broker in your area and explain to them what you're going to do to the house so they can have a good understanding of what actually they can sell it for. Awesome. Awesome. And on the exit strategies, that's great. That's something I think that most new investors really screw up. They come in thinking, hey, I'm going to do this, but they don't think of the, but what if, right?

And you have to plan for that, but what if? That's something that we definitely, we made sure we highlighted in our ultimate beginners guide, and we'll link to that in the show notes at biggerpockets.com slash show 24. But yeah, I mean, when you're going in there, you need to know, hey, I've got option A, B, C, D, all the way down because otherwise, you know, if one thing goes wrong, you're in deep trouble. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

Could we talk a little bit about the properties, the property types that you're flipping? Are you doing single family, multis? What's the focus? Yeah. Primarily, the flips are single family. Mostly that sort of affordable first-time home buyer market seems to be working well for. For us, price ranges from 175 to 350 has been our average. And 350, not necessarily that that's a high-end home, but that could just be in a different

market, different town. That could be more of a starter home or more affordable-type home in those markets. That's sort of the cream of what we're doing and it's worked well for us. So we're staying with it, but we're starting to explore some higher-end homes. We almost put together a $2.5 million deal, but it fell apart. But I learned an incredible amount about that. And we're not afraid to go out to some of the bigger deals. and I do see us going out to some of those down the road.

I want to talk more about your bread and butter stuff, but since you brought it up, can we dig in a little bit on that $2.5 million deal that fell apart? Sure, absolutely. Not at all. It was actually in Nantucket, and the lead was brought to me. Networking really does a lot for you.

In the beginning, you have no deal flow, and as you continue to network and get yourself out there, you have a pile of stuff that comes your way. So, you know, basically, you know, I didn't say no to it. I jumped at the opportunity and I, you know, I sometimes can react well when something's thrown my way. So like I didn't plan on going after a two and a half million dollar house. But really what it comes down to is just, you know, adding a few zeros to it. And so I got the lead.

I went out to Nantucket, studied the market, hooked up with some good real estate people out there, got my contracted down there, you know. And basically, we raised the money for it. The deal just fell apart because it was a lawsuit against the seller. for some environmental wetlands. And in the end, they weren't wetlands. He was right. We couldn't hang on any longer to our investors' money.

And I gave my investors the opportunity to pull out, go somewhere else or hang on, and they decided to pull out. So we moved on from that project. You know, and I think that's a great lesson for people. You know, no matter how prepared you are, clearly you guys know what you're doing. You've been doing this for a minute now.

You know, there are certainly still outside extraneous forces that can come in and, you know, put a stock. up to things and could ruin your timelines, your budgets, and all sorts of stuff, no matter how well-planned you are. Absolutely. And you just can't control every aspect of this business. And that's a hard reality for me because as much as, you know, we're efficient and we want our deals to close quickly, you can't control the attorneys and the deals.

You can't control neighbors. You can't control a lot of things. So good point. Cool. Yeah. Well, let's go back real quick. Before we move on, there's a few things actually, you've been saying I just popped in my head that I really want to talk to you about.

but let's go back to the bread and butter stuff like Josh said. Sure. You said you're going for single family homes mostly 175 to 350. Now, is that what you're selling them for or is that what you're buying them for? No, that's the sell price. They have to repair value what we're selling them for. Okay. And what do you typically like buy them for?

Like if, yeah, for example, if it's $175,000. Let me give an example. Like if we had a $200,000 house that we sold, typically we're applying a 70% formula to that, which is 70% times 2 is 140, then we're detecting our cost of repairs. So if this case, say, it was 50,000, then we'd be looking at a maximum allowed off of 90. So we'll pay up to 90, sometimes more, sometimes less. It really depends on how negotiations go. Okay.

Yeah, let's actually dive into that a little bit deeper, the 70% rule, because you brought it up. And I know this is a really, really popular thing on bigger pockets and for a good reason because it's great. So, yeah, why don't you just explain again what exactly is the 70% rule? Well, 70% is just a quick analysis to determine whether or not you can take a deal to the next level. And there's a lot more details that go into number crunching. But basically, it's really a simple formula. It's like fifth grade math. I think we wrote a blog post on that called it fifth grade math.

And we'll link to that, by the way, in the notes. Okay, cool. So basically it's just really, there's two very important things, what I consider the most important things when considering, you know, how you're going to make money on a deal. And quite honestly, you really need to make the money on the deal on the front end. It's understanding the numbers before you get into it. So with the 70% rule is the first most important thing you need to understand and determine is what you can sell that house for, also known as the AIV, the after repair value.

If you get that number wrong, you're going, you're pedaling backwards from the start. So it's very important that if you can't determine that on your own, which I don't suggest you do, unless you're a licensed real estate broker, and I would still recommend you talk to other real estate agents in the area. We always try to seek out the experts, any particular town, especially if it's a new town that we're not familiar with, to run comps, and then you have to test those comps yourself and really analyze them and understand them.

So once you determine that, then from there you're simply taking that dollar amount and times in it by 70%. And that's going to give you your starting point. So like in the example, I just mentioned, if it's $200,000 is the ARV, then you are looking at buying that house for $140,000. Now, in the real world, we're not going to buy a house that's in perfect condition for $140,000.

That's worth $200,000. That's why in this business, you want to focus on distressed properties, maybe the properties that no one else really wants. Because from there, then you're going to deduct your repairs. So if this house took $40,000 in repairs, then you're looking at buying this house at $100,000. Now, to work that backwards because I get people that just don't quite understand that 30% and how we use it.

So how are we determining what our profit is, going to be based on that difference of the 70% from the 100%. Well, of that 30%, a rough gauge is 20% of that is going to be what our projected profit's going to be. So if it's $200,000, we're saying 20% of $200,000 is a projected profit of $40,000 if everything goes perfect. The other 10% is, which a lot of new people forget about is the carrying costs, the, you know, maybe if you're borrowing money, the interest rate, maintenance while you hold that property.

So 10% of that is $20,000. That's a lot of money. Now, if you're borrowing hard money, and this is why I tell everyone, you know, that debt applies, that 30% rule can apply differently for others. You're borrowing hard money and you're paying, say, five points and 15% interest, well, more than likely, you had carrying costs are going to be more than 10% if you carry that property for more than 90 to 120 days. So it's just a rough gauge and it works well for, us, but you've got to use it with caution and don't use it as an excuse to go buy a property

just on that. Does that 70% rule apply at all price levels, you know, 50,000, for example, versus a million or 2 million or 5 million? That's a great question, Josh, because... That's Brandon's question. I'm just, you know, voicing it. I'm a channel. I'm a channel.

Great question. No, in my opinion, it shouldn't, but it really depends on the individual. And really what that comes down to, let me give you an example. Like, if you use that 70% rule on a $50,000 house, your projected profit is going to be $10,000. If you use the example that I just mentioned with the 20%. So you have to determine what your minimum return on investment you want it to be. Not your minimum return on your money, because if you're all in it, if you're coming in on these deals with no money of your own, what's how much money you're going to make? If $10,000 is not enough, then that 70% rule is not going to work.

So you might say, I want a minimum profit of $20,000 on a property. So then you have to look at it differently. the same way that goes on with say a two million dollar property well 20% of two millions four hundred thousand dollars uh well hey if the numbers work and i can make three and a thousand dollars on this deal i would go after that two million dollar property now we'll look at it maybe a 15% um of a ib as opposed to a 20% so you look at the dollar value when you have the number skew high or if the number is skewed low and you have to determine how much money you actually want to make that's a good that's a good point well make makes sense too with like

the cheaper ones, like they'll say 50,000, if you're going to only make 10,000, like this is something I found, because I flipped a lot of lower end houses like that. That 10,000 can get eaten up like that. I mean, just gone in a heartbeat. Like, oh, the heating system is bad? Oh, there goes my profit.

Sure, sure. That's terrible. All the more reason on the lower end, because, yeah, if you've got a heating system go bad and if you replace a boiler, there goes 30% of your profits out of the window right there. Yeah. So it seems, you know, ultimately then the risk

level is certainly going to be higher on these lower-end properties, and it appears that there's kind of a perfect range, potentially, somewhere in the middle there. Yes, I believe what you want to do is you want to find what your company zone is and what price point, especially in the beginning. I would never start off flipping a two million dollar house. I think what anybody starting out needs to understand is what am I going to be, what's comfortable for me, you know, and if you're going using the 70% formula at a $50,000 house, You need to understand that if you get your cost of repairs wrong, you're not going to make any money at all.

Yeah, now that's great. That's great. You mentioned using good agents wherever you work. You talked about always finding these quality brokers and guys who can help you out. You know, a lot of real estate investors think they can work without agents. They think, hey, I'm going to save money. And what do I need an agent for? Any feedback on that?

Yeah, I think that's a big mistake. I think relying on the experts, building. building your team is so crucial to you being successful. For the mere fact, like I mentioned, the number one reason, or the number one most important thing in determining how you're going to make money is ARV. We never got the number two, which is the cost of peers. But if you don't get that AARV, if you go on Zillow and you or any of those, those, those sites are great for doing research, but if you're relying on that to come up with your AIV

and you base your offer on that, and they're off $20,000, $40,000, $40,000, always relying on the experts and you do that through networking and creating relationships. Yeah, that makes sense. You mentioned real quick that we didn't really touch on cost of repairs very much. We talked about ARV a lot. So let's focus on the cost of repairs. How do you determine how much something costs? Yes.

In the beginning, if I may share with you, I would have like a contractor party. And every time I went to look at a property, you know, my plumber, electrician, carpenter, you know, wherever I could get in there to give me pricing because I didn't have the experience. and pricing things out accurately. And that gets all quick because, you know, in the beginning, where you're trying to get deals, you're wearing these guys out, and they're not going to take you very seriously. So all I can say is in the beginning, if you don't have the experience,

try to create those relationships, explain to them, be honest, up front, tell them what you're doing, and if they can have the patience to bear with you, they'll reap the benefits in the end. How we do it now is basically I have a cross-reepairs sheet that I walk into a property with, and it's just a checklist, so I don't, you know, forget anything. But in some cases, at this point now I'm able to walk into a property and evaluate it really without even writing anything down.

I know that sounds crazy. But the checklist will be like starting with the exterior and working your way around and then into the interior, which things to look for, you know, like look at the roof. But people might forget the chimney. Well, does the chimney need to be pointing? How does the flashing look? How does the shingles look? How does the facial look? How does the soffets look?

and just really going through it step by step and then looking at the cost of repair sheet, see what you have over there in your market, what some of those repairs cost. And, you know, again, if you're not experienced with this, I would always highly recommend maybe you partner up with a general contract or have him walk a property with you and learn from him. If he's not willing to partner with you, offer him lunch or whatever it takes to really get those numbers right. Because if you get those numbers wrong, you'll be out before you're, get started. That is definitely good feedback. And maybe even apprenticing under an experienced rehabber like yourself, you know, give your time and energy and return for the ability to walk through and

experience that stage of estimating, right? I mean, I think that'd be a great way to go. Absolutely. I think that is. And anytime anybody has an opportunity to learn from someone else and they can sort of shadow them. I would say go for it and learn as much as you can and ask lots of questions. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, my next door neighbor, I just found out a few weeks ago that he's a contractor. And so me and him have been talking a lot about that. And next time I got, you know, next time I find a deal, I want to walk through him with on the deal and have him kind of compare my thoughts versus his thoughts because, you know, I think I'm pretty good at estimating repair costs, but I'm excited to see, you know, like exactly what he, you know, what the difference is.

So anyway, yeah, good ideas. Absolutely, Brandon, that's great. And I tell you, you know, we learn every day in this business. I mean, you know, we get things wrong. I mean, we had a $1,700 allowance for some electrical work on a property that end up going like $3,500. So that's double what we had budgeted. Now, you know, we may have made up for some other things on the other end, but that's no excuse to, you know, what we look at that is, you know, we talk to our electrician and we really get a line item pricing for every single possible thing we can so that now when we go in. Because my company's growing and I have acquisitions managers.

and we want to make sure they don't make that mistake and that we can be within 90% of what we're estimating when we're putting offers out there because we're not bringing contractors in now to make office. So it's critical that we get those numbers right. Yeah, that's really good. Yeah, I was, I had a plumbing, the other day I had a plumbing problem with one of my properties that I'm rehabbing right now. And I called a plumber and he bid, I think, $2,400 to fix it. And then I got another bid and it was $3,400 to fix it. and then my next-door neighbor is doing the whole thing with his plumber for $1,200. So that's another thing, too, is the guy, you can differ dramatically between different people.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And you bring up a good point, and you got the best price in. I'm sure the work's going to get done correctly, but don't necessarily always go for the lowest price. Yep, that's true. You really want to qualify your contractors and make sure they're licensed, make sure they have insurance, and check references, especially if it's somebody new. because, I mean, we had almost $4,000 or $5,000 different zones on plumbing courts on one of our projects, but you need to qualify that lowest bidder to make sure they're qualified to the job.

And even if you do that, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to get somebody to do the right job because I had that with a concrete guy. And, you know, the guy had stellar references, stellar everything, did a horrifying job, didn't want to stand by it. And it was a battle. And it was a battle. And so, you know, you just don't know. Sometimes it's, you know, you run into bad luck and it's bound to happen.

I can share one of those stories, for sure. Well, maybe we'll pick your brain on that one later on. Okay. Well, you talked about your deals and deal flow. Why don't we talk about that a little bit quickly? How are you guys going about finding the properties and deals that you working. Sure. I'll let me tell you a little bit how we started and where we're at now. I mean, in the beginning, multiple ways for me. It would be, first of a network and going to the real estate

investment association meetings, also known as the Rears, collecting business cards and reaching out and letting anyone know what I do. So it could be realtors were always a good source for me. are REO brokers, which are real estate brokers that have specific relationships for banks to get some of these foreclosures, networking, networking, networking, and other events. Now, you can also get deals from attorneys, mortgage brokers, and so forth. One very important way I was getting deals is through wholesalers. You guys, you know, wholesalers talked a lot about on bigger pockets. And wholesalers do things like hang bandit signs.

they send out letters to pull on leads. Boom, bandit sons. Yeah, I know. We could talk about that for about an hour. Farming, all sorts of good things. And that's, you know, I didn't use some of those direct marketing techniques on my own in the beginning. I didn't quite understand who wholesalers were. But now I do and we do a lot of business.

Do you have any tips, I guess, for the wholesalers that are listening on how they can, I mean, like how, what do you look for in a good wholesaler? And what kind of deals are they bringing you? Yeah, wholesalers, I mean, geez, that's another whole. podcast, I think. Because I think there's an illusion out there that wholesaling is easy in that anybody can do it and it's a shortcut to rehabbing. And it's a further thing from the truth is there is no shortcuts to anything in life as far as I'm concerned. And if the way I talk to anybody that's thinking about getting into wholesaling, I tell them it's actually harder than flipping because you've got to market aggressively. You've got to know how to talk to sellers. You've got to be,

you've got to be honest and you've got to be willing to help all parties, not just yourself. And Wait, you said something really quickly. You said you have to be what? You have to be honest. Is that what you said? Yeah, can you imagine that? Wait, an honest. Holy smokes.

Yeah. And I bring that up just because, again, so many wholesalers, you know, start out. And literally the first thing they start doing is lying about deals that they have and all this BS. And it's like, you guys, that's just not the way to start out. Josh, that's great. And I'll tell you, and I think some of that is bad training. I agree. Listening to, you know, I guess the gurus out there and, you know, buying these programs.

I just, I don't think they, some of them don't know better. I mean, there's also the experience wholesalers that do know better that you got to watch out for as well. Because then they're taking advantage of the new flippers and selling them stuff that aren't deals. And so, yeah, you got, you got to be careful on, just like there's good flippers, there's good and bad wholesalers, good and bad investors and so forth. So that's a great point. And that's why it's really important to know the numbers yourself and never to rely on a wholesaler to tell you the numbers. So it's absolutely really important. I know I've seen a lot of wholesale deals, you know, come across, you know, either bigger pockets or whatever that I just look at it.

And I'm like, that's a terrible deal, like completely terrible, yet they're telling everyone it's the best in the world. Well, and, you know, that's one of the, I hate to hype us. Well, I like hyping us. But I'm not, the point of this isn't to do that. But, I mean, we have a section of bigger pockets on our forums where people can, literally share a deal. So if a wholesaler brings you a deal, you can literally share the numbers and you'll have experienced guys just come in, you know, and they're going to say, oh, this is good, watch out for this. You know, they'll ask your questions. I mean,

it's a beautiful thing. So hopefully people listening put that to use because it's a great resource. Yes, that's a great point. That's why anybody that I always say bigger pockets is great for that and put whatever you can out there for questions and you'll get some great answers. Now, just to back up on you were asking, how do I find deals? So relationship building has always been important to me. Just to fast forward to where we are now, two of the wholesalers that I did business with, through relationship building, through networking, one is now a full-time acquisitions manager for me. So he was a former wholesaler who had a dream of being a house flipper.

We talked and I told him my company was growing. So we ended up joining forces me, and that's Bill Roberts. And also John Pissetti, who was a great marketing guy. I mean, he's just a great wholesaler, is now come on board more as a marketing director to continue to pull on leads on all those things that wholesalers do, do that they'll be doing now. We'll be doing in-house now. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah.

So is that the bulk of your team? I know you've got Ralph and now you got these two guys. What other team members do you guys have on board? Yes. In-house, like I mentioned, John Fissetti just came on board. Bill Roberts has written me three or four months. Actually, my daughter is fresh out of her first year in college. I'm going to design school in Boston.

She's working 20 hours a week with me is temporarily until I can get a full-time office manager. And that's the real estate business. That's the real estate side of my business is where we make our money. And then, you know, the house flipping school is something as just sharing with individuals on our website how to flip houses and try to give back as much as we can. And that's where, you know, Ralph and Ryan, those guys were actually a marketing team that came on board about a year ago that's helped me with my internet stuff and blogging and things like that and getting me out there.

So, yeah, just a great team of people that have. So let's talk about that for a second because I think that's an important thing. Brandon and I, we go back and forth a lot about web marketing for investors. And, you know, it's funny, every real estate agent has a blog. Every single one. They've all got it. They're all doing it. They kind of get it.

Real estate investors, I think, for the most part, don't necessarily fully grasp the power of blogging. And you're somebody who's successfully doing it. You've got your own site, and we'll link to that in the show notes, and you blog for us on bigger pockets. And as a result, you're probably getting leads for your business. You're building more relationships. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, the blogging side of things and why do you think that's so effective and why people should or shouldn't do it? Sure, sure.

I mean, this is all new to me for about, you know, a year ago is really when we started down this road. But one thing I've always realized in business is that, you know, my attitude is always like, you know, unless you can do something great yourself, I believe you should seek help by seeking out the experts in the business. Now, Ralph and Ryan from the entire enterprises, I met those guys through business networking international. That's another business group that I belong to, where we meet weekly, and we started meeting,

and he was asking questions about how I promote my business and things like that. And one thing led to another, and then I started doing some research. I'm like, wow, there's a lot to this stuff. And I just not have the time to do it effectively. So that's where, you know, creating your team, we talk about that a lot. And, you know, I know what some people might be saying, if they listen to this, oh yeah, well, that takes money and it's expensive to hide these guys. Well, you know what? You can make all the excuses in the world that you want, so you have a

choice. Either you get really good at doing it yourself and stop watching TV and stay up late at night and figuring it out, maybe you even consider bothering with someone or maybe you consider partnering with someone. How cool would that be? Yeah, that's great. That's great. So you've got, I mean, you've composed this team together. And obviously somebody starting out isn't going to have an acquisitions manager and a marketing team and all that. At what point does that start to come together? Well, at least for you, was it just when you had the cash, when you had the availability to bring them in, you brought them in right away?

Or what was the plan? Yep. Well, like in anything, when you start off on a new business venture, I believe you need to create a plan, a business plan. I know many people don't do it. They get overwhelmed by it. You could just have a one-page business plan. You need something, you need to have a roadmap, because business plans change.

I mean, you go off track, you come on track. But to answer your question, no, I mean, this evolved to the point where last year, you know, I was averaging about nine to 12 properties and I had a decision to make. I either wound it down because it was getting overwhelming, it was a lot, or we ramp it up. And I knew if I ramped it up, I needed to add people to my business. So I made the decision to ramp it up, and we did. And now we're going to be, we're at two properties per month now, and probably we'll be going to three or four over the next several months.

That's really good to hear. I feel like I'm at that exact spot that you just said. Like, I have a decision to make, do I ramp it up or do I take it down? Because I can't really sustain where I'm at right now. And, no, that's really good. Sure. I like to, I need an acquisitions manager. That's what I need.

That would be really nice. We can talk offline anytime we're in a good. There you go. Relationships, relationships. Yes. You got it. People love to call real estate passive income, which is interesting because most of the investors I know are very busy. Busy finding deals, busy managing teams, busy worrying they pick the wrong market.

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Sign up for free at Avail.co-B-B-B-B-B-G-R-Pockets. That's A-V-A-I-L-S-E. CEO slash bigger pockets. Tax season reminder for all the real estate investors listening. If you own rental properties, short-term rentals, commercial buildings, basically anything that's not your primary residence, you need to know about cost segregation. It's an IRS compliance strategy that lets you accelerate depreciation on your properties, which means you're paying less in taxes this year and keeping more cash in your pocket for your next deal.

Cost segregation guys is the go-to firm, having done over 12,000. thousand of these studies with 500 million in total depreciation identified. Head to Costsegregationguise.com slash BP to get a free proposal and see your potential tax savings. You mentioned a little bit ago about, you know, new investors, you know, getting stuck maybe. I want to talk about that because I know that's a huge problem for a lot of people, analysis, paralysis, and not actually ever doing anything, just learning continually. And a lot of our listeners probably have been listening to the podcast from the beginning

and have not done a deal yet. So I guess what can you speak on that, you know? Yeah, I think one of the biggest things is I think new people are reason why they get stuck. I think they get overwhelmed. There's so many different ways to make money in real estate. And what I see just from early on going to the, you know, all these weekend courses, I mean, believe me, I spend my money on buying programs and going to all these events. And I think what ends up happening is they get overwhelmed.

There's so many different things. They buy so many different programs out. either wholesaling or flipping, buying and holding, mobile home parks, storage facilities, notes. I mean, the list goes on and on and on. And I think what they need to do is they need to find a niche, something in real estate that's going to drive their passion, something that they can get excited about. You know, if buying notes doesn't excite you, then don't go buy notes.

You know, if wholesaling excites you because you like to talk to people and you want to try to help them out so they get out of a bad situation, and the meantime you make some money doing it, then do that. If buying a distressed, run-down piece of junk property inspires you, to fix it up and move that neighborhood and go after that. So that's definitely one. The other big one is they have no plan. And if you don't have a plan and you have no goals, you ain't going to go anywhere.

You have nothing to measure your success by. So you need to create a plan. You need to write it down. You need to start taking action. That's great. That's really good. Yeah. And, you know, I want to reiterate one of your points.

You mentioned on the wholesalers helping people out. I make it part of my mind personal mission with what I do with bigger pockets, the show, and everything else, to kind of point out that real estate investors aren't just a bunch of scumbags. We are actually a group of people who are rehabilitating neighborhoods, you know, fixing things up, you know, giving people a place to stay. Now there are bad people. We know it. And unfortunately, that small percentage, I believe, gives a bad name for everybody. but ultimately, you know, it's a great thing that it's a service, what investors do. I mean, we helped save the housing market, right?

I mean, where would we be right now without investors? I agree. Unfortunately, I don't think the bank seat that way. I mean, they seem to want to make things more and more difficult for us to acquire properties. That's another whole. Oh, yeah, we have lots of. But, yeah, no, I agree. And I love what I do.

And I feel we are. It's so gratifying when you're fixing a run-down property in the neighborhood. You know, people walk up to you and the neighbors walk up to you. We were just looking at a property in Plymouth Mass the other day and the lady was coming over to was begging us to buy it. We located the owner. The teenagers are hanging out there. Bad things are happening there. And it's like, well, we would love to be able to buy this property and it make them even happier when we store the property. So, yeah.

It's a great thing. It is a beautiful thing, man. It's a beautiful thing. Well, let's talk about some of the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the thing. other challenges. I know you mentioned, you know, some complexities and things that you've kind of been through. What would you say were your biggest challenges in building your business out to where it is today, maybe some of the tough spots that you went through, anything that, you know, I like to say people really, people tend to learn well from other people's mistakes and maybe

you could kind of share some of those. Yeah, it's kind of like, do as I say, not as I did type thing. Exactly. If I can save anybody from losing money, I'll always tell them what I did morning and learn from it. I guess one of my biggest challenges was, you know, after 20 years of talking about doing this or longer, yeah, about 20 years at the time. And then finally doing it and then losing money in your first deal, I got to tell you, it was like getting kicked in the stomach. It was not a good feeling. I mean, I was down on it.

To be honestly, I was like, I just couldn't believe it happened. And I'm watching everybody make all sorts of money and finally doing it. So, you know, I had a choice either I don't do it anymore or, you know, or I make steps to learn from my mistakes. And there were many. So, yeah, that was a big challenge. But what I did was I spent the next two years educating myself, spending lots of money on education.

And in the end, I said, all right, what's my ROI on all this money? All the stuff I charged on my credit cards. And it was going out there and actually doing a deal is the only way I was going to get my money back. So finding that first deal, I mean, I have failed losing money. Talk about a challenge. I mean, I lost money on my first deal. I, my business was suffering because I was trying to build a real estate business while I was trying to run my flooring business.

Those are some big challenges, but you've got to keep moving forward, my opinion, and that's what I did. If you can keep moving forward every day and making small changes, you know, sort of like taking, you know, three steps forward and maybe one or two steps back sometimes, As long as you keep going forward, it will happen. And finding deals in the beginning was a challenge, getting money, right? I mean, let's face it, that's our challenge for everybody. And you've got to learn to find deals.

You've got to learn how to get the money and overcome all those fears and move forward. Right on. Right on. That's awesome. Cool. Well, hey, I want to do something a little bit different on this podcast episode that we have not done yet. And I want to call it like the fire round. Fire round.

Fire round. All right. These are all questions that came from the bigger pockets forums. You know, these are all short, direct questions that I just want to get your opinion on. So we're just going to fire through these. This could be hard, but I'll try. I just want to know your thought on this. Yeah, there we go. So, all right.

And me and Josh will kind of alternate on these. So I'll start with asbestos. How do you deal with it? Hire an asbestos abatement company. Don't touch it yourself. Yes, indeed. Appliances. High end, low end, used. Relevant on what you're selling the house for. On average, even our start of homes, we go with medium-priced appliances and we go with stainless steel. It's great look in the kitchen. It's worth the extra money to go at stainless steel or white or black.

Cool. All right. So how do you decide how nice to make a flip? That is based on our ARV and knowing the neighborhood. You never want to have your house to be the nicest house. household, that means you probably spent too much money in repairing it, and you certainly don't want to be the less attractive housing neighborhood. So that's, you know, we look at that very carefully. That's awesome. That's awesome. All right, do you offer incentives to your contractors? Oh, I've gone down the contracting road so many different ways. All I'm going to say is sometimes yes and sometimes no. Okay. That's good. Fair enough. All right.

Go ahead. You could, my suggestion would be, depending on whether you're hiring a general contractor, or if you're contracting it out yourself, or if you're hiring a property manager. There's nothing wrong with incentives. And, you know,

if you're going to offer a early incentive for getting done early, I think you should also have something that, you know, like a fee if they go over, like a performance fund almost. Yeah. That's what I'm talking about. We're working on some things like that too.

So I can share more. we'll see how much the contractors like that. Yep. Maybe a blog post down the line. Yeah, that's a good idea. All right, so let's say you're driving around, Mike, and you find a vacant, ugly-looking house. What do you do?

Well, right now, I take a picture, write down the address, and I give it to my acquisitions, man. Nice. Okay, that's, hold on. What would you have done back in the day? Don't parse, man. Come on. Well, back in the day, I would write that address down, and I would contact

maybe a local relative to area or wholesaler and have them do some research to try to see if they could find out what's going on with that deal and offer a fee if it led to a sale. That's a good idea to call up a wholesaler and have them do the work for you. That's a great, great, great idea. And for the wholesaler, I mean, they get the opportunity, man. They get the training. That's awesome, man. That's awesome.

All right, here's a good one. You ready? Yep. You ready? This was actually on the forums. This was actually a question. I know. I remember meeting that.

Would you flip a house if a murder took place in it? My quick answer on that is no. Oh, I agree. Do you want my reasons? Sure. Yeah, share some reasons. Well, number one, I think it's kind of like bad karma, knowing that. I don't know if I'd feel good about it.

Number two would be the money end of it. Obviously, if you knew about it, you got to disclose it. Right. And I think. I actually don't think you have to disclose it everywhere. I'm not certain of the laws, but I think... It could be from state to state whether you have to disclose it or not. I believe in this state you would have to.

And it may be a time parameter around that, like how long it happened, or how many change of ownership. If there was a change of ownership, once or twice, I don't believe you would have to disclose something that happened like on a formal ownership. But I don't know. Knowing that, I don't think I would want to do it first. Yeah, I think there's enough deals out there that you don't have to go after the murder houses. Exactly.

Yep. All right. So how much do you stage? We are staging 100% of our homes right now. And we weren't doing that, say, a year ago, but now we have a staging program in place where staging offers many, many benefits, and I would highly recommend it to anyone telling a house.

That's just to remain competitive, I think. Do you do beds and everything? No, we're not staging bedrooms. We're staging living rooms, dining rooms, kitchens, and assessorizing with towels and shower curtains and sometimes pictures and things like that. Right on. Pictures of you?

No, definitely no. I would scale them away with this big Italian nose. My wife wouldn't allow it anyways. All right, so your next door neighbor to your flip has junk cars everywhere all over the place causing your house to not sell. What do you do? Well, the first advice I would give is know this before you buy the house. There you go.

But I also bought houses, I guess I was blind to that. So, actually, by the very first house we bought, had a boat sinking in the front yard. So, I mean, how come I didn't see that boat when we bought the house? Boat sinking in the front yard. Yeah, in the staging that was on the side of the house. I probably was there since 1980 was probably a clue that the guy never finished the rehab. Nice. I would say, you know, in the event, though, you did buy it and didn't notice it.

You definitely need to understand exit strategies in having a price reduction strategy to move that house. It's not like we talked about early, either lease optioning it out or renting it out because that that could happen. People don't want to buy houses that their neighbors don't look very friendly on. Or you could hire one of those tow companies on the TV shows to come and steal the boat. I think you've been spying them because we're looking at a house in Middle Bowl and the guy next door has a bunch of junk cars. So that's kind of scary that you guys put that question. I once actually offered to pay for my neighbor. You know, when you buy a house, you don't realize, like when you buy the ugliest house on the street,

The one next door doesn't look so bad, but as soon as you clean up the house you're working on, all of a sudden the one next door, you realize. Anyway, I once offered to pay for a guy to pay to clean up his yard and everything, and he shot me down. I was going to say, how did that go? But he did go out and clean after that point. He realized it meant a lot to me. Anyway. All right.

So last question of the... Fire round. Fire round. What is your minimum profit that you personally aim for on a flip? A minimum profit that we aim for is around $35,000, Brandon, and that is a product of really the ARB. Most of our flips aren't much lower than 175 now, so 20% of that is around $35,000,

and that's our minimum projection. So if we're getting into it, like I say, $140,000 or $150,000 flip, if we're not going to project 35, we won't go for it. Okay, cool. Now, before we get to our last final questions, I do have one more question for you. What is, I guess, how is this market today looking competitively wise? I hear a lot of investors talking about having a hard time finding deals.

I'm just wondering if you found that true as well. It's definitely what depends on what they're doing to find deals. If you're relying on MLS, which a lot of them do, very competitive. Things are being outpriced. And I would say, you know, don't break from your rules and stay true to your numbers. Otherwise, you might get burned. So in that sense, yes, it is definitely more competitive. It's definitely our seller's market now.

It has heated up. We're selling properties our first day, second day on the market. But you've got to find other ways to find deals and not just rely on MLS. Great. Great. All right. So now officially we can jump to the Famous Four. All right.

That sounds so pathetic. Yeah. Now, before we start with the Famous Four, man, you know, we're talking here. I got you. I got Mike Likava. I got this guy from Massachusetts. So come on, man, you got to say it. Don't fat in the pack.

Come on, let's hear it. Oh, yeah, I can't do it. Oh, God, happy God. Hey, there it is. There it is. Beautiful. Beautiful. All right, now that we thoroughly embarrassed Brandon,

uh, thanks. Let's, let's talk about your, uh, your favorite real estate book. Are there any favorites? Um, think and grow rich by Nepalien Hill was, uh, it's probably by far my favorite book of all time. I mean, it's just such a great book. It really got me thinking beyond more like what the secret book was all about, but it's about positive mindset and reversing the negative thoughts in your brain and making positive affirmations. Just a great book.

I've read it like three times and I would recommend it to anybody if you're looking to succeed and change your mindset and how to do it. Nice. Nice. I'm sitting here watching Brandon crack up over something. I'm still trying to figure it out. You were just mocking me earlier, not on the podcast, but being Mr. Negative today. So I just thought that was funny.

I may have to reread that one. You should read it, Brandon. There you go. What about hobbies? I'm sure you do stuff outside of your real estate career. You got the family. What do you like to do for fun? You know, I love my business so much.

I mean, I consider this fun every day. I go to work, however. I try to spend any time I can, as much time as I can with my kids and my wife. Because to me, success isn't just about how much money you're going to make. It's about enjoying it along the way. And that, you know, golfing, mini golf on my kids. I love the golf person.

I go golf once in all my buddies. But just hanging out by the pool and spending as much time with my two girls is really everything to me in my life. Right on. That's awesome. You know, I didn't understand golfing before until I went with some real estate guys, like, I don't know, a few months ago.

And now I get it, why people golf? Because it was such a good networking thing. It was, like, I built such good relationships with a bunch of realtors around town and an investor just by golfing. It was awesome. It was awesome. Try doing some skins someday and then, you know, put a little, like a dollar a hole on the game. It's really fun. I don't want to promote gambling or anything like that. Right, right, right.

I would lose that money very, very quickly. And I believe golfing to not be awesome because, you know, anytime I play, a club goes flying. And if I'm doing it with somebody that I'm seriously trying to have a relationship with and business, it won't look good. It's a little embarrassing for Josh. Yeah, just a little bit. All right. So last question of the day. Why do you believe some house flippers succeed and others just come and go and fail or never get started? Well, I think for any individual, whether it's house flipping or any business, really it comes down to a passion within you. If you have that passion and you want it bad enough, you'll find a way to make it work. But I think what happens

in this business is too many people get caught up and thinking this is like some get rich, quick scheme, you know, hit the easy button. I'm going to make a million bucks in 90 days, and that's not the case. So what ends up happening, I think they may prematurely get into a deal and they may lose money on their first deal, or a million things may go wrong, and they get discouraged. So I think first and foremost is you want to educate yourself, get on bigger pockets and ask questions and my goodness i wish i knew bigger pockets 10 years ago because or five five years i wish i knew it 10 years ago yeah exactly um because i would have had a lot of questions you guys might have thrown me up the site because i probably would ask too many questions never there's no such thing

as a stupid question mike create a plan i mean right you create a plan even if it's one page and have some goals if you know uh what's the saying um a dream is just uh or goals no goals with no actions are just dreams. You can dream about it, but if you don't, if you don't create goals, you don't take actions to meet those goals, you ain't going to get there. That's awesome. That's awesome. And quite quotable, Brandon. Yes, I may have to put that in the tweetable topics on the show notes. Yes, yes. Awesome. Well, listen, Mike, I got to tell you, man, lots of fantastic information. We definitely appreciate you coming on the show and taking the time. Thank you so much for participating with us on the site. We'll, we'll start

certainly be linking to your profile and the show notes. Your website is how, what is it, house flipping school? Yes, house flipping school.com.com. So you guys could find Mike over there. And listen, thanks for being here with us. Thanks, Josh. I appreciate the opportunity. Yeah, thank you, Mike. Thank you, Brandon, and we'll talk to you soon. All right, everybody. That was Mike La Cava here on the Bigger Pockets podcast. hopefully you guys got as much out of that interview as we did. It was really chock-filled of lots of tips, lots of actionable content. So we definitely appreciate Mike coming on board.

Again, as we told you in the beginning of the show, we've got lots of great reviews and ratings. If you guys haven't yet taken the time to leave us one on iTunes, please do. Otherwise, make sure you're hanging out with us. on Bigger Pockets, the more active you are, the more you're out there engaging with other people, the better your opportunities for growth and for networking and expansion of your knowledge and your team are going to be. So definitely be out there and engage. If you're not following us on Facebook, follow us at Facebook.com slash Bigger Pockets. Find us on YouTube. We got some cool stuff,

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