Epic Real Estate Investing - EPREI 021 : Wholesaling and Fix n' Flipping with Kristi Cirtwill

Episode Date: November 28, 2011

It's the strategy reality T.V. is made of! Drama, stress, triumph and big pay days! It's wholesaling and fix n' flipping! And today Matt is joined by professional fix n' flipper Kristi Cirtwill to share her sercets of success. You get your free real estate investing course, How to Do Deals - No Money Required, at http://FreeRealEstateInvestingCourse.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Epic Real Estate Investing Podcast, episode 21. You're about to meet a man that can show you how he took control of his life and financial future and how you can do the same. He's never been on TV. He's not a millionaire, and he does not know Donald Trump. He is a full-time real estate investor, newly discovered author, and family man. He does not report to a boss. He creates his own schedule and takes his family on a few vacations every year.

He got started investing in real estate with almost no money in a really crummy credit score, and he's going to show you exactly how he did it and how he continues to do it. You will have to work. You will have to be responsible. However, laying by the beach sipping fruity drinks is a reasonable goal without further delay. Your guru. Sorry. Your guide to a better life through real estate investing. Matt Terrio.

Hello and greetings from the epic real estate investing podcast, the podcast that will show you how to build wealth through creative real estate investing. So you will have the option to realistically retire in the next 10 years or less and enjoy the good life while you're still young enough to do so. My name is Matt Terrio. author, full-time real estate investor and family man. If this is your first time listening to this show, you'll want to do two things. First of all, welcome.

I'm so glad that you're here. But first, you're going to want to go back and listen to episode one for the ground rules of the show. And two, download the free real estate investing course, how to do deals, no money required. And you can get that at free real estate investing course.com. It's a step-by-step course of where I unveil the mystery around doing deals with no money or credit. You can get that at free real estate investing course.com. So today, before we get into it, I got a few things that I wanted to share. I hadn't visited iTunes in a while and I noticed a few reviews of the show. So thank you. Thank you for your reviews. Thank you to all of you that have

stopped by to leave your comments. I was pleased to see that all the reviews were five-star reviews. And if you didn't know, that really helps the show in iTunes in the iTunes search system, meaning the more good reviews, the easier it is for others to find the show. So thank you for that. So I wanted to read some of those reviews just to acknowledge those people that took the time to go and do that. Some of these reviews are really, really cool. This one comes from Fret Fudger, Worth Your Time, Five Stars. Says Matt holds nothing back and shares everything he knows about real estate investing, subscribe, and enjoy.

Thank you, Fred Fudger. I thank you for that comment. Next one says by C Football Fan. Excellent five-star review. Very straightforward, honest approach, highly recommended. Love it. Thank you. And then this one, five-star review, another comes from R.H. Locke. Says, I made $6,500 on my first deal. It says, first, I want to thank Matt, Terrio, and Sean Terry. I downloaded the podcast on my iPhone. I wanted something to listen to while driving. I got really motivated by the material. I told a few people that I was thinking about flipping houses. A family member told me about a house that was for sale cheap. Long story short, I got the deal under

contract. Put out some for sale signs because I did not have my investors list started. The day after I had a buyer and a contract to sell. The whole process took about 21 days from start to finish. Title search took about 10 days. After closing costs, I took home just under $6,500. I was nervous the whole time. I was unsure about myself the whole time, but I stayed with it. I realized that everything kind of fell into my lap. I also realized that from the podcast, alone, I had enough knowledge to put this thing together and recognize the deal. It worked for me. I am $6,500 richer.

Thanks, Matt. Well, R.H. Locke, you are welcome. Awesome story. Thanks for sharing that with me. Thank you for those reviews. Keep them coming. That was awesome. Great to hear, especially if you're putting stuff to work and making money at it.

So thank you. And another thing, you know, the Epic Pro Academy is coming along really nicely. And not as fast as I had hoped. I've obviously missed my November 15th deadline, but it's coming. And I'm filling it with a ton of information. I want to make sure I don't miss anything, particularly anything that might cost you an opportunity or might cost you some money. So I'm making sure I'm getting all my bases covered.

Make sure that you have all the information that you need to succeed at this real estate investing game. Also, I have supercharged the Epic Analyzer. You know, for those of you that have downloaded the free real estate investing course, you know what that is. And you probably also know that the Epic Analyzer, it has its limits, although it does serve its purpose. Its purpose is to an evaluative property to basically reveal whether you have a deal or not in just a matter of seconds. And, you know, putting this whole academy together has been a little more of a challenge than I had expected.

The challenge comes from coordinating my team of professionals of which are putting this together. We're putting this together collectively. Nonetheless, it's coming along really nicely and should be complete any day now. And I'll certainly keep you up to date and let you know when you can check it out. And with regard to those reviews, if you've got some reviews, you know, please, send them in, I could certainly use them. So here's a deal. I'm just thinking of this on the top of my head. If you put some of this information to use and you've experienced some results, go ahead and send me that review. And if you put it in a video format, I will reward you for that. I will give you access

to the Epic Pro Academy for free. You'll become a free member. That'll be my gesture of appreciation and gratitude for you helping me out with that. This testimonial I just found on iTunes, I mean, What a shocker to see someone made $6,500 just out of the blue. And, you know, I sit here in my office and I record these podcasts. And, you know, sometimes I just have really no idea where this information lands and how people put it to use unless you guys tell me about it. So I really appreciate that. Thank you. All righty then.

Continuing on with our series of interviews from real estate investors, real real estate investors, doing deals in today's market. I have a friend and an associate on the line today of which I've known for a few years. years. She hails from Canada, the country just north of the United States, and she now resides here in Southern California. She's one of the more respected wholesalers and fix and flippers here in the area with several deals under her belt, as well as several deals, active deals today at different stages of development. And the one thing, you know, I really respect about her is that I know how persistent you have to be to make real estate investing work and make it work successfully and profitably. And her being from another country, she's had to just,

jump through quite a few more hoops than those of us who are American citizens just to complete some of the more simple transactions. So I've got a lot of respect for her for doing that. I mean, it takes a lot of tenacity and spirit and persistence. So on the phone today, I'm joined by Christy Sertwell. Christy, welcome to the show. Thanks, Matt. Glad that you're here.

So as we get started, I just wanted to, I guess, get a little bit of your background. and learn how did you, basically, how did you get started investing in real estate? And what was your initial attraction to real estate? I bought my first property when I was in my early 20s, and I honestly went into it a little bit without any knowledge whatsoever, but I just knew I wanted to own a house instead of paying rent. So I ended up renting some rooms out to students and kind of realizing quickly that I could get my mortgage.

pretty much covered. So I love the idea of that and having somebody else pay off my mortgage and cash flow. So a couple more properties, but it wasn't until maybe three years ago or so that I kind of went into a full-time into the flipping and rehabbing system. So now I do that full-time per living, and we'll eventually, again, when we bought them out, put that money back into more rental properties. Got it. So I know you're flipping property and you're eventually going to move on to the holding. What is your primary acquisition strategy?

Where do you find most of your deals? A couple different ways, but basically they're all coming off the MLS, but they're brought to us a couple of different ways. Through realtors that we have relationships with in different markets and also through wholesalers. So more of a bird dog where they're, out there scouting the market for us as well. The odd

time we actually get stuff brought to us privately, so it hasn't made the MLS yet, but it's maybe brought through a realtor that we've made a relationship with. They just haven't slipped on the MLS yet, so we have those brought to us privately. Got it.

But your primary source is the multiple listing service, right? Yeah. And then your main exit strategy at the moment is flipping the problem. property, correct? Yes, I'm not currently buying any to hold. I'm flipping them all.

Got it. So my question is, you know, the multiple listing service, I've always been, like, I've kind of stayed away from that, particularly if I was looking for a fix and flip, because it's just kind of tough to find equity. How are you able to do it? Usually we're just seeing an opportunity that somebody else has been, we've kind of, part of it has been we've narrowed down to a just. just a few different cities that we're working now.

And I think that's key because before we were trying to take over all of L.A. and Orange counties, and that really didn't do us any favors because I think what we ended up, what was happening, we were missing deals because we did recognize them as a deal. So now that we've narrowed down on just a few different cities, when something comes up on the MLS, we can recognize it as a deal. We know those areas a lot better. so that that's a large part of how we're finding stuff. Got it.

So knowing your market is a biggie? Yep. Got it. And then I just still have to imagine, though, you probably write a lot of offers. Is that correct? Yes. You laugh.

Is that because that's really accurate or kind of accurate? In the beginning, I'll tell you how I got started. I wrote 250 offers. to get one deal. Now, obviously, that has gone way down because I don't, you know, I have relationships built. It's a little easier to spot deals. But, yeah, in the beginning, it was quite a few offers.

And it's just until you kind of get the hang of even how to write the offers, that's just kind of what you have to go through. So now I would say, on average, we have, we have, we have. myself and a couple other wholesalers were probably putting in on average three to five offers a day. Three to five a day? Yeah. And so that would be, let's say, 15 a week. How many deals or how many of those do you get accepted a week?

Well, we kind of based it on a yearly goal, and our goal this year was to buy 20 houses, and so far we're at 17 houses. So, if you kind of work out the math, that's about what it is. Got it. So that's, you're probably on track to do, I guess you're doing about two a month. Yeah, yeah. Got it. Well, that's not bad.

I mean, everyone's got their own strategy and doing two a month. That's awesome. Do you do any type of marketing? No, I did a little bit of direct mail, but I mean, hardly enough to even, you know, say that's really one. acquisition strategy. So not really. I mean, the on time I'll send out a postcard,

but it's not really something I do on a consistent basis. Got it. Okay. What are some of your favorite online resources that you use in, whether that's to generate leads or find leads or, you know, to run your analysis, do your due diligence? Do you have any favorite online resources? No, we just use the MLS to really do everything through.

The only other website that we do go to, redfin, which is just data pulled from the MLS and other real estate sites. But others of that, I would say 90% we rely on the MLS. So I would say if you don't have it, go get it. Right. You find a way to get access to it. Right. You really don't need anything else if you've got that.

Absolutely. Yeah. So the big question on the show and from the audience is, where do you find the money for your deals? Well, there's an old saying when the deal appears, the money will appear next, and that is true. I did have some of my own capital to start, and when I partnered with my sister partner full-time, he also brought some capital to the table. But obviously, you run out of that pretty quick.

We're in a market where we're purchasing, on average, $250,000 to $300,000 houses. So it doesn't take long to buy one or two of those, and your money's pretty much done. So beyond that, we started just letting everybody in the world know what it is that we do. And surprisingly, all these people, private individuals with money showed an interest in earning 10 to 12 percent, and those are the people that we work with now just get a 10 to 12 percent. and, you know, put their money in a trustee position on the property, so security against the property, and that's what we use. So we also have used hard money in fact, and that just means basically somebody else's money, 10 to 12%, but you're also paying points on top of that. So the benefit of doing that is it is a lot quicker to fund the deal.

So if we need something funded really quickly, hard money is definitely a good resource for that. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Got it. So you'd said something right in the beginning. You'd said, you know, when the deal appears, so does the money. Tell me a little bit more about that, what your experience is. And specifically, like when you do have a deal and you go to your money sources,

how do you ask for it and how do you present your opportunities to your money sources? Well, to back up a little bit, I think a large part of it is just, being out there and having people know what it is you do for a living. But everybody knows you're in the business, smoking mountains. The money people need us as much as we need them. Because they've got people sitting there, and it's no good to them if they're not earning any return on it. So they're looking for, they don't want to do all that hands-on stuff.

They've already been there and done that. So they're looking for people who don't mind taking the active role and they can just hand their money over and earn a decent return on. So it's just really staying involved with the real estate clubs, real estate investing clubs, all over L.A. and Ridge County. Just kind of keeping your faith in the community. And when people know that that's what you do for a business, you almost kind of start getting phone calls from people.

You know, you don't have to go and peek it. After a while, you just get calls. it was a blue with me. So it's just having a presence and I would say you asked a question earlier about online, well, I would say in terms of just building your credibility

and building your name as a business, Facebook has been a tool to help me do that. And again, it's not even about pitching anything or going on there and asking for money. It's just about posting before and after pictures of a property. And that just goes a long way to show companies that you aren't.

Got it. So you use Facebook as a platform to essentially just, you know, show off your success and convey your competence. Yeah, and even if you're just getting started, I would say just, you know, promote that one property to that's like crazy. And show people that you know what you're doing. The money will be more. People will want to work. Right. Right.

Exactly. So tell me, what is the typical day for Christy look like? Well, today my day started at 5.30, and I was at a job site in Arcadia by 7 o'clock, doing a final walkthrough for a property that hopefully will get listed up market in a couple of days. So that was part of it, a trip to home depot. Hopefully I won't have to do all this running around eventually as my... business default, but that's for now is part of the project management. The other part of the day, just scouting the deals, checking the wholesalers, maybe somebody's

got a deal, so they have to buy and see it, so I'll run in particular talk, getting bids for new jobs that we have starting. Just some investor relations, so if we have properties on to go, we want to make sure we keep the contact with our investors to let them know how the progress is going, just stay in touch with them. Just over that. And, of course, networking. So you build any kind of business. I think that's the way to do it.

Right. So that's a typical day. A long day. Right? No, it is. Definitely. I mean, we all experience the same thing, and it seems like we all do the exact same stuff. How is your approach to investing changed since you got started?

I would say it's a, you never stop learning and you're always, in the beginning I would say it was different because, you know, I had like two deals by first year. And now, you know, with 20 deals in one year, you have to put some kind of system in place or you're going to very quickly go to business. So part of it has just been developing that system, which, you know, you don't need to develop. all this is that you don't have any properties going. But now that I do, it's just kind of, how do I figure it how to manage all of them? So from that point it's changed, but also from a market standpoint, it's changed.

And it's still changing. So the key is also to stay on top of what's going on in the marketplace. Are we, you know, going up anytime soon? Are we still in the deep line? And just a variety of other things. that could affect the real estate market. You really have to kind of keep an eye on that stuff. And, you know, I could end up sending goals for next year that I may not meet

because I have to instantly change my goals because of something that's happened in the market that's not within my control. So you just have to almost be ready to roll the punches depending on what changes happen that, you know, you don't really have a sand. That leads perfectly in the sense. my next question is in what ways do you stay up to date with the market and what types of things or indicators do you look for? I stay in touch with a different economist.

I just finished reading the book, The Aftershock, and just anything to do with, it doesn't even have to be real estate related. It could be economy related. It could be budget related. It could be job loss, job gain, anything to do with that. I'm trying to read it and learn it and form my own opinions on how that could end up affecting the real estate market. So obviously the last thing I want to do is buy a house and have the value decline like it said in 08, where, you know, it was dropping so fast that your profits are immediately wiped out.

So I think flipping is still a really good strategy to do. It's just a matter of getting in, getting out really quickly so that you don't get caught in that drop. Right. Right. So based on your experience and what you know now, based on your current knowledge, where do you think the market is headed? Down. Sorry to be a donor, but I don't think we're going up anytime soon. I think we'll be pumping along the bottom for a little while yet, but there are some.

predictions that we will experience something like we did in 08 again. Again, I'm learning as I go, but I'm speaking out the people that have been right in the past and that, you know, have credibility in my eyes, and that's kind of what is leaning towards. So, you know, do I think that you can get properties in Riverside for land value? sure, you know, will they go down much more than they have? Probably not when you're buying it land value. However, you know, there's still some areas that even I'm flipping houses in where, to me, it doesn't even make sense that as two-bedroom, one bathroom,

they'll be selling for half a million dollars. So could that drop to $300,000? That's what some people are saying. So I'm just being cautious of... and like I say, the key to managing that risk is just getting in, getting out quickly. It's not going to drop in a matter of a month.

So, yeah, I mean, I see this kind of bad overall for the U.S., but in a way, I see just a ton more opportunity ahead. Right, right. So that, well, you're just, You're just falling right into my next questions perfectly. So if you're, if you think it's going, we're going down some more, and according to you, I mean, you think we might be going down significantly. And just for everyone that's listening, you are in Southern California.

So you're basing that information on the Southern California market, right? Yes. Okay. So what types of things are you doing to prepare? Are you adopting a different strategy or are you just stock and stuff? stocking some money away. How are you preparing for this if that's what you think, where you think the market is headed?

I'm trying to become more liquid. So right now I have, I think I have too many deals going and I just need to, you know, sell some of those. We seem to just have a period of fun there where we picked up a lot of properties. Anyway, so we're quickly just

turning, well, just getting them out the door and I might just try to keep more cash aside and not get too overextended in any way. I think the key will be to have some cash when the time is right just as a personal safety net

and also just to be able to buy a good deal, more good deals. But I think that thing is still the way to go because you can get in and out of it so fast. I think the one thing that I would do now is not buy any more six-month project or longer, I would just go back to the one that I know and I could do really well, which are like the four-week rehabs, kind of get in and out, get them relisted.

And I think that's really kind of a safe zone. For me, for me anyway. Sure, sure. Yeah, it sounds like I've known you for a while, and I think we met right about the both time both of us got started. And you can certainly always tell when you're talking to somebody who's actually out there on the court and playing the game. And I certainly know that you are and you can tell that you're very educated and experienced. How much have you actually invested in your real estate investing education? And how much did you feel you needed ahead of time before you actually got the courage and the confidence to go out there and get started?

I was sure I'd have to really add it up over the years, but definitely tens of thousands. I would say from around the 20 to 25,000 marks, but when you add up how that's been able to pay me back over time, I mean, I don't know if I would have done it any other way. Right. You know, you just, it's like, why would you get into any profession without having had some kind of formal training? So, you know, I just found the courses that made sense to me,

and honestly, it's so wild to narrow down what it was I wanted to do. So, and it took a few different classes to really think about, well, you know, this strategy maybe doesn't make sense for me. So I'm not going to pursue that. So it did take a little while, but after a while you seem to realize what resources do you have and what strategy would they, would they have to fit with, and that's kind of what you end up doing. Right. Do you continue to invest in your education? Oh, yeah, definitely.

In what ways? Just staying in touch with the real estate investing world, finding out what teachers are coming to town, taking additional classes. I read, I try to read a lot, just on a variety of topics, not just real estate, but personal development. That has a lot to do with running your own business, or not.

And like I said, the economy stuff, I try to stay on top of it. of that. So just a lot of reading, a lot of media. I try to make friends with people who are doing more deals than I'm doing. So obviously they're doing something right. They're still in business and you can learn for those people. So what I do. Nice. So what is something that you now know that you wish you would have known when you got started? I guess. when I got started, I really did not have an idea of what it would take to run at this. And there's nothing really I would have done any differently.

I still would have jumped in with both feet, which is what I did. But, yeah, when you've never run a business before and suddenly, you know, you're trying to run a multi-million dollar real estate. company, it can be a little overwhelming. I just don't know if there's any way I could have prepared myself more for that. I think to some degree you just have to take the classes and then the next step is to just do it. Got it.

Got it. So about, I guess it was about a month ago, maybe a month and a half ago, I'd send out a survey to all of the listeners and asked them what were their most. earning questions about real estate investing. And I've got a bunch of them here, and I just wanted to fire these off at you and see if you can give an answer for these and help them out. Just give them a different perspective. And we'll just have a little fun with it. If you can answer it good, if not, just say pass, say next questions.

Sound good? Okay. Okay. Sounds good. All right. So question, this question are, what were the steps in growing and selecting your power team, who came first? and why? And what's a good way to structure payment of professional services or legal advice if initial funds are minimal? So there's a lot there. So what were the steps? We'll start with

the first part. What were the steps in growing and selecting your power team? Who came first and why? I thought it's a person who just jumps in with both feet, does it, and figure out who I need a long way. And it wasn't a matter of okay, you know, I've got the business. Now I have to think about who do I need on my team. It was never like that. It was just, I knew I had to get a property. That's how you start flipping to buy a property. So how do you buy a property? You need a realtor. And so I probably met a gazillion realtors before I thought about, oh, this one kind of gets the investing side of thing. So, you know, not saying you burn any bridges, but it's just a bit of a number go through and partly for yourself and then you can know what is your criteria

where what the area you're going to invest in what type of property so that's the step one in my mind right the second step is the next thing you have is the property and you need a contractor to fix it up so you know you're always kind of thinking you know wait so you buy the property then gets contractor but you're thinking 10 so what is what is the next step point see so if it could be logification about it like that, it helped. Keep it thinking ahead. So what's the next resource I'm going to keep?

So a lot of those resources just deep through network. I would join local real estate investing group. I would join a local networking group in general and just try to get referrals for to them out, the contractors and realtors and lenders. That was probably 95% the way I built up my resource. Right. So you just kind of picked them, just went through the process and went and found people as you needed them. Yeah. Got it. Yeah. Got it.

Who would you say is the most important person on your team to your success? At this point in time, I would say it's my business partner. I don't think we would be at the level, I don't think I would have been two years ago if it had been for a joint sports situation. now. So what did your business partner bring to the table that you were missing? I guess we both came to the table of different skills, which was good. You don't want both of the people's the exact same resources. So he had some capital.

I had a little bit of capital. He had a lending and a short sale background. I had the project management. experience. And I think when you have one person with a lot of enthusiasts for the business, you know, that's one thing. But when you have two people, it's almost like you sent quadruple the amount of enthusiasts. Because now you've got two people, and when you put two heads together, it's just more ideas,

more possibilities. So that was it for me this year anyway. Right. Nice. So what's a good way? to, I guess, structure payment for your professional service? How did you do that in the beginning, say, when a lot of your money is designated toward the property itself, but you still need the professionals to work with?

Did you get creative at all in your structuring your payment, or you just paid them straight what they asked for? There's always room for negotiation. I would say if you're doing a property that costs you $25,000 to pay a contractor to do the work and you don't have $25,000 to pay him along the way for the work to do it, you probably shouldn't be in the 50s book. You should

have some contingency been built up somewhere. It's just too risky to be running so thin and not being able to make those payments. Initially, the reality of the business is you can't do every

single thing by the book initially because you don't even have a business still. So in you get that one or two properties. I think I bought the first one just in my personal name, which probably wasn't the right thing to do, but at least you got me started. Then it was like, okay, I need

a corporation, I got that set up, so just a matter of seeing the need for the service and having done something in the business so that you brought in some income so that you can pay to do the next step.

So it is hard to budget. There's no doubt about it, is that if every step of your business, you're always going to have budgeting concerns and cash flow concerns, it's just going to be at a different level. So it's just managing that, and it's the most important,

one of the most important things I've done this year, actually, is to develop a cash flow worksheet. Because the last thing I want to do is, you know, get to a property, and buy a property and not be able to start that remodel because I'm out of money to do it. I never want to let myself get in that position. So it's hard to budget,

but if you are in the 60-foot business, it is critical to somehow have access to some capital to start the business. Cool. I think we answered that question pretty thoroughly. Yeah. Next question. I know you have a couple specific areas that you work in.

So I imagine that you see a lot of people, the same people over and over in the industry or in your area. Can you, this is the question, can you work together with the competition in your area to get started and learn from them? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Because I've actually wholesale some properties to some of my colleagues. and they've actually sold me properties and it just depends on where you're at in your business. If you have too many properties

and you want a wholesale one, then that competition now becomes your client. So I think it's just a matter of working together and there's enough houses to go around for everybody so I never see it really as a conflict. Got it, got it. Let's see. I know you don't do, you're not really doing it.

any buy and holds at the moment. So I'm trying to find some more fix-and-flip-type questions. Here's a good one. How can you find people? Because I know, because I'm on your email list, so I know you send me deals every once in a while, how do you find your people to refer your deals to? Like if something doesn't fit your criteria,

you don't have room for it, how can you still, I guess, capitalize on that deal? I guess again a lot of it has been worded enough initially when I didn't know anybody here I would just go on Craigslist and try to find buyers

I would also show up at the real estate investing clubs to kind of find out who's doing what and to see if there's buyers there and there are not everybody actually buys so it's going through and kind of finding out the curious ones that actually want to buy.

But, yeah, a lot of it's just word and mouth fee. You do one deal with one person, and next thing you know, they're passing your name onto a friend of theirs, who's also looking for a property. So just a lot of networking and word of mouth, mostly. Right. I mean, there's really no way around it. I mean, it's a people business,

and if you want to do the business, you've got to get out there amongst the people. Yeah, that's right. Absolutely. Okay, what are your three Christy Sertwills, top three rehab tips? All right, rehab tips. Don't over remodel for the neighborhood, which is always tempting to do because you want to make a $250,000 house look like a million dollars, and just the reality is sometimes you'll just never get your money back out of that. always build in a contingency.

So if you think it's going to cost $20,000, you might want to just plan in the back of your mind that it could be a couple thousand more for surprises. And the other thing I do is I try to see any new contractor that I'm thinking about hiring. I try to see a previous job of theirs. So if they've just completed a job somewhere,

I try to go to that job site just to take a look at their work and just kind of do some due diligence to make sure I'm getting into a good situation. Right. Great. So number one was don't overbuild for the neighborhood. And number two was building a contingency, a safety net, so to speak, because there's always surprises in rehabs. And three is do your research on your rehab team. Yeah. I love it.

I think that's a great one. I don't know the only really, I haven't really lost any significant money in a deal yet, but I know where there is more money or there was money to where I could have made more. There are situations where I could have made more money was definitely by maybe selecting my rehab team a little bit better. So I think that's, that was a good team to put. Good, good point to point out. Great. So thank you.

Here's a, I got two more questions for you. If you lost everything today and had to start from scratch, how would you restart? I'd probably do the exact same thing I did. Just jump in with both feet and build it the exact same way I did. Just through networking, word of mouth, and kind of just following the similar plan. I mean, I think it should go faster the second time around because if you already have the the systems and the strategies in place,

then it's just a matter of implementing and getting back to work. Right. Right. So what you're doing is working and you do the exact same thing? Yes, I would. Awesome. Awesome. Cool. So, Christy, what's in your future right now that you're really, really excited about?

Well, just where I see the market going. Whether that's good or bad to to people, to me, I just always see opportunities, no matter what type of market we're in. And that's what gets me out of bed every morning. Just thinking about all the opportunities to do what I'm doing, flipping houses, building up capital. And then eventually when things are at rock bottom

and, you know, you can't buy any cheaper, you know, that will be the time to just start accumulating and eventually to retirement. So that's what gets me excited in the morning. There is a lot of opportunity in today's marker right now. Absolutely. And you obviously see the same thing. That's great.

Well, Christy, thank you very much for taking time out of your busy schedule. I know you've got a very busy one. You know, would you mind coming back in the future and then sharing a little bit more about your progress? I would love to, Matt. Awesome. Thanks a lot, and I will see you at the real estate clubs soon, I'm sure. Okay, sounds good.

Thanks, Matt. Appreciate it. You bet. Take care. Okay, bye. Bye-bye. Okay, so that's it for today. And until next time, I do have another interview with the real live real estate investor doing deals in today's market.

No cheerleaders, no coaches, no mentors, no Monday morning quarterbacks, just real live real estate investors doing deals. sell and nothing to promote no hidden agenda, just here to give back and share their information what's working for them and what's working for them right now in today's market and to share that with you. Okay? So until next time, as a very wise person once said, everyone who achieved success in a great venture solved each problem as they came to it. They helped themselves. And they were helped through powers known and unknown to them at the time they set out on their voyage. They keep going regardless of the obstacles they met. To your success, I'm Matt Terrio, living the dream. Thank you for spending this time with Matt Terrio and the epic real estate

investing podcast. When you have a moment, stop by iTunes to leave your comments and let us know what you think of the show. And if you haven't done so already, get started investing today by visiting free real estate investing course.com to access Matt's free course, how to do deals no money required. Until next time. To your success. To your success. This podcast is a part of the C-suite radio network.

For more top business podcasts, visit c-sweetradio.com.