Insight with Chris Van Vliet - From Failed Stand-Up Comedian To Real Estate Mogul: Jamil Damji From A&E's 'Triple Digit Flip'

Episode Date: May 10, 2022

Jamil Damji (@jdamji) is a real estate entrepreneur and one of the hosts of the A&E show "Triple Digit Flip". He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at his beach house in Marina Del Rey, CA to talk about how a failed career as a comedian led to him getting started in real estate, what someone needs to know when they are flipping their first property, what he looks for when he wholesales a property, how he started his company KeyGlee, the best advice he has ever received, his TV show "Triple Digit Flip" with his co-host Pace Morby, his advice on the current housing market and much more! To learn more about Jamil Damji visit: https://www.jdamji.com/ If you enjoyed this episode, could I ask you to please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcast/iTunes? It takes less than a minute and makes a huge difference in helping to spread the word about the show and also to convince some hard-to-get guests. For more information about Chris and INSIGHT go to: https://chrisvanvliet.com Follow CVV on social media: Instagram: instagram.com/ChrisVanVliet Twitter: twitter.com/ChrisVanVliet Facebook: facebook.com/ChrisVanVliet YouTube: youtube.com/ChrisVanVliet CVV CLIPS: youtube.com/CVVCLIPS Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All systems are going. Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Van Blaine! Oh, yeah, welcome back to another audio adventure here on Insight. I'm CVV, Chris Van Fleet. Thank you so much for being with us on this one as we sit down with one of the stars of the A&E show, Triple Digit Flip, Jamil Damje in the house. Actually, me in Jamil Damge's house. He invited us to his beautiful beach house in Marina Delray, California,

Yeah. And his story's just so inspiring from someone who moved to Hollywood with hopes and dreams and aspirations of being a stand-up comedian and through a series of a bunch of different events, became a real estate mogul. Not bad. And if you're looking to buy a house like I am right now, or if you've ever thought about dabbling in real estate or flipping a house, this is going to be a pretty eye-opening conversation since Jemiel buys and sells around 100 houses a month. Yeah, a month. check him out on social media he's at j damgy d a mjai on instagram you can also find me at chris fanfleet and i know a lot of you subscribe to my youtube channel of course you can watch this interview over my youtube channel but i'd be so grateful if you also subscribe to my new ish channel cvv clips on youtube where we post the most interesting inspiring and memorable clips from all of our interviews and the channel's blowing up it's getting around 20 million views a month so please if you

subscribe here. If you subscribe to my YouTube channel, please also consider subscribing to CVV clips. Our fan of the week is Joey who says, thank you, exclamation, Mark. Change my life. I really hope I get to meet you one day. Thank you so much for your podcast. Well, thank you, Joey, for your review. I read one on every episode from Apple Podcasts. So if you have an iPhone, if you have Apple Podcasts, please go in there, leave a few words, leave a few emojis, leave a few words and emojis. We'll shout you out here on the show. We read one on every single episode. Spotify also has ratings, so please go in there, click on the stars there and leave a rating. All right, let's dive into this one. So good. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome.

Jamil Damjee. Well, thank you so much for inviting us in here. This is beautiful. Thank you, Chris. Nice to meet you in person and good to hang out with a fellow Canadian. Oh, yes. I always know you're going to be a good person when you're a fellow Canadian. But here we are both in Los Angeles right now. So there is so much I want to dive into here. But for anybody who's seeing you for the first time here, like you've got a hit show on A&E called Triple Digit Flip. And like, congrats on that, by the way. Thank you.

Thank you. It's been an incredible journey for us. It's, you know, four of us as the main cast members, my sister, our project manager, my best friend, Pace Morby. We basically run around doing life together. And then Pace's wife, Laura, who just had a baby. She's our real estate agent. So the four of us get into antics.

You know, we flip beautiful homes, make some money. sometimes sometimes it gets a little hard but we're really enjoying it it's a good time and he's been a great partner for us to work with so we are in production of our second season at the moment hoping it's thank you thank you it's it's hard to get a second season from what i understand it's hard to even get your show picked up right there's a lot of like you shoot a pilot and then oh thanks it looked good but we're going to go in a different direction to have a full season is a huge accomplishment then to be able to go from there and have another season is like that's massive it's awesome it's awesome And we actually just got back from a trip to New York City

where we got to hang out with the executives at A&E. So they've got a great vision for their home block. Our goal is to be partners with them for quite some time. So we'll see how it goes. What is it about these shows? Because my girlfriend, Rachel, is obsessed with these types of shows. What is it? Well, you know, it's, A, we all have to live in a place, right?

So the home is a necessary spot for all of us. Second, it's interesting how much range there is for people with respect to like their design ideas, things that make them feel comfortable. What makes home home? And I think the appeal is that because there's such a broad taste and because there's an opportunity for business, like we can make substantial profits buying, fixing, and selling homes. And I think that there's a draw there because for the most part, people just like thinking about things that they can. could do, right? We live in a world right now where we get access to so much information. We really can learn about anything you want to learn about. And if there's an opportunity to go out there and make six figures on house flipping, why not? You know, if it all

it takes is a little bit of courage, some investment and grit. Yeah, everyone says the best investment in terms of like getting a great return is real estate. Correct. But I think there's a lot of people who go, well, you know, I'm not there yet, Jamil. I only have, you know, a few thousand dollars in bank. What do you say to someone like that who may may not have the money to put down on something that they could flip? It's an interesting situation as well because I'm what they call a whole. I'm a professional wholesaler. For those of you that aren't aware of what wholesaling is, real estate is not as cut and dry as we might think it is. We hear all the headlines. We're in a housing crisis. There's no inventory. Houses are selling for $500,000, $600,000, $800,000 over a list.

You hear these headlines over and over again, and you think, wow, things are crazy. How are you buying any houses to flip. Well, that's the retail market, right? And that's the market that's the market that's the market where if you want to buy a house, you've got to put 10 or 20% down, or if you're an FHA buyer, maybe 3 to 5% depending on where you are, you're going to qualify for a mortgage, you get a bank involved and all the things. Well, that's a real place. People do business there, but I trade in what the whole, and the secondary real estate market, which is the wholesale market. So I'm picking up properties that are really distressed. You know, like hoarder houses, completely dated, or, you know, somebody inherits it because somebody

dies and they don't know what to do with the house. Like a place you wouldn't really want to live in. Yeah, it's just, it's just there, the houses that we buy have stories. Sure. They have situations attached, right? That's a very kind way of saying it. Yeah. Well, you know what?

There's no way other than being kind about it because I've seen these people. I've shaken their hands. I've gotten into their lives. I've looked in their underwear drawers. You know, and I know that that sounds like. a weird place to be, but like when you see that it's just sometimes just life gets too hard. Sure. And it can get hard for everybody.

I've been in moments of life where it's been very difficult. And I can understand how it can get the best of you sometimes. And our goal when we're making these deals is to always give a homeowner an opportunity to maximize what they could sell for in its condition, right? Because they know as a business person, I'm going to need to take a financial risk to buy their house. And I may make money. I may not make money. But I'm going to give them as much as I can possibly give them in the condition it's in, hoping that I'll still be able to make a profit.

And that's where this word wholesale comes in. So when you're buying a distressed house, one that wouldn't be financedable by a normal bank, right, because it's in too poor of condition, you can tend to get some pretty decent deals. Now, if you're brand new and you don't have a lot of money, you can actually still participate in the real estate market by doing what we call wholesaling. Now, wholesaling is when you identify a good opportunity, you put that opportunity under contract, and then you sell your position in that contract to another investor, right? So it's literally flipping paper. That's how I did my first real estate deal, and I actually did it in Canada. So this is where I learned about this process, right? In Canada, they call it a skip transfer.

Over here, they call it wholesaling or assignments. Okay. In Canada, and the reason how I learned this was I was actually in business already. I was in a media company. This was back in early 2000s when the internet was still fledgling. My job was coal-calling businesses and seeing if they were interested in moving their business advertisement from the yellow pages to the internet, right? Which is so crazy.

It's only 20 years later. Right. Only 20 years later. So much has happened. So much. But these business owners, they were like, you know, often very, very hesitant because they didn't think the internet was going to stick. Well, ha-ha, did.

But we would sell these websites for $600 apiece, five-page, you know, a about us, a homepage, a gallery, and contact information, like really basic stuff. We would sell these websites for 600, but they really cost us $700 to make. And this is how bad of a business person I was in the beginning. I was losing money every time I made a scale. However, they put me in a position to overhear a conversation my business partner was having with his dad, and they were in development. They were taking these old houses, demolishing them, and then building duplexes.

And they'd make $160,000 or more every time they would do one of these projects. their biggest problem was they didn't have enough houses to demolish. So I could hear them griping about not having houses, and I just asked, well, what if I can find you one? And we're like, if you can find this one, we can do some business, but good luck. Well, the next day I'm walking my dog, and I see a house for rent in a neighborhood where they're demolishing houses and building duplexes. So I actually know this house had been for rent for a while because I tried to rent it two months earlier, but it was $200 out of my monthly budget. so it didn't work for me. Yeah.

But the funny thing is, is I call this lady and I say, if you're not finding a renter, would it be possible that you might be interested in selling it? And her answer was for the right price. And so I asked what that price was, and she said $350,000. So I turn around and I go and ask my business partner how much him and his father would pay for this house. Their answer was $400,000. Now, most people would have just said, okay, well, she's willing to pay, sell for $350,000, give me something. But the way that my mind worked was I need to get myself into this transaction, but I don't have any money to do it.

So I do what I know how to do, which is cold call. Start cold calling lawyers, real estate attorneys. And I get all the way to the letter S. So I started A and I get all the way to S. Nobody would talk to me because their secretaries were just like stonewalling me right at the call, right at the reception. This one lawyer who was so fresh out of law school, his name's David Steed. I'll never forget him because he changed my life. he explained to me this process of a skip transfer.

He said, what you need to do is have two contracts, one where you're at a buyer. You have to make sure that you write your buyer name as your name and or a signee. And then a second contract where you're selling the property. So your name is on the seller line and now you're just selling it to that developer. Bring both of those contracts to me. And once the conveyance is done, I'll have you a check. And that's how it worked. Wow.

I made $47,000 after the real estate lawyer took his fees. and that was my first deal. Wow. Now, this is coming from a guy who's losing money every time he's making a sale. I grew up in a very working class part of Calgary, Alberta,

the Northeast. People who are familiar with it will know. I didn't have a lot. Our parents worked very difficult jobs. They worked very hard. They provided a great life for my sister and I, but we struggled financially.

And so for me, this was an opportunity not only to affect my life, but to change my families. And I didn't look back. So I went full, fledged into real estate. I started flipping apartment buildings, made millions of dollars, and then the financial crisis of 2008 happened, and I lost everything. So we went from King of the Hill to

complete disasters, right? We were homeless. In fact, we had to borrow money, and there was a point where my sister, my dad, my mom, her husband, her daughter, my dog, and our cat, and myself all lived in a two-bedroom, one-bath apartment. That's a lot of bodies. A lot of bodies. And that's where we fell to. But we have such a beautiful family, such a, like, love, such a place of love that nobody blamed anybody. We just picked ourselves up and kept moving.

And is it at that point that you moved to the U.S.? And this is the thing I love about your story is you moved to the U.S., not to do real estate, which you knew very well. You moved here to be a stand-up comedian. Yeah. Yeah, it didn't work out. because we're not here talking about comedy, right? We're talking about real estate.

You make a few jokes. Come on. But it was, yeah, I came out here to do stand-up comedy. So I did the whole open mic circuit. I finally got some traction, not a lot, but I got a little bit of traction. I started posting videos on Funny or Die. They'd get some views. That's pretty great.

They were great. I was writing, producing, all of the things. But real estate just kept calling me, right? And I'm living in L.A. It's super expensive. And I'm looking over at Phoenix. And I can see that you can buy a condo that before the financial crisis had sold for 400 grand for $25,000. Wow.

And it rents for $800 a month. Wow. Tell me where on earth you can pay $25 grand and get $800 a month in cash flow. That was a pretty special time in the real estate market in 2008 or sorry, 09, 2010. Correct. Where you were getting like things for like pennies on the dollar. 100%. And I saw an opportunity there.

Sure. So what I did was packed up. And I said, this is not for me. anymore. I, you know, I, I, I did a couple of wholesale deals remotely, virtually from L.A. in Phoenix. I was putting houses under contract and doing what I knew how to do, flip the contract. I made $18,000 on Craigslist in like seven minutes. And so you can sell, you can wholesale these on Craigslist? Hell yeah, I was. Right now, I mean, our, our processes have gotten a lot more sophisticated than Craigslist. I'd hope so. Yes, but at the time when I was first starting, of course,

That's where real estate investors were looking for deals. And so for me, seeing how easy it was and how naturally I understood how to underwrite and spot value, I knew that it was just time for me to pack it up. And on my birthday, actually, it was December 12, 2012, 2012, I'll never forget because I was crying. There was a habboob on the 10. I don't know if anyone's familiar with the huboo is, but those are big dust storms in Phoenix. And they black out everything. You can't see inches in front of you. I'm, like, thinking I'm living through the apocalypse.

Like, I had no idea what was going on. Like, how does this happen when I'm driving to leave my life in L.A. to Phoenix? And I'm in the middle of this dust storm, this life-ending dust storm. But everything was great. That was the final test for me. That was, like, Act 6. Wow. It was time for me to, like, start a new chapter and do something different.

I think back to that question of, like, why are people so intrigued by these flipping shows on television? It's the idea that you can make a year's salary in a month or six weeks. And for a lot of people, that's the sale of a lifetime for them. They'll talk about that one time they bought this house that was maybe a little bit under value, fixed it up a little bit, decorated it, made it look great. You do this every month. Yeah, my friend, Dolph DeRoo's said the deal of a lifetime comes around once a week. Even for like regular people?

Even for regular people. For instance, my company is called Key G-G-G-L-E-E. specialize in selling off-market fixer-uppers to the public. So any of you out there that are thinking, I want to get into real estate, I don't want to overpay, I don't want to overbid. Check out the houses that we're selling on our website. Like, we're literally selling junkers. But these things, if you invest correctly and you do a good job, you can pick them up for pennies on a dollar, fix them up and move in with instant equity. Tell me in 2022, in the U.S.'s hottest real estate market in its history.

how you can still do that. It's baffling to me. My girlfriend and I are looking to buy a house. Right. And I was telling you, no, your crate, see, there's a thing, right? I used to go to a car dealership and buy cars when I wanted to buy a car. And most people do that. There's a whole other world out there.

I now buy vehicles from a car broker. If you don't know what a car broker is, guys, you're missing out. Because if you go to a car dealership, they're the skeeziest, worst places. You feel like your stomach's and knots. You're getting taken. advantage of. You can feel them fucking you. Excuse me. You can feel them screwing you

like while you're sitting there in their desk and they're smiling at the same time. It's the guy with the rings, you know, in the red face. And so all this is going on in a car dealership, I can't stand it. You go to a car broker. Car broker will find your car from a dealer. Get it at a discount.

In some states, they don't even charge tax, ship you your car, arrange financing for you and do it all without you ever having to step foot or overpay or negotiate or haggle, none of it. Yeah. Right. So there's other ways to do business out there.

And same thing works for real estate. You don't have to buy retail. You don't have to be like everybody else. You can do things differently and check it out. I mean, check out Kigley Homes or Kigley.com and look at some of our inventory and see if there's something there that interests. You know, we have 110 franchises across the United States. So we're doing fix and flips and selling fix and flip operations. to people all across the U.S.

So are all the ones that are listed on your website? Are they something that would need to be fixed up or have they already been fixed up? Yes. Yes. So we trade in distressed property. Right? So I'm, I never, that's, there's, there's this misconception that wholesalers, you know, take advantage of or, or take equity from people. And it's not the case because we're really buying stuff that needs a lot of investment for new equity to be realized. Sure. Right. What we do is we trade in risk. Actually, what wholesalers do is they sell potential. Right? If I can look at a property and I see potential in a property, I'm willing to sell a portion of that potential to forego it for somebody else to take and I make a fee at doing it. So again, if you're thinking about getting into real estate and you want to learn how do I flip a contract?

You don't need any credit. You don't need really any money. If you're backed by somebody like me or another fix and flip or a cash buyer, we can provide you a proof of funds. We can be your liquidity. You can get out there and start sourcing these opportunities and sell those opportunities. to me and make 10, 20, some wholesalers make 30, 40, 50,000 dollars selling me opportunities, and I gladly pay it. Right. I gladly pay that. So what is a good deal look for? If I'm just getting into this and I want to make 20, 30, 40, 50 grand, what's a good deal

look like? Well, there's 15 million vacant houses in the United States right now. And we have a housing crisis. Think of that. 15 million vacant houses in the U.S. right now. and they're talking about a housing crisis. So that's bullshit, right? There's just, there's a, there's an opportunity problem. There's people who don't know what to do. So let's talk about it. How would you spot a deal? Will you ever walk around outside or drive around outside and see those

houses with tinfoil in the windows, overgrown weeds, mail piling up outside, the blinds are falling down. The roof looks like it's about to cave in. Those houses are everywhere. There's zombie houses, right? There's a way that you can find out who the owner of that property is, get their phone number, and call them. And oftentimes these are out-of-state owners or their tired landlords who don't realize their tenant has destroyed their house. There's a story there. There's this reason why this house looks like it does. You call those people and you say, look, your house is falling apart. I'm sure you've got all kinds of violations from the city because of the condition it's in. It's dangerous. If there's people living in there, I don't know how because it's really bad. Why don't you sell to me? Why don't you sell to me?

I'm willing to give you a cash offer on this. I'll pay all the closing costs. There's no real estate commissions involved here. We'll do a cash deal. I'll close it as quickly as possible. I'll even handle the tenant in there if there is one. You get the cash price and do your thing. So that's one way to find these houses.

Another way is you look at, like I mentioned, code violations, right? Oftentimes when these situations start to happen, there's trail. There's a breadcrumbs being left by this property owner as to like there's a problem here. And that'll often come from HOA violations, city liens, water shut off. Like they're getting their power and their electricity turned off. These lists are all public record. In fact, there's, if you go to a website called batchleads.io, B-A-T-C-H-L-E-A-D-S, batchleads. If you use slash Jamil, you'll get a little discount.

But you can download 5,000 of these property records, skip-trace them in the platform, get all those people's phone numbers, and start calling. them people and just say, hey, look, you've got code violations piling up on your house. Do you want to sell to me? Yeah. And then if you want to find out how much to offer them, get a hold of me. I'll tell you exactly what I'll pay for it, and all you got to do is lock it up a little bit under. So if I tell you, Chris, I can pay $300,000 for this house. And you call the homeowner and he tells you he'll take $2.80.

That's $20,000. $20,000. Yeah. And you can do that like this. And there's people making money like that day after day, minute after me. minute. Even in this market? Even in this market. Last month, my, my corporate store did just over 60 transactions in Phoenix alone, generating $1.4 million in assignment revenue. Oh, wow. Houses that we sold to other investors who are going to go and fix and flip. This market,

like I said, it's, it's only hot and it's only got an inventory problem if you're looking in the wrong place. That's interesting. If you want to go out and buy your, first house right now. It seems a little daunting. Like everything is selling for way over asking. Would you recommend that somebody dives into the market because there's that old adage of like it's not about timing the market, it's about time in the market? Or would you say if you wait a month or two or three, things maybe will flatten out a little more? I don't know that things are going to go down because we have a new gorilla at the table. Typically, the housing market has been very cyclical, right and I study a lot of data and interest rates the Fed rate all of this typically can adjust the

market and it and we see the Fed right now it's raising rates but you're still seeing offers you're still seeing people buy well what's happening is there's this big gorilla at the table it's called the secondary home buyer those are investors like BlackRock private equity companies open door offer pad these big Silicon Valley investors that have billions of dollars They are now buying 20% of the inventory that's getting on the market. So they're buying up so much. And that's not your average school teacher or fireman, right? This is a billion dollar company that has absolutely no interest or care if they are a little bit early or laid in the market because they're not selling.

They're going to rent these houses out. 100%. They're hedging against inflation, right? There's a lot of smart people in the world who's seen, what we've been doing with our dollar. Yeah. And we've been printing it. And that causes some crazy inflation.

And with the pandemic and the supply chain problems that are out there right now, there's a premium on everything. Everything is more expensive. And so what's happening is these guys are seeing inflation and housing is one of those things that rises with inflation. So they're protecting against inflation because if they go put $5 billion in homes and inflation's at 8%, well, A, they got inflation. then they get appreciation, then they get cash flow.

How do you lose? This stock market isn't performing like that. No. So again, to somebody who's looking at this and saying, I'm waiting, I'm going to wait it out. I think a crash is coming. I'm sorry, guys. Yes, we will lose some heat in the market, but you're not going to get a better deal. In fact, things are still going to go up.

I'm predicting that we're going to still have 8 to 10% appreciation. even with interest rates rising. No way. So don't wait. Don't wait. You are in the, you're witnessing right now the shift from America

being home owners to renters. This is the time where we're all going to look back at it and say, I wish there had been legislation stopping these big Silicon Valley investors from gobbling up 25% of American housing, which they're now renting back to us

at a 30 or 40% hike. Yeah. Right? This is what's going on. Don't put yourself, up in that situation, guys. Get into the market. Get moving in it because truly, if you don't do it now in five years. I had Grant Cardone on the show not long ago. And he was saying, he was like, don't buy a house. Any house that you buy, you should be renting it out and getting that cash flow

on it. And then rent where you live is what he's saying. Right. And I would agree with him to some degree. I mean, I rented for my primary residence for a long time. But you had other residences that you're making money on. Correct. Yeah, not everybody's in that. situation, right? A lot of people have a fixed income and they go, well, this amount's going to go to either rent or mortgage. It can't be both. Right, right. And even if you look at the historics of housing, right, yes, we've had a wave. But then it continues to. But it goes up to the right over time. It's always up to the right over time. So even though we do this on our way up to the right, so what if it goes down a little bit? You're only losing money if you sell. I don't think we're going to

lose heat. I don't think we're going to have any dip in pricing. I think pricing is going to continue to escalate. Even with mortgage rates going up, they're like around 5% right now. Yeah. Two months ago, they were in the threes. But think of what we're talking about. Five percent is cheap. Right? I mean, there were times when 17, 18 percent. People were still buying houses. I think my parents were like 20 something percent when they bought our house in like the early 80s. Yes. They ended up taking out a loan for my grandfather, so they didn't have to pay the 20 ish percent. Right. That crazy? It's crazy to me. But it's like, so, so really, historically, 5 percent's pretty dang good. It's just we've been addicted to cheap money for so long because we were

getting it for so little. Yeah. Right. And for me, like this house that we're in here, I have, the first time I've ever had to get a residential mortgage was on this place and I wanted to take advantage of the cheap money. So I got like a three and a half percent loan on a two million dollar house. Fantastic. It's great, but that gives me an opportunity to go spend that money that I would have put down on here on other things and other opportunities. And earn on that money. Correct. Yeah, that's so smart.

Yeah. So is the idea that you're going to buy more properties like this in California? Because you don't live in the state. I don't live in the state. No. So one of my investment strategies that I've got a couple right now. And I'd love to give the audience these nuggets. So for me, if you've looked at the state of service out there in the world right now, it's dismal.

Right. Have you gone out to eat lately? Sure. Yeah. Was it great? Yeah, well, sometimes. Depends where you go. Mostly.

But I think there's a lot of places that are like, they're understaffed. Understaffed, right? Yeah. It's like that everywhere. And so, especially in hospitality, there's a huge vacuum of service and accoutrements that would normally come with hospitality. I think Airbnb short-term rentals, I'm really bullish on it. I think that we're as a world, like as a community, as a human community, we're all really

enjoying looking at other people's spaces and living in other people's homey spaces rather than sterile hotels. So I'm really looking at adding more luxury short-term rentals to my portfolio. Secondly, I'm seeing that there's an opportunity in small multifamily right now, not to hold, but to wholesale. So I just did a deal. This is going to blow your mind. I bought a sixplex, fully remodeled. Almost five out of the six units had been rented. out. And this landlord had just done the remodel. He just started renting these places out. He was renting these two-bedroom one baths for $1, $1,200 a unit. When I negotiated with him, he's like, yeah, you know, I'm not going to give you a deal. I know who you are. I watched you on the internet.

I looked you up. I'm not giving you a deal. Okay. I want top dollar for my spot. I'm like, okay, what's top dollar? Like, what are we talking? One point two million dollars. And I got one last unit left to rent. If you want, I got a guy who he'll take it at 1,200. He wants it. If you don't want him, you can use your own guy, but take it or leave it. Like, he was playing hardball with me. And so I was like, okay, $1,200 a door is so much you rented these four? He's like, yeah, I squeezed every penny out of it. I'm like, great. Yeah, I'll take it. One point two million dollars. Well, there as actually, the rent gap is those units rent for $1,700, not $1,200. So I took that last vacant unit, put it on Craigslist, and we rented out for $1,700.

Wow. While in escrow. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Okay. So we post-dated the lease. This person, we closed on it at $1.2 million. A person moved in.

Now I've got a rent gap showing from $12 to $1,700. So $500 times five more units available. And all of these tenants are going to be on month to month as their lease is come up for renewal. And in Arizona, it's not like California. you can actually raise rent. So what ended up happening is I sold that multifamily building to another investor whose plan is to raise the rents, but I made a $450,000 profit on one transaction by raising rent in one unit.

Wow. So there's an opportunity out there, guys. If you find that there's a cheaply renting complex, take a look at that. Yeah. And then see what are similar complexes or similar units renting for? And if you find a gap, there's a potential deal that you're, and you can, like I said, you can flip that deal. You can flip me the contract and make 20,000, maybe 100,000.

God knows what you'll make in a spread. And I'll give you as much as I could possibly give you because I want to do more business with you, right? So that's how it works. I think your story is so interesting because there's been a lot of highs and a lot of lows. Like even, you didn't even talk about the fact that you were trying to go to law school to begin with, right? Med school.

Med school to begin with. And like, that didn't work out. At first, real estate didn't work out. Comedy didn't work out. And now here, it's working out. Right. Along this whole journey, what do you think's been the biggest thing that you've learned? Man, the thing that I realized is that we are so impatient wanting to get to a destination.

Like, you can look at my life today and say, I want that. I want the house. I want the car. I want the business. I want the friendships. I want all those things. But really, they all came from pain. You got to be in your life at this moment right now.

And I promise you, you are exactly where you're meant to be. No matter where it is, wherever it is, there's an opportunity for you to grow. There's an opportunity for you to do more. And I don't get here without those valleys. I don't get here without those lessons. I don't get a TV show without failing as a comedian. Because if I didn't have that sense of humor,

I wouldn't have caught the eye of A&E to do that deal. They wouldn't have thought we were compelling. There would have been nothing different about us. But they got a failed comedian flipping houses. How cool is that? Right. And I am myself on that show. Like they give me free reign to be as goofy as I want to be.

Right. And so the facts are is that you've got to go through these things in life. man, it's not going to be easy. Nothing you do is going to be easy. And what I learned is that there's God in all of it. Like all of it. Every tough situation from 30,000 feet was a blessing, was love. You know, it was growing me.

Yeah, and it's brought you to exactly where you are right now. Like you said, whether you perceive that to be good or bad, you're exactly where you're supposed to be. Always. Were you out looking for this show or did they come and find you? They came and found us. That's amazing. It was insane.

man. It was one of the times where we skipped the regular Hollywood BS. We talked about how a show typically you shoot a pilot. Well, actually it starts with a teaser. Then it goes to a pilot. A sizzle reel. A sizzle reel to a pilot, to focus groups, to

a half-season order to a full-season order. Well, what happened in our case was this casting director found a video that my best friend Pace Morby had posted on his YouTube channel. So shout out to everybody creating content on YouTube. can change your life.

Pace is going to be on the show in a few weeks. Amazing. This is a nice little teaser for that, too. Yes, you're going to love Pace. Can't wait. He's incredible. So Pace's YouTube, post the video, and a casting director sees it and says, you guys are hilarious. And she cuts it up and sends it off to A&E because she's been charged with the task of finding

A&E's new show, the talent for the new show, this home renovation show. And so we actually start getting reached out to. by people at E&E saying, hey, hop on a Zoom with us. We really like you guys. But I ignored them. I thought it was a joke. I thought it was scams. Like people wanting to charge me $1,000 for headshots or something.

You know, you've been in L.A. long enough. You're like, nobody wants me. Right? So I'm getting these emails and I ignore them. But Pace, he's one of those people that doesn't ignore his emails. And he was actually right in responding. And he said, well, what do you want? Well, we just want to talk to you guys for 30.

minutes like hop on a zoom with us and and we just want to catch your vibe so he calls me he says come over to my house let's just do this zoom it's 30 minutes we're on the zoom and i'm looking at the names on the zoom and i'm like on my phone googling who these people are and it's legitimately the vice president and aeney wow and i'm like oh boy this is real yeah right so we do the zoom a week later we get an email say you know what we're going to completely go against how this typically goes we're in love with you guys. You got a show. We're skipping the pilot.

We're going right to a full season order. Congratulations. Wow. It was like surreal. It was surreal how the process went. Season one was grueling. It's hard to make a TV show. It takes a lot of work.

It's amazing how much work goes into 22 minutes. Well, we get 43. So luckily we've got full hour on every episode. So you think about that. 43 minutes is an episode for us, they shoot 100 hours of footage for that. Yeah, that's mind-blowing. Yeah, it's a lot. And I wonder, because you're very efficient with everything that you do, how much does this hold

you back? Because you're doing stuff for the cameras and you're probably going out of your way and doing appointments or making appointments you might not necessarily do or maybe they're longer than normal because the cameras are there and mics and everything. How much does this holding you back do you think? I mean, there's definitely a cost. Yeah. Right. You, you, everything that that's good in life has its equal and opposite, you know, issue, right? And so for me, yes, it's taking me away from a little bit of a little bit of my business. But again, you know, I sneak those moments in, right? So in between a break, when we cut and they're switching lenses, I'm doing deals. I'm in my car on the phone. You know, I'm talking to my accountant. I'm talking to my salespeople. I'm working through a deal that's on fire or a problem that we're running through. But in addition to,

of buying and selling houses, I'm also a coach. So I've got thousands of students out there that I train and teach how to flip houses or contracts like we just talked about wholesale. And so I'm really involved with my students. Like I'm one of those people that I don't dial it in. I don't hire people to do it for me. I'm on the call six hours on a Tuesday. You know, so I'm shooting eight hours of TV. Then I come home and I do six hours of coaching with my students because that's the dedication I've got to them, right? I have to. They paid money to be with me. I got to give them me. Can't be a cardboard cutout version of me. It's me, right? And until I've run out of energy, that's the way it's going to be, right? But after that, I'll just quit coaching because I'm like, once it's not me

anymore, I don't want to do it. I feel like you have endless amounts of energy, though. I got a lot of it. Yeah. Where does that come from? I meditate. So for me, I find that I gain a lot from stillness, from just going into a quiet place, giving myself an opportunity to just be in my body to be in my thoughts, to observe what's going on inside me. And you energize yourself in breath, right? There's a lot that we can get from everything that just is around us, right? Yeah. That and, you know, I have opportunities to hang out with my wife, come out to the ocean.

There's something magical about being by the water. There is. You know, you're 70% water, right? And think about that. If you're 70% water and you feel different when you're near the ocean, well, it's because your water molecules are attracted to the water molecules in that water. We're going deep here now. I mean, they are, right?

Like, if you think about how powerful the polarization of water is, the moon pulls it onto the earth, pulls the sea onto the earth every day from that charge. Yeah. Right? So it's obvious that that charge is real. Well, think about it. If you're 70% of that charge and water attracts other water.

It wants it. It needs it. You put two drops of water on a table together and wait, half an hour, they're going to become one drop. You ever done that before? Yeah, I know exactly you're saying. And so, like, you think about being by the water, it does something to you energetically. Yeah.

Sounds like you should move out of Arizona. No water there. It sounds like my wife's been paying you or something. That's why I'm speaking so loudly. She's really, you know, pushing for us to spend more time out here. And I enjoy it, you know, so we definitely will be out here a lot more. But I got to say Phoenix is a special place for me. it's it's where I rose out of the ashes so I I just got so much love for Arizona I got so much love for

the city there that gave me an opportunity that gave me a chance that smiled on me and let me have a business in a life you know you've been in a rut before you've been in a few ruts before yeah what do you say to somebody who's watching this listening to this right now who's in that rut right now I mean go inside nothing you want is outside you like really I can't stress that enough. I have found so much peace and so much opportunity by just being in my own heart. And if you can live where you're present in it, where you're actually like here, you know, when you're driving sometimes to a location that you know very well.

Do you ever wonder how the hell you got there? Yeah, you go on like autopilot. But we do that so much in the day. We do that so much in our lives. We do that at work. A lot of us are just checked out, right? When you live checked out, nothing you do has power. Nothing you do has power.

It's like because you're like half there. But if you're in a rut right now and you're in a spot, try to get present. Try to get as clear as possible about where you are, where your mind is and where you are in space and time. And take a step. Take one step. Take one step being present and just see the doors that open. Because there are doors everywhere.

Everywhere. I mean, I've walked through some doors and, and again, you think they're chance. Yeah. But they're not. There's love there. There's an opportunity for you to step into your greatest possible life. And it's like God's trying to give you that all the time, all the time, even when you're taking the station of like sitting down.

Like you look, this morning there was a homeless guy outside of my door. We were talking about that, right? And I, you know, when I woke him up and I moved to me, was a little upset at me. and I had an opportunity there to get upset back. I had an opportunity to be compassionate, right? And understand, like, this is Los Angeles. It's extremely expensive. This guy fell asleep.

He probably had a rough night. You know, his face was all banged up and stuff. I'd known that he was in my garbage over the night and made a mess in the garage. I could have said and been all kinds of rude, you know. Rather than doing that, I, like, thought about it. Like, and I walked up to him and I said, I'm really sorry. I'm not trying to give you a hard time. You know, I gave him some money.

and I said, go have some breakfast, go have a cup of coffee. And I just spoke to him, like a person. And then he lit up. He lit up. And his station in life right now is sitting down. Right? He's, if you think about it, he's sat down. Yeah.

You know, but there's a human being there. Sure. A powerful one at that. And all sometimes people need is an opportunity. All sometimes people need is a cup of coffee, a shower. You know, or something to do today or a place to go. So you've got this. You know, if you're in there and you're in a spot right now, you've got this.

Like you do and believe that. Believe in it because if you can put it in your head and if you can put something, a desire in your heart and you just take one step towards it, one step towards it, the next step will light it's way up for you. I love that. There's so much value in here. And thank you again for making this happen. What's the best way for people to connect with you?

I would love for you to check out my YouTube. It's Jamil Damjee, J-A-M-I-L-D-A-M-J-I. I teach how to do real estate the way that I do creatively through flipping contracts on my YouTube channel. You can learn all about it there. You can also follow me on IG. It's at J-D-A-M-J-I. That's at J-D-A-M-J-I. Also check out season two of triple-digit flip on A&E.

we will be airing after the fall. And you can also watch season one of Triple Digit Flip on A&E, on the Amazon app, as well as the A&E app as well. So I end every conversation with the same question. I think you're going to like this because I'm all about gratitude. And I wake up every day and I say out loud three things that I'm grateful for. And I do it before I go to bed. So for you, what are three things in your life that you're grateful for right now? Well, breath, always.

Because we're here. God let me open my eyes. my family, so grateful for my family. Everybody who loves me gives me an opportunity. And even when I'm having a rough day or a hard day or a hard life, they're always there for me. And then the last thing that I'm, and I know this is like, it's going to be tough for people to swallow this.

And maybe you, you won't agree with me, but be grateful for you. I'm grateful for me. I'm grateful that I have this mind. I'm grateful that I have, you know, this imperfect body. I'm grateful for all of it. I'm grateful to be here. And, you know, if you can feel that, if you can sense that gratitude for yourself,

for yourself, take you anywhere. So good. Thank you so much. Thank you, brother. It was a pleasure. Thank you. All right.

Big thank you to Jamil for inviting us into a beautiful house for this interview. Thank you for being in there with us. You can check out a show Triple Digit Flip on A&N. me and you can find Jamil on Instagram. At J. Damgey, his website is jadamjee.com. Take a screenshot. Let us know what you learned from this episode and share it with a friend, share it on social media, and tag us so we can share it as well. Speaking of social media, I put this on Twitter last week. A lot of you retweeted this, a lot of you commented on it. So I'll share it with you as well right here.

If you don't sacrifice for what you want, what you want becomes the sacrifice. Chew on that for a little bit. Be great, be grateful. We will see you on the next one for some more insight. The Hammer Alley podcast, an 80s flashback mockumentary. Back in the 80s, there were a thousand bands trying to make it in the world of rock, but there was one band that had it all. Hammer Alley.

Whatever happened to Hammer Alley? How did they go from top of the rock? I'm looking for a music video. They're a band from 1987. Hammer Alley. Ever heard of them? To Rock. bottom. Dude, I was born in 1987.

I can't believe he's doing this. Hammer Allie. Follow and listen on your favorite platform.