Tentmaking Tips

I reminded him that when I first started, I just focused on flipping a few houses in my own neighborhood.

It’s easy to wrap your mind around this.

It’s easy to find distressed houses because you drive by them regularly

And it’s also easy to build relationships with sellers who live near you.

Too often we overcomplicate flipping.

We start thinking about how to dial in the marketing, what marketing channels to use, and how often to send out marketing.

All of this is important and will come with time.

But, when you’re first getting started, the key is to keep it simple.

I spoke to another student last week who asked about forming an LLC, picking a name, setting up bank accounts, etc. All good questions. But I reminded him that when you’re just starting, none of that actually matters.

You can flip your first house...

Over the years, I’ve found this comment to be so true.

This week was no exception.

A seller called us a few months ago telling us about her need to sell her house. There was just one problem. A tenant still lived in it and they hadn’t been paying rent.

As we got closer to the closing date, the tenant told the seller they weren’t going to move out unless the seller paid them money. She knew the eviction process would be long and expensive, so she offered them a few thousand dollars to leave the property.

Turns out, after taking the money, the tenant still said they wouldn’t leave. We started to help her walk through the eviction process and a notice was posted on the tenant’s door to vacate.

The tenant eventually said they would leave but not before sending a fake invoice to the Title Company...

And the answer is really simple.

It doesn’t matter.

Huh?

I tell people this all the time. How you get started in real estate really doesn’t matter. The key is just getting started doing something.

Why?

Because once you get into the real estate world, you’ll find out over time what interests you the most. Just get involved somewhere.

Sometimes people overthink where & how to get started and I remind them that the where & how don’t matter that much.

Here are ways people might get started:

• Landlord

• Multi-family

• Development

• House Hacking

• Flipping Houses

• Real Estate Agent

• Short-term Rentals

• Commercial Brokerage

The list could go on.

Perhaps a great way to choose is to find someone you know & respect that is involved in real estate. Take them out to lunch & ask them to tell you more about what they do. Maybe they’ll offer you the opportunity to tag along & learn from...

I’d like to go through each of them & talk about ways to overcome them.

Barrier #1: Mindset

Many people in ministry think that since flipping houses isn’t in their primary skillset, there’s no way they could do it. They hear about it, like the idea, but immediately talk themselves out of it because their mindset is that it’s not possible for them. The good news is that mindsets can be changed. If you take a look at all of the Student Success Stories in past newsletters, you’ll see that people in ministry, with no real estate background, have successfully flipped houses.

Barrier #2: Education

This is connected to the first barrier but someone may assume the education required to learn house flipping would be difficult or beyond their grasp. The truth is, while there is certainly an education component in the beginning, it’s...

I totally get it.

One of the principles that I love in the best-selling book, Atomic Habits, is the idea of breaking down big goals into very small next steps that don’t seem so intimidating.

Why not do that with flipping houses?

Instead of thinking about building a house flipping business in 2024, what about trying to flip just one house?

Surely you could do just one if you had the entire year to figure it out, right?

And what’s really cool about flipping houses is just one flip can make you life-changing money.

Once you flip one house, maybe you’ll want to try a second, then a third, and before you know it, you’ve built a business flipping houses with employees that run it for you.

But it all...

If you missed the first six, here they are:

$140,874 Profit - Student Deal Highlight

$13,000 Profit - Student Deal Highlight

$26,000 Profit - Student Deal Highlight

$23,637 Profit - Student Deal Highlight

$50,000 Profit - Student Deal Highlight

$81,500 Profit - Student Deal Highlight

Profit

The student in today’s deal highlight made $6,000 in profit. This was a fire damaged property which basically sold for the value of the land. The student originally had it under contract for $20,000 but was unable to sell it. The seller was eager to sell and was willing to reduce the purchase price to $8,000. The student found a buyer who was willing to pay $14,000, leading to his $6,000 profit for the land with an unsalvageable home.

List

The...

We find these by using marketing to contact sellers & express an interest in buying their property.

Part of the reason we’ve bought all of our properties this way is because it was very difficult to find a “deal” on the MLS. Too much competition.

Well, with recent market changes & higher interest rates, many investors are beginning to find “deals” on the MLS.

What’s great about MLS “deals” is that they don’t have any marketing cost, which increases your profit.

Our team is now daily making offers on MLS properties. And the best part is that these properties are being automatically emailed to us each day.

Here’s how we’re finding good MLS deals:

1. Have your Realtor friend set-up...

We send postcards and letters to sellers asking if they’d be interested in an offer on their home. I also have a course & coaching program where I teach others to do the same.

When sending mail, you occasionally have to change the type of mail you’re sending because what you’ve been sending isn’t performing as well as it used to.

That happened to us recently.

We had been sending out a certain postcard for several years that performed very well, but it wasn’t performing like it used to.

Around this time my 16 year old daughter was also looking to make extra money. She already did some babysitting but wanted to work in her Dad’s business if possible.

We had an idea.

Buy unique craft envelopes in bulk (birthday invitation size).

Have her handwrite the address on the envelope.

Put a real peel & stick stamp on...

I’m living proof that’s not true.

It’s a numbers game.

If you talk to enough people & make enough offers, you will find deals.

In a hot market, you may have to talk to more people to find a deal than in a cooler market, but they’re still out there.

We just closed on a deal this week that we plan to do a “Lipstick Flip” on.

We had people offering us $10,000-15,000 more than we paid for it just to “Quick Flip” it to them, but we knew if we put a little work into the house, we could make significantly more than that.

We plan to do a light remodel & then sell it again to a family who will live there.

How did we find this deal?

It was a referral from a seller we had bought a deal from previously.

We called them about a year after the first deal & asked if they had any other properties they’d be interested in selling.

They did.