Top 5 Must-Haves For Flipping Houses – Get a Good Contractor

In this first of 5 video tips on house flipping, Beau talks about the qualities you need to find in a good contractor.

I'm sure you'll agree – getting a good contractor is one of the most important things you need to do if you want to make money flipping houses. Expert house flipper Beau Eckstein gives you the ins and outs on the above video. Watch it – it's stuff you need to know if you want to be a successful house flipper.

Tomorrow, Beau will talk about finding deals.

Transcript

Top 5 Must-Haves for Flipping Houses—Be a Good Deal Finder

http://youtu.be/gkDbchm0WdQ?list=UUUH3z1PR_YTmDcMm4jxRvOQ

Hi, I’m here tonight again with Beau Eckstein and we’re going to talk about the top five must haves for flipping houses. And in this tip we’re going to talk about being a good deal finder. So, Beau, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and then we’ll get into how you became a good deal finder.

Hello everyone, my name is Beau Eckstein. I’ve been in real estate for about sixteen years, and I just kind of explored all the different aspects of real estate, residential lending, construction financing, private money loans, hard money loans. And the last—about three years ago the downturn really created a lot of opportunity, so I got involved in house flipping. And that seemed to be very lucrative, for the last couple years—although the market is changing again. But anyway, one of the big components of house flipping is finding deals. So that’s what we’re going to talk about in this segment. And basically, there’s a couple ways that I find deals. One is off the MOS, which is the multiple listing service. Everybody can go on there, but the remodels we do, my team, we do more extensive remodels. So I can look at a property that might be a three bedroom one bath home and I can convert it to maybe a four bedroom two and a half home, add a thousand square feet.  So I can create value-add type properties, where some people might go on and they’re looking for more of the easier, cosmetic fixers. So, there are still deals on the MOS, not as many, but we still look every day. I have a network of real estate brokers and I always make clear to ‘em that if they bring me a deal they can write the offer and earn the commission, so that’s fine with me. So, whenever I’m out at a networking event I just let everybody know that I’m an investor and I buy houses. And I tell ‘em what I’m looking for, locations I’m looking for. So real estate brokers and agents, great, another great source. And then there’s wholesalers. And what a wholesaler is, a wholesaler is basically an investor that goes out and finds all the good deals, gets them in a contract, but just wants to earn a quick buck. So they assign the contract to an investor like me, who can put the capital together to buy and close on the purchase. So, I have a network of wholesalers, some people like to call them bird dogs, and they’ll bring you deals and they’ll get an assignment fee for assigning you the contract. So, that’s the best way because all the all the legwork is done. It’s in the contract, you either say yes or no based on a quick and uh, you analyze the property and then you go from there, if it’s either a good deal or bad deal. And usually they put together a pro-former (2:45) for you, so all you have to do is check their numbers if they’re a good wholesaler. So that’s a really nice way to get deals. Another option is probate attorneys. So, if you have any relationships with probate attorneys and or probate realtors. There is a lot of—when somebody dies, and their property is not put into a living trust their property is going to go into some form of probate. So there’s a lot of opportunity in probate, so I would keep my eye on that. There is also a lot of opportunity in FSBO’s—for sale by owners. A lot of times people think that they just want to sell–sell it themselves to save the commission. Or maybe there’s–they don’t foresee if there is enough equity in there to pay a commission. So, you can call in, uh, FSBO’s.

Okay.

So yeah. So those are just a couple. Another good one is landlords—burn out landlords. They, y’know, their tenants just thrashed their house and they just want to get out. So there’s just, y’know, you can find deals anywhere. Anywhere. Contractors are usually really good at finding deals ‘cause they’re out working and people always walk by the property and they start building relationships with neighbors in the area. So that’s another great way of finding deals.

Great! So um, if somebody had any questions for you about house flipping or any of these tips in general, how would they contact you?

They could go to my website which is beaueckstein.com, or they can call me on my cell phone and that’s 925-852-8261. 925-852-8261.

Ok great! I think those are really good tips, Beau, and we’ll be taking to you soon. Thanks!

Alright, thanks.