Taking real estate business to the "next level"

[Kyle B.]

Hey all,

I was hoping to get some thoughts from experienced investors (rehabbers in particular) about what steps helped them take their business to the "next level" so to speak. I've been rehabbing for a little over a year now and have started out pretty well. Right now though, my time is split between looking for a place to flip, and then once I find one, I switch over to almost exclusively managing the rehab process and taking on quite a bit of the work myself. Once the rehab is finished, I switch over to finding a new house mode. That leaves me with the problem of having a gap in time between each flip, whereas my goal is to have at least one project going on at all times. I know I need to focus more of my time on finding properties to purchase, but I feel like I need to spent a lot of my own time at each rehab in order to get the job done efficiently and to a high quality standard (I know hiring a general contractor seems like a simple answer to this, but I've found it much more expensive to do this than sub out the work myself).

Not really look for a solution to this, but thought it would be helpful to hear from others how they were able to overcome this or other similar hurdles in their business as they were in the early stages. What actions did you take to really streamline your business? Was it spending a lot of time finding the right people to hire / being more hand off on the rehab and focusing more on lead generation. Really interested in hearing people's insights or any anecdotes in general.

Thanks!

Kyle

[Bill Jacobsen]

I started out with a partner who acted as a general as well as doing much of the work.  The projects usually took 2 to 4 weeks with 4 months from buy to sell.  We split the profits 50:50.

I now use general contractors.  I budget 6 months from buy to sell.  I budget 20% profit on the money required.  Most who can do the work seem to want to do the work.  If you do the work you should require above 20% per project.

Hope that helps.

Bill