My Biggest Mistake On My First Flip

[Matthew Beans]

Over the last two to three years I have been flipping houses, and wholesaling real estate. I have done everything from acquiring a property to dispositioning property for wholesale.

I have built relationships with real estate investors. Not only locally in Phoenix, Arizona, but nationwide. After wholesaling for a little while, I eventually got into flipping. 

I flipped my first property, and kind of ran into a couple problems financially.

My girlfriend, Cat, has been bookkeeping and transaction coordination for real estate investment companies over the last year and a half. 

On the first property I flipped in central Phoenix. I bought it for $145,000. Then sold it for $255,000. I was 50/50 with the partner on that deal. I was using a spreadsheet for bookkeeping and accounting. I had all my expenses down to a "T".

I was super solid.... I thought.

I was taking all his receipts from Home Depot, Amazon, and other vendors, and entering them into a spreadsheet.

The day of closing, July 31st, 2020, I received a call from my partner and he says, "Matt, how much have we spent on this property?" 

I gave him the number.

As I signed all the documents at the title company there were a couple thousand dollars in fees I wasn't expecting!!

About a week after closing, I started finding all these receipts that totaled $3500.

So, My partner ended up making a couple thousand dollars more than I did on this deal.

How did this happen!? After Cat helped me get setup in Quickbooks and get things dialed in, we realized a major need in the industry.

Soooo....We started a bookkeeping business for real estate investors!

[Zach Westerfield]

one of the best decisions i made when i first started in real estate 4 years ago was to bite the bullet and buy quickbooks and learn it from the start. i figured i would tackle the learning curve early, when my business was super simple. it would be easier to grow into it rather than swap sometime down the road. after buying a quick how-to-guide, and sitting down with my accountant who took the time to teach me, i got it down pretty quickly. i still do my own bookkeeping, and i could not imagine using spreadsheets for what quickbooks does.