Trying to move to next level

[Ryan Strat]

Hi Everyone I am new to bigger pockets. I have been reading the forums for a couple weeks and have read a few good Ideas so thank you for those. That being said I have been flipping houses for 18 year pretty successfully but really want to move to the next Level because the way I flip houses is I am basically buying a job. I have been a licensed contractor for the last 8 years in AZ an CO the flipping market in CO got way to saturated for me and we came to Dallas TX. We have been able to find a couple deals but I feel that we are in a rut. (We being my mom who is the RE agent, dad is a Handyman and me a General contractor) We have bought 4 SF homes and are paid off and are currently rented out and making  a total of $2600 a month net. We flip house and do most of the work ourselves hiring a few people to work with us. I want to get away from this and find crews but for the last year and a half we could not get good crews that were anywhere near our standards. We have been doing about 100k net for the last 6 years and now we have the rentals but again me and my dad are putting a minimum 70 hours a week and I'm not seeing us growing, just plugging along. We have 40k right now and have 2 properties in CO to sell and we will have another 100k. right now we have a house on the market and that will net 25k and we are currently working on another that will be completed by August to net another 25k I'm not saying we are doing bad I'm just tired of the super long hours and feeling there is no light at the end of the tunnel. I want to be able to be more on the investing side and less on the physical labor side. We have talked about MF complexes but don't see any good deals the give a good enough return. We have bills for the 2 families that come to about $6,200 a month. We have a few hard money lenders that love us and back anything we go after so funding is not an issue to grow in size. Also my credit is 720+ so that is not a issue either. Like I said I am wanting to move to the next level and any advice would be greatly appreciated as I am at wits end. I see and hear alot of people making moves in RE and feel like I must be pretty dumb for being in RE so long and not financially independent or not being able to feel like a success. I have not been to any RE groups here in TX but I have in CO and AZ I felt that I needed boots most of the times to wade through the crud and felt like a huge waste of time. Thank you again for reading and any help is greeted with open mind and arms.

[Hattie Dizmond]

There are a lot of things about a flip I can do and would do better than the crews doing them, even good crews.  I have an absolute obsession about certain things...paint lines, trim cuts, don't get me started on shingles, and don't let me near the house with a tape measure when framing is going on!  The reality is there is a difference between quality and perfection.  In my 9 to 5, the Managing Director I work with is fond of saying, "Perfection is the enemy of good."  What I've had to realize is that time is money.  I can't make money, if I'm doing the work, because I take too much time.  I also can't make money, if I'm scrutinizing everything a crew is doing, because they aren't doing it "perfectly".

There is a price point where perfection is expected.  But, ask yourself if you've ever been in a $150k - $200k new construction where you couldn't walk in and immediately pick out at least 10 things that weren't done to your standards.  I haven't.  There's always things in those houses that make me cringe, and I know, if I ripped the drywall off I will find trash in the walls and will probably find it in the attic, if I look.  Those houses sell to people who are happy...really, really happy...about their new home.

It's the same concept of not over improving.  You don't buy a house in a neighborhood of $150k homes, then rehab it with hand scraped hardwoods, granite counters, frameless shower doors and tumbled marble backsplashes.  I think I would get a crew to do your lower and mid-range flips, then let your dad be the PM on the higher end jobs.  Just a thought.