1st yr, 15+ Deals in SF Bay Area, $1.6m Profit, Ask Any Questions

[Bobby Nilsen]

Good Morning All,

We have officially completed our first year in business. We did about 15 deals ranging from $15k rehabs to $650k rehabs and $23k wholesales to $150k wholesales. It was about 50/50 on wholesaling and fixing and flipping. Let me start out by saying my partner and I have never made more than $100k, we live in the SF Bay Area so I think we are considered to be in poverty, just kidding but its close. Up until 2015 I was in the military and was making the big bucks. I guess I am trying to say money didn't come easily and we scraped by for the first two deals to make them happen with the caveat that if these didn't work we would lose as we went all in and it would be back to the 9-5 and saving just to hope to retire at age 65. We both have been in real estate as a side gig that made no money for some years. We each have a buy and hold and we both got our real estate license, with which we sold nothing right before the crash. So we have some experience with real estate, none with flipping except for the TV shows for which I now have no time for. 

It all started October 2016 after spinning our wheels for a good year plus with nothing happening. In that learning process we were shooting in a dark room and probably came very close to shooting ourselves a few times. In a matter of a month after that first deal the lights came on and the roller coaster took off. The first property was a single family home that we essentially wholesaled and then we turned and burned for the big stuff. The next one was a 4-plex that we flipped, full rehab and stabilized the rents. After that we did another four multi-families mixed in with single family homes. Our purchases ranged from $300k to $2m.  

One of our best moves that took us from six figure flippers to the seven figure range was networking. We attended quite a few meetups and took everything we could from the speakers and utilized it to the max. One speaker has made us $500k plus this year and will most likely make us more than a $1m in the next yr or two. There were some meetups where the speakers were OK and the benefit of that meetup was meeting all the others who were there.  

We have now started keeping the multi families and are still focusing heavily on the the single family flip. There is just no better place in the world to be in real estate than the San Francisco Bay Area. Ask your questions and I'll answer them the best I can. 

[Bobby Nilsen]

@Vince Scolari We have purchased as far south as Gilroy and as far north as Crockett. Most of our purchases are in sunnyvale, Mountain View, and San Jose. Theres a few decent meetups, the one that I go to more regularily is at Harry's Hofbrau. 

@Noah Scott The biggest piece of advice is when you know you have a deal pull the trigger. We have lost out on a few due to not getting it done quick enough. We have also tried to wholesale deals to others where I am glad they didn't pull the trigger because. We have also made a lot of money being the quickest. The golden ticket is talk to as many agents as possible to grow your network with them. The agents spend a lot of money on marketing, let them market for you. 

@Joseph M. The $150k wholesale was a duplex in Mountain View right across the street from google. There is a post about the $650k rehab which can be found here. I am no longer an agent, never did too much with the license and it just expired. But yes any deal we find on our own we will list. That $650k deal we listed ourselves and were told by many agents they will net us more. After it sold they all thought it was nuts how much we got for it. Our deals are found using everything, craigslist, real estate agents for on and off market, mailers, referrals, etc. Haven't done billboards yet, those will be soon to come I think. Financing is through hard money, have a guy we can send a text to and he will fund it from that. He knows we bring deals.  We haven't found private money that can beat our hard money guy. 

@Chaithra Kumar I have no clue where the market in the Bay Area is going. Its crazy and that's all I know. We try not to get into anything that if worst case scenario we know we cant fire sale for a profit or rent for cash flow. We also try not to go out too far for rehabs so we get in and out in  a short time. For your first property it depends on what you want to do, buy and hold or flip.