3 tools for 90 flips

Now, you have started your real estate journey. Your agent calls you and tells you about this great deal and says to meet you there.You walk through the house. He shows you the price and what you should offer. You think it is a great deal, so you call your contractor and have him meet you there within a day. You walk through all of the house you and talk about each room. He gives you a bid, and then you tell your real estate agent the offer price. You buy the house. Rehab it and sell it and make a profit. You are ready for two, three, ten, and fifty profitable flips.

How do you keep track of all of that? First, have your solid team in place. Once you have, the team in place you are ready for the flipping machine.

The flipping machine includes three things. Gmail account, Trello.com, and IFTTT.com. You should have a Gmail account already 15gb of storage with sheets, docs, and email all free. Trello and IFTTT may be brand new to you. Trello is a Kanban board or a whiteboard with a list and sticky notes inside of the list. It allows you to visualize the workflow of your projects or project. You move each Trello card from left to right as they move through the workflow. You can add your team to each board and have conversations on each card. Each card is an address.

IF This Then That, also known as IFTTT is a free web-based service to create chains of simple conditional statements, called applets. In other words, it is an automation service. It allows you to combine Trello and Gmail.

So first step is to start with Trello. My preference is three boards. Acquisitions, Construction, and Sales. This allows you to see each step of the process and separates them, so you don’t overwhelm yourself with deals.

Acquisitions should have a few main steps.

1.Deals to view

2.Viewed

3.Budget written

4.Offer made

5.In Closing

6.Lost Deals

7.Archive

These are the basic 6+1.

Here is how I used Trello. I move the cards from one list to the next. I had a real estate agent add the deals to my Trello board. I viewed them and then brought in my contractor. He would give me the budget. I added the budget to the card in the description. I then made the offer and added it to the description of the card also. Once the offer was accepted, I would move it to "In Closing" and then using Trello I would add the date it closed as the due date. Trello has a calendar power-up. Enable this, and it will give you a link to subscribe to the calendar. This helps immensely in scheduling. Once closed you remove the due date and move it to your Construction board. Your Real estate agent and Contractor are part of this board.

Construction board main steps.

1.Demo

2.Analyze

3.25% Complete

4.50% Complete

5.75% Complete

6.Rehab Complete

7.Sale ready.

These are my preferences.

One you may not have thought of is "Analyze" after the demo. I always make sure to visit the home after the demo. This allows you to see problems you didn’t see originally and change your budget accordingly. Change the list to how you pay your contractor. "Rehab Complete" is for the contractor. "Sale ready" is ready for listing this includes photos and final clean. The Contractor is part of this board. If he has any issues that can wait he just has to add a comment to each card. This allows Trello to be the main way of communication. Also, each conversation only pertains to the single address, therefore, no confusion. They can even add photos and files if necessary to each card.

Sales is pretty simple.

1.MLS Ready

2.Listed

3.Offers made

4.In closing

5.Closed $$$

These are self-explanatory.

I add my listing agent to this board.Wait? Where are IFTTT and Gmail? Here come the superpowers. IFTTT is the automation glue. Make sure to add your Trello and Gmail account to your IFTTT account. You can send emails via Trello. IFTTT tracks Trello for you. When you move a card on Trello to a specific list, IFTTT will then send an email via Gmail to the email you used.

Example. 1.

When you add a closed deal address to the list "Demo," it will send an email to your contractor to start the demo. It would look like this.

Contractor,

Address {name of card} is ready for demo. If you have any questions, please add them to the Trello card.

Example 2

When you move the card to "rehab complete," send an email to the cleaning company.

Cleaning company,

I have Address {name of card} it is ready for a final clean please let me know when it is scheduled.

I suggest only allow a few essential people to be on your boards. If you don’t add them, then use email to schedule projects. 

My partner and I used this process acquire and rehab 90+ rehabs in 10 months. Amazingly all of this is can be done from a smartphone. We were able to see where each of our deals were in the process by a quick glance.

If you have questions, please reach out. We are all here to help each other.