All Forum Posts by: Ashley Wilson

Hi Jim Criscuolo,

Welcome!!! I am currently flipping a house in Havertown and am looking at two other properties (one of which is also in Havertown) to flip.  My father and I have been in business for a little over two years and we would love to connect, as well as hopefully work together in the future.  Please feel free to message me if you would like to connect, and I would be happy to have you tour our current flip so you can see an example of the work we do.  Looking forward to speaking!

Sincerely,

Ashley Wilson

@Christian Sifuentes congratulations!!! And welcome to the party! I feel like you are at the same place we were at last year at this time! So I am really excited for you, as this year has been great for us, so I wish the same for you too!!! Not sure if you are interested, but I mentioned previously about a post I wrote on our Two Year Reflection (https://www.biggerpockets.com/blogs/7285/52563-two-year-reflection), and I previously wrote one called Under Contract Now What (https://www.biggerpockets.com/blogs/7285/51619-under-contract-now-what)...both might have some useful tips for you that we have obviously learned the hard way:)  Best of luck to you, and wishing you the best in 2017!

@John Weidner Thank you so much for your comments!  Ironically after I posted this, there have been several houses that might work for us!  We have thought about getting a RE license in the future, however I must say our realtor is incredible! I don't know if we could do a better job:)  So honestly, I don't think that is the rate limiter.  We have also consider going to auctions in the future, but we would like to get a few more flips under our belt before we take on the unknowns with auction houses.  

For discounts, it is funny you mentioned it, because we ask on some but not all of our materials.  We have also found that comparing prices online can lead to a lot of price matching.  For our current flip, we bought the majority of our materials during the Lowes Pro Reward Day and saved 10%, plus the 5% for using our card, so that proved to be a lot!! Despite the three hours I spent speaking with Lowes about the order (don't even get me started on them!!!).  But, we should definitely start to ask our other suppliers as we have gone to them now a few times, and I think our repeat business does warrant a discount.  Thank you again for the tip!

@Account Closed thank you for your comment! Hopefully we can navigate this next step together! I agree with you, funding is an obvious hurtle.  I recently wrote a post regarding our two year reflection, and I believe there is a flipping triangle made of three components (funding, the house, and your team).  It seems your hurdles are with two of these three components.  For funding, have you approached banks, or investors yet?  Personally, I think your second point depends on how good and how big your current GC's team is.  For us, my dad is a GC, but he is supposed to only handle emergencies, otherwise he manages all of the subs we hire.  With this set-up he is able to handle more than one house at a time (or at least that is our current plan, and once we move forward we will test this theory).  Getting a GC license and hiring a crew is not as easy as it sounds.  Unless you have GC experience (and you have the time to dedicate to the project), a lot of things can go wrong, even with purely cosmetic flips.  I am not saying that you wouldn't be able to learn how to do it without prior experience; however, testing your GC's skill set while simultaneously taking on a new challenge of scaling may double the challenges you face, and may ultimately cause major impacts on your business.   I think the best way to answer the question, is how much is it worth to you.  In other words, would you hire someone with your experience to be a GC knowing that it would cost you minimal, but problems might occur, or alternatively would it be more cost effective to hire one of these high in demand GC's, and find cost savings elsewhere.  Not sure if I really helped, or not, but I know the more you talk about something, the more ideas will be generated, and hopefully one will work out!  Best of luck, and please keep me posted! It is nice to know we are both growing (and doing something right)!

Great Job!!! I actually think getting multiple offers on the first day is what the goal is...not necessarily for people to say the price is a bit on the high side.  As the old saying goes, "Time is money", so if you priced it higher, who knows how long you would have waited for an offer.  And better yet, you could have missed out on your next purchase because you were waiting on the property to close.  I always think it's better to get it sold, as soon as possible.   It looks like you did the reno for a great price.  Did you do some of the work?  

@Garrett M. My husband is thinking about getting his license too, and he came across this website: http://www.joinreal.com/ .  It's completely online and only takes a 15% cut.  Has anyone else heard, or had experience with this?

I just sent a message to your personal account.  Hope it helps!

Hi James,

I think the best plan is to do two different analysis.  Instead of looking at just from the rehab costs perspective, analyze time on market for rehabbed vs non-rehabbed properties.  Typically a fully rehabbed property will sell a lot faster than a non-rehabbed property.  Then calculate the holding difference.  Meaning if it costs you $50/day to hold the property, and there is a two month difference of time on market (based on previous sales in that area), you can expect to lose another $3,000 by not doing the upgraded kitchen.  Also that is another two months before you can reinvest your money, so you are losing even more than the $3,000.  Personally, I think there are three things that sell a house: Location, Kitchen and Baths.  If you are at least going to get your money back from the investment, plus you decrease your time on market, I think it's worth it. (Especially considering what time of year we are approaching!)  Good Luck!

Ashley

The best way to find subs...ask the good ones!  BP always says "You are the average of the five people you hang around with the most".  Same is true of subs.  Typically good subs work with other good subs.  We have found a lot of ours through asking the good ones we already use.  

Hello BP Community,

Almost two years ago, my father and I started a flipping business together.  Since then, we have flipped three houses (two already this year), and will be closing on our fourth in a couple of weeks.  We have done quite well on each house, and are now looking to scale our business. 

Our plan is to start doing two houses at a time.  We are going to achieve this by staggering start dates, as well as vary the scope of work (as two of our last three renovations were full house rehabs). 

I would like to ask your input on the following:

1) Do you have any additional tips, than the ones listed above, for doing more than one house at a time?

2) After we are successful at doing two at a time, we want to move on to three at a time, and so on.  What is your experience with the number of houses one Project Manager can handle?

3) What are the things we should look out for when scaling?

4) As our area is very competitive, we often find ourselves being outbid.  While we know the volume of flips that some of these competitors do is often a reason they can outbid us, we also know they have dedicated teams working on their projects, so they can severely undercut the cost of the rehab.  In your experience, what is the "magic number" of houses per year where we could get these dramatic reductions in rates?  (For both materials and labour). 

Thank you in advance for your time and your knowledge!

Sincerely,

Ashley Wilson