How I’m Flipping 12 Houses (at Once!) All While Traveling

Ashley:
Today’s guest didn’t just start young. She started really young. Dominique dove into real estate at just the age of 17 learning by doing rather than simply studying and her action oriented approach has paid off. She started with wholesaling in Los Angeles, completing an impressive 40 plus deals in a year and a half, and then expanded into long distance flipping in New Orleans. Now she manages multiple flips at once, sourcing deals through off market strategies and uses her age as an advantage, not a hurdle. She’s a powerhouse investor on a mission to grow her business even more. You won’t want to miss this episode. Welcome back to the Real Estate Rookie podcast. I’m Ashley Kehr and I’m here with Tony J Robinson.

Tony:
And welcome to the podcast where every week, three times a week, we bring you the inspiration, motivation, and stories you need to hear to kickstart your investing journey. And today we want to welcome Dominique Gunderson to the Real Estate Rookie Podcast. So Dom, thanks so much for joining us today.

Dominique:
Yeah, thanks for having me. Super excited to chat with you guys. All things house flipping

Ashley:
Well, let’s start off with the beginning. How long have you been investing in real estate and how many total deals have you done so far?

Dominique:
I got started investing right out of high school actually. I jumped into real estate. I did a few different things with it from being an agent wholesaling, owning rentals, and now my main focus is house flipping. But I’ve done over a hundred deals so far. I started at 17 and I’m now 27, so almost 10 full years in. And again, that’s been a lot across a lot of different strategies. But as far as the house slipping stuff goes, I’m currently running 12 house slips right now, long distance. Got some rental properties as well. So yeah, happy to dive in more on any of the strategies. That would be a good focus.

Ashley:
There definitely is a lot to unpack there. And so my first question is what did you decide to do first? Was it actually doing a flip or did you do a rental or short-term rental? What was kind of the beginning of your strategy and why did you choose that?

Dominique:
So the very first thing that I did in real estate was actually being a real estate agent. So I was super interested in real estate, knew I wanted to do that for a career when I was in high school. And as soon as I graduated, I was ready to get my real estate license and start working under an agent who was really successful in the Los Angeles area where I grew up, just to get my feet wet just to learn about sales and contracts and the basics of real estate. So that was my very first intro to real estate. But I didn’t switch over to the investing side until about two years in when I started wholesaling. And that was my very first investment deal. I wholesaled for about a year and a half in Los Angeles and was basically just using that again as another way to really get started, get a bunch of deals under my belt, learn more about the investing side and how investors think and how they analyze deals. And I knew that if I was selling them deals, I would kind of get that insider look at what they were looking for and how they were running numbers. So when I did deals on my own, the wholesaling was the first thing I jumped into and it was about two years later that I jumped into flipping.

Tony:
So Dom, one follow up question to that, because it sounds like you kind of cut your teeth in the deal finding side, which I think is super important because every successful real estate investor needs good deals. But you were a teenager when you started this and I think there are a lot of people with maybe more resources and more life experience, more money to help build this business that still haven’t gotten started. So at 17, how did you actually find, if you recall that first wholesale deal, how did you actually find it? Were you door knocking? Were you spending thousands of dollars a month on marketing? What did you do to actually find that first deal?

Dominique:
So a lot of the deals I was finding when I was wholesaling, it was a really good time in the market too. And I was in la, which was a super competitive area where a lot of people were flipping houses. So that was definitely to my advantage. I had a lot of really good buyer contacts that usually when I found a good deal, even if it was a specific niche, I had buyers looking in different niches, different neighborhoods. So my buyer’s list was a big benefit for me of being able to do a lot of volume. But as far as the deal finding, I mean I did everything from leaving letters on people’s doors or sending mail when I saw distressed homes, wholesale deals off the MLS, I did other JV deals with other wholesalers, real estate agents would bring me deals off market just like I was exhausting all kinds of different strategies to see what was working best. And ultimately I honestly figured out that I didn’t really like wholesaling that much, so I never really stuck in it long enough to run a super competitive marketing campaign and do a hundred deals a year or whatever. I was super ready to transition into flipping.

Ashley:
Dominique, when you made that transition into flipping, where did you even start? So if you had a rookie investor today who wanted to do the exact same thing, can you lay out that blueprint of your first flip that you did long distance?

Dominique:
Yeah, so I think for me the biggest thing was funding at that time because I was super young, I did my first flip at 21 and bought it with all of my own cash. So for me that was one of the bigger hurdles and it kind of spread into all the categories. It spread into like, okay, what market am I going to do this in because I have to find a place I can afford and how am I going to manage if it’s not in my backyard? Because Los Angeles was super expensive. So it led me to start thinking about a lot of different questions, but it all stemmed from the funding. I didn’t have a track record. I was super young and I did not want to put myself in a position where I might be in debt to somebody hundreds of thousands of dollars if the flip went wrong.

Dominique:
So I used the wholesaling to basically kickstart and fund my flipping venture. So I know not everybody is necessarily in that position as a rookie or just getting started, but I would say it was a good strategy and I do recommend it to get started in real estate some sort of way, whether that be an agent you’re making commission or wholesaling or a contractor or a property manager, whatever that is that you could dip your feet in and kind of get started and actually making some money in the industry because then you just have a better advantage in all categories between funding, contacts, building a team, knowing the market, finding deals, all that stuff gets easier when you’ve actually done it to some degree and you’re getting paid to do it.

Ashley:
So once you’ve decided you’re going to flip, you have the capital. Where did you decide to do your first flip and how did you analyze a market to do a flip in?

Dominique:
So I had thought about flipping in Los Angeles where I was wholesaling and that’s where I had all my contacts. But again, back to the funding point, it just wasn’t realistic At the time I was looking for something where I could be all into the property for about a hundred thousand or less. So I started thinking about a good market out of state. And for me it was less about looking at all the data and statistics of a market to pick the perfect place and more about picking a place where I felt like I had even just a little bit of a competitive advantage in the sense of knowing the area and building a team. So my dad and his wife lived in New Orleans and that was just the first place that came to mind of, oh, I should start looking into the New Orleans market because at the very least I know someone there that I can go and visit and stay easily can tell me about the area, tell me what sorts of neighborhoods to avoid, stuff like that, just the basics. And so that was the first and only out of state market that I looked into and it just stuck

Ashley:
Rookies. We want to hit 100,000 subscribers on YouTube and we need your help while we take a quick ad break. Can you go over to youtube.com at realestate rookie and make sure you’re subscribed to the channel. Stay tuned after a break for more from Dominique.

Tony:
Alright guys, welcome back to the show where we are joined by Dominique Gunderson. So Dominique, other than having a connection to someone in that market, was there anything else that you saw in New Orleans that gave you the confidence to say this actually makes sense to flip in, or was it just the familiarity and the kind of connection through your dad and your dad’s wife?

Dominique:
The connection was the biggest piece for sure. I knew the biggest hurdle was going to be building a team and if I could get any sort of competitive advantage to meeting people on the ground, I was going to take it. But there were a couple other things. Like I said, the price point was a big one. I could buy a single family house with my own capital that I had saved up, so that was huge. There was a lot of single family suburb type neighborhoods, which I really liked too. I didn’t want to do condos or townhomes or multifamily at the time or anything like that. So having a lot of inexpensive subdivisions of single families was another big one that I liked.

Tony:
Now you mentioned team building is one of the focuses that you had going into that market, and I think for anyone doing investing long distance, whether it’s flipping wholesaling, long-term rental, short-term building the team is a piece that gives them a lot of concern or maybe build some of that hesitation. So how did you at what 20 years old at this point, maybe go into this unknown market and build a team of contractors to help you build this flipping business?

Dominique:
So I think with any piece of building an investment business, it doesn’t all just come overnight and there’s no super simple answer I could give you to that. I mean, I’m still building a team five years later into investing in New Orleans, I’m still putting together who are the top players, who are my top teammates, and then people that I had to let go that didn’t quite live up to the standard. So it’s always an ongoing thing, but just starting out, some of the biggest things that helped me were referrals. So even from the beginning, even though I wasn’t there, I started to get really involved and connected any way I could into meetups, networking groups, and just trying to get involved with other investors on the ground. So I would go to New Orleans every couple of months just to check in on things and I’d try to time it around attending some of the local meetups or just grabbing coffee or setting meetings with other investors who I wanted to connect with.

Dominique:
And so I got a lot of referrals from just other investors. Once I would get one team member, it would help to sort of spiral into others. If you get a great real estate agent, they often know other contractors or title companies or lenders or other people that you can work with in other aspects too. So referrals all around have been huge for me. And then just always being open to team building. So even though I have a good crew right now, I have several crews, I have several realtors, I have several people doing everything to always be willing to meet more people, always putting the word out that you’re looking for X, Y, and Z. When you have a good team that you need to be building those backup lists, not when you’re stuck with nobody and desperately searching for somebody.

Tony:
Dom, I appreciate you saying that even multiple years into flipping that you’re still building the team because I think for a lot of Ricky’s that are listening, they have this idea that it kind of stops at a certain point that the maintenance of building this business kind stops it at a certain point. But even for me, we flip and we do short-term rentals and long-term rentals and we’re still kind of tweaking and adjusting our team on a very much regular basis. We just hired on a new cleaner for our properties in Tennessee. We just let go of some maintenance folks that are managing our properties for the last couple of years and Josh as we replacement with someone else. So there’s always kind of these ebbs and flows and the team building piece. So I appreciate you calling that out. Now I just want to get a little bit more clarity on the timing now, I know you identified the market because you had the connection, you were kind of networking, talking to other investors and getting a sense of who they’re using for different things. But did you have a rock solid team in place before you submitted that first offer?

Dominique:
No, I definitely did not have a team before I started submitting offers. I’m not a hundred percent sure if I would recommend doing it that way, but it all worked out for me. But yeah, no, I was just starting to learn the market, figuring out what types of deal finding strategies I was going to start looking at to find my first deal. And I just started submitting offers. And once I got one, not just under contract, but I actually closed on it, it wasn’t until then that I solidified who was going to do the construction, who was going to be my realtor, all those types of things. I had talks with different people getting biz, doing different networking, but literally just as I was going, it was still falling into place. So by no means did I have it all lined up and everything was perfect, it was day by day figuring out new problems as they would come up.

Tony:
One last question, Dom, on the team building piece, if you didn’t necessarily have the crew that you were going to use as you were submitting these offers, what steps were you taking to estimate those potential rehab costs? How would you know what the rehab was going to be on this property if you didn’t have a crew that had told you, Hey, this is what it’s going to be?

Dominique:
Yeah, it’s a great question. I definitely didn’t do it perfect because I was jumping into a new market, so pricing was going to be different, but I felt like I had enough of an understanding from what I had learned in wholesaling to at least get a decent idea of what a rehab would cost. And I did put a lot of emphasis when I was wholesaling in connecting a ton with my buyers. So I would often ask them if I could stop by their job site of a deal that I had sold them a couple of times throughout the renovation and then see it once it’s done and if they could share with me the numbers that they were coming up with when they were putting together estimates and then what they actually spent and all that kind of stuff. So I spent a good amount of time doing research type stuff like that when I was wholesaling to where I felt like I had at least a decent idea of what a renovation would cost. And then once I started actually flipping in New Orleans, of course I got more of a specific idea of quotes and estimates that I was gathering from contractors in that market.

Tony:
Now one of the things you mentioned, Dom, I want to circle back to you was you said you have 12 flips going on right now. You are recording this in the midst of a cross country trip in your RVs. You’re sitting on the beach in North Carolina, you’ve got 12 flips going on in New Orleans. Did you have to walk each one of those 12 properties before buying them? Is that your typical process?

Dominique:
So I don’t personally walk them unless I happen to be in town when a deal is coming up, but I’ve been inside of all of them. I currently go to New Orleans every other month to just walk all my jobs, check in with my team, keep a set of my own eyes on things just so that my team also knows that I’m not just forgetting about it and letting things go. It helps to just keep that accountability for them. But I don’t usually walk them before I buy them. It’s usually either my project manager or one of my contractors that will go and do the initial walkthrough and then just send me a full set of photos and videos.

Tony:
So let’s drill down on that just a bit, Dom. So a part of being a good house flipper is building out your scope of work. It’s the detailed list of all the things you’re going to do within this property to get it from its current condition to the condition at which you’ll be able to sell it for the profit that you’re hoping to get. So if are not seeing these properties beforehand, can you walk us through how you’re creating that scope of work remotely?

Dominique:
Yeah, sure. So there’s a couple different things, and I’d say they typically focus more on the major systems of the property that are my big question marks for any given deal. So I always want to know the age of the roof, the age of the HVAC system, if there has been any recent electrical or plumbing updates such as if any underground plumbing work has ever been recently done, if they’ve recently replaced the electrical panel, stuff like that. Just some of those bigger ticket items that if I missed those things we would be way off on the numbers, like 10 grand or more off on the Reno scope. So those are some things that my team kind of knows to be aware of to either look at themselves or to clearly capture on video for me to look at myself. But then a lot of the other stuff you kind of learn as you go and you get more deals under your belt with the same crews, you get a really good sense of their pricing, especially when you’re buying a lot of houses that are really close together, which I do typically do.

Dominique:
A lot of my flips are a five minute drive away from each other. And so you’re dealing with the same price point, the same style of home in the same area, so you can use a lot of the same finishes. And the pricing for labor and install is usually really similar to from one project to the next. So a lot of times what I’ll do for more of the finishing type of stuff is just look at some of the quotes we’ve just received or just on jobs we’ve just completed to get an idea of, okay, what’s the going rate right now for labor and install on flooring and tile and cabinets and all that kind of stuff. And same with materials. I mean we’re using a lot of the same materials across the board. So when a kitchen just costs 5,000 for the cabinets, it’s probably going to cost 5,000 again type of thing. So yeah, it’s a lot of just keeping similar scopes and numbers across the board for transparency throughout different projects

Ashley:
Dump. For your contractors, are you mostly getting a general contractor that already has a crew or are you kind of piece milling and building out your own crew based on getting your own subs?

Dominique:
So I’ve always used a GC and I really recommend this super highly if you’re going to do anything out of state because it’s just so hard. That’s a whole job in itself that does typically require a lot of being on the ground and onsite oversight. And so for me to try to do that long distance, I can just tell you for me, it would be impossible. I could never coordinate a crew of subs and have it be successful with me never being there. So I’ve always used a GC and I highly recommend that for anything long distance.

Tony:
So on that point, Dom, you said that the GC is a super important part of you being able to do this remotely. Say that I’m a first time investor and I’m trying to do exactly what Dom did in New Orleans. What questions should I be asking these different contractors to kind of identify who’s a good fit to help me do this remotely? Are there any red flags you’re looking out for, but just how can I vet a contractor to help me do what you’re doing?

Dominique:
I think communication is the biggest piece for me. That’s the biggest one that I’ve been burned on in the past when I’ve had bad contractors. That’s always seemed to be the downfall and the clear sign that I should have not hired this person is the communication. And what that looks like for me is I talk to my contractor three or four times a day. It’s just how it goes because there’s always questions about this project or that and what design did you want here? And hey, I just walked this property, here’s what I found. There’s just so many moving parts all the time. And so if it’s somebody who’s really busy, doesn’t really have the time of day already has a fully built out client base and doesn’t really need someone like me that’s going to be bringing lots of projects, then I don’t think it’s a good fit.

Dominique:
That’s just a red flag for me off the top. And this is something I did a lot too when I was just starting out, and I would recommend for anyone who’s just getting started and doesn’t have a big book of business to bring as a, I don’t know, as something that would get people to want to work for you if you’re just starting out, you want to try to find people that you can grow with and you guys can become loyal to each other. So the first contractor I hired who did a ton of work for me at the beginning was someone who was just starting to do full renovations. He had previously been doing just a kitchen remodel or just a bathroom remodel and he wanted to do full projects, like manage an entire renovation. And so we had a benefit to bring to each other. I was just starting and I was going to start bringing him lots of deals if this one went well and he wanted that kind of work. So finding people like that, you don’t have to find the most sought after with all the top reviews and busiest contractor in town that’s going to come super highly recommended. That might be a good fit, but typically they’re going to be really hard to reach, hard to communicate with, and they already have a built out book of business.

Tony:
Alright guys, we need to take our final ad break, but we’ll be right back after this.

Ashley:
Okay, let’s jump back into the show.

Tony:
So Dom, one last follow up to that. You said that this was someone who was doing kitchen remodels. How did you find this person? Was it through a referral? Was it through a meetup? How did you find that person that was on the cusp of wanting to go from these smaller jobs to the bigger jobs?

Dominique:
Yeah, it was a referral. A referral from someone else on the ground who had used him for a kitchen, I think it was. And yeah, we had done a couple of estimates on some jobs that I was looking at, so I started, got a feel for his numbers and ultimately we started doing some renos together.

Ashley:
Well Dom, we’ve kind of gotten into how you found your market, how you’ve built your team, how you’re managing your rehabs. Now let’s get to the good stuff as to what has your success looked like? Do you have just a screaming deal that you have completed for one of these flips?

Dominique:
Like to go through all the numbers and stuff?

Ashley:
Yeah, yeah, we would love that.

Dominique:
Yeah, for sure. So I can give you a couple examples, but a very standard flip that I would do in New Orleans is, so when I first got started I was focusing a lot on the lower end entry level price point, which I would say is a really good, it was a good choice for me and I would recommend it for people that are getting started, there’s just a lot less risk. There’s a bigger buyer pool, a lot more people are looking to buy something that’s 200,000 when it’s renovated, then 500,000. So my first couple of years in, I did a ton of deals like that. For the most part, my purchase prices were typically between 50 and a hundred thousand depending on how bad the condition of the house was. We were typically putting in between again, like 50 and a hundred thousand depending on how bad the house was, if it was a full gut or just kind of a cosmetic one.

Dominique:
And then my resale prices were always 200 k and under, so that’s where I started for several years. That’s all I was flipping, and I was flipping houses blocks away from each other. I could walk to all my projects. So I just really niched down in certain neighborhoods and figured out what design trends and stuff that people are in that price point we’re looking for. And then over the last couple of years, I’ve kind of diversified a little bit and done some deals that are more in the three to 400 K price point on the exit. So a lot of what I’m buying right now looks more like one we are working on right now, we just bought for 150,000 renovation will probably be about 60,000 resale, should be between 303 20. So that’s a pretty common price point and renovation type that I’m working on right now, still doing some of the lower end 200 K and under stuff, but in the more recent years I’ve started holding a lot more of that stuff for long-term rentals as well.

Ashley:
Well, that’s awesome and I thank you for sharing those numbers with us to get an idea. We just recorded a rookie reply and one of the questions actually was, if I’m making 55,000 off this deal, is this a good deal? And it was over four months, we didn’t know where the market was or a lot of factors into it, but sometimes just having another investor share what their numbers look like and help someone else gauge what kind of deals they should be looking at. So Dom, continuing on, you said that you had made a pivot, you kind of changed, you went to a little bit higher price point at one point. How has the market changes impacted you? Is there anything different that you see in the future? Looking into long distance flipping for 2025,

Dominique:
Probably one of the biggest impacts that I felt all of last year and this year. Last year I still had a lot of 200 K and under flips, at least towards the beginning of the year, I started making that pivot to higher price points in early 2023 because I started noticing that when I would go to sell some of these properties, as the market was shifting and interest rates were going up, and insurance is a huge thing in New Orleans as well, that makes properties really unaffordable for first time home buyers that all of my deals, they were going under contract, we were getting showings offers and buyers that were getting to week three out of four of our escrow period and then would just fall off the deep end, couldn’t close, couldn’t get to the closing table, couldn’t get the lender, the lender’s final approval.

Dominique:
And so it became really difficult to sell these houses that were going to that really entry level first time home buyer that just couldn’t quite make ends meet with interest rate and insurance hikes. It was really affecting the ability of those buyers to close. So that was one of the biggest things that made me shift. And I pulled five or six in Q4 of last year of those properties that I had in that price point, I just turned ’em all into rentals because they just weren’t selling. And so I started buying more In the not high end, you don’t want something that doesn’t have a big buyer pool, but just slightly higher end price point where we’re more in the 300 to 400 range on the resale value just to have slightly more qualified buyers that interest rates don’t affect quite as much. But I say that with a little hesitation because I’m sure you guys have felt it too this year it’s almost just getting worse and worse than even some of the quarters last year where there’s just no buyers.

Dominique:
It doesn’t matter how well priced your house is or how nice it looks and how you’re the best, most affordable option, there’s just nobody buying. And so it’s hard to do much with that when it, it’s just a hard market to sell. So that’s one of the biggest hurdles right now. I don’t think it really has anything to do with market or price point. I mean, I’ve heard this from people across the country that this is just where things are right now and mortgage are at all time lows and all this stuff. So that’s definitely the biggest hurdle right now on the flipping side is you’ve got to just buffer your holding timelines so much and just expect that it’s going to take many, many weeks on market, potentially not because you’ve done anything wrong, but it’s just the way that things are right now.

Ashley:
I think some of it has to do with too is we’re in an election year and maybe now since we’ve recorded this, the election is over with. But if you look at historically, people don’t make big financial decisions around election time until after the election when they kind of know a little bit more of how the country is going to be run and how it’s going to impact them financially. So that definitely could be a large part of it too as to why the slow down, why people aren’t making offers, why people aren’t buying, especially in this past quarter is because they were waiting on the election to see how that would impact them financially. One question I had, you were saying that you turned them into rentals. Can you explain what that means and what that process would be like for somebody else to had that same kind of exit strategy or option on their flip?

Dominique:
Yeah, I know you guys have talked about this a ton on the podcast, but it’s essentially implementing the Burr method. So if one exit strategy of flipping and selling isn’t working, a lot of times when you are in that first time home buyer entry level category of price point, you can also make the B strategy work and it might not work perfectly where you get all of your money out on the refinance, but majority of it, if you still have a good margin on a flip, you probably still have a good margin on a rental. So that’s what I did, basically just took the price that I was trying to sell those properties for and turning it into my appraisal value that I was getting on those properties. And so that appraisal number will set to the bank what the property is worth and they can loan up to usually 75% of that number in a cash out refinance.

Dominique:
So I was just pulling all the cash I had invested into the property back out through the cash, cash out, refinance, some of them I had to leave a little bit of my own funds in the deal, but I was still able to pull majority out and then just cashflow it as a long-term rental. So just renting out the property for, I have a couple where the rent is like 14 to 1500 and the mortgage is 11 or 1200, so you still make a couple hundred bucks a month in cashflow. But again, it’s more so the strategy of if it’s not selling, you’ve got a loan to pay off, you’ve got investor debt to pay back. It’s an easy way to just get your money back out at the deal, recycle it and jump into something else.

Tony:
Dom, you mentioned loans, investors to pay back. What kind of debt are you typically using on your flips? Are you going private money, hard money, or some other form of financing?

Dominique:
Yeah, so almost everything I buy is with private money exclusively. I’ve only used hard money once for a higher end project that was harder to raise money from one individual from, but for the most part, I mean my projects are again all in between the one 50 to two 50 for the most part range between purchase and renovation. So I’m just raising that capital from individuals that I’ve either connected with or have reached out to me through social media or hearing me on a podcast or whatever it is, coming to one of my meetups, different strategies to where people have just literally reached out and been like, Hey, if I have money sitting, how can I get involved? How could we potentially work together? And so I’ll just do debt financing. So I just set a straight up interest rate that they receive on the money that they invest with me, and that just goes into part of the holding costs that I account for upfront on the deal. Just making sure, like I said before, to increase now that holding timeline of how much debt you’re going to pay out on these flips, because at least for me, it’s not like four to five months anymore. It’s like eight to nine.

Tony:
Two questions before we start to close out here, Dom, on the private money piece first, what kind of terms are you typically getting from your private money lenders?

Dominique:
So I usually set it with a 12 month term with no prepayment penalty for 12% interest. So one point per month that the money is invested. I don’t do any upfront points or fees, it’s just straight up interest rate of 12% annualized. And again, yeah, that no prepayment penalty has been pretty important for me to implement as well so that I can pay that off assuming our project doesn’t take 12 months. And then assuming that investor wants to keep their money invested though, we can recycle it and hopefully use it twice in one year or twice every year and a half or whatever it is to help increase my return on their investment.

Tony:
And do you make any payments during the life of the loan itself or is it all paid on the backend when you sell the flip?

Dominique:
I’ve done both and I usually leave it kind of more up to the investor’s preference if they want one lump sum or monthly payments, but I’ve done it both ways.

Tony:
So last question then on the private money piece, Dom, that first person, the first person that wrote you a check, it’s a private money lender, where did you find that person? How did you connect with them and what did your actual pitch look like on that first transaction?

Dominique:
So the very first person that loaned me was someone I met in Los Angeles when I was working in real estate out there. It was a guy who owned some rental properties in Los Angeles and owned a lot of commercial real estate. But I literally just started talking to him about what I was doing. And at that point I had already done maybe five or six projects with fully my own capital in New Orleans. So I didn’t even try to raise capital until I had some deals under my belt and a little bit of a track record and proof of concept. And so I just started talking about the numbers on those deals and how much someone like him could have gotten if I would’ve instead paid out a private lender on those deals. And yeah, just had a little deck put together of how my past deals had gone, and we just opened up the conversation and it turns out he was looking for something to be a little bit more passive on and get out of California type of investment, something that was a little bit easier and less strings attached with red tape and all of that.

Dominique:
So dealing with the city. So it kind of just literally checked all the boxes of something he was looking for. But yeah, it was super random and I would totally recommend for people that are in that boat to just talk to anybody and everybody about what you’re doing because you just never know who’s going to maybe be in the right place at the right time looking to be that perfect partnership for you. That was my experience with it. It was like I was in that boat of man, how am I going to get funding? How am I going to go raise $500,000 to start scaling this investment business? And for somebody else, they were in the exact opposite boat of what am I going to do with this $500,000 or whatever it is to make a passive return on it. So if you just keep sharing your story, that’s what I’ve found. It’s always happened naturally

Ashley:
Deem what a great story, but better yet, great advice as to always talk about what you’re doing. Tell anyone and everyone, whoever will listen about what you’re trying to do. And Brandon Turner had once told me too that just talking about it instead of specifically asking someone takes the confrontation out of it too, as to you could always approach it, do you know anyone that’s looking to invest in real estate? Instead of, do you want to invest in real estate and give me some of your money? So I think you gave such amazing advice. So we have one more question for you today as to what advice would you give someone looking to try long distance flipping for the first time? Is there anything common, a common pitfall that comes to mind that they should avoid? So best advice and a pitfall they should avoid?

Dominique:
So I think it’s that you have to get the concept out of your head of long distance investing equals being removed from the ground, from your projects, from your team. Like yes, it is really cool that I am touring around the country in my RV right now and traveling and exploring and not having to be on the job site every day, but I would never go more than a month or two, like I said, without going there and without even thinking about, okay, who can I meet up with? Who can I talk to and grab coffee with the next time I’m in town? That in-person connection stuff is so huge. I think that could be a common misconception that I’m just fully removed and don’t have any sort of connection to what’s going on in New Orleans. I would highly recommend that if you want to start investing somewhere, you’ve got to go there.

Dominique:
Go there before you even buy something, drive the streets, figure out the nuances to that area because there’s some in every market where you’ve got to have seen those things firsthand so that you’re not overlooking things and making mistakes of running your comps and running your numbers because there’s x, y, or Z factor that nobody wants to live here or whatever, that you’re just not aware of because you’ve never been there. So I think between seeing it and putting eyes on it, that’s huge. But also the in-person connections with people, it’s so huge. It’s like how I’ve built loyal teams. It’s because we go out to dinner with these people, they’re part of our lives more than just doing business. It’s like a relationship that you’re building with your team and the community and everything. So anything that has to do with that, with being there and being present is probably the most overlooked thing I think that people think about with long distance investing.

Ashley:
Dom, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciated you taking the time to join us and to share your story, to give a lot of great advice about doing long distance flipping, but also being an inspiration to others that this is possible and even in today’s market. I’m Ashley, and he’s Tony. If you want to learn more about Dom, we’ll link her information into the show notes. We’ll see you guys next time on Real Estate Rookie, I.