Season 2 Premiere: The Next Chapter in Fix & Flips

Welcome to raising the flipping bar. My name is Derrick Marlon and I've redeveloped over 80 properties in metro Denver. I've bought and sold 115 multifamily doors in Cincinnati, Ohio, and my team has done just under 300 single family rental acquisitions for our clients. On this show, my goal is to help you make more money, save you a bunch of time and create a well oiled flipping machine. Let's dive in. And if you want more information, head to fix and flip dot show. Hey, everybody, Derek Marlin coming back at you for season two of raising the flipping bar. I'm super excited to be back with you guys. It's been a couple of weeks, since we've last launched our first season in our first handful of episodes. So season one was really just a masterclass of everything that we do in the fix and flip process, essentially, whether it's called property redevelopment, which is what we call it, or everybody knows classically as fixin flips, I wanted to give everybody a step by step look into how to successfully analyze deals, how to market both on and off market to find and source properties. 

Once you get those deals, where are you doing to make sure that your flips are successful, and how to exit the property on the back end. And then there was definitely some some on your business and in your business with my friend and colleague, Doug slay Bob with the CPA coach. So what we're going to do for this next season, is this is an intro episode. And we're going to dive into a lot more episodes that focus on interviews. And so the cool thing about this is I've got this amazing list in front of me of guests. And they are going to be expert, real estate agents, expert investors, people that are actually both investors and real estate agents. And then other super smart people way smarter than me, that give you insight into the Denver investment, real estate space, give you tips and tricks on how to run your business most effectively. And hopefully just provide as much value as humanly possible. 

So let's jump back into raising flipping bar. Season two, episode one, we're glad you guys are here. I want to talk a little bit about what's going on with my company elevation. And we're doing some really fun growth things here. Because I want you to think through how could this help benefit you and how could we be most importantly, a really big resource to what you're doing. The first is some shifts to our sales team. So we have a sales team, right now currently have six licensed real estate agents. And we've actually changed our folks where they hang their real estate license, we've gone from your castle real estate, that we really appreciate what they did for us. But we've changed to exp. And one of the reasons that we've done that is it gives us the ability to build out a more robust investment focused real estate team, not only in metro Denver, but you know, spoiler alert, we're going to be expanding into other markets here in 2024, and beyond. And that gives us the ability and the footprint to do that. And all the backend support. So it's been great to work with the EXP team. If you guys are looking for a place to come and be a experts in the real estate investment space.

That is all we focus on 100% investment, real estate, really nothing traditionally, and we are growing our team. So hit us up if you guys want to be a part of what we're creating, what those folks are doing is they're helping source and find properties for us. They're helping source and find properties for our clients. They're in the middle of the rehab process to know exactly what's going on. And they effectively sell everything on the back end, the partnership flip is really a big focus for us for 2024. And the reason we're doing that is because it's not only unique to what our company can provide, but I think it's a perfect solution to where we're coming out of from a market perspective, meaning the market is still leaning towards sellers. Right now we're recording this in fourth quarter of 2023. And it is again more of a seller's market. But it's not the crazy heights that we saw in most of 2021. And most of 2022, where everything would go 100,000 hours of asking, there'd be 30 offers and pretty much it was like a ticket or leave it type of housing scenario, which is not healthy by the way. And it's gonna give us an opportunity to smooth things out a little bit, where even properties that were super overpriced and not in good condition would sell well. 

Now in the current market environment stuff needs to either be very fixed up and very dialed in to get a premium price. And if not, that's where we come in where we put our renovation budget to work, we put our expertise to work, and we partner up with people to split the profits 5050. And most importantly, it is gives us the ability to work with other seasoned real estate agents who can sell these deals on the back end. So for those of you, you know, folks out there that are wanting to sell fixed up properties and help serve your clients. That's part of our mission. We can help you guys with that current exact example of what we've got going on. I'm just kind of looking at my notes right now again, q4 of 2023. We have four flips going on right now. It's going to be an interesting dichotomy because we have two less expensive, smaller condos that are fixed up and then we've got two more expensive $1 million plus price point that we're selling on the back end. And those of you that listen to the first season, you know that typically we don't focus on that expensive of a property. But I think it's kind of when the universe calls and tells you, there's something good coming on, we need to be receptive to it. 

And the first one was a property that actually I got from some colleagues and some great guys that we're going to have on later in season two, the homebuying, guys out of Dallas, Texas, we met these guys, Lance, and Adam, great dudes, we met them at a real estate investment conference. And they were actually working some, you know, kind of dated Facebook leads. And we had a mutual seller, that they said, Hey, I think there's a deal and an opportunity here, it turned out to be a property that is four homes off of Sloan's lake. And so I'm really excited, it's going to be really, really beautiful flip. And we're actually keeping the the current structure and it's going to be really leaning on that mid century modern vibe, and that stylistic, really price point premium that comes with Mid Century Modern properties. So stay tuned for that one, we're also doing another property in what's called West wash Park. 

And that's another really hot and just historically amazing neighborhood, and Metro Denver, where flips typically go really, really well. These are both 100% permitted projects. So we'll tell you about the good, the bad, and the ugly of waiting for permits, what you need to do, sometimes it's taking months just to get permits in the city and county of Denver. But this is going to be another hopefully $1.3 million plus and price point. And it's going to be a beautiful home that we really keep a lot of that old world charm and character with the property. Again, kind of conversely, with two different condos that we've got going on, have another kind of traditional bread and butter flip that we're doing in the Santa Fe arts district. And then we're doing also another partnership flip, with some clients down in Parker. And we'll probably have an episode later in the season about that one, because it really dives well into how one of the real estate agents brought that deal to us. They were a great solution. Because we handled everything, it was kind of a stressful scenario where mom and dad unfortunately had passed away. And the adult children, you know, just I think was really hard for them to decide what do they do with the house. So we're going to breathe new life back in the house, we're totally fixing it up, it's going to be probably the nicest house in that price point other than maybe some brand new builds, but at a lower listing price. 

And we're going to be selling that here very, very soon. So we'll have all that market Intel and that data for you. The other thing that we've got going on from our team is we still have our Senior Project Manager, Travis, who was in one of our episodes, he's doing great, helps us run all of our projects. And then we've got my wife and Marlin who runs the design side of our business. And she's also primarily overseeing the Broadway collective or CO workspace, which we'll talk about in a second. So again, just want to give you kind of some context of what we've got going on to help qualify what we're doing and really set the stage properly for season two. So the next point that I want to talk about is kind of the current market overview and the market environment, this should be both recorded and dropped in fourth quarter. And so we are seeing very kind of typical seasonal slowdown, meaning when we get into the fall, and especially when we get close to the holidays, there definitely is a slowdown in property selling and how fast they sell. There is still historically low inventory. So one of the big you know, you guys know, those of you that have saw the first season is I'm kind of a nerd when it comes to data. 

And I try to absorb as much information as possible, to help me make good clear decisions. And then let my gut just make that little push over the edge of which direction we go. But there's actually less available home inventory, or just general property inventory on the market. Now, then in the then in 2019. So I know a lot of people are saying, well, the housing market is going to crash. COVID obviously bolstered that were so many people were sheltering in place, and they needed more space. And so that created a lot of upward mobility and a lot of movement. But now that we've kind of come back down to earth a little bit, and there were some significant corrections in the Denver market and the second half of 2022. We're seeing that stabilize, but we're seeing lower inventory. 

So what we're anticipating I just had another guest on here, more Zucker who with Team number homes that's going to be an amazing episode he wanted to in into she kind of concurred in that with low inventory coming out we think there's going to be another very strong and healthy seller's market and 2024 again, probably won't be the insane you know, 30 offers and $100,000 over asking but but still leaning towards a healthy market. So our personal goal and this is just something we try to run our business if we could pick and choose the perfect scenario. Obviously perfect scenarios don't always exist, but the more we can acquire and bind fourth quarter, conversely, then the more we can sell and fix up and renovate over the winter and listed in first quarter through the springtime that's hands down the best time aim to increase your profit margins. So as you can see, we're trying to do as much of that as humanly possible. Interest rates are in the low 70s. Right now. So it is still pretty, pretty healthy, pretty high. And I think that's what is putting, you know, the term the golden housing, handcuffs on, meaning people essentially that have have two and three and maybe 4% interest rates for them to move and get a bigger property, it is going to be a significant amount more money. 

So even let's say you have $300,000 in equity in your property, you sell your property, and you can put a $300,000 down payment, if you're leaving a $500,000 property, to afford an $800,000 property, which should theoretically be bigger, maybe a little nicer, give you more room to grow and grow your family. Even if you put down that 300 grand your monthly payment at 7% interest, or seven and a quarter or whatever it's at, you know, today in q4, compared to what you have is just there's not as much bang for your buck. So we're really kind of agreeing with a lot of the data that we're seeing out there, that there's there's going to be a continued shortage. And what we also see as builders are being really smart and savvy and not overbuilding, and they also see, you know that they get a price premium. So they're making as much if not more, per property that they're selling than then in the past leading up to the prior housing crash. And so again, I don't see this insane amount of inventory, hitting the market and Metro Denver. 

The other thing people just talked about, as they say, Well, what about foreclosures? Again, we don't see that data, we've got a lot of great title companies and partners that we work with when we buy and sell our properties. And they send the weekly report of pre foreclosures. And literally it's not more than 30 to 40 homes per week in all of our MSA, which stands for Metro Statistical Area, meaning Denver metro, you know, there's 3 million people in our city. And if you're getting a list of 37 properties that are in foreclosure, it's just I don't see that wave happening. Personally, again, people could send me this stuff and tell me I'm wrong. I'm wrong and a bunch of other stuff too. But again, in general, we see this being a pretty healthy seller's market. And we hope that actually there is a little more inventory, so that from a volume perspective, we can all grow and do a little bit more business. So that's kind of the 2024 overview. Or I should say, actually the 20 23/4 quarter overview, and how we seen things kind of transition into, you know, to 2024. So I want to touch on a few other things, which is how can we help our audience? And how can we help build our community. So we're going to have monthly meetups that are starting up in September, and we're going to be every single month. 

So check the show notes, we're going to be doing these investor meetups and investor happy hours at our building the Broadway collective in Englewood, Colorado. So check that out. We're also doing a ton of free classes and free training in fourth quarter. So I will be teaching all over Metro Denver. And we've got three different 45 minute classes. One is essentially a 101 fix and flip type class. So it'd be really high level as if you would have you know, listen to the first season of raising the flipping bar. And then the second one is fraction a little more geared towards real estate agents, but how to two to three times your commission by partnering with us in the partnership flip model. So it's going to really just explain how the partnership flip model works and how we can all work together and serve our clients better, and everybody do better in the long run. And then our other one that I really like, and it's going to be cool, because you'll be able to see very diverse set of properties and products out there is our fix and flip live class. And so what we do with that one is Travis, our Senior Project Manager, he teaches that one, and we have kind of a small intimate group because some houses we can't fit that many people. So you know, 2030 people max on on a first come first serve basis. 

And we show people exactly what we taught in our first season. We show it live in an action. So when we talk about why are we putting in one egress window in a property versus two. And what's the proper clearance when you're rolling out the window, we can stand there and point to it and we can show you guys that. So a lot of on the spot learnings and kind of how we run our system. Right now we're up to about 107 steps in our system of how we flip a property from start to finish. So definitely check out fix and flip lives. And then we have our elevation Academy coming up here on November 10. It will be our fourth quarter elevation Academy. And that's going to be our intensive one day community to learning seminar where we teach people every aspect of our flipping process. You get to network with other investors, be contractors get access to our off market deals first before anybody else. And more importantly, how can we continue to build our community to serve you guys as investors and agents and fellow entrepreneurs in the real estate world. So that's some of the value add stuff that we've got going on, that we want to deliver on a consistent and ongoing basis. Obviously listening to this podcast is hopefully beneficial to people And then you guys can also follow us on all of our social media channels. So whether it's at elevation invest from an Instagram perspective, elevation investment properties for Facebook, I'm trying to do a lot more content on LinkedIn as well. 

So keep an eye out for that that's a little more high level kind of entrepreneurship on the business versus in the business. And then the other two things I want to talk about, we are in the studio, you can see behind me, I'm so excited. Our co workspace called the Broadway Collective is open. We are here officing out of it from the elevation perspective, our main day to day company and some of the sister companies that we've got. And we've got a podcast studio, which is where I'm coming to live from. So I'm super excited to have all of my guests from now on in our podcast studio. And it's a place where we have like minded individuals that want to grow their business, help their community, whether it's real estate centric, whether it's other real estate agents, teams, hard money, lenders, bankers, wealth managers, attorneys, we want really a customer to walk in our front door, and we can help them in a number of different fashions. So we've got Office suites and dedicated desks to lease. So you know, hit us up if you guys are interested in that. But more importantly, this is going to be the hub of all the different training and education that we do as the Broadway collective, in Englewood, Colorado. 

And again, we're just looking to grow together with other entrepreneurs. And folks, we can hopefully help drive business. The last thing that I want to leave you guys with as we get ready to kick off a really exciting episode, or season, I should say, with a bunch of great episodes is I've been really trying to focus in I'm a huge reader. And I like to read as much as possible. And it's funny, because I always give my kids a hard time and they're like, why do I need to, you know, study or when I'm done with school, I'm never going to study again. And I kind of point to, you know, the hundreds of books that I've read to help me inform some of my decisions. But I changed my strategy in 2023. And instead of reading a couple books a month, I'm actually picking four books only. And it's been really hard from a business book prospective. And I'm reading those books multiple times to really implement the strategies, that's going to help drive our business forward and help serve our community. 

So again, these are people that are way bigger than me. So it's not like it's a, you know, paid endorsement. But I think the first one is called buyback, your time. And Dan Martell wrote this book, and I love this book for two reasons. One is, he's a really smart entrepreneur, he kind of came up in the SAS network of the software world in the software industry. But he's really serving entrepreneurs, well, which to me, the most important commodity that we have is how much time do we have, theoretically, there's an infinite amount of money you can make, there's a ton of deals you can do, but you can only execute it in the amount of time that you have. So what Dan's book does, and he's got a whole workbook that goes with it, that's free, I mean, for 25 bucks, or 30 bucks, or whatever it is on Amazon. That's an insanely good value. But it helps categorize so that you can make most efficient use of your time. And it's been phenomenal, I actually got a chance to hear him speak at wealth con, which was a Ryan Penedo hosted event, which was really a spectacular event. So a great shout out to those guys and sidebar, what they're doing that at the Wealthy Way. 

Really cool stuff, but saw Dan speak there. And it was really, really great. Because again, if we're just killing ourselves to to work, you don't even have time to spend some money that you might be making or spend time with your family or do you know charitable events, or travel or whatever you want to do. So again, buy back your time, I would, I would 100% read this, this is my one of four. So I had to really be particular in how I allocated that one. And then the other one, it's my tried and true those you guys that have listened to me for a while it's called traction. And it's by Gino Wickman. And to me this book, I'm such a nerd, this is actually the fourth time I've read it. And I try to go back and sometimes do it from an audible perspective. And sometimes I'm just, you know, kind of still nerd out on writing down notes. But it essentially teaches you whether you're a one person business or even up to probably 100 person business, how to effectively run that business from a systematized and organized perspective. 

And really everything that they do is kind of broken up into two different sections of what the visionary can do, and helping create the vision and run your company, and what the integrator can do and the people in the team that help execute the plan, what the visionary is really thinking about. And we did this one, I was just a company of literally just me and one of my employees, even though we've gotten, you know, kind of a collective team of about 15 people both in house and out of house that work with us. But again, check out traction. This one's really, really good. You can do it yourself. It's called The Entrepreneurial Operating System or ELS. And then sometimes there's business coaches and consultants that call themselves us integrators meaning they'll help you implement all the things in this book. So those are two things that I wanted to give you guys eyes on this this intro episode two, season two of raising the flipping bar, please again, reach out to us, we would of course love for you to subscribe to our YouTube channel to interact on the podcast, all of our different social media platforms. 

But to me, again, it's most important to engage. We don't need the biggest community in the world. But if we have an engaged community, we're all going to grow together and do a lot more business together. And I'm kind of getting hooked on this podcasting, so it's not going to go away. It's kind of fun. I heard a different person mentioned that if you record more than 20 podcasts, you're in the top 1%. From a production standpoint, you can judge me on quality and I always welcome feedback. So please do reach out to us and let us know. But I'm pumped, because by the end of season two, we're going to be in that 1%. And we're just getting going now that we have a studio and in great teams to work with. So thank you guys for tuning in. We'd love to interact and to connect with you guys. Again, I'm obviously Derrick Marlin with elevation and we'll catch you guys on the flipside.

Thank you so much for listening to raising the flipping bar. My goal is to help you successfully and profitably redevelop properties in competitive markets. And I encourage you to listen to some other episodes on this podcast. If you're a new investor, make sure you subscribe or follow raising a flipping bar on your favorite podcast platform. And make sure to share this episode with somebody you know but enjoy it had to fix and flip dot show to stay up to date with future episodes of raising the flipping bar. My name is Derrick Marlin and I'll catch you on the flip side