How to Flip a Home as a First Time Flipper with Alex Marmon

Alex Marmon: [0:00] Yeah, I mean, lot of it was just like by the hip, figure it out as you go kind of stuff. I remember out of the gate, we were working on demo. And when we were kind of like planning for the project, we had like walked it and we're like, okay, we're gonna do these things. We slotted like a week for demo, I think. A month and a half later, we were like almost done with demo and we're like, we have to get this done. Like, it was horrible.

Speaker 2: [0:25] Welcome to the Collecting Keys Real Estate Investing Podcast with your host, Mike DeHaan and Dan Austin. From wins, losses, horror stories, and tactics for optimizing your business, Mike and Dan take a real uncensored deep dive into the ins and outs of running a full time real estate investment and wholesaling business.

Mike DeHaan: [0:49] On this episode of the collecting keys podcast, we actually have a newbie to the real estate world coming on and and being a guest on our show. It's a little bit unique, but I just felt that he was a great fit for, you know, giving an interesting perspective on what it's like to flip a house because he bought a house from us, from our wholesale business with really no experience or background, and he's one of those guys that just decided to go for it. And, you know, I really admire that gusto and his willingness to just jump into this project and take down this renovation and do this whole thing despite the fact that he really had no idea what he was doing. And he learned a lot of really valuable lessons. And, ultimately, you know, he's kind of the ideal sort of person that I would say, like, the avatar of who you should try to be like if you wanna get into the real estate investing game. Like, he had been doing his basic research, a little bit of learning. He had been watching me from afar via my Instagram, and he essentially reached out and was like, hey. I wanna do what you're doing. I'm in your area. Can you help me buy a house? And I said, well, we actually have one. Do you want it? And he said, yes. Found money. Found partners.

Mike DeHaan: [2:04] He jumped into it. With his enthusiasm, we were willing to coach him, and he learned a lot. And on the deal, he's probably gonna maybe make out okay with it. You know, he's he's definitely had a lot of learning experiences along the way. You know, went way over budget and did the whole thing in kind of a backwards manner. But the education that he got will truly be undeniably helpful for him in the future. So, anyway, go ahead and enjoy this show with Alex Marmon giving his super interesting perspective on flipping a home from a first time flipper who just jumped in head first, and I think you guys will really enjoy this. What's going on, everybody? Welcome to the collecting keys podcast. I am super excited today. We have Alex Marmon with us, and you might be going, who the hell is that? And that's completely fair because in the real estate world, he is literally nobody.

Dan Austin: [2:55] Well, no. He's he's a step above nobody. Nobody's the guy who shows up to the REI meetup and doesn't have a deal yet.

Mike DeHaan: [3:03] That's that's true. That's true. You're already better than 85% of the, you know, REI meetup regulars who go every single week and have never bought a deal. So Alex is a is a good friend of mine, and he actually bought one of our wholesale deals, I guess, what, about six, seven months ago. And I thought this would be a really great interview to have because Alex is very contrary to the typical new flipper in the way that, you know, most flippers, they go in, they'd listen to a bunch of podcasts. They really dive into education. Maybe they're working as, like, a contract. They do all this bullshit. Right? They're talking to realtors and all the things. Alex, he's asked me a couple of quizzical questions over the last couple of years, but then he would kinda just fade out every few months, you know, and he would, like, start asking me questions, and he would disappear. And then one day he comes forward, he goes, I wanna buy a house. And I said, that's perfect. We got a house you can buy. You wanna buy it? And he said, yep. And he pulled the trigger and did his first flip with really no idea what he was doing. And, you know, I gotta say the place looks great. You know, I don't know if you I don't know if it's sold yet. It's currently on the market, but you did it.

Mike DeHaan: [4:06] You kicked ass on a property that was, you know, very unique to make pretty, right, to actually make valuable. And There's

Dan Austin: [4:14] so there's a lot of gotchas on it for sure.

Mike DeHaan: [4:16] There was. Yeah. So I thought it'd be great to have you on, Alex. You tell us about that process, things you learned, things that, you know, you'll do better next time, advice you for other people. So I guess first off, let's talk about, you know, your background a little bit. It'll be a fresh introduction of you, who you are, why you wanted to do this, why you sort of chose to jump into this sort of situation.

Alex Marmon: [4:37] Yeah. For sure. First, I just wanna say thanks for having me. Super cool to be here. Never done a podcast before.

Dan Austin: [4:42] So First time flipper. First time podcast. I love it.

Alex Marmon: [4:46] Just cross that long.

Mike DeHaan: [4:47] Just jump jumping right in. Since this is the same thing, you had no interest in this, and I messaged you, and I said, hey. Just come to my podcast. And you're like, nah. And I was like, it'll take 30 Right?

Alex Marmon: [4:56] Well, we'll see how it goes. So yeah, I'm a software engineer, I kind of got interested in flipping really from watching you. Like you just came out of nowhere. Oh, thank you. I worked with your wife back in fourteen-four. And yeah, I was just like this guy quit his job, and now he's living the dream. Like, I'm gonna see if I can do that. So I hit you up constantly asking questions. I super appreciate you always answering everything I had for you. But really, I was just like saving money and, and trying to get ready a little bit. You know, I listen to podcasts every once in a while, but I'm definitely the type of guy that just jumps in. I think that's pretty clear already. And so, as soon as I had the cash on hand, was like, Hell, yeah, let's get her done. See how it goes.

Dan Austin: [5:36] Sweet. I like it. Love that. So you're kind of a you're a nerd to use layman terms. You know, Mike says you have no background in construction. Your dad wasn't a real estate developer, I'm assuming. Nope. You just you yeah. You just jump right in. Head first. That's pretty cool. I mean, I would say that I didn't have any experience either, but I felt like I had I did have some some experience as far as, you know, working things.

Mike DeHaan: [6:00] Bro, you you were, like, working on a construction site before you decided that you didn't wanna be an alcoholic and join

Dan Austin: [6:04] the army. Like, that wasn't the path for me. You know, I just yeah. I had a little bit different background, so

Alex Marmon: [6:11] I felt like

Dan Austin: [6:11] I did. But, know, you learn a ton on on the on the fly. But, yeah, I'm sure you definitely learned a lot. I bet you know more about plumbing and electrical and floors and drywall than you ever thought you would.

Alex Marmon: [6:22] Yeah, it was insane. Learned an absolute ton. I have to say I partnered with my brother on this project and he worked for, or I guess works for still insurance, like claims type company, they go in when somebody files an insurance claim and like do demo and stuff. So he's got like a little bit of construction knowledge. So it wasn't like 100% blind, like we had, you know, some YouTube knowledge and things like we kind of had prepped. So yeah, paired with him on it. And I mean, the stuff we learned is just like incredible. I've never learned that much that quickly. And it still took longer than we hoped it would. So it's crazy.

Mike DeHaan: [7:00] It always does, man. But I mean, that's not so valuable, right? Like, know, even if you, you know, don't make any money on it, you lose a little bit of money, the price of education there is priceless. Know, and the experience that you'll have going into the next project, the amount of confidence will be completely different. The way that you look at, you know, the minute details as well as, like, the big picture of the property and how to really get the most out of it is gonna be so much better than the people who play it safe. And they're just like, I only wanna buy a house where all I have to do is replace the carpet and put on new countertops.

Dan Austin: [7:30] Me too.

Mike DeHaan: [7:30] It's like they're never gonna develop as a person. So, you know, as a as an investor or as a person because that's

Dan Austin: [7:35] And there's there's a lot of sleepless nights that come along with what you're talking about, Mike. I know you you and I have talked about those. Yeah. When you're kind of knee deep in something you don't know. You're jumping in head first, but you know you you're not a quitter, so you're gonna you're going to finish the project, but I I'm sure you had some of those sleepless nights, like, where you're thinking about the project or you're like, what did I do? Like, did I make a mistake?

Alex Marmon: [7:56] A number of times I asked myself, how the hell did we get here? I can't even I I'm walking out. It's Yeah. Yeah, sleepless night.

Mike DeHaan: [8:05] Unfortunately, that never goes away. Dan had a sleepless night, like, literally last week for a project that never goes away. Never goes away.

Alex Marmon: [8:11] Good to know. Alright. I'll keep that I remember

Dan Austin: [8:13] walking through the project, your project, when you guys were in demo phase. So maybe, like, go back to that moment while you guys were there. Because it was you guys tore out a lot of that house. It was Lath and Plaster. Maybe go back to that point in the project and, like, where was your mind at? What were you thinking just for people that are maybe just starting their first flip or getting rid they're in demo right now, like, kinda your mindset at that point and and how much did the project grow from that point of what you thought you needed to do?

Mike DeHaan: [8:43] Yeah. So I guess to preface that really quick, the the lead of that, just describe the house in general. So people kind of know what we're dealing with here. And then you can go into, that sort of basic process.

Alex Marmon: [8:55] It was built in 1904. It was about 1,300 square feet, two bed, one and a half bath, two stories. Both bedrooms are upstairs. Downstairs, there was an addition, we think, at some point down the road. And the kitchen was down there. The old kitchen was like a hallway. It was like the strangest setup I've ever seen. Like, you couldn't even barely open the fridge all the way to get into it. There was also like a full size freezer in the in the old kitchen. So it made a really small space feel like even smaller, and it was just totally useless. So yeah, I think that sets the stage pretty well for the house.

Mike DeHaan: [9:37] Yeah. What was the general condition of it? So that's the house.

Alex Marmon: [9:40] The guy that lived there beforehand was a heavy smoker, I think is the main thing to point out. It was clutter everywhere. I mean, definitely a hoarder house. There was a few treasure finds, though, at the house. Upstairs in one of the, like, back corners was a huge stack of Playboys, which is a very

Dan Austin: [9:59] nice find. Nice. Those are probably worth some money, you know?

Alex Marmon: [10:04] Yeah. Guess one of

Mike DeHaan: [10:06] Probably. Yeah. That's a good idea. Yeah.

Alex Marmon: [10:08] We'll have to do that for sure.

Mike DeHaan: [10:10] So it was yeah. That was what Playboy, I think, what the fridge was still full of food. You know, and the story behind this house so and we sold you the house. This is a wholesale deal we got. We found this property because the owner of it had died very unexpectedly, and it was the brother, brother or son, might have been the I think it was the brother of the owner was back in town and, you know, was dealing with the affairs, found a card from us regarding, you know, the property. I'm not even sure why we targeted it. It might have been maybe a a financial issue or a lien or something like that. Found a mailer from us on the counter. This is also why, guys, if you want a wholesale, direct mail is awesome because, you know It's so true. Even the dead will leave your marketing with their loved ones to find.

Dan Austin: [10:52] Do we have?

Mike DeHaan: [10:53] Honestly, though, right? We've gotten a lot of deals that way. And brother found the card, gave us a call. And we got the call. We had it signed around literally the next day. So, you know, strong motivated seller. The guy wasn't from here. He walks in the house. He's like, damn, this place is disgusting. I'm just gonna offload this thing. And here we go. So yeah. So we got down. And then sure enough, I mean, the reason you picked it up, you happen to, like, literally reach out, think, I the day or two after that we had it. And we're like, yeah, here you go. Got it all lined up for you. And our thought was perfect for you was it was I think it was a great starter home to flip because small footprint. One of the biggest mistakes I made on my first list was I flipped this 2,800 square foot house. Do not recommend that at all. And so small footprint, and it was a house that would end up in like a standard price point. So it wasn't like high end, and it wasn't like low end. Right? So it's gonna be a high, highly desirable price point for end buyers.

Alex Marmon: [11:48] Yeah, the stars really aligned it all worked out perfectly. Like, couldn't have asked for a better process getting the acquiring the property from me and all that stuff. Yeah. It amazing.

Mike DeHaan: [11:56] Yeah. So it just lined up perfect for you. Right? This right? Perfect sort of starter house. So you're talking about the hallway, you know, things like that. When you went into this house, I guess, know, Dan was talking about the demo and all that sort of stuff. As you're getting into it, what was your thought process with that? I remember the hilarious conversation where I went over there once, you guys are talking about removing that wall. And you're like, can we just, like, take this wall down? Like, what will happen? It's like, well, you're gonna have to put a beam.

Alex Marmon: [12:20] Like, there's gonna have to

Mike DeHaan: [12:21] be something to support the entire upper level of it. You know, and what was your thought process going into that? Like, like, how did you even figure a lot a lot of these things out as you were going besides just texting Dan?

Alex Marmon: [12:31] Yeah, I mean, a lot of it was just like by the hip, figure it out as you go kind of stuff. I remember out of the gate, were working on demo. And when we were kind of like planning for the project, we had like walked in and we're like, Okay, we're gonna do these things. We slotted like a week for demo, I think.

Dan Austin: [12:49] Oh, man.

Alex Marmon: [12:50] A month and a half later, we were like almost done with demo. And we're like, we have to get this done. Like, was horrible. I had rented a dumpster from the city. And they brought it out. I was like, it was like, I don't remember the price, honestly, like, $10 a day or something, something like that. I honestly don't remember. But we're like, oh, that'll be fine. It's like seven days, who cares? It won't be a thing. We'll fit it all in one dumpster, because it's like $300 to get them to come take the dumpster and dump it. And so yeah, like $2 $3,000 later, we're like still doing demo. And it was winter at this time. And because we got the property in February. And I remember the city wouldn't put it on our side of the street or in the backyard. So

Mike DeHaan: [13:35] For six weeks. Your neighbors are sitting there looking at this freaking dumpster for like six weeks.

Alex Marmon: [13:40] Neighbors were pissed. They were so mad. And we had to take everything all the way across the street. Oh, man, it was just a gnarly process.

Dan Austin: [13:49] That was a bad setup. Looking back on it was not a convenient setup.

Alex Marmon: [13:53] No. And then it was just like the layers of the house. We would peel one thing back and there was something else behind it. And we really didn't know where to stop, to be honest with you. We could have kept going. But we just got to the point where like, okay, we have to stop and actually, like start rebuilding this thing. But we're just going to be doing demo for six months. And so, yeah, we just basically called it one day, we're like, we have to be done. You know, if there's more that comes down the pipe for us to remove them, we'll do it then, which ended up not being the best strategy, because then we just had a giant pile of junk in the backyard and nowhere to put it.

Dan Austin: [14:26] Right. Yeah, that and that's where like, a good point. Like, because I think you said this was built in what nineteen o four? Yep. So more than a century worth of renovations. Like you said, there probably was an addition to it and all sorts of layers of everything.

Mike DeHaan: [14:40] Mhmm.

Dan Austin: [14:40] And it just takes time to break through those. Right? And so that's like a learning point of like, do you wanna flip a nineteen o four house in the future? Or when you do it, like, what are you know what to expect as far as the demo goes. So that's I would imagine, I know it has been for me a great learning opportunity for you because on those old houses, you truly can. You can demo them until the house is gone. You literally can. Nothing square. Nothing straight. There's, you know, drywall on top of lath and plaster. There's newspaper insulation mixed with, you know, rat poop and asbestos and all sorts of you know, it's just like, how nice do you wanna make it? That's all it comes down to.

Alex Marmon: [15:16] Yep. Yep. Exactly.

Mike DeHaan: [15:19] So cool. So as you got into the demo, how was, like, a lot of the the CapEx stuff for it? I mean, I think the roof was okay. It wasn't after the roof, did you?

Alex Marmon: [15:26] Nope. Nothing up on the roof.

Mike DeHaan: [15:27] That was fun. Like, electrical, plumbing, HVAC. I know the HVAC came in kind of last second.

Alex Marmon: [15:33] HVAC came in literally like the day before we listed. So that was exciting. But the electrical, we had to redo the whole kitchen. That was another huge learning lesson. Plumbing, we had a couple plumbers come in and just the quotes that we got were like unbelievable. Like I couldn't, still blows my mind how much money people charge for plumbing. And so a lot of that we figured out on our own as well. But I think those are really, really good lessons because even though it took us way longer to do it now in the future, those issues come up, or those things need to be done, we know exactly how to do it. It'll save us, you know, a ton going forward.

Dan Austin: [16:09] Yep. Yeah. A learning point that certain trades are more expensive than other trades, right? So here's a good learning opportunity. Demo guys are usually really, really cheap, especially, you know, will, they will haul yours, they'll haul your stuff off for you. They'll do whatever they can. Honestly, so cheap. And then a plumber and electrician though, are really expensive and scheduling is hard to get them. But like I said, demo guys are cheap and they're dime a dozen.

Alex Marmon: [16:32] Yeah. You know how much it hurts me to hear that? Yeah. You probably could have had

Mike DeHaan: [16:37] the house demoed for like $3,500, all of it. And it would have taken like three That

Alex Marmon: [16:41] one cuts really deep. But no, we, we kind of did like a retro retrospective, just like look back about all the things we could do better. And that was the biggest thing was like just higher up demo, they would have taken five guys, literally a week, but it took one guy, one and a half, you know, six. Right. It was

Mike DeHaan: [17:00] That's so funny. No. It's all good, though. Yeah. And then then with the trade stuff as well, the big thing, know, learning those yourselves. Yes. You know when to call bullshit on a lot of these skilled trades people because they will absolutely read you like a book. You know? And, I mean, like, you know, there's there's a reason. It's like if your, you know, your wife goes into a car dealership, like, get her tires changed. She's gonna get quoted a higher price than you every single time because they can. Right? Yeah. She's gonna be buying buying blinker fluid. Yeah. Exactly. You know? And that's that's that's not right. That's not ethical, but that does happen. You know? And especially when it comes to things like like trades where people don't have a lot of contact, and it is super kind of mixed what the true value of that stuff is. If you can be like, okay. No. That's bullshit. I know exactly what's involved in that. You can kind of speak the language, you will get better prices. You know?

Alex Marmon: [17:52] Yeah, there's a quick story about the ending of this whole thing. Literally, the day before we went to list the main plumbing line that connects to the sewer disconnected. And so you couldn't use water anywhere. And we had a open house scheduled for the next day. So we're like in a total panic, what the hell are we going to do? Called a bunch of plumbing companies had one come out. And the guy goes into the crawl space gets under there looks at it comes back out. And he's like, Yeah, it'll be about $2,500 for me to fix the pipe. But if I can't figure out how to fix it, it'll be about $5 because I got to dig a hole in the side of the house to access it and replace everything. And I was like, No, no, no, no, no, there is no way that this thing that's been working for six months and just barely came apart is going to cost $5,000 So ended up crawling up there under there myself pulled the part off, sent a picture of it to a different party. He's like, Yeah, to be like $100. Boom.

Dan Austin: [18:49] Yeah, just a little ingenuity. That that hazard pay, man.

Mike DeHaan: [18:54] He didn't want to go into the crawl space. He's like, Screw that. Which is crazy, because that's not

Dan Austin: [18:57] a bad crawl space. I mean, I was down there, you know, looking at your basement. Mike and I definitely own properties with worse crawl spaces than that.

Alex Marmon: [19:03] Yeah. It Wow. It was bad. Let's not sugarcoat it. Okay? It was mean, wasn't

Dan Austin: [19:08] it wasn't nice. But It

Mike DeHaan: [19:12] wasn't nice. Yeah. I don't know. We've had some pretty bad crawl spaces. I mean, my Dan and I's first property we bought together.

Dan Austin: [19:18] Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [19:19] I mean, I always remember we we had, like, this, like, rape dungeon for lack of a better description. Like, it was, like, bad. Like, it's the only time I've ever seen Dan have a glimpse of PTSD.

Dan Austin: [19:28] They, like, butchered chickens down there too.

Mike DeHaan: [19:29] It was when we were walking this house initially, and they had their they had their chickens the the tenants had chickens in the basement, and the lady of the Hispanic family was cooking this, like, super pungent food. And so it just smelled like spices and herbs and livestock. And me and Dan were walking this house before we bought it. He walks downstairs, and all of a sudden, he looks at me, and he's white as a sheet. And he's like, I need to get out

Alex Marmon: [19:50] of here.

Mike DeHaan: [19:50] And he shoves me out of the way Yeah. And goes outside.

Dan Austin: [19:52] I was like, holy shit. It was not a nice basement.

Mike DeHaan: [19:55] He just had flashbacks to Iraq right now.

Alex Marmon: [19:57] Alright. I'll quit complaining about ours, because that definitely

Dan Austin: [19:59] I do remember looking at it, and I think I was telling you guys where you gotta go level the floor or something, and and it was like, yeah, you gotta crawl under. That's the only way you do it. And I was like, in the under under my breath, it's like, have fun with that.

Alex Marmon: [20:14] Yeah. No, that's

Dan Austin: [20:17] a that's a good learning opportunity, though, too. It's like, sometimes, you know, your time is is worth more, and hiring it out is the best. But also sometimes, especially when you're learning and you don't know, take the time to call a couple different people to figure it out like you did. Just take a lot of people would have been like $2,500, and you were at the end of the project, they would have just thrown their hands up. Just take this away from me. Right? Taking that time, you know, saves you 2,400.

Alex Marmon: [20:44] Yeah, Yeah. I was totally there at that point. I was like, I want to be done with this project so bad. Was ready to pay anything. And then, I mean, $2,500 is too much. Yeah. It's a lot. Yeah. It's a lot. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [20:55] For that. Yeah. Well, also too, you had already just gotten bit by the furnace. I know we connect you with that. So what was that situation?

Alex Marmon: [21:02] This I'm gonna have to start like at the beginning, we ran out of the gate bought like a security system from this company, I think it's like called Cove or something. But they send you like cameras, sensors, all this stuff to see if the windows are open or whatever. And they sent us a co2 monitor. So we put it in the house. And the thing kept going off. And my brother and I like must be broken. Unhooked it, threw it in the garbage, and we're just just went on with our lives. Like there was, it was just this annoying thing that kept beeping at us. And like in hindsight, that was the stupidest thing I could have possibly done in that situation. It's no way to and so we just continue on in our lives, the heater gets really hot, the top of it like upstairs was like 90 degrees in the middle of winter, like, in our heads, the thing is working perfectly. So there's nothing else. There's absolutely nothing wrong with it. And then, so yeah, we were just doing like a final inspection near the end of the project to cover our bases, make sure everything was good to go. And the inspector comes back and he's like, there's a co2 leak in your HVAC system. Like, no, there's no way that thing works perfectly fine.

Alex Marmon: [22:13] Like, whatever. I had an HVAC company come out, they're like, Yeah, there's definitely a co2 they get, it's really bad. And you're gonna have to replace all of the ductwork throughout the whole house. They quoted us $20. And I was like, okay, these guys are giving us the runaround. That's that's a lot. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [22:32] Man, how was that feeling in your chest when you thought you were done and you're about getting ready to list it and suddenly you thought you're gonna have to spend 20,000

Alex Marmon: [22:39] I literally just laughed. I knew they were giving us the runaround. I'm like, damn, okay, this is actually an issue that I have to deal with. But $20 I was just like, No, this is not. These guys are ridiculous. This is not happening. So at that point, I actually called Dan, I was like, Hey, man, I need some help here. You got to have somebody in HVAC world that knows what they're doing that isn't going to charge me that. He's like, Yeah, absolutely. I a guy. So they came out and they were like, Yeah, this is pretty bad. But it'll be like $5 to replace the whole system. You don't have to replace all the ductwork, all that stuff. Yeah. So they came out and did all the work. And then my brother and I were just sitting there talking about it. That's when we realized that we had the co2 sensor that kept going off. We were calling it. And then it dawned on me that the previous owner of the house passed away in the house in his chair in his in middle of the night, in his sleep. Oh, what? I just like freaked out. I was like, no way did this actually happen. I I think I called you.

Mike DeHaan: [23:40] Did. Yeah. And you're like you're you called me, and you're like, should we, like, call the family and tell them? I'm like, it's not gonna make anything better.

Dan Austin: [23:47] I mean, it might be a nice closure to why, you know, he passed away. I mean,

Mike DeHaan: [23:52] I'm sure they did, like, an autopsy or something. I don't know. Nah.

Dan Austin: [23:55] Not on that. They're, like, old guy hoarder. Nah. Wow. That's intense.

Mike DeHaan: [24:02] Yeah. You're basically like, you know, CSI. You know, you should don't get, like, a designation somehow with that. I don't know. You've you've solved the I've solved the death. That's more than mean, I Dan and I have never solved the death.

Dan Austin: [24:14] I've never solved maybe caused the death. We've definitely had people die in our buildings, but this meant we had two people in the same unit die. Two people in the same unit on different days die, we never investigated at once. We're like, oh, it's vacant. Sweet.

Alex Marmon: [24:28] Oh my god. That's that was bad.

Dan Austin: [24:31] Yeah. That was a bad that was a bad bad month there. We

Mike DeHaan: [24:36] should do a whole episode just on that project.

Alex Marmon: [24:38] Yeah. We will.

Dan Austin: [24:38] We'll do a breakdown. Yeah. We'll do that. But but for now, we'll give Alex's glory because this is this is nuts. I honestly, that is nuts. I don't know how you title this episode, like, flipper finds dead man. I don't know. Flipper finds cause of death.

Mike DeHaan: [24:58] Yeah. At least you're able to escape for that with your new knowledge. Absolutely. You know what? You now have a new respect for carbon monoxide and the alarm that you ignored. And if shit like that ever goes on in your house, you're not gonna be able help those people to just unplug the sensor and be like, oh, it's probably nothing.

Dan Austin: [25:13] New respect for demo, new respect for CO two. Yeah. You know, I know we're kinda running close on time, but I do wanna get kinda just more information on like your process and maybe just kinda go through what you did at this home, like your flipping process, starting like just quickly, like demo, how you guys did it, and then any things that you would do differently? Like, are the high level things you would do differently throughout the process?

Alex Marmon: [25:38] One of the biggest things that we would do differently, especially during demo, is not rip out the toilets. There is, like, one thing that new flippers get from this. It's like, rip out the toilets during demo because then you don't have a toilet for however long it takes.

Dan Austin: [25:52] Yeah. That is so important, but it's a little detail that people forget.

Alex Marmon: [25:56] Oh my god, the number of times that we went to Lowe's just to use the restroom is incredible. Oh my god. Yeah. So I mean, we we ripped all the all the stuff out of the house. And then

Dan Austin: [26:09] You were down to, like, the studs for 90% of the house. Right?

Alex Marmon: [26:12] Yeah. The majority of the house down to studs. Yeah. As soon as that was done, we went straight into leveling the floors. Again, learned a ton there, but kind of went bottom up, right? Just got everything on the floors as squared away as we could. Really wanted to

Dan Austin: [26:26] Did you jacked up the main level floors is what you were doing? And then did you use like self leveler?

Alex Marmon: [26:30] We jacked up in some spots, and then we actually sistered some new joists in other spots, just to, you know, make things as level as we could. And, like, we, at the time, were like, we're amazing at this, and this is the most level floor in all of flipping history. And then we got to the point where we were installing flooring, and the whole thing is just like Right.

Dan Austin: [26:50] Yeah. Yeah. Because you guys had to do that, right? Because you're doing LVP throughout that main area. And I remember walking, I'm like, yeah, you're gonna want these high points and low points somewhat fixed, because your floor will be moving around.

Alex Marmon: [27:02] Yep. Yeah. Okay. So Yeah. And flooring is a whole whole separate story, to be honest. But we did that and then kind of jumped into the plumbing and electrical side of things. Rewind their kitchen was was really cool. We learned a ton there. It was actually quite a quite a bit of fun. To be honest, I like that

Dan Austin: [27:19] kind of stuff. So nice.

Alex Marmon: [27:22] Yeah, that went pretty well. And then we tackled the stairs after this. And the stairs were kind of a highlight an unfortunate highlight because they were really difficult. They were super skinny. And the bottom of the steps kind of like came down and then turned and went into living room. And that turn there. Before we got there, there was like maybe a foot and a half between the wall and the like end of the stairs. That makes any sense? And so we wanted to expand that and make it more open so that you could get up the stairs easier. So we ripped out all the steps. And then we ripped out all of the railing. Oh, man. And it turns out installing new railing, and new stairs in the house is very difficult. And requires a very high level of like, carpentry skills. Yes. You just don't have

Dan Austin: [28:15] In a geometry degree. Wow.

Alex Marmon: [28:17] Oh my god. It took us so long to get upstairs. That was talking about, like, sleepless nights. I literally just, like, laid in bed for, like, a month just thinking about how the hell are we gonna do these stairs? But

Mike DeHaan: [28:32] no, I love it. So then, like, you know, process wise, did you have any sort of, like, organizational process to keep track of this stuff? Are you guys literally just going, like, software guy, you're just in sprints. You're just like, we're doing the demo.

Alex Marmon: [28:44] And then we're doing the plumbing. And then we're doing that.

Mike DeHaan: [28:47] You just would focus in.

Alex Marmon: [28:48] I can't even say that we like planned our sprints ahead of time. It was more of just like a, okay, this is like the goal. And we know that Yeah, we got to do some things to get there and like, just start crossing off the list. Basically, we, we actually did have a gigantic checklist. And it was literally just like, get a thing done and cross it off the list and then just keep going. Well, the challenge too, with that is when you're talking about planning sprints is, you don't actually necessarily know what a sprint like, it would be like coding in in your terms, something. So you had a sprint to code something, but you don't actually know

Dan Austin: [29:18] what it needs to be like on the other end, and you don't actually know how to do it. Exactly. So you don't know you don't know how to code. Don't need you don't actually know what you want it to look like. So you're just kind of feeling in the dark until you're just you're just pushing control alt delete like I do and calling

Alex Marmon: [29:31] the help desk until you get enough code put together that it works. Yes. That's exactly right. And in our case, you were the help desk. It was amazing.

Dan Austin: [29:41] Yeah. I mean, that's that's impressive, in itself, but I also think it speaks to like, a lot of people can do this. And even in your feet, you're like, you're you're feeling in the dark, like, it's not overly complicated. It's what I first when I was going through this and I used to do the demo and or the the work myself on my first couple, like top to bottom, all the work myself. The thing I had to finally figure out was the house will not disappear because of the work I'm doing. Like, the the asset won't just disappear. Right? You can definitely damage it. And the worst thing that you can do is spend more money, which is not a great best case scenario spending more money. But, like Mhmm. Again, the house just generally speaking will not fall over because you took the staircase out and wanted to rebuild it and make it nicer. At end the day, you're gonna have a nicer staircase. Might cost you more than you thought, but you're gonna have a nice staircase.

Mike DeHaan: [30:30] Yeah. With the exception being if you knock out a a wall that's holding up the upper stairs in the entire

Dan Austin: [30:35] Then the house will definitely fall. Yes. Absolutely. And I think one of my recommendations to you on that was like, well, when you move the when you remove the wall, just kinda see if it sags a little bit.

Alex Marmon: [30:46] That's, like, exactly what

Dan Austin: [30:47] we did. That's a definitely a general contractor tip by one. Let's just see how much it sags

Alex Marmon: [30:52] Yeah. I was gonna say we had a a two by four right next to, this spot that was gonna sag or that we thought might sag, and we just marked it with a pencil. And then we, like, left for the night, and we're like, well, if we come back and it moved, then we know we gotta put brace there.

Dan Austin: [31:06] That's like expert level right there, actually. And most people probably wouldn't even think about that. That's that's good place Oh, for

Alex Marmon: [31:11] would be pretty good. Oh my god.

Mike DeHaan: [31:13] All this stuff, all the structural engineers that are supposed to sign off on that are crawling in their grave right now. Has that the house sold yet? I know it's on the market. Have you had any offers?

Alex Marmon: [31:22] Hasn't sold yet. No. We've had a couple of people walk through and and show interest. The main person that was interested didn't want it because there wasn't a garage, which got kind of low because we tore down the garage that was in the backyard.

Dan Austin: [31:35] Oh, no. I

Mike DeHaan: [31:37] mean, it was a it was a piece of shit garage. Like, you know, that one had to go anyway. Yeah. It was. It was.

Alex Marmon: [31:43] Yeah. So like, I would have done it again if we were in that same situation. But now it's obviously like, well, if we just had spent another week or two fixing up that old garage, we probably would have sold the house already. Another lesson.

Mike DeHaan: [31:57] Yeah, exactly. So I mean, you know, to be fair, it's been up for like a week. I mean, back when I first started flipping houses, the kind of expectation was that a house would sit for a month before anyone put any offers in. And we're just moving back towards to that being the normalcy. I mean, a house looks great. You know, it's in a good location, good price point. No. I have no doubt it'll sell. You know, it's just things are gonna take a little bit longer right now. So if you if you do get your asking price for $2.99, what are your numbers look like if you're okay sharing with that?

Alex Marmon: [32:23] Yeah. I'm definitely okay sharing. Our breakeven at this point is about $2.80. So if we get $2.99, then sitting pretty good. That's like way more than

Dan Austin: [32:31] And that that includes all your holding costs and

Alex Marmon: [32:33] Yeah. That $2.80 breakeven

Dan Austin: [32:34] cost, selling costs, that. Okay. Nice. Nice. Nice.

Alex Marmon: [32:38] So yeah, super excited about that.

Mike DeHaan: [32:39] That's a good spread.

Alex Marmon: [32:40] Yeah, definitely. I mean, we came into it thinking like, we're going to lose money on this, but we're going to learn a ton along the way. And obviously, we had like some hopes and dreams of making, you know, thousands and thousands of dollars. And if that happens to pan out, then you know, we'll be ecstatic. But if we just get out of it without losing $20, then we'll be pretty happy. Yeah, no, I think you're I think you're right in there. And I think there's a lot

Dan Austin: [33:04] of lessons to learn where I'm guessing that you've figured out a way to probably save 20% of your renovation costs already. Oh, By not doing certain things and stopping at a certain point. One thing that I always give advice on to people is the dollar budget is really important, but the time budget is equally, if not more important, because the longer you hold a property, the more opportunity there is for bad things to happen to your property. And so bad things being like, you go from wintertime where you don't have to do landscaping to summertime where you have to do landscaping, or somebody breaks into your house and steals half your materials, or you know, all these things have happened to Mike and I. So, you know, you live and you learn, and the timepiece is a huge element to being a flipper.

Alex Marmon: [33:46] Yeah, I think the timepiece is probably the biggest thing that we misunderstood when we got started. I remember very vividly my brother and I talking about this project and we were kind of looking at everything that had to be done and he looked at me and he's like, I bet you I can get it done in a month. I was just like, Alright, man, we'll see. And nearly eight months later, it's finally done. Eight months later. At one point, we were just like, okay, we got to throw all of our timelines out of the out of the back of the truck, because they're just garbage. Like we were trying so hard to meet these deadlines that it was just stressing us out. But they were all, you know, imaginary deadlines we ourselves. So yeah, I unfortunately don't have advice for people on timelines, you got to just kind

Dan Austin: [34:26] of Yeah,

Mike DeHaan: [34:28] That's alright. Cool. We'll start to wrap up here. But just wanted to ask you a couple roundup questions. So I guess first off, what is your number one tip that you would give somebody who was kind of in your same position, was looking to get it in their

Dan Austin: [34:41] first flip? What's the if you

Mike DeHaan: [34:42] had one piece of advice you give them, what would be?

Alex Marmon: [34:44] It's got to be just go for it. I think just jump in, man. There's there's no reason not to like, I understand and not wanting to lose money. But yeah, you know, the financial security that this kind of stuff can bring is well worth a short term loss. So just get after it.

Dan Austin: [35:02] Absolutely not. Best education ever. Absolutely. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [35:05] And there's no better education than what you've what you've done right now. Perfect. Cool. And as this one wraps up, what's next for you? Do you have any more plans to buy more? You know, markets kind of weird right now. What are you thinking are your next plans in the real estate investing world?

Alex Marmon: [35:19] So my wife, when she listens to this, she'll probably laugh. But if I do another flip this summer, I think she'll probably divorce me. Just because of how much time I was spending on it. Yeah. But we had our baby like right before we started the flip, right? So that's tough. I'm excited to spend some time with the kiddo. But then, you know, as soon as life kind of calms back down, we jumping into another one for sure.

Mike DeHaan: [35:46] Nice. Another one. Cool. Think I like what same kind of project? You can try and make it a rental? Trying to flip something again?

Alex Marmon: [35:53] Yeah, I think I'd like to flip something again and actually make some money depending on where this one sells. That would be pretty cool to see. But then yeah, like long term. Yeah, really, I just want this to be a machine that, you know, turns out rentals and starts building wealth.

Mike DeHaan: [36:08] Cool. I like it, man. Sweet. Well, thanks, buddy, for hopping on with us. I appreciate you being open with all the, you know, ups and downs and, you know, the numbers of it all. I think that, you know, I'm proud of you for jumping into it and taking that initial step. It's absolutely the hardest. And then, you know, going into any future deals, your opportunity, your ability to analyze the connections you have, you know, basically, just your whole thought process is gonna make every single one better. So, you know, you've definitely taken a good leap and, you know, I'm sure you'll do great in the future.

Dan Austin: [36:40] Yeah. So I gotta mimic what Mike says, like, super proud of you for doing this because Mike and I talked to a lot of folks and we're like encouraging to a lot of people, not many of them jump in and do it. And so that's super cool for you to do that. And what Mike and I always say is like the best way to get more deals and better deals is to buy one from a wholesaler like us and make it a deal and do something with it, which is exactly what you did. We're confident now that you're a closer that if we if you say I want a deal, Dan and Mike, that you're going to close, and that's huge for us. Right? We want that confidence. And so that's a huge win for you In addition to just education you have, you've built a brand for yourself.

Alex Marmon: [37:15] Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I just want to say like, I think thank you guys for having me on the podcast, but also thank you for everything. Really appreciate all the help you guys went well along the way. And, you know, it's been awesome working with you guys.

Dan Austin: [37:27] Agreed. Awesome.

Mike DeHaan: [37:28] Yeah, absolutely, man. Likewise. And, you know, we'll do more here in the future. So cool. Well, thanks again, Alex. And if you guys want to learn from Dan and myself about how to be like Alex and be buying deals and hopefully making about $20 here, go check us out at the instantinvestorprogram.com. We have a couple different options there now. So we have the group mastermind. We also have a new side to this where you can actually get one on one coaching from one of us directly. So we will be working with you personally on a monthly basis to sort of go through your business and help you grow. And that comes along with the group mastermind. So if that interests you, go to answerinvestorprogram.com and check that out. Besides that, guys, please go subscribe to this podcast and share it with anyone that you think might be interested in it. Even if you hated this episode, go subscribe anyway and just don't listen to it. I don't care. It will still make us go up in the rankings if we have more subscribers. So do that for me as a favor. Besides that, you can follow us on Instagram. I am at Mike underscore invest. Dan is at love userman. Dan, go ahead and give us a DM. I got my first hater the other day. I'm super pumped. I feel like that means I finally made it. And I was even happier because I started talking shit back to him.

Dan Austin: [38:36] Technically, I'm your first dater.

Mike DeHaan: [38:37] That's true. You you've been a hater way before that guy. So right on, guys. Thanks for listening, and talk to you guys next week. See y'all. See you.

Speaker 2: [38:46] Thanks for listening. Please leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts, and check us out at collectingkeyspodcast.com for tips and guides on starting your own real estate investment and wholesaling business.