Damon Amato
Damon Amato has been a guest on Collecting Keys, the real estate investing podcast hosted by Mike DeHaan, Dan Austin and Dylan Koch.
Making 7 Figure Profits By Subdividing Land with Damon Amato
Damon Amato explains how he funded his early real estate moves with online poker winnings, lost over $100,000 on his first deal (a five-unit condo conversion with a below-floodplain building), and kept wholesaling houses to make his hard money payments. He then describes the model he and his architect business partner built: putting land under contract contingent on approvals, handling the zoning and permitting themselves, and assigning the permitted deal to a builder without ever closing.
Key takeaways
- The "no money of your own" pitch is mostly a sales tool — Damon says if you're not financially, emotionally and mentally prepared for a $50,000 loss on a single project, don't start.
- His first deal nearly bankrupted him: a 12% and 5-point hard money loan plus taxes and flood insurance meant a $31,000 first payment when he had $26,000 in the bank, and he used early draws to pay the lender back with his own money.
- He survived by wholesaling three houses during that project instead of stopping all other activity — a common mistake newer investors make when one deal consumes them.
- Their land model: contract contingent on approvals, pay for engineering and architecture, run the board meetings themselves, and assign to a builder. One New Hampshire example: $265,000 contract plus about $30,000 in permitting turned two single-family lots into approvals for 12 townhouses and a house, sold to a builder for $900,000.