Building HUGE Equity With 100% Hands-Off Investing

House flipping can make you wealthy. Everyone has seen the TV shows, podcast interviews, and the high-priced renovations, even in their own neighborhoods. But what if where you live is WAY too expensive to flip houses? The home costs are high, the labor costs are high, and underpriced, outdated homes are hard to find. Thankfully, you’re not out of luck. Today, we’re teaching you how to flip houses from a distance, even thousands of miles away! Dominique Gunderson is currently flipping 12 houses from 2,000 miles away. Yes, it’s possible (and profitable), and Dominique has made it her full-time business. As a Los Angeles native, Dominique couldn’t afford anything in her home market, but through visiting family in New Orleans, she realized it was the perfect place to flip. So, she slowly started scaling a team that would allow her to be anywhere in the world while she ran her business. In only her mid-twenties, she’s been able to build a team that takes care of the renovations and rehabs for her while she handles finding the deals and getting the funding. Today, she’s teaching you how to do the same: build your out-of-state team, scale the right way, and when (and how) to delegate so you don’t do all the work. She’s even breaking down her profit margins and revealing how much you can actually make flipping in affordable markets. In This Episode We Cover: How to flip houses anywhere (and FROM anywhere!) without doing the work yourself How much long-distance flips can make you in 2025 (Dominique’s profit margins) Building your boots-on-the-ground team to handle renovations for you When to flip vs. hold and signs a flip should become your next rental property The secret to scaling your team so you can do less work and make more money And So Much More! Links from the Show Join BiggerPockets for FREE Let Us Know What You Thought of the Show! Ask Your Question on the BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets YouTube Apply to Be a BiggerPockets Podcast Guest! Invest in High-ROI Turnkey Rentals with Rent to Retirement or Txt REI to 33777 Grab “The House Flipping Framework” Book Sign Up for the BiggerPockets Real Estate Newsletter Find Investor-Friendly Lenders BiggerPockets Real Estate 587 - Full-Time Flipping (Out-of-State!) at 24 by Doing What Most Don’t Know w/Dominique Gunderson Connect with Dominique Connect with Dave (00:00) Intro (03:35) Long-Distance…Flipping? (05:28) Flipping 12 Houses at Once! (07:52) Building Your Team (12:49) First Deal and 2025 Profits (19:13) Keeping Flips as Rentals (22:06) Secrets to Scaling (31:38) Keep it Small (But Scalable!) Check out more resources from this show on BiggerPockets.com and https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1096 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dave Meyer?

  Flipping 12 houses at a time while living 2,000 miles away. It sounds impossible, but today's guest is doing it right now. She's going to tell us how she got there after starting with just a single property she bought for less than $100,000.

• 0:19Dave Meyer?

  What's up everyone? Welcome to the BiggerPockets Podcast where we teach you how to achieve financial freedom through real estate. I'm Dave Meyer, Head of Real Estate Investing here at BiggerPockets. Our guest on the show today is Dominique Gunderson, an investor who focuses on flips in New Orleans, but lives a location flexible lifestyle, traveling around the country in an RV. Dominique was previously on the BiggerPockets Podcast back in 2022. It was episode 587. And at that time, she was about three years into her flipping career and was already doing five or six projects at once. Super impressive at that point. But today, we're going to hear about how she's scaled up even further.

• 1:01Dave Meyer?

  She's doubled that volume of flips, even while managing her business from across the country. We'll also talk to her about why she's added a rental property portfolio in addition to her already successful flipping business. This is a very fun conversation. I think you're going to learn a lot, so let's bring on Dominique. Dominique, welcome to the BiggerPockets Podcast. Thanks so much for being here again. Appreciate it.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, thanks so much for having me back. I'm really looking forward to diving into some fun topics today.

• 1:31Dave Meyer?

  Yeah, you have such a cool story and approach to investing. Can you just give us a little bit of background for those who haven't heard your previous appearances on any of the BiggerPockets podcasts?

• 1:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. So I got into real estate super young, right out of high school. I graduated at 17 and just knew that this was what I wanted to do. And so jumped right in out of high school, got my real estate license and started learning some of the basics of just sales and marketing. And from there, I jumped into the investing side and did wholesaling for a little bit to get started and build some capital and then jumped into running my own investment company in 2019. So I have been running that since then in the New Orleans market and I don't and have never lived in that market. So my main focus is out of state flipping, own some rentals

• 2:25Speaker 01

  out there as well, but have pretty much just been growing and scaling since 2019.

• 2:30Dave Meyer?

  Out of state flipping is just a term we don't hear very often. So I am really eager to talk to you about that because I know a lot of people who want to get into flipping are interested in doing it passively or in a less expensive market than where they live. So what led you to like going from what you were doing, which was wholesaling agent to wanting to be more active of an investor primarily focusing on flips now?

• 2:56Speaker 01

  I think for me, going into kind of getting my license and starting doing the wholesaling, that was always like a means to an end for me. That was to just really learn the game and build capital. But even just from a young age, like being in high school and kind of getting interested in real estate, I always knew that I wanted to run my own company. I wanted to flip houses. I wanted to own rental properties instead of just being a middleman, whether that be an agent or a wholesaler. So for me, that was just a great way to get started and to learn. But the goal of that was always to fund my future operation and vision.

• 3:36Dave Meyer?

  So tell us how you started long distance or out of state flipping because that almost, it almost sounds like an oxie, but like not something that you could actually do.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  So for me, it honestly combines like the best of both worlds. I love that you can pursue an active strategy where you can make a lot of quick cash and really build your, your overall equity and wealth, but doing it in a more passive way where you don't have to be on the job site every day. So that's something that I've learned over time after. Doing it and have come to really love. But honestly, it all started just almost out of necessity. I was twenty one uh back in twenty nineteen when I first started my own company. And I had all my experience in Los Angeles area, Southern California. So it only made sense that I would just start flipping here where I had all my contacts.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  But it was so expensive and just felt so out of reach for me. Uh being so young, you know, knowing that I would have to be all into a deal for like minimum three or four hundred thousand on the low end. I didn't have that much cash saved up and so it just felt a little overwhelming. And so it was almost a necessity for me. I had to start looking. What market could I afford? What market would this be feasible for me? And New Orleans was one of the only markets that I had really good trusted contacts in, not that they were in real estate, but my dad and his wife lived in New Orleans. And so that was just the one out of state market that I said, you know what? Even though I don't know anybody in the game out there, I know someone.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  I know someone who has probably called a plumber to their house or maybe knows a person down the street that's a real estate agent or something like that. I had some little bit of edge on the building the team side just from knowing people in the area.

• 5:28Dave Meyer?

  That's awesome. So I, you know, when we talked a couple of years ago, uh and when you were on the show, you were doing a lot, like five or six flips at a time, right?

• 5:37Speaker 01

  Yes, correct.

• 5:38Dave Meyer?

  How did you pull that off? Is it just all networking where you just have so many GCs and contractors that you can do that kind of volume?

• 5:46Speaker 01

  So there's a couple of different avenues to that. I mean, one is the deal finding side, right? Keeping a good steady stream of deals coming in. Then it's also what you mentioned, the management side of having a team to actually execute those deals. So there's a lot of components to that. A couple of years ago, when we chatted, I was doing probably five or six flips at a time. We're running twelve flips right now. And so scaled up even more. And something really cool happens when you start to scale, which. It sounds kind of crazy, but it actually gets easier in a lot of ways because you're you're in this whole different boat of it's not just like a side hustle or a hobby. It's a full-time business.

• 6:29Speaker 01

  And so in every area, you have to put in full-time effort. And so let's just say on the deal finding side, you're going to be making connections with people who know that every time they have a deal available, you will buy it. You are always looking for deals. You have to feed your pipeline just to keep the business going. Where if you're only doing a couple of flips a year, it's a timing thing. Like you can make great networking connections, but if you're not in that time slot of, you know, a couple of months a year where you're looking for a new deal, you're going to have to say no. And so your contacts aren't as strong. They can't be because you're not as reliable. And same with your team members.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  Like I have multiple crews that are always working, always working just on my jobs and I can keep them busy. And so you build that loyalty and you can create really strong teams of people that are trusted and can do your jobs over and over again. And you start creating systems and processes. And so in a lot of ways, scaling up can make things a little easier as far as the systems and teams go. But obviously it takes a lot more management and there's a lot more headaches and problems that come up. So it's a balancing scale.

• 7:42Dave Meyer?

  For sure. Yeah, that's amazing. Honestly, I'm so impressed that you said that becomes easier because it sounds so difficult to me. I want to learn more about your, your systems, but I think that there's probably a lot of people listening to this right now who are really interested in this idea of out of state flipping. Like I'm personally interested in it. If I could figure out how to do this in a reasonable way, I'd be interested. So maybe we can actually go back a little bit and just talk about sort of what were the first steps you took? And maybe you could just provide some advice for people who would consider this strategy.

• 8:17Speaker 01

  Sure. Yeah, I think the absolute biggest thing, whether you're doing one flip out of state or 10 is your team, your team on the ground, because you aren't going to be there for practically any of it. You may check in every other month or something, but you have to know in every aspect between real estate agents, contractors, project managers, lenders, everything has to be in place. To make sure that the process is flowing just as well when you're there or not there. And so that was some of the first steps for me is, okay, how can I build a team of people? Who do I need on my team? And how can I find them that I can trust without me being there all the time?

• 9:01Speaker 01

  And that is much easier said than done. It sounds like, okay, sure, just go start networking with people and it'll, it'll happen, which is kind of true, but it truly is, you know, looking back now from where I started, it's such a trial and error thing. Like you just have to know that going in that you're not going to just find the perfect team and everything be the same from day one and it'll just, you'll just move forward seamlessly and always work with the same people. It's just not going to happen. You always have to be networking. You always have to be looking to build and expand your team because people will maybe be good for a couple of deals and then they'll, they'll fall off or have a personal issue

• 9:44Speaker 01

  come up and they can't work with you as consistently anymore. So the networking, I think, was one of the big places that I started. Attending any sort of networking groups, whether they be digital or in person that I could and just start meeting other investors, other people in the space that I could ask for referrals, or I could just meet contractors, I could meet people that I'd need to work with, you know, in person at some of these networking groups. So just thinking about who I needed and how I could find them was definitely the biggest first place I had to start.

• 10:15Dave Meyer?

  And so how did you find them? Because for me, I can understand and sort of wrap my head around how to network with agents, you know, we have tools and bigger pockets for that, or even network with other investors. I've done some out of state burrs where, you know, I've, I've networked with some contractors, but. Those were like smaller in scale and I felt that, you know, the project scope was very clear and I knew that this contractor I was working with had this expertise. But how do you even go about networking with GCs in another city? Were you going to New Orleans frequently?

• 10:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's funny to say, but I think it can be simpler than you may think. It's obviously easy in your own market because you can just meet people randomly, like you said, but I always had somewhat of a presence in New Orleans. I mean, today, I mean, I go there at least once every other month for five days to a week, just to kind of check in and meet people face to face. So there's always opportunities when you're there in person, but there's so many online groups even that you can join today. Like for me, I mean, the Facebook groups in the local New Orleans market are really a big thing. Like, there's a lot of great investing groups and like you mentioned too, bigger pocket

• 11:36Speaker 01

  stuff. Like, there's always different groups that you can kind of join and get in to just get the conversation started with people. You may not necessarily meet the contractor that you're looking for, but you might meet someone who's like one step away from getting you to that introduction. But I mean, I've met some of my contractors super randomly. Like, some of them have literally just been working at a job across the street from my property and you just go over there and start talking to them and ask if they're looking for more work and you get kind of a sense of their quality of work since they're on another job site. I've had contractors literally just walk up to me and introduce themselves

• 12:16Speaker 01

  to me at meetup groups. Like, it's been just random interactions that seem to come more and more frequently, the more you open yourself up. My team is not closed. I am not one and done, like, set. I'm always looking to network with more people.

• 12:33Dave Meyer?

  Yeah. All right, we had to take a quick break and then we'll be back with more of my conversation with Dominique Gunderson. Do you ever notice how every passive investment somehow turns into a very active lifestyle? Active spreadsheets, active phone calls, active stress? Here's a better question. What if you could buy brand new construction homes 10% below market value in the best markets across the country without making real estate your second job? That's exactly what rent to retirement does. They're a full-service turnkey investment company handling everything for you. In some cases, investors get 50 to 75% of their down payment back at closing, plus interest rates as low as 3.75%. They've partnered with BiggerPockets for over a decade, helping thousands invest smarter. If you want to do the

• 13:18Dave Meyer?

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• 14:57Dave Meyer?

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• 15:40Dave Meyer?

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• 15:59Dave Meyer?

  We're back talking with Dominic Gunderson on the BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast. Maybe you could just tell us, Dominic, a little bit more about your first deal and like how you pulled that off? Because that might help me and maybe some other people extrapolate how you did this once, and then now how you've sort of achieved this amazing, very impressive scale of doing like 12 of these at a time.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. I wouldn't say my first deal was perfect by any means. It was far from it. But like a lot of people will say, it's your first deal and it's the best one because you got started, right? You made the mistakes and now it leads you to go do 100 more. So my first deal, I bought on the MLS. Nothing crazy or fancy about the strategy to find it. Paid $51,000 for the house and ended up putting in about, I think about $45,000. We were all in like just under $100,000 for the house and only sold it for $115,000. So after like realtor fees, closing costs, stuff like that, I mean.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  Hardly made anything, made a little bit of profit, but not much on the deal. But again, learned invaluable lessons that I like can't put a price tag on from just getting started and doing a deal and meeting people even like I called and talked to so many different people just on the contracting side, just to like give me bids and just learn about numbers and how people are projecting scopes of work out there. And even though I didn't use all of them, like that already gave me a bunch of different sets of numbers of how to analyze rehab costs and what things are going to cost. And funny enough, even one of the contractors who gave me a bid on that first house that didn't do the job, I reconnected with later down the line. And he did probably like thirty flips for me thereafter.

• 17:48Dave Meyer?

  Wow.

• 17:49Speaker 01

  So you get started somewhere, you have an actual property where you're actually doing something with it. And that's your in to start making a lot of these connections, you know, you have something you can talk to people about that you're actually working on. You have a property, you can ask different agents to come walk and like, what can I list this for? You know, you're making relationships and same on the contractor inside. So that was my first flip again, so far from perfect, but such a great starting point.

• 18:16Dave Meyer?

  That point about having something tangible to like center your conversations around is so important. I I've stumbled into that as well, like just talking to a contractor about some theoretical property or like, do you want to work together? It's like, yeah, of course I want to work together, but you know, not having something to point to like, can you do X job? Like, can you do this job by this date? It really adds a sense of urgency and tangibility to a conversation that I think makes the relationship move a lot faster. So I think that's, that's great advice. That deal seems great, relatively cheap, buying it for fifty, sixty thousand.

• 18:56Dave Meyer?

  Now, you know, fast forward to today when you're doing twelve of these, can you tell us a little bit about what your average deal in this kind of market looks like?

• 19:04Speaker 01

  Today, I'm kind of buying in two different buckets. One would be the more entry level price point, which is more similar to that deal I just described to you, my first deal. And that would be anything that's worth, when it's done, two hundred thousand or less. And so those are a lot of the deals that I keep for rentals and do the BRRRR strategy on because they have good cash flow numbers at that price point. Sometimes I'll flip them if it has like a really good spread. And then the other bucket of deals I'm buying are the ones that I'm more so fixing and flipping. And those are the slightly higher end ones. Some of them have a like 300K ish resale value, but more so they're in the four to 500K resale value.

• 19:48Dave Meyer?

  Okay.

• 19:48Speaker 01

  Where you're purchasing it between like 200 and 250 and putting in like 80 to 100. So those higher end ones are more so what I'm flipping right now.

• 19:56Dave Meyer?

  What's your, what's your average margin then on these kinds of deals?

• 20:00Speaker 01

  So the target is always 15% return on investment.

• 20:04Dave Meyer?

  Okay.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  So 15% of what I put into the property. Obviously, sometimes you make 10, sometimes you make 20, 25, you know, so, but target for me is always 15.

• 20:15Dave Meyer?

  Okay, that's, that's quite good. And how long are these deals taking you?

• 20:19Speaker 01

  That's super dependent on the market right now. I have some that still sell in your average 30 to 45 day timeline. And we're all into the deal from start to finish in five or six months. And I have some deals right now that the market's slow and it's just taking several months on the market just to get an offer.

• 20:38Dave Meyer?

  Really?

• 20:38Speaker 01

  And so some of those deals are taking more like eight to nine months, start to finish to be done and sold.

• 20:44Dave Meyer?

  And has that changed your approach? I'm assume if you're continuing to do them, that they're still profitable enough to the point where you're taking on the same volume of deals as you were maybe a year or two ago? Or are you trying to scale up more?

• 20:58Speaker 01

  I like this range. It's a good enough scale to where you're doing a lot of volume. You're able to keep your teams busy and, and keep people loyal to you. But it's not so big that I'm trying to do like a hundred deals a year. It is just super unmanageable and I have to make a bunch of partnerships and have WTO employees and stuff like that. So my goal isn't to necessarily get that big, but um yeah, right around this range of having, you know, 12 to 15 projects at a time. Mostly on the fix and flip side and kind of keeping the best ones for long-term rental properties.

• 21:32Dave Meyer?

  Awesome. Wow. And that that's incredible. I congratulations on all the progress you've made in just a couple of years. I'm actually curious, though, you know, you said that you you're holding some rental properties. What led to that shift?

• 21:45Speaker 01

  I think that's a something that's always been a goal of mine from the beginning as well. And it was more a capital and experience thing, you know, the more deals that you're doing and you don't necessarily need to flip so many per year in order to just pay your bills and and live off of the income. You can kind of start thinking about holding some of the better ones for longer-term rentals. And so buy properties and let the tenant pay down your mortgage for 30 years. And I'm still pretty young. So for me, that's a decent strategy to be, you know, mid 50s to 60 and have a bunch of properties that are now paid off. And that can be something that I retire on.

• 22:28Dave Meyer?

  How are you choosing which ones you're flipping versus holding on to if you're sort of it sounds like going through somewhat of a similar process, at least on the front end of the deal.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  I pretty much will hold any deal that does pencil as a rental. So in my market, there's a lot of deals that pencil as flips because you may not have enough quite enough margin in the deal to pull out all of your capital and make it like a perfect burr. But you still have a really nice profit margin for a fix and flip opportunity. Or, you know, it might be in that slightly higher end price point that I mentioned before, where even if it was a perfect burr, you could pull all your cash out. It just wouldn't rent for enough to cash flow and make any positive cash flow. So for me, like, any property that Is in a price point where I can realistically pull out almost all of my cash

• 23:23Speaker 01

  or all of my cash with a cash out refinance and it's still cash flows at least a couple hundred dollars a month, I will always keep it as a rental.

• 23:33Dave Meyer?

  And how are you sort of managing the capital side of that then? Is it just making it more complicated for you like in terms of getting different loans and managing your inflows and outflows of cash? Cause I would imagine that it's just adding a whole layer of complexity and another sort of business line.

• 23:50Speaker 01

  Definitely it's different and has different components for sure. On the fix and flip side and even the BRRRR side a little bit upfront, when I'm buying the properties for cash and renovating with cash, I pretty much exclusively use private money. So these have just been people that I've connected with over the years that have cash and want to invest passively. They act just like a bank, just like a normal lender, but they're just a private individual. So I'll use those types of loans to purchase the properties and renovate them. And then if it's going to become a rental and hold it long-term, we put long-term financing with a 30-year mortgage. That would be the cash out refinance.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Once the property is fully stabilized and rented out, we'll put that long-term financing on the property and use the money that you get from the cash out refinance to pay off the private lender. So that way it's just me left on, you know, the mortgage and you're dealing more with just a institutionalized bank or lender that you're making the mortgage payments to every month for a 30-year mortgage.

• 25:01Dave Meyer?

  Dominique, I want to ask you more about how you were able to scale this business with a bigger team and more systems in place. But first we need to take another quick break. For my wife's birthday, I wanted to make her a new website for her landscape design business. So I researched a lot of different options. I tried out a couple, but honestly, it was really overwhelming. It was pretty time consuming and still, the site wasn't coming out the way I wanted it to. Then I tried Hostinger and everything was super simple. I asked Hostinger's AI to build a clean site for her business and it had a working version up in minutes. No coding or designer needed. Plus, its AI

• 25:41Dave Meyer?

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• 26:26Dave Meyer?

  burritos at the lodge. I don't even care. This is the trip I look forward to all year. But here's the part I actually appreciate. The practical side of my brain kicking in is that my place doesn't have to just sit there empty the whole time I'm away. I can list my space on Airbnb and bring in a little extra income while I'm out getting humbled on a mountain. And with the co-host network, I'm not the one handling all of it. You can partner with a vetted local co-host who can create your listing, manage reservations, message guests, and even handle the styling. So I get to fully focus on my trip and my place is still working for me the whole time. Find a co-host at airbnb.com/host.

• 27:09Dave Meyer?

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• 29:02Henry Washington?

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• 30:30Dave Meyer?

  Thanks for sticking with us. Here's more of me and Dominique talking about scaling an out-of-state fix and flip business. I want to get back to some of the stuff that you talked about earlier with achieving this level of scale. You know, you obviously talked about systems. You talked about teams, but can you tell us a little bit about like the order of operations? Because I'm curious sort of, you can't do everything at once. Like what are some of the like first steps? When you said, I want to go from five or six deals at a time to 12 that you're doing now. You know, who are the people you brought on? And what systems, what software, what other tools did you need to bring on in order to ramp up each subsequent deal?

• 31:12Speaker 01

  I will warn you with this question. I am a very simple person. I'm not one that has like all the fancy softwares and systems put together and built out all these, you know, different. Apps and stuff that we're using, I'm pretty simple. Um, I keep a lot of, you know, things on spreadsheets and like just simple, like easy tools that anybody can, can build and do. But from an operations standpoint, what it looks like, and this is a big mind shift that I had to make from going from like five to six to 10 to 12 is you have to build out your teams. So when you're doing maybe like five at a time, it's actually probably more beneficial to find

• 31:55Speaker 01

  one great team, one great set of everything and just feed them as much business as you can. Keep them loyal. You can probably have a contractor because the projects are going to be at different stages that can handle that much volume. Same with the real estate agent, same with the lenders, like everything you can probably find one great team and really keep them loyal and hone in on them. But when you scale up, you just can't. It's, it becomes way too much and too overwhelming for just one great set of people. So you really have to shift to that mindset of like, okay, my team is built, everything's closed to what we were talking earlier, where you're always looking to build new teams. You're always looking to improve.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  Who else can I start working with and how can I make my teams better? Cause you have multiple open slots for every position. And so there's just more opportunity to like refine and really work with the best of the best. So for me, like what that looks like is I have a couple of GCs who run all my projects. So I don't work directly with any subs. I just work with a couple of GCs who are managing everything on the ground. And that just keeps things a lot more streamlined to even just on the accounting and like invoicing side. I'm just getting one to three bills throughout the projects, pretty much like larger chunks. They're keeping track of receipts and buying materials and

• 33:23Speaker 01

  things like that. So it just keeps things really streamlined. I just have one point of contact that I can keep in touch with daily or every other day to get updates on the jobs. And each of those GCs are managing three to five different projects all the time. And then I have a project manager role. At times I've had like two people in this role, but I think even with a larger scale, you can, you can probably just keep one person in this role. But this is somebody who is kind of like a third party to all of the other roles. They're not just your contractor, just your agent, you know, they're not specialized in one thing.

• 34:05Speaker 01

  They're just doing any and all tasks that might come up on a day to day basis. So it might be making deliveries, it might be putting up a lockbox, it might be turning on utilities, like anything, it could be just, I'm sending you to the property to get me update photos and videos so that I can keep a tab on what's going on or clean up if it's a vacant house that's been listed a couple of weeks, like sweep the floors and stuff like that. So it could be anything.

• 34:34Dave Meyer?

  Does that person work exclusively for you?

• 34:37Speaker 01

  No, I've had a few different people in this role and it's usually been kind of part time. So I've typically worked with people that are within the real estate space, like doing something else within the space and they're just looking for some like side part time work.

• 34:50Dave Meyer?

  So I guess that role seems super crucial to me because you know, you always have a contractor who, yeah, they're on your team, but they also like, you know, they run their own business. And so I feel like it's kind of essential to have sort of a neutral party in there who's like, works for you and can report back on the real state of things. And like, not that people are being dishonest, but like it's helpful to have someone who is looking at every deal through your perspective, not just like hearing it filtered through the lens of an agent or a contractor who are probably trying to do the right thing, but just like have their own perspective and biases.

• 35:30Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And yeah, just having more eyes on things is always helpful because people see different things, you know, and it's just kind of like a checks and balance system for. Keeping tabs on things, like you said, I can't tell you how many times we've done a final walk through with the contractor. Like the project's done, it's ready for photos. And then I send my project manager through and I get 10 more pictures of touch up things that need to be done, you know?

• 35:54Dave Meyer?

  Right.

• 35:55Speaker 01

  So just having like the extra set of eyes is super, super important.

• 35:59Dave Meyer?

  So how has this changed your role in your own business?

• 36:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. I think it's in a lot of ways, doing this out of state will do this to you. But as you scale up, it'll also do this to you. You have to force yourself to be more hands off and to delegate. Even if I was on the ground, I don't think I would spend my time doing like the project manager role. For example, those are all things I could easily do if I was on the ground, but it's not the best use of my time. And so whether I'm on the ground or not, it's a great role to delegate. And same with like general contractors. I could, if I was on the ground, run my own projects and save money. But even if I was, I don't think that would be the best use of my time because I have to do all these other things to keep the operation growing and scaling.

• 36:46Speaker 01

  So it really helps you put into perspective, just being out of state, what things are really important to delegate? And what things are really important for you to do? So like for me, the acquisitions, that's like probably the most important, super important in any fix and flip operation. Cause that's where you're making your money, right? Or if you make a mistake, it's probably made there. Once you bought the deal for a certain price, if you were wrong about anything, like you can't fix it. So I spend a lot of my time overseeing the acquisition side of things and making sure that we're not overlooking, you know, anything on the rehab scope projections, ARV projections, and ultimately just making the final decisions on what we're buying.

• 37:29Speaker 01

  And I spend a lot of time on the capital raising part as well, you know, making those connections with individuals who are going to lend me funds. I always have funds available to be buying more and more houses. Those are two things that I would say are really important for me to make that connection for. People to know me and my face and my name to continue sending me deals and continue giving me capital.

• 37:55Dave Meyer?

  And do you like it? Like it's, it sounds just like such a big shift. Like you've had to sort of almost reinvent your, your own business and you're doing so much different stuff. At least in my career, I've found times where that happens. Like I just do it out of necessity. And then you kind of like come back and figure out like, oh, I actually should be doing something I enjoy more. Like, do you feel like you're in a place with your business that's sustainable and that you're enjoying?

• 38:20Speaker 01

  It's such a great question and I toy with this a lot too, because on one hand, I love that I can be fully remote and running this business. Like that's the greatest gift to be able to have built something that I can travel, I can do whatever I want to do all the time, be my own boss at this age. Like what a gift, you know, to have been able to do that. And so I love that aspect of it. But at the same time, when I do get to spend time in New Orleans and I go to the ground and I'm, I'm present, I'm like, wow, this is so cool. I like to be here, you know, to walk my own jobs and, and to see what's going on. Like you really feel like you're actually a part of it instead

• 39:02Speaker 01

  of just kind of running this remote thing from, from somewhere else and not hands on seeing it. But ultimately, I think for me, it makes my business better, I think, for me to not be there, to be honest.

• 39:14Dave Meyer?

  Interesting.

• 39:15Speaker 01

  It, it does. The part that has forced me to delegate and to bring on really strong team members that are great in each individual role, I think has made my business better. Instead of me trying to like do things that I'm ultimately not best at, and then just be kind of mediocre across the board.

• 39:35Dave Meyer?

  I resonate so much with what you said. I, I understand the feeling of it making you better. When I moved abroad, I had sort of the same experience, just this forcing function where you recognize what you're good at, you are forced to become more efficient. It does make you better. But having just moved back to the US, like I love being at properties. I'm so happy, like being able to go like check out my deals and go even deals I'm not necessarily going to buy, just like going to open houses or looking at. Being with other investor friends who are like doing deals like it is fun to be a part of it. So Dominique, in two years, you've made incredible progress. Again, congratulations. What, what's next for you? You've scaled up, you've doubled your, your volume? Are you just going to keep going? Or what's next?

• 40:20Speaker 01

  For the foreseeable future, I see myself really trying to stack up and build more rental properties and just keep the, the flipping operation like decently stable as far as the current volume that we're doing. And hopefully just continuing to build relationships to getting better, more consistent deal flow, continuing to make sure that we're on top of the renovations and we're refining, like making better design decisions so that we sell faster. And how can we cut our rental budgets back? So efficiency is the overall

• 40:52Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 40:52Speaker 01

  goal, I think, right now.

• 40:54Dave Meyer?

  Well, that's awesome. Congratulations on, on scaling and we'd love to have you back in a, in a year or two or whatever, just to hear what you're up to. Cause it's such a cool, unique part of real estate investing that we don't hear about very often, but you're doing it so well. So thank you so much for coming and sharing your, your insights and your story with us, Dominique.

• 41:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. Thanks so much for having me.

• 41:16Dave Meyer?

  And thank you all so much for joining us here on the BiggerPockets Podcast. We'll see you again soon.

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