Today, I am delighted to share a conversation I had with Mike Hambright, who rather humbly describes himself as a real estate investor. He is also the Founder of a number of businesses, including Flip Nerd, which is building on Mike’s success having flipped over 300 houses himself and coached others who have flipped 1,000s of houses each year. More recently, he has just completed on three deals with ‘multiple doors’, so apartment blocks and portfolios, in the $10m to $15m range.
Despite his obvious success, Mike is a very humble person, who ranks caring, giving and responsibility among his core values…along with hard work, persistence and dedication.
If you are considering ‘burning the boats’ to go full-time in property and developing the confidence to do so, then this is going to be a very interesting discussion to listen to.
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Resources mentioned
Contacting Mike Hambright & Resources
www.flipnerd.com has 1,500 videos and a number of blog posts
Social media – Facebook & Instagram as Mike Hambright…NOT the one with the Swastika on his chest!
Property Deal Tips & How to Reach me By Telephone
Link to the Podcast feedback survey
TPV Apprentice Programme info HERE
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#PropTech: A guide to how property technology is changing how we live, work and invest – a link to the latest book.
Property Investor Toolkit – here is the book link on amazon.co.uk & amazon.com in case you would like to get yourself a copy to accompany this series
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Transcription of the show
Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Property Voice podcast. My name is Richard Brown and as always, it’s a pleasure to have you join me on the show again today.
Today, I am delighted to share a conversation I had with Mike Hambright, who rather humbly describes himself as a real estate investor. He is also the Founder of a number of businesses, including Flip Nerd, which is building on Mike’s success having flipped over 300 houses himself and coached others who have flipped 1,000s of houses each year. More recently, he has just completed on three deals with ‘multiple doors’, so apartment blocks and portfolios, in the $10m to $15m range.
Despite his obvious success, Mike is a very humble person, who ranks caring, giving and responsibility among his core values…along with hard work, persistence and dedication.
If you are considering ‘burning the boats’ to go full-time in property and developing the confidence to do so, then this is going to be a very interesting discussion to listen to.
Property Chatter
Mike Hambright
Mike essentially ‘trained his entire life to be an employee’ with a degree in finance and then a couple of positions in corporate organisations in the banking and retail sectors. He didn’t have a good mentor to guide him back then. So, he tried to make himself more appealing to someone that would pay him. This led him to decide to go back to formal education and get an MBA.
Despite getting a good job, one day out of nowhere he got fired. This made him realise that he had no control over that. After this, he joined an early-stage company, which subsequently filed for bankruptcy after 18 months! He realised that he was not in control of his life and was looking for what he could do to take greater control of his life.
Mike then decided to take control of his destiny and became a real estate investor. Since then, over 11 years having flipped several hundred houses, wholesaling and retaining a number of properties. He is based out of the Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas area of the United States. Since then he has progressed to teach and coach others to do the same.
He flipped over 300 houses over around 7-8 years and retained around 40 properties in his portfolio. He recognises that he could not keep all the properties when there are no other income streams around to support that. Equally, at that point in the market cycle, credit was not as readily available either.
Gone from being a real estate investor to become a real estate entrepreneur. First-year he did 65 house flips in the first year, after ‘dabbling’ with an online business, so things were getting very tight, the runway was short and it just had to work…so they went big! Staring out when the market dried up meant that competition was less. They accessed a financing facility via friends and family money.
After flipping around 100 houses around 18 months in, he diversified to coach and mentor others, leading to a network that is flipping over 1,000 a year. The focus is on running the business rather than a training module as such. This has grown and morphed over the years.
In a short period of time, he went from a quite desperate position to make more money than he ever had before. However, things were a little lonely or isolated in reality – there were no real peers that they could relate to. Real estate investors are ‘a different breed’. So, the coaching and mentoring sprung out of this. Surrounding himself with some of America’s most successful real estate investors, enabling different types of conversation to take place.
Mike now also has elevated conversations with people that challenge him…
Other income streams…Investor Fuel Mastermind, an association of real estate investors around two groups: 10-50 deals per year (self-employed) and 50+ deals per year (business owners with a team). The networking at a higher level and the opportunities just scale even more. For example, Mike has just secured his third $10m+ deals in quick succession. Typically, these are apartment communities of 100 doors or more
The keys to getting involved in larger deals…initially, someone else finds the deal and you get involved as a passive investor and syndicating investment. Larger deals typically have different roles to perform, such as finding, funding, managing, etc. It’s easier for people to participate in different ways.
Flipping is a very active business, so larger deals allow a little more passivity and concentration of capital and other resources.
Dealing with issues and challenges along the way.
What is different is Mike’s confidence level, which allows him to make a decision in seconds or minutes, even though problems and challenges will still occur.
These days, Mile has freedom of choice and can actively choose what he does, which projects to work on and who he does it with. This is all because of working hard in real estate. He is now ‘playing with the house’s money’, which means he can also take on more risks, without losing his home or feeding his family.
There has been an evolution of mindset growth…it’s just a game at this point. You still need to be challenged and so you look for bigger and more challenging projects to hone his skill. There is also a hierarchy of needs to work through, but everyone can get up there. Determination, hard work and a little luck are needed but there are no real special ingredients to limit us as such.
Core values
Personal Responsibility – take responsibility for your own life, nobody will ever be as concerned about your success as you. Not reliant on anyone else.
Principles such as integrity, respect and tolerance.
Hard work.
Caring and giving about other people. Everything has to be win-win…genuinely.
Humility…one added by me.
The market looking forward…
Things are usually market specific; the coastal markets are the first to slow down. However, other markets, such as Dallas are growing as companies and people are relocating there. Mike’s model is to advertise directly to home sellers, who always have similar issues, such as financial issues, health issues, death and divorce, reducing hassle, etc. These situations always exist and don’t align themselves follow market cycles.
At a macro economy level…he would be guessing, which feeds into doing what he can control rather than trying to second guess where the market is going.
Flipping is all about arbitrage…taking something at one value in one market and reselling it at a higher value in a different market.
Tips and advice
For newer investors…many say they are interested yet fail before really doing a deal; they essentially defeat themselves by not persisting long enough. If you want it bad enough, there is no reason why you cannot achieve that level of success. People should surround themselves with people doing it already, either as coaches and mentors or as partners. Doing deals breeds confidence, so even when you split the profit, you do more deals and so build more confidence as a result.
There is so much information out there; so piecing it together with meaning is the challenge. So, follow a proven system and work with proven people that have accomplished this before.
For property entrepreneurs at the next level…it’s moving from being trapped being self-employed and doing most tasks and activities. So, having people, systems and processes are essential to make it a real business and this comes with scale.
If you work hard, willing to support others and personal responsibility, anyone can become a successful real estate investor.
Contacting Mike Hambright & Resources
www.flipnerd.com has 1,500 videos and a number of blog posts
Social media – Facebook & Instagram as Mike Hambright…not the one with the Swastika on his chest!
Remember, if you want to talk about anything from today’s show, or just talk property investing more generally, email me at podcast@thepropertyvoice.net, I would be happy to hear from you! The show notes can be found at our website www.thepropertyvoice.net
All that is left to say, is thank you very much for listening once again this week and until next time on The Property Voice Podcast…it’s ciao-ciao.
[…] Link to Richard's full interview with Mike Hambright on The Investor Fuse Podcast & Mike Hambright's interview on TPV podcast. […]