How the current fix and flip market is changing - with James Dainard

James Dainard is co-founder and managing partner at Heaton Dainard Real Estate and Intrust Funding LLC. He is currently a co-host on one of the BiggerPockets podcast series. As a seasoned real estate investor, James leads the development and execution of corporate strategies, marketing, and property acquisitions at Heaton Dainard Real Estate. His decade of experience investing in multi-family and single-family units in the Puget Sound region has guided Heaton Dainard with over a billion dollars in sales and over 3,000 transactions directly to investors. Flipping houses remains one of the most well-known strategies in today’s real estate industry, and for good reason: fix and flip homes can potentially offer attractive profit margins for real estate investors who know what they’re doing. Unfortunately, many beginner investors make the mistake of assuming that the only important part of flipping a house is the renovation itself; in actuality, success will also depend on how good of a deal you secure when purchasing a property. Consequently, finding fix and flip deals is one of the hardest aspects of the job. Tune in for today's episode where James shares some his insights about fixing and flipping houses with us. Episode links: JamesDainard.com IntrustFunding.com HeatonDainard.com https://www.instagram.com/jdainflips/?hl=en  --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum and today with me, I have James Dainard with Heaton Dainard Real Estate and James is the co-founder and managing principal of that company. They do apartment syndication, hard money lending, fix and flips and also have a brokerage among many other things. So James is gonna be talking to us today about the fix and flip market, what he's been doing and how it's changing, and what we as investors should be thinking about as we get into this market. So let's get into it.   James what is going on, man, thanks for coming on the podcast and hanging out with me. I appreciate it.   James: Yeah, I'm excited to be here. It's anytime I get to talk real estate's always a win.   Michael: I know, I know and it's crazy that we like get paid for it. It's kind of a joke, you know?   James: Yeah. I'm still waiting to see the big checks. But all right, I'll keep doing real estate until that somehow I figured that part out.   Michael: I'm right there with you, man. For anyone who doesn't know your background, know your name that your company give us a quick and dirty insight who you are, where you come from? What is it you're doing real estate today?   James: Yeah, I'm James Dainard. So I'm out of the Pacific Northwest. We've been an active investment company at the Seattle, Washington for the last 18 years now. So I started doing this when I was a senior in college actually knocking doors for an investment company and then once I graduated, we kind of just start building companies, one after the other, went through a pretty nasty weather. Well, the month that we opened our business was the month that the whole real estate market fell apart in 2007, and eight. So it's, we're very seasoned investors, we're active guys in Seattle, we typically do we have a brokerage that does about 200 fix and flip properties a year with our clients and then we do about an additional 50 ourselves and then we land hard money up in Seattle, Washington, just short term financing and then we're big apartments indicators as well. So we own about 2000 doors in the Seattle market. Very, very active, very active guys. We like to stay busy, we work and then also, and now we started doing it now we're putting out a lot of different types of educational stuff for people on project already and then on the market for bigger pockets with any podcast channel. So always expanding, always doing more things. But we're, we're guys that like to talk about what we're doing not about theories. It's like, whatever, whatever we're actually got our hands on. That's usually what we're talking about.   Michael Love it, love it. Well, James, I love to focus the conversation today on fix and flip, since I think it's something a lot of our audience members are really interested in and it's just a super unique time, seemingly in the market as a whole. So give us a little bit of insight. Are you doing anything different now than you were six months or 12 months ago with regard to fix and flip?   James: Oh, yeah, we are doing things completely different and you know, and I think one thing that investors always need to know is the market goes up and downs, it's changing all the times and so what you're doing, and this is why the fix and flip business can be so challenging. Again, we've been doing this for about 18 years, and we've been in four different types of markets, you know, we had, or five, you know, 2006, through eight was crazy hot like it was now maybe not quite as hot as this last one. We had the crash where we were flipping in a declining market where the market was crashing 10% every month, basically, there was like the it was just the walls were coming in on every project and then we were in a flat market 14 to 18 or 17 and then you know, this last 24 months had been pretty crazy with the appreciation and in the last 24 months, you had to do things completely different to make money and a lot of that had to do with like timing, purchasing the right location and also interest rates as interest rates were really low, the pricing was soaring and so now we're in that whole new, it's a whole new market again, you know, cost of money has gone up about 35 to 40% and it's slowed everything down.   So as flippers, what we've had to do is instead of just trying to secure a deal in the right location with low inventory, we're really checking the numbers and how we underwrite things is vastly different than we would do. Six months ago, like six months ago, we were looking for that high data point and interpreting where the market was going to kind of factor in a little bit of appreciation on the exit, which will allow us to buy in a slimmer margin. Now what we're doing is we're buying at cheaper, larger spreads because we don't think the market is going to get the depreciation and we're being very fine tuned on our comparables, we just have to really dig into everything and we only will use current market data because the rates are sky, they're moving around so much. So we only pull comparable data from what when the interest rates were in impact. So like, right now, we're only going back 30 days on our sales, we won't look at anything 60 to 90 days old, because it was just a different market at that point in time. So but yes, you always have to change, you have to change what you're doing on a regular basis. So we're buying differently, we're underwriting way tighter, we're looking for bigger walk and margins are being super conservative on our ARBs and then also, we're rebuilding our whole construction team as well to get more cost efficient.   Michael: Interesting, so when you talk about like underwriting things differently or buying differently, give us a little bit of insight, like what does that mean and like, how are you actually doing that?   James: So underwriting it's so key when you're looking at any investment, right? It's going to tell you a what it's worth stabilized. It's going to tell you if you're buying a property, what's your rent projection? What's your cash on cash return and with fix and flip the two major you know, I mean, the three major things and when you're underwriting fix and flip is a the performer what is the numbers telling you in the deal is that a good enough cash on cash return or return that you're happy with? The second most important thing is understanding your rehab costs and accounting for those correctly, because that's going to really dictate whether you're going to make money or not and right now, because we're in this volatile market, where we have cost of monies going up, the labor market is still a little bit messed up right now to where it's hard to get guys, the site materials are still more expensive, it's harder to find supply chain issues. So what we're doing in that market is we're adding 10 to 15% contingencies to every budget as we're underwriting, we also re snap out our budgets every 60 to 90 days to keep up with the cost. Whereas four years ago, we had to do it once a year, like update it, get our numbers down, but it's so rapid that we have to move things around and so we're staying on top of our construction budgets and then lastly, that valuing that asset for highest and best use, we're looking at how do you rapid return on each deal, because you can look at a deal and skin it three different ways.   You can go really heavy and go for the big margin, you can do it really light and go for a small margin, which you're in and out of the deal and get a good cash on cash return in a small amount of time. But we're being we're just spending a lot of times digging into comparables, we're staying very tight on our radiuses to make sure that we're staying inside of our neighborhoods, because you know, neighbor as the market cools down, things like schools, neighborhoods, neighbors, all these things, negative impacts, they affect the values a lot more, you know, the last 24 months, you could buy a house on a little bit busier road or maybe have a little bit crunchy your neighbor and you could still sell it with no problem. But as it slows down inventory increases, those things become kind of major issues for sale. So we're, we're really deducting negative impact properties, we're taking five to 10% off those on values, you know, when we're looking at comparables, and then we're only going back 30 days, because we want to see what the buyers with the same cost of money what they can afford, that's what we need a price off of and then lastly, we're not going to that high, high end comp, we're trying to stay in the cluster and then putting together our rehab plan to fit in the cluster. We don't want to be this super nice, expensive house right now. We want to be the most updated, but in the affordable masses and that's what's been selling things fairly quickly for us. You know, the market is definitely cooled to where we're not getting a ton of people coming through these houses. But we have 50 listings right now a fix and flip properties, and we're still 60% pending and so things are still selling as long as you're putting the right plan in play.   Michael: Interesting, man, I think that makes a ton of sense and are you have you shifted? I know, you said you're not trying to do like the most fancy updated house anymore, is that something that you have done in the past?   James: Yeah, we do. You know, I like to go where it's hard, because those are the best margins and it's, you know, especially real estate has been this thing that's it's almost like Bitcoin, right? Like we're everybody wanted in at one time, the last 24 months and so what that does is when you're the masters coming into the market, it really compresses your margins and sometimes it just comes down to straight luck, like people made a lot of money just because they bought something and the market made it worth a lot more. Not because they bought the right thing, not because they put the right plan on it, it was just the market and so is as you're kind of going in, we would go after more expensive property. So like the last 12 to 18 months, because they're more expensive. They require a lot more rehab plans, they require a lot more liquidity and to be honest, when you're taking out hard money loans that are over a million dollars, they're expensive to hold and so the debt cost is really expensive and so we been in that area because there was lack of investors buying there, it got us about we were able to achieve about 50% higher margins in that space, because…   Michael: Just less competition...   James: Less competition… So that's we went from doing more cookies better deals like I used to flip about 100 120 homes a year myself and then as that got more and more compressed, I was like, Well, why am I doing all this work for small margins, I'm just rack like, it's just wear me out. So then we went to larger projects, to where we get we're focused, instead of doing 120, we're doing 40 to 50. So we've got to work a little smarter. But as that market cools down those, that's a very risky market to be in, because if there's a, you know, a 5% correction, on $3 million, that's, that's a, that's a huge hit on your bottom 150 grand, they can come right off the top, which can be a lot of your margin and so the more expensive properties we're being, we're making sure we're padding and with a lot more walk in margin on. The other thing about the more expensive ones we're staying, we're being more conservative on now, where we've been doing a lot of them, it's because they take a long time, so you're exposed to a lot more market conditions. You know, if the if the Fed continues to increase rates over the next six to nine months with, they're saying they will, that that value can swing dramatically over a nine month period, whereas 12 months ago, it was just swinging up.   So it was all when at that point and so we have started scaling back on the more expensive properties just because they're really high risk, or we're expecting that we get our margins up even further than they were before. The one thing I have seen is not a lot of people are buying them. So the margins are getting bigger and bigger and so there is like that magic number for us, we're trying to hit at least 50 to 60% cash on cash return on those deals, because the extra return allows for any kind of market dip at the same time. But the key right now, because the market conditions are changing, they're going to be continuing change, it's just get in and out in and out, get your deal, buy, stabilize it, sell it, rack your return move on to the next and so that's why we've kind of pulled out of that market, in addition to as the market starting to get a little bit more flatlined, and stable, a lot of investors have already exited, because they I mean, to be honest, they don't have the stomach for it, it because it's risky and so the margins have gotten bigger on the easier deals. So that's why we're also going back that way as well because you know, we don't want to work on a project for 12 to 18 months on some massive project if we don't have to. So we don't really pick the project based on like our own personal opinion, I would love to only do multimillion dollar flips, because I just enjoy them more I get I get to do more, I get to do cool things there. But I want to go with what financially makes sense and so you know, for us, that's why we're also rebuilding our construction team right now as we build a team to do higher end properties. But as we go back to cookie cutter, we have to, you know, we got to change out our staff, we have to change our contractors and that's what we're working on right now. We have full time staff, like we're cold calling contractors for finding new guys or meeting them on site, because we have to build that new bench for what we're trying to accomplish. Not every remodel is the same and not every guy is the same. So you have to be balanced with who you have as your resources.   Michael: Yeah, that makes total sense and because things are changing, so drastically, seemingly, and so quickly. I mean, do you ever think about like a plan B? If you can't flip the thing? Do whatever makes sense to put a tenant in place and hold it and almost burned the property or are you like, no, we're gonna fix and flip it and if we have to take a haircut on the exit, we will just move on to the next one?   James: Well, that's the dream deal, right? It's the it's the lowest risk deal, which is your burr style flip where you know, because the hard part about the expensive properties, you know, if I'm flipping a home, I got two going on right now where we paid roughly 1.5 for one and we pay 1.8 for another we're putting 750 grand 900 grand into both properties. So I can't keep that as a rental like that. If we leave 25% in, no, our mortgage is going to be 25 grand a month at that point and so you know, 20-25 grand, so that's just not going to pencil and so that's another reason why we're kind of backing off because you know, the best kind of deal you can buy right now like I just gotten contract, I have one that I close in seven days. I picked it up for 275, which is about 25% cheaper than we were paying nine months ago for these houses and so we already got the discount because the market starting there's more opportunities as people get nervous and but it's a perfect deal for low risk flipping, and these are ones that people should be if you're really nervous about the market, you should target these kinds of properties. So we're paying 275 It is a piece of garbage. It needs a ton of work. We're putting, we're putting like $135 a foot into this house, which is a lot for us for like a low rent model, but it's we've 100 It's 110,000 our budget for 700,700 square foot house. It's…, that deal works. It's just toast it's the you know the roof caved in. It's stacked full garbage to the ceiling, it's definitely good. Actually, if anyone was check it out, we're gonna we're gonna do a live walkthrough on it pretty soon.   Lots of weird things in the house but and the reason is so good is we're paying 275 with a rehab, we're going to be into it like 375 385, we can refi that deal even at high rates, if it's worth a solid 499 to five and a quarter five and a quarter is a definite number right now. But we've actually performed it at 499, because it's about seven months out. So we've reduced our value down based on where we think the rates are going to be. And that's the most important thing for mitigating risk. You know, you don't want to just look at the rates. Now, if you think they're going to be higher in six to nine months, you want to bring your ARV down a little bit, because that means that property is less affordable at that point and so we had a performance at 499, which is going to be roughly about a $50,000 profit after all hard cup money cost, sell costs in that and so that's going to end up being like a 60% cash on cash return with our lender interest funding, because then we do 15% down. So you know, we're coming in with like 60 to $70,000 down, we're going to make 50. So it's a great return. But let's say the market drops down at 450, we can still refinance that property and get almost 90% of our cash back on that loan to value because we can go up to 75% and our payments going to be roughly about 25 2600 annual rent for 2800 and so it's the perfect flip, because no matter what you either can rack your 70% cash on cash return by quick in and out deal and that's a lot of work for 50 grand, but it's very safe and that's why we bought it or if the market falls apart, which it definitely could you never know what can happen, then we can still refinance it, we can keep it and then hold it for two years and then sell it off later at that point, or, you know, our $200 in cash flow, let's say we decided to just keep it and that rates fall down to about 5%, five and a half to what they're usually around, our cash flow is not going to just be $200 a month, it's going to be around $800 a month. So you can you can target the cheaper, heavy fixer smaller houses, those are very good properties that because the price points are so low, they make it very interchangeable. So if you want to be safe in flipping, buying a burr is the best way to go. Because you know what refi out, you know will pay for itself and you have that 25% margin, which is your profit in the flip and so those are the best things you can target in this current market…   Michael: It makes total sense. Have you ever thought about like on this particular property seller financing at like nine or 10%?   James: Well, it's the problem is seller financing in that kind of scenario. Let's say we got that guy to finance us 90% and we just had to bring in 10%. At that point, I can get hard money loan three interest funding at 10% rate, you know, 10 to 12 and the loan balance…   Michael: Oh yeah, you're in it for the hard money…   James: And then we can also get a construction loan, which is going to triple our return expectations because if we pay and we do 10% down, so we give that guy 27,500 down, but then we have to come out of pocket with the rehab of 110 220, our cash on cash returns actually going to be reduced by 65% by not using a construction lender because with the construction lender, we only have to come up with the 15% of the total project. Whereas the other way, we're coming up with 10 and all the rehab and so that's the dangerous part about seller financing. seller financing works really well, if it's a light fixture in my opinion, or they're just giving you 100% financing with a closeout term at that point and so for me, I don't really care about rates I don't really care about cost of money, I just look up cash on cash return and whatever the highest cash on cash return is how I want to set the deal up for leverage.   Michael: Okay, makes total sense. James, like you are clearly an expert in the space and in your market and you are so laser focused, it seems and you know Seattle, like the back of your hand. What do you recommend to newer flippers, newer investors that want to get into this space that maybe don't have that level of expertise in their market that you do?   James: Start with baby steps, baby that's the biggest thing where people I've seen it where I've gotten myself in the most amount of trouble too is when I buy something I don't know and the rehab gets out of control and in what the last 24 months depreciation would save your butt. It didn't matter if you bought a deal and you didn't quite know what you're doing that it made you look good. Yeah, yeah, you everybody looked good, including myself like it just the margins were absurd and but if you don't know how to nail that plan, that's where you can get really out of control. Like if you spend 35% more on your budget and it goes way over your timeframes, that's going to eliminate your profit and you better steal to sell that for top dollar or you could be losing really quick and so the first thing you want to do is really take baby steps try to go for more cosmetics where you're not doing like adding bathrooms changing out things, low permit properties where you can do more cosmetic swap outs, tile flooring, doors, trim, minor things, maybe roof windows, that will keep it you can you can kind of isolate your cost a lot more. The other thing that you to do is you always can partner with investor to, you know, bring in like a general. So like right now what I'm actually doing because the markets risks here we're doing we're trying to figure out how to cut costs is we are now partnering also.   So instead of increasing staff to manage more projects, we're actually we're running some projects ourselves to where we're generally in the whole thing, then we are also partnering with generals now to where I'm giving away 30% of the deal to the general, but they are running the whole thing with my team, my team is gonna go get in the paint colors, the tile that design the layout, they handle everything A to Z, and they have a vested interest in it. So what we're doing is we're bringing in our resources that are starting to slow down on work, too and we're tying them into the deal because it requires less management, and it reduces the risk because the contractor who can charge you, whatever he wants for change orders right now is tied to the deal, too. So he's essentially charging himself, right and so partnering with the general is a good way to go partnering with another investor, you know, like I bought a flip property out in Scottsdale, Arizona in the last six months and I don't know, Scottsdale, I don't have the same resources. I don't have the same deal flow out there. So I had some extra capital. So I invested in a gal named Cara Beckman's flip and so I was she found the deal. She ran the project, I put up all the cash and we split the profit 50-50 and so there's other ways you can do you can partner with people with the right type of processes in play.   Michael: Yeah. I love it, I love it. When you're underwriting a deal, I mean, they're talking about the 70% rule and as you're underwriting a flip, are there some rules and guidelines that you live by, in today's market to help you kind of get a quick, quick glance at a property and know if it's a potential interest or not?   James: Yeah, so I always buy off cash on cash return, because it's that 70% rule can be hard. It's a great rule of thumb, right? Like, what's it worth, buy it, you want to be buying at, you know, purchase price and fix up at 70% of that total amount, right. So for all the listeners, if you're if you have property worth 100 grand, you're trying to buy it for 50, put 20 in and then you're at 70% at that point and it's not it's a good rule of thumb to do so like a lot of times, even when I'm surface writing a deal, I'll just take the ARV or the value of the property, I times it by 80% because I knock off all my landing costs, selling cost, subtract the rehab, subtract the purchase price, and then there's the profit at the end of the day. The one thing I don't like about that is the ARV can be so changed, though. Like it can be 70% one way and it cannot be the other way and so there's so many ways that you can do a deal. It's hard to put it in a standard box. Now I think if you're in more of a cookie cutter area, like if you're in track wrong track home bill, like if you're in like Central Florida, Texas, where they're all the same, it's easier to do but in Seattle, every street matters so much whether it's like high crime, or is it a better street where the schools are, the homes are really old, and they're all different. So the rehabs vary so much you can't standardize as much every project is its own beast and so that's why I go off cash on cash return. So when I'm looking at a deal, I'm always going okay, can I get around a 50% cash on cash return after all costs, and that's how I buy off of is that's my minimum expectation for short term investment. Like on buying holds, I'm always shooting for 10%. So like, as long as I know, my margin, that's how I underwrite correctly. Now the market will change what my margin expectations will be, though and so like 12 months ago, my cash on cash return on a flip, I was trying to get 35% with leverage in there and then it would kind of bump up with appreciation. So as the market slows down, I increase my return, if that keeps me fairly safe at that point.   Michael: And that makes total sense. You're just patting yourself additionally, in case something moves the wrong direction.   James: Yeah, it's no different than how we were buying the last 12 months. It's like we were buying on slimmer margins, because we thought there was a higher exit down the road and you know, so if you're in a really good market, you buy slim and if you were in a really, you know the market start transitioning, you start patting your performance or like even in the stock market, a lot of people were day trading, right? They're getting them in now, people kind of getting more settled in because the day trading can blow up in your face really quick. The short term is harder to do and so you're seeing a lot more people just invest in the long term because they're like, hey, I just want a stable return, try to beat inflation. But you know, as the market cools down, you get less trading in there a lot too. Yeah. But with the market cooling down, it has created some massive opportunities. So I mean, we're definitely buying property way cheaper than we were buying 90 days ago. Which is nice. It's we're getting back to like a normal system like we can buy it for this we rehab it and then we sell for this and we're gonna make roughly around this whereas last two years is like well, I don't know what's gonna happen we'll see could hit…   Michael: Yeah, anyone's guess is good. So James is like 50% cash on cash is like insane. saine insanely high, which is amazing and I have to imagine not all of your deals have hit that target. So can you give us a little bit of insight into one that maybe didn't go your way to help level set expectations for what the flippers?   James: Oh, yeah, you can very easily lose 50% In flipping too. I mean, the thing about flipping is, wherever one always needs to remember the things I have to remember is I'm an investor, I'm making a decision on risk and if I have the chance to make a 50% return, that's an extremely high return, especially in like a nine month period, right? That's on an annual basis. That's like 70% 75%, that means that that investment engine is extremely risky. Like you don't like there's a reason but like, CDs don't pay 30%. Very risky and I feel like sometimes people forget, like how high risk this business is and so you really got to stay on top of it. But yeah, I mean, we've had all sorts of deals go wrong over the I mean, the first major fixture I ever bought when I was 23. I 2008 happened right as I was selling it, and I got flatlined, I lost all my cash I'd saved in two years of wholesaling and so it can go away very, very quickly. But I mean, even recently, like we, I mean, we had a deal where we bought a home, we got its permit, we jacked up the house and then the city came back to us back in the plan review decided to change the whole plan on us, we had to put a new foundation in which ended up costing too much money in the house fell over. It basically just collapsed down and so we had to build a new house and so what it's like in that house, we've owned this property now for three years, because of the time in the restore and the new plan, right, and we know what we're doing and so it was just one of those things where everything that could have gone oh, and then our foundation company walked off with half of our deposit, it was just everything went wrong and we do this and we manage and we watch everything. But sometimes things just go wrong and that was one of them. Where it's a domino effect, it was like this went wrong, this went wrong, this went wrong and then you know, and so now we're listed on the market and if we sell it for full price, which we've been at for 75 days, we'll maybe break even after three years and you know, and who knows, we might take a haircut too. But that's just kind of part of the game. Like how I look at this, I don't look at this per deal. I look at this as I'm an investor.   So if I'm looking at the stock market, again, like if I look at my portfolio, I'm not looking at that one stock, I'm going how did this work over a 12 to 24 month period and so that's how we even look at our flips the last 12 to 24 months, like some are like the last 24 we made too much money. Now we're going to take a little bit of a haircut. But when we look at it, at the end of the day, it's still going to be a great return as long as we're buying and selling consistently. But we have definitely had I've had all sorts of bad things happen on where we've lost money usually comes down to bad hiring or bad contractors, where we've hired guys, we've worked with them for five, six years, the wheels come off and they disappear with our money. I've hired a fake contractor before where he hadn't legitimate fake IDs and licenses and a business law and he still had a business license still had a contract. That deal I definitely lost I think I lost like 80 grand on that house because he didn't eat it's not only he, he took my money did a bunch of the work was supposed to get permits, never got permits, I got red tagged. That's how I found out it was all a big scam and we had to rip the whole house, we basically had to restart backwards and redo it again. So not only did we pay him way too much money, we had to redo everything that he had done and so when you get in that situation, it's really hard to get out of that hole and you know, for me, I just say sometimes you got to take, you know, take a face to the face and keep moving forward, go and go that route. But yes, if you can make 50% returns, you can lose it just as fast.   Michael: Yeah and I think that's so important to remember because I know I'm totally guilty of it myself getting so enamored with these high returns and the big sexy projects and oh my god, how attractive it is and then when things go sideways, you're like, oh, I didn't really think this was gonna happen and you can get caught looking pretty quickly.   James: It's easy to get caught in this business. It's you know, it that's what everyone just has to remember is you got to constantly be refining it. Typically when you're a flipper or developer even a buy and hold strategist, right? You have to change your business plan every nine to 12 months, because the market will change cost of money is going to change market conditions are going to change rehabs going to change and so you have to keep changing as long as you move your chess pieces around and try to forecast it down a little bit. Then that's how you don't get really rocked. But, you know, at the end of the day, bad things happen. Sometimes just things don't go the way you want and you just have to keep moving forward and the most important thing is don't lock up like I back when I was newer. I would kind of lock up and try to figure out how to save the money and get the money back. But then you just waste time and you get bled out by a holding cost because you're paying 10 to 12% for hard money and so you start to be you almost are becoming, you're spending even more money by trying to pick up the money. So for me, I just try to keep it moving for that point.   Michael: Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. It's like almost counterintuitive, but when you look at the math, like numbers don't lie. That's really a really great point.   James: Yeah, you got to look at the whole picture. Like, what were your cost racking and how do you mitigate the risk at the end of it?   Michael: Yeah, love it James. This has been awesome, man. For people that want to reach out to you learn more about your business, learn more about what it is you do, where's the best place for them to do that?   James: Well, first, check us out on Bigger Pockets on the market podcast is an awesome podcast where we talk a lot about a lot of these strategies in forecasting and data, how we change our strategies with data, like what's going on in the market, where do we see the trends are and then the key is the change before they happen and so we talked about it there or you can check us out we do a ton of free real estate education on our YouTube channel @projectre or Instagram @ jdainflips. We were really just trying to get good information out to people. It's not really surfacey like we get we get into the issues like alright, this is what happened. This is what how we're fixing it, and it cost me this much and so we get very, very specific training on our social media pages.   Michael: So it's not just glamour shots of Lamborghinis, and cheques and that sort of thing.   James: Yeah, I haven't got I haven't gotten to that. I haven't got my spray tan all the way on yet.   Michael: In good time and good time.   James: Don't believe what you see on social media. It's no we're gonna show you the glamorous lifestyle of it. Flipping is not easy and we let you guys know what we're doing. I mean, even for us, right? We flipped over. We've been in over 3000 flips, stuff gets asked all the time to it's caught we you just have to work with other investors find out how to fix problems, and the best way you can do that is just communicate with everybody. Yeah, so definitely check us out.   Michael: I love it. Well, James, thank you so much again for coming on and hanging out with me. I really appreciate you.   James: Yeah, no, thanks for having me on, I appreciate it.   Michael: Absolutely take care of we'll chat soon.   All right, everyone. That was our episode. A big thank you to James for coming on super interesting stuff and can't wait to see how they continue to perform in the next six, nine and 12 months going forward. As always, if you like the episode, feel free to leave us a rating or review. We'd love to hear from you and we look forward to seeing on the next one. Happy investing…