I moved around a lot when I was younger. And I’m not talking from state to state or city to city—I moved a few doors down from wherever I was living. I never knew why, and frankly, I never asked my parents. All I knew was that I was with my family, so I went wherever they went.
It wasn’t until years later that I realized my parents were fixers and flippers.
Real Estate Beginnings
We would intentionally move doors down from where we lived because of my family’s familiarity with the area. And it’s here that I eventually learned my first real estate lesson: Buy where you know, not where you think you know.
As a kid, my mom, dad, and I constantly drove around looking at houses. I always thought it was so boring—like, why are my parents paying so much attention to how the yard or the driveway looks? Why are they so obsessed with the trees around the property, or why do they care so much that more than half of the shingles fell off of the roof? Who knew that as I entered my 20s, I would be driving around asking myself the same questions?
My parents loved to find distressed houses. If it had good bones (and sometimes even if it didn’t—whoops, it happens), my parents thrived on the idea of bringing a house back to life.
How quickly and effortlessly they fixed and flipped houses still dazzles me to this day. Vacant lots? No problem. Dad was in charge of the chainsaw, and Mom pulled the rope to take down a wilted tree. My parents were, and still are, some of the most hardworking people I know.
But you know what made me happy, even as a little kid? How happy my parents were to make a house into a home or a piece of property into an oasis for someone else to start their journey. And it’s here that I learned another lesson, this time a life one: Do what you love, and the rest will follow.
There are two kinds of fixers and flippers. The first are those who outsource the work to contractors, and the second are the DIYers who learn…