Lili Invests Blog

I’d spent almost $60,000 dollars renovating a house and we weren’t even done yet.

Today I'm sharing 13 things I've learned about the house flipping business that you've got to look out for.

#1: Don’t underestimate trash removal costs after your rehab

The first thing on our list is, you don't want to forget about the trash.

We did a crazy amount of demolition in this house, and I seriously underestimated how many of these giant dumpsters we were gonna need.

This dumpster is a 20 yarder and it cost me $345 for a week. 

We've gone through probably four or five of these already. 

So you do the math.

Tip number one: don't underestimate your dumpster bill!

#2: Estimating your rehab labor and material costs

The next thing you want to look out for is being very clear about your labor estimates and your material estimates. 

 So my drywall guys are actually finishing up today with a drywall job.

My drywaller gives me an estimate for labor and I pay that directly to him.

But then ...

Today let's talk about negotiating appliance purchases for your real estate deals.

So I found this guy on Facebook Marketplace selling laundry appliance sets and washer dryer sets.

I don't know how sketchy it is, but apparently he has a warehouse, or a shop, or something with multiple different sets and stuff.

So if we can go get sets from there for cheaper and they’re quality, not just cheap, then that would be good.

But he does say that they all come with a warranty.

Always walk in knowing your "walk away price"

One tip I have for you guys is to always walk in knowing your walk away price.

If I can get it under this, I'll buy it and if I can't I'll walk away.

Because it's just going to make you a stronger negotiator and it's going to help you stick to your budget.

L: Hello, how are you?

A: Good.

L: I'm here for Adam. 

A: Yes.

L: Is that you? I'm Lili, nice to meet you. We were talking on Facebook.

A: Nice to meet you. What were you looking for?

L: I'm looking for some ...

With a quick internet search, you can find a dozen different get rich quick schemes and business ventures that claim you need no money to get started.

One of the strategies you might have come across is called wholesaling real estate and I want to break it down and determine whether the claims of this being a no money needed strategy are really true.

A common question that I get and that I want to answer today is “How much money does it take to get started?”

I could make this super short and say that technically you can get started with zero dollars but that's a big technicality.

Instead, I want to dive into what do people actually mean when they say you can wholesale with no money?

How much money have I spent?

And then what recommendations do I have for you if you have a hundred dollars to spend, five hundred dollars, or a thousand dollars or more to go towards your wholesaling budget?

Wholesaling real estate is the idea of getting a property under contract, and instead of purc...

After weeks of grinding it out, searching for leads, making offers, finding cash buyers, and making videos of everything for you guys along the way, it's time!

So many of you have been with me throughout the entire journey, and you can tell from the title of this post that we made it.

I broke through that wall and got that coveted first deal, and as always I'm here to give you guys all the juicy details.

If you're new here, my name is LilI and I've been documenting my journey from start to finish of trying to get my first wholesale deal.

You can check the link to the entire playlist of me wholesaling a property from start to finish, and hopefully we'll all be able to look back on this first video and see that I actually did get a deal.

A quick definition of wholesaling is when you find a distressed property, put it under contract, and then sell that contract to a real estate investor for a fee.

I've got a ton of videos on my Youtube channel breaking that down even more in depth.

What's up guys, and welcome back to another blog post.

Right now I've got two properties under contract, and I've got some exciting news about what's been going on in my wholesaling business.

But before I get to that, I want to show you guys how I find cash buyers.

I’m going to find those cash buyers, give them a call, share the conversation with you, and see if we get any interest in the two properties I have right now.

What would be ideal is that some of these buyers want to come out and see the properties that I have. 

But even if they don't, I would love to just make the relationship, connect with them, and get them onto my buyers list in case they’ll be interested in future deals that I get.

So the first thing I'm going to do is open up PropStream.

If you guys don't have PropStream, definitely use this link to get a free seven-day trial, and you'll also get a little bit of a discount off of the monthly price if you do decide to keep it.

PropStream is something I use litera...

If you want to wholesale real estate on your path to financial freedom, finding motivated sellers is the name of the game. 

But where should you be looking for them?

Contrary to popular belief, the hardest part of the wholesaling process in my opinion is not finding a cash buyer for your deal but actually finding a motivated seller to begin with. 

And good deals are worth more than gold, especially with the market as hot as it is right now.

Today we're going to discuss what makes a seller a good candidate for a wholesale deal and what lists we should be pulling to find them.

On-Market vs. Off-Market Deals

In the wholesaling part of my real estate investing journey, all of my deals have come from on-market listings.

This means that I found these properties using sites like Redfin and Zillow, and one in particular was a “for sale by owner” sign in someone's front yard.

One reason I really enjoy doing on-market deals is because these deals can happen really quickly.

For exampl...

For those of you who don't know, about five months ago I started my content agency called Li Media, and this is what I do outside of my real estate investing.

Li Media focuses on running people's YouTube channels, and we have a couple of different clients across a couple of different industries.

The same exact way that I run my channel is how I run other people's channels, and I think of it in terms of two things: strategy and services.

Kyle is one of my clients and also one of my good friends that I met back in 2017 in Cape Town. He is a professional pickleball player who’s now a client, and he has a pickleball channel.

So his YouTube channel focuses on how to play pickleball and we were talking about strategy. We were looking at the performance of some of his past videos, talking about future ideas, and some of the brand deals that I'm helping him to secure for his channel.

All of that falls under the strategy umbrella.

We also have a services umbrella, where we have a team of ...

Today I'm making a new pitch deck for a commercial real estate project. Hopefully, in the next week or two we'll have a good financial forecast and start having meetings with investors to raise money to buy a commercial real estate property.

So when I say we're doing the new pitch deck, what does that look like?

It’s a presentation outlining the idea, the feasibility, who the team is, why it's a good opportunity, that type of thing.

Now to give you guys a little bit more insight into what we’re working on and why we're approaching things in the way that we are, we have to talk about the difference between residential real estate which is what I was doing and Commercial Real Estate which is what I'm looking to move into.

Residential Properties

So in residential real estate, you find the value of a residential property by looking at comparable homes.

So if I have a three bedroom, two bathroom, built in 2001 and it's in similar condition as a three bedroom, two bathroom, built in...

In today's blog post, I'm gonna share my thoughts on LLCs, specifically when it comes to wholesaling real estate. 

One of the most common questions that I get is whether or not you should set up your LLC before you start wholesaling real estate.

And while what I say here today is based on my own research, my own experience, and my conversations with my CPA, I am not a financial advisor.

And so anything I say here should not be taken as personal financial advice. You should definitely consult a professional for that.

There are a ton of different ways that LLCs and other business entities can be utilized for wholesaling.

If you're not familiar with what wholesaling is, it's the process of getting a property under contract with a motivated seller and then selling or assigning that property to a cash buyer for a fee.

There are different rules and regulations depending on what state you're wholesaling in.

We'll talk about whether or not you actually need an LLC to get started wholesa...

What's up guys and welcome back. This blog is where I document my real estate investing journey and bring you along with me.

Today I'm revealing 15 real estate side hustles that you can do part time.

Not only are these jobs in super high demand, but they also pay pretty well. And I'm going to show you how to use these side hustles as a way to get your foot in the door and become a full-time real estate investor yourself.

Today, I'm going to tell you exactly what you would be responsible for if you were working with an investor to do some of these jobs.

I'm also going to tell you how easy it is to get started doing that side hustle, how much money you could make, and what type of time commitment you might need.

Side Hustle #1: Project Estimator

So one thing I do as an investor is break any big rehab projects up into three phases. 

So at the start of phase one, I'll have all of my estimates for phase one and all of my contractors hired. 

Then, as we're approaching phase two, I'll...