Flipping Houses Without Renovations In 2025

This is episode 2089. All week, we’re going to talk about the five steps to flip a house without renovating it specifically in 2025. Why? It’s because that’s what we’re doing. We’re not talking about how you should buy a parcel of land and make a ton of money in 2025. Why? It’s because we’re not focusing on that because the market is telling us not to focus on that. Are we stopping it all together? Heck, no. Are we buying and selling land? Yes.

Do you know what I would like to talk about?

We’re utilizing the market to mix some dough in a different business line. Yes, Jill? I’d love to.

Why are you already laughing, honey? Do you think it’s going to be funny sentence? I thought you were done, but I didn’t know that was going to go that long.

No radio etiquette on this show in any way. Either one of us.

Actually, that ties into what I want to talk about. Relationships. I’m just kidding.

What would you like to talk about, Jill?

Do you have a good one? Do you have a bad one? Is it saveable? The holidays are stressful. I get it. That’s one thing we haven’t talked about in a while is how many people file for relationship changes. You have like a pricing correction. You might have a relationship status correction that you make in January because we’re not going to do it before Christmas.

Is there a relationship status called pending?

There should be. Here’s my relationship status. Accepting backup offers. This is good. I want to write that down. You’re pending it. I’ll except to backup offers. We got that. All serious, though.

What are the Facebook relationship statuses? I haven’t looked at this stuff in years.

I think it’s in a relationship, probably married, probably single. I think that’s it. They should have like actively shopping.

You know how you can no longer just call things what they are because the world’s changed? I think those are discriminatory. I think it should encompass all the possible relationship statuses that there could be.

It should be under contract. Pending means ring pending.

Your relationship is pending. Every single one. There’s a couple of them. Saying you’re single is not demonstrative enough, like, “I’m freaking single.”

Partnership wanted.

Would you do this deal?

That’s a good one. That’s the best.

What are we supposed to talk about?

Houses. Back to what we’re talking about. I was going to mention that as we record this, we are wrapping up Career Path 10. It was so cool. That’s the Land Academy Mastermind program. I know that last time, you dove hard into explaining to the group in grade detail more about houses, mobiles and other things that we’re working on personally. You have gone back to one of our programs, which is House Academy, and not much has changed. It really hasn’t changed. It’s only a few years old. It’s not like it’s 30 years old, like you’ve been doing deals, but, it’s all pertinent. Good stuff. There’s only tweaks. We don’t have a reason to update anything right now other than go do it, which I guess is what we’re going to talk about.

Selecting The Right Areas For Success

That’s my segue. Thank you. On Monday, we’re going to talk about how to locate or why and how to locate test Zip codes or houses sell quickly. One of the things that we actually learned in Career Path this time is that some people may or may not be working in the right areas just because they’re used to it and they haven’t tested it in a long time. Tuesday, we’re going to talk about utilizing home ownership data, getting all the assessor data in a Zip code that does work. Contacting the owners and ciphering through the ones that are going to sell or willing to sell. That’s actually what’s new.

On Wednesday, we will follow up in sequence there, how Jill establishes a relationship with these homeowners when they get our correspondence, whether it’s an offer or a phone call or whatever. How she establishes a relationship and then move tries to move forward to buy the house under our terms, terms that work for us. That is the magic. That’s what separates us from everybody else and why we have created a ridiculous amount of wealth doing this.

Thank you. That’s it?

Sure. Let’s see how many compliments I get.

I’m sorry.

It’s not a contest.

Your magic is today.

Jill never says, “Wow, you crunched that data so great.”

Your magic is today and tomorrow, Monday and Tuesday. It’s totally complimenting.

I’m not fishing for a compliment. I’m just saying it’s lopsided.

We’ll talk lopsided.

Can you say lopsided anymore? Am I going to offend anyone if I say that?

What’s wrong with lopsided?

I’m just asking.

You say I equidistant challenge. I don’t know.

On Thursday, we’ll talk about executing the actual acquisition and purchasing the ones that fit your criteria. It’s shocking to me how many people don’t actually make a decision after everything works in the deal.

They can’t pull the trigger.

Finally, on Friday, we’ll talk about re-presenting the asset on the internet to sell it. That’s all we do. We don’t create an HGTV show out of it. We don’t renovate anything. There’s a chance we might slap some carpet and paint in there just to make sure that we get that extra $100,000 that we’re after. Anything beyond that, not going to happen. Each day on the show, we answer a question from our Land Academy Member Discord forum and take a deep dive into land-related topics by your request.

Ross wrote, “HI, all. A general question. Are the more experienced among you using the law of quarters, IE, offering 25% market value as per Land Academy 3.0? My feeling is that increased competition in most markets would result in that percentage being too low, realizing, of course, larger parcels would garner higher percent offer prices. The larger question might be, does more competition mean accurate pricing is far more paramount than in the past or am I overthinking it? Thanks in advance.”

The Rule Of Quarters

Yes, you’re overthinking it. The rule of quarters, not the law of quarters, is something that I came up with a lot of years ago before we even created Land Academy. As with many things in Land Academy, it’s stuff we were already doing. I just gave it a name. The rule of quarters is this. You have a piece of property, any type of property that’s worth $100,000 now, you go out on the internet, the internet says, “This thing’s worth $100,000.” It could be a house for land or anything.

We generally offer not as a full-blown, this is how you do a roll, about 20% to 25% of that when it goes out into the universe of offering. You’ve got a $100,000 property, you offer $25,000. The theory is you’re going to sell it for about $50,000 and then the person who is going to either renovate it or clean it up or sell it on terms or whatever has a bunch of leeway to resell it for $75,000. No one ever hits retail. That’s why this works so well.

We are always way below as it’s changing hands on its way up to retail. Way below that price. Ross, here’s the deal. There are a few reasons that people respond to our inquiry about whether or not they want to sell a property. Our favorite one, and it ends up being the one that is probably 95% of the deals that we do, is they’re having a life event.

It’s not about the money or the price. They say something like this, “Your timing’s perfect. I just got your letter. I opened it. We need to move to Boston. My husband got a new job. Yes, we’d like to sell. What do I do next?” They never say, “I got the offer and prices in that.” There’s this perception, and I understand it, and this has been going on since we started Land Academy. This is a very popular topic. “If I price it higher, I’m going to do more deals.” That’s just not the case.

The competition is two things for me. Send out more mail and make sure who is answering the phone is a rockstar and makes it happen. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in this situation. I couldn’t be sitting in this seat and be doing it this many years and not have been in this situation where they go, “I had somebody a month ago offer me. Your offer is $22,000. I had somebody offer me $35,000.” I’m like, “Why didn’t you take it?” “They never called me back.” Maybe the $35,000 is too high,” and you continue on like that. “I’m right here, let’s talk. What are the reasons you think it’s worth more?” Maybe it’s valid, maybe it’s not. Now you have a dialogue and you’re putting a deal together and I can do it. Do you like that?

I do.

Thank you. It’s those things for me, but yeah, don’t ever think it. We have a guy wrapping up Career Path. He’s like, “I almost didn’t send in any mail in the fourth quarter. I was just going to sit back, but I know I got to keep the system pipeline going.” I said, “Yes, you do,” because he had this amazing home run. He bought for $20,000 and sold for like $230,000. I’m not kidding. Ross’s a perfect example of all percentages are out the window. It’s not like he’s going to go back and go, “I under-purchased that. I need to give you more money because I ended up selling it for this.” No, it was just a home run thing.

Ross, I appreciate your question here and effectively no longer talking about you because I get in trouble sometimes. Some people email me back and say, “Do you need to roast me that bad? I’m just asking a question.” Now we’re just talking about the topic. Thank you for asking. Please don’t email me.

Why It’s Not About The Pricing Mailers

I have to follow up. I don’t understand this sentiment. He’s new, so I get it. Ross is new. This is not about him, but this obsession and lust for pricing mailers perfectly kills more careers than anything I know. Get the mail out, send it at a certain percentage, do exactly what I talk about in Land Academy 3.0. The magic happens when the person calls back and a real estate deal is created, which is what’s Jill’s role is in this. Do you have to be Jill to be successful at this and make a ton of money like us? No.

You have to be a reasonable person who is enjoys talking on the phone and enjoys helping and doing transactions. Getting to know other people. Nurturing is a great word. This is so much more than just pricing a mailer, especially with houses. They have a personal situation going on. The more that you foster that and listen and basically act like an amateur psychologist, the more deals you’re going to do.

Real estate is never just about the numbers—it’s about understanding people. When you listen deeply and approach each situation like an amateur psychologist, the deals will follow. Share on X

Will you address this last question, though, that Ross did have? Just to make sure it’s the right information. He’s under the impression that a larger size parcel would have a higher percentage of offer price.

No, that’s actually the reverse.

That’s what I want to make sure that you knew.

If you look at the price per acre on a 40-acre property or all 40-acre properties and all 1-acre properties, the price per acre is going to be much higher on one-acre properties. It’s been like that since the beginning of time. Why? It’s because people have a certain dollar amount in their pocket while they’re walking around and they can only afford X. The car industry learned this a long time ago. As things get more expensive, there’s less of a consumer audience. Volkswagen figured this out a million years ago, so they make the cheapest cars possible. Believe me, they are cheap. They’re not a high-quality product, but they’re the cheapest and they’re one of the largest automakers in the world because of that.

I was just going to say, too, that the bigger goes like your bottle case theory; it’s cheaper when you buy the case. It’s cheaper when you buy the two. It’s the same thing with the acreage. The price per acre goes down as the acreage goes up.

Economies of scale come into play but Jill’s getting bored already. I can tell.

You’d lose me for sure.

Testing Zip Codes And Data-Driven Decisions

This episode’s topic, how to flip a house without renovation in 2025. This is step 1 of 5. Locate and test Zip codes where houses sell quickly. I came up with this topic because it was very popular. Jill mentioned our Career Path class. Career Path is our mastermind high-end class for people that are making a couple of million bucks. They want to make $10 million instead. One of the things that I realized for multiple people in Career Path is that they are beating a dead horse with that market that has recently, let’s say in the last twelve months, gone down in value. True. It has affected the velocity of trading of assets, buying and selling real estate. Why? It’s because there’s just no raw demand any longer.

There are markets in Texas that were just getting huge, significant increases in value because people were moving there from other states, namely California. Like it or not, people move out of California and they move into your neighborhood. That’s just how it is. I have real strong opinions about it, like most people probably reading the show. Whether you disagree or agree with that, we can all agree that increased values in real estate that you own is good. What happened is the people in Texas are not getting the influx of out-of-towners buying real estate even in the last six months. The values are going down and you’re expecting your business to continue to operate the way it’s operated for the last 2 or 3 years with huge success. That’s just not the case.

You got to pivot.

You have to retest and test the Zip codes where these houses are selling quickly. If I do my job right, I utilize the red, green, yellow test in the House Academy and Land Academy. Do away with the Zip codes that don’t work where there’s not a high velocity of trading. More property should be selling in any given Zip code than is listed in each month. It’s flushing out the inventory. If I do my job right, I price and mailer relatively correctly. I get a ton of mail out and Jill gets a bunch of phone calls.

Jill and her staff get a bunch of phone calls. We’re going to do some deals. If I choose areas or don’t look at this at all and just stare at a map on the wall and say, “That looks like a good place. Central Los Angeles looks like a great place to send mail,” nothing’s going to happen. You have to really utilize and test for data, keep your emotions out of it entirely, unlike I do in this show. Just look at the data and feed your phone person.

You have to utilize and test for data to keep your emotions out of things entirely. Share on X

Nobody does it better. I am so appreciative of you.

We’re right-side up now.

Is that good?

We’ve got ten years to make up for, but you’re doing great.

Thanks. Have I told you lately how great your hair looks?

Relationship status, ending.

That is your color.

I’m glad you like it because this is it.

“This is going to be my shirt for the next three days.”

I’ll tell you, right before this recording, Jill and I were a guest on a podcast that originated from India. We talked just like we’re talking now. I don’t think she knew what to do.

It’s true. She’s like, “Who are these people?” Her parents don’t talk like that, I’m sure.

Is this how Americans talk like?

At the end, she half asked us to come back and do another longer format. I’m not sure that’s going to happen.

We call it like it is. You’re reading this show because you probably call it like it is, too. We don’t dance around that topic of her company, whatever it was. It’s holistic. I’m not knocking it. This is great, but I’m just not sure. You got two dingbats from Arizona on that show that really grabbed ourselves our entire lives about our bootstraps and created real estate deals.

Good baths are, otherwise we’re going to tell you the truth. We don’t know how not to. If you’re not sure, join us on a Thursday call is written all over my face. I cannot fake it and I suck at lying.

If we offend you in any way, I understand.

Sorry. All right. Join us next time, where we will discuss step two, how to flip a house without renovations, utilizing home ownership data to contact owners/sellers who are going to sell us their house. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. We are Jack and Jill. Information. And inspiration to buy undervalued property.