Welcome to the only blog dedicated to flipping properties on Long Island

You have found real estate investing education nirvana. Welcome. My name is Bruce Dalis and I have completed numerous renovations and flips over the past five years. Our company not only finds properties, but performs our own renovations and (being RE brokers) sells them. We’ve honed all aspects of taking a property through the entire flipping process, from start to a profitable exit. And I want to share……

Real Estate investing on Long Island is unique and difficult. Between high taxes, crazy filing fees, expensive inventory that is hard to find, it may seem hard to build a successful flipping business here. Not so Grasshopper, it can be done! This series of blogs will help you through the muck and mire of Long Island Real Estate investing.

Like many people working in the various fields of the Real Estate industry it wasn’t my first choice. I went into flipping as a consequence of having been fired. Not only was I let go, but it was from a company my father started and I built (ouch!). After taking six months to lick my wounds, I decided it was time to figure out what I wanted to do when I grew up (I was only a child of 58 at the time).

Clearly, I spent too much time watching the Home and Garden Network in between re-runs of the Brady Bunch, but the thought of flipping houses really caught my imagination; heck, making millions dollars from the comfort of my own home, with my big butt securely and firmly planted in my “Barco Lounger”, and using other people’s money to boot. How could I miss!

My first observation that perhaps this might not be quite so easy was when I was trying to find education on flipping houses. I bought a book that purported to have the “real” formula to successful flipping. The only real success was for the authors, as they gave just enough information to entice you to signup for their $20,000 mentoring course. Oh, and the other peoples money they were pushing was maxing out my credit ‘cards’ (in the plural cuz they advised opening as many cards as you could). Nah.

Then I found a company who’s expertise was teaching flipping on a nation wide basis. They offered a pretty good curriculum, and had one on one phone mentoring, plus weekend retreats for a little brain washing, and responsibility coaches (like you need someone else telling you off, right?). Just donate $60,000 (yes you heard me correctly) and you’re on your way to fame and fortune. Nah. This deserves a second nah. Nah. Also, it occurred to me that I may be better off with a flipping instructor who’s main business was flipping, not teaching how to flip. How about a third one. Nah.

While I was grumbling on how expensive education was going to be, it occurred to me that $60,000 was down payment money. Maybe doing it myself and learning as I blindly went along was the best way to go. I mean, my last company was an electrical manufacturer and contractor, my beautiful wife Fran and I had renovated four of my own houses in ten years, how could I miss (I’ve heard that before)! And that’s the direction I went in. I bought the wrong house, used a ripoff artist of a contractor who only priced change orders in four figures, like a $5,000 toilet, totally missed a small set-back issue, and generally over spent my budget by tens of thousands of dollars.

Fast forward five years, where am I now? Mucho flips later, I am a real estate broker just getting ready to open a new office strictly investor focused. I teach real estate investing at one of the local REIA’s (don’t know what a REIA is? You do need me), I’m a BPO agent (appraiser lite), and I mentor and help new investors. Our companies revenues are in the high seven figures with consistent profitability.

So here is the value of this Flipping Long Island blog. I learned everything the hard way, by screwing up and by doing. I’ve never made the same mistake twice (well maybe once, no twice. Ok, once I did it three times, but never four times). But I did learn much, and my subsequent flips were all profitable (well mostly). Real Estate in NY is different than in most other states and Long Island is different than NY. I am here to show you all the ropes, from a guy in the trenches (hopefully the trench won’t fall in on me) who is mostly self taught, and gets it (finally). Instead of holding you up for a five figure mentoring program if you need that kind of individual help, we work on an hourly basis.

So I hope you will join me every week or so. We will dissect this business we call flipping (dopey name). I’ll take you through every aspect from setting up your business, to finding properties (the hard part), how find other peoples money (a.k.a. borrowing), renovations their pitfalls and the fun of dealing with contractor, pricing and making offers, selling your property, and all the uniqueness that is the real estate business here on Long Island.How can you miss?