Transform Your Investment: Why Qualified Inspectors Are Crucial

Dylan Silver (00:00.812)
Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. I’m your host Dylan Silver. And today on the show we have Scott Parker. Scott is the founder, CEO and master electrician of Rhino Electric Services located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana with over 30 years of experience in the electrical industry. welcome to the show.

Scott Parker (00:23.618)
Hey Dylan, thanks for having me, man. I appreciate the invite.

Dylan Silver (00:26.526)
Absolutely, absolutely. And before we hopped on here, I let you know, I always love to hear folks entry point into the real estate or the service space, because no two stories are alike.

Scott Parker (00:38.36)
Yeah, you got it, man. So yeah, I’ve been doing electrical work for about 34 years now. So I was in my early 20s, or right about 20 years old. I was looking for what I was going to do for a living. I come from a blue collar family. My dad was a carpenter. My grandfather was an electrician. My dad’s, one of my dad’s, or two of my dad’s brothers were carpenters and one of the younger brother was an electrician. So I kind of come from a, you know, blue collar family where we like to work on stuff. We like to work with our hands. So.

I guess, man, since I was able to walk, my dad’s had me on some kind of construction job somewhere. And I decided to follow my grandfather in the electrical trade. So when I went to apply for an electrical job, my first day on the job, I literally knew I found what I was going to do the rest of my life. I still learn something new every day. I love it. We started our own business just about six years ago. Due to some reasons outside of my control, my wife’s control, we found ourselves unemployed.

We just started a business. don’t know. I kind of lost my mind. Yeah, that’s right.

Dylan Silver (01:38.86)
And from there, divine intervention. Scott, do you remember how old you were when you got into the electrical trade? 20 years old. So you’re 20 years old, but you’d been in around it for your whole life. At that point, you said a little bit about how you felt right at home. Did you know right then and there this was gonna be your lifelong career?

Scott Parker (01:47.158)
I was 20.

Scott Parker (02:01.228)
I did. First day of electrical work, knew I came home and told my wife now, my girlfriend then, I found what I’m gonna do the rest of my life. I tried working in body shops, I tried working driving trucks and just, you different things. I knew an office job in college wasn’t gonna be for me. It just was. I like to work with my hands. I enjoy building things. I really love troubleshooting electrical problems. That is just what I’m passionate about. Especially if you send another electrician over.

Dylan Silver (02:24.856)
So this is interesting. Yeah.

Scott Parker (02:28.77)
that can’t find it and then you call me. It’s game on, man. I love the challenge.

Dylan Silver (02:33.292)
Let me solve the problem no one else can solve, right? So, you know, I haven’t studied electrical work, but I have studied in and around electrical engineering, I never completed my coursework, but there’s a lot of electrical that goes into that. And let me tell you what, as you know, Scott circuits is one of the most difficult courses that you could possibly get yourself involved in.

Scott Parker (02:35.566)
That’s right.

Dylan Silver (03:00.374)
And so I have infinite respect for all electricians. And to be honest, I feel like of the trades, it’s probably not the lowest barrier to entry and you have to use a lot of, it takes an intellectual to be an electrician. So as you were starting and then as you were growing, is that kind of some of the appeal to you?

Scott Parker (03:21.964)
I think so. I don’t know that I had thought about doing anything else. I did some carpentry work in between school during the summer with my dad. And I enjoyed building things, but it wasn’t what I was passionate about. So the electrical, like I said, it’s the trouble sheet. It’s the problem solving, I think, that I really enjoy. I love it.

Dylan Silver (03:44.792)
to folks who may be listening here and thinking about the problem solving aspect of it, as real estate investors or as real estate operators, I like to say you’re a problem solver, right? What is your real skill set? Yeah, talking to people, yeah. Of course you have to understand contracts and have some familiarity with local ordinances and statutes and so on and so forth, but you’re really a problem solver. So Scott, as you scaled in your…

career as an electrician working your way up to master electrician and you’re dealing with these types of issues. What were some of the growth and the obstacles that you faced and what was it a very clear how to get through them or were there times where it wasn’t so clear?

Scott Parker (04:31.342)
I’ll start at the beginning when I was an apprentice. They opened a VOTEC school in my area, and I immediately got in that class. And one of the things I did, which I guess I got picked on a little bit, I sat in the front of the class, and this is how long ago, this was in the 90s, with a tape recorder, and I recorded everything that teacher said, and I listened to those tapes in my car over and over again.

to make myself learn. And the guys used to pick on me because I would tell them, I’m not going to be a good electrician. I’m going to be the best electrician. And I took it real serious. then as I’ll tell you from learning, you know, starting a business was I started on my own and I quickly found myself, you know, getting some work and I was working during the day. I would estimate in the evenings. I would do invoicing at night. And I found myself real quickly getting overwhelmed, working seven days a week, 12, 14, 16 hours a day.

And so that was one challenge for sure, getting into the electrical space as far as a business owner is concerned.

Dylan Silver (05:28.44)
So you’re working your way through this and at some point in time, I mean you knew from the beginning that this was going to be your lifelong career, but at some point in time did you have an eye set on I’m going to one day be a business owner myself or was this divine intervention?

Scott Parker (05:43.566)
I think divine intervention, but it’s a great question because my mother told me that I was actually born an entrepreneur. very young. I’ll tell you just a funny story real quick. When I was very young, I must’ve been probably less than five years old. I vaguely remember this. I set up a stand at the end of our driveway and I was selling pennies for nickels and the only customer I had was my mother. So it it was probably an unsuccessful business and

I tried starting a car detail business when I was right out of high school for a little while. And I found out during the winter time, not many people wanted their cars cleaned. And so I struggled there. But yeah, I’ve always thought about having my own business. I did work for one company, Solid, for 20 years. And I treated that company like it was mine. I feel like I gave them a lot.

Dylan Silver (06:35.832)
Yeah, mean 20 years is two decades of your time. It’s, you know, in many cases, you know, a quarter of someone’s life or more in some cases. So a good long chunk of time. You know, for folks who might be unfamiliar, you’re a scout in Louisiana. How long does it take for someone to be an outsider? You know, no license at all, not a, you know, not an apprentice, nothing to then being a master electrician.

Scott Parker (07:03.37)
I would say, now there’s some special cases here, but I would say the average electrician, probably about eight to 10 years to reach the master level, to really get, unless they’re just really hard learners and they spend a lot of time in the code book and stuff. So that’s kind of where it took me. I moved up into a journeyman electrical type position pretty quick because I could run conduit and the…

Dylan Silver (07:12.823)
Okay.

Scott Parker (07:31.522)
company I was working for bumped me up to a journeyman because I could run conduit real good. And that’s where I kind of got started. But I do feel like I advanced a little sooner because I missed out on opportunities of learning terminating wire and things like that. So it took me a little longer to get into that. about four or five years to become a journeyman electrician and maybe eight to 10, be a master.

Dylan Silver (07:51.256)
And so for me, selfishly, because I’m really ignorant of the different designations here, master versus journeyman, master means you can have your own crew and basically you can be insured and bonded. Is that the difference here? Explain to the difference.

Scott Parker (08:07.458)
Yes, a master electrician in our area in Louisiana, you’re not actually required to have a journeyman or a master electrician license in Louisiana. They do push it in New Orleans and in Lake Charles, Louisiana. There’s kind of a strong union presence in those two cities. And so they push it there. so, but you know, getting the master electrician was as important to me. It’s something I wanted to accomplish. And I did take tests in some other states.

Dylan Silver (08:31.298)
Yeah, for sure.

Scott Parker (08:36.344)
to get licensed in a few other states when I was working with a company as a, I was their license holder or building cell phone towers.

Dylan Silver (08:44.856)
You know, there’s so many different questions that I have. And I’ve actually, myself, before I got into the real estate space full time, I just kind of on a whim said, I’m just gonna get a plumber’s apprentice license. Different trade, right? But I just see the trades expanding so rapidly and it really being ripe for entrepreneurs to come on in because you have what seems to be a little bit of a void right now with…

with people being apprentices and I think we need more of it. I’d to get your feedback on that. Do you see the trades right now really just being ripe for people to come on in and young entrepreneurs and to make a career out of it?

Scott Parker (09:28.278)
I’ll tell you this, when COVID hit and everybody else at restaurants and hotels and various types of businesses were sitting at home, not working, electricians were freaking booming, man, because people were at home and they wanted things done while they were at home. And I mean, we blew up during COVID. so private equity took note of that. And so you’re seeing a lot of private equity coming into the trade spaces, buying up companies.

especially the trifecta groups, the HVAC, plumbing, electrical type companies. Matter of fact, one of the largest companies in the Baton Rouge area, I just heard yesterday, they just sold, and I’m assuming it’s to private equity. I haven’t had a chance to really research that yet, but there’s a lot going on, man. They saw that we were essential. And when they were losing money on their investments in resorts and hotels and those types of things, they turned that attention over to the trades.

Dylan Silver (10:23.65)
think it’s ripe for innovation and I think people who are able to utilize kind of almost a commercial or retail centric focus, putting the focus on the consumer and bringing that type of modern prospecting techniques, modern communication techniques, transparency, they’re really going to differentiate themselves. And I’m imagining as you’ve grown, you’ve been able to see a lot of that.

And where do you, no one has a crystal ball, right? But where do you see in the next year, year and a half, two years, five years, homeowners, single family, residential homeowners going as far as for any type of work on their homes? Do think that the tools that people will use to reach out will be the same? Is it a Google search you think? Or is it, will there be apps and different ways where people can, you know, submit for bids and so on and so forth?

Scott Parker (11:19.768)
Great question. have spent, we get a lot on Google, but there are constantly innovations and in technology that’s coming. There’s ways to get on Alexa now to find an electrician. You know, so I see things like that. I’ve heard some rumors that there’s going to be some, you know, just in reading about technology, some of the stuff that could be coming and Alexa would probably be a strong one. There is a lot of changes with AI now.

Dylan Silver (11:33.624)
Wow.

Scott Parker (11:48.898)
with chat GPT and these types of things, being able to find a lot of things about electricians.

Dylan Silver (11:54.754)
Yeah, I mean, I can tell you what, Scott, to your point, I don’t know how new this is, but I was using chat GPT to recently yesterday and looking up various people that I knew in the real estate space. And about six months ago, if you did this, nothing would come up. But it was coming up with like a detailed breakdown, even to the point of like their strategy, their exit strategy in the real estate space. So I’m imagining, you know, if I’m in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for what I’m at in

DFW Metroplex in Texas, know, North Dallas, that these are gonna be tools which people will continue to utilize and grow significantly here. But pivoting a bit here, Scott, before we hopped on, you mentioned you have the 10 most common electrical issues. Dive into that for us here. I would love to hear about this.

Scott Parker (12:46.606)
So one of the niches we found, and I’m about to let my secret out, is we have found for us, some electricians don’t like it, but working with home inspectors and realtors, doing the repair work on home inspections. Last year, the numbers that I found in 2024, which is supposedly the worst year in 30 years, in three decades, the real estate market. And so I’m using 2024 numbers according to what I found on the Greater Baton Rouge real estate.

association of realtors that they sold 6,000, I’m sorry, 8,903 houses in 2024 in the greater Baton Rouge area, which is like three parishes. Y’all would call counties, we call parishes. And so I did the math on that. You know, that’s 8,903 possible opportunities to bid on inspection type work. But anyway, it led me to working with realtors when they get home inspections, to be able to guide their clients.

on buying houses when they see the inspection report and the inspector uses things like double tapped neutrals. I’ve created a document for my realtors and their clients to be able to know what a double tapped neutral is. And I’ve added pictures so they can see what it looks like. And I’ve given a description of what it means. And what it normally means is they’ve taken more than one neutral wire and landed on what’s called the neutral bus in the bar where you the white wires, they’ll put more than one under a screw and

what the code calls for now. did it for years. Code calls now, unless the panel is labeled and it specifically says you can land more than one wire on that screw, you can only put one white wire under each screw. So in a home inspection, we would go in and move those neutrals down individually to each screw. And then the other things would be missing GFCIs near wet areas, sinks, kitchens, laundry rooms, outdoors, bathrooms. It is a big one.

Open splices, we find this a lot and what that is saying, there’s open junction boxes and exposed wiring splices in the attic, sitting on the insulation. There’s wire nuts and wire just laying on the insulation up there, not in a box. So splices need to be contained in a box. the other one was double tap breakers. There are some square D breakers that are intended to have two wires connected to them, but…

Scott Parker (15:11.992)
What we like to see, me personally, I like to have one circuit per breaker. And that way, I don’t have a lot of confusion there when I’m trying to label the panel or even try to troubleshoot. And so double tapping breakers means there’s two wires hooked to one breaker, sometimes more than two. The other thing is, and I see this a ton, is incorrect breakers installed in electrical panels. So let’s say the electrical panel is a square D, home line panel. It’ll say HOM.

Dylan Silver (15:16.472)
Mm-hmm.

Scott Parker (15:41.154)
breaker that is allowed listed by Schneider, the owner of Square D, is a Square D home line breaker. And I constantly see people putting GE breakers, Eaton breakers, Siemens breakers in these panels. And it’s not listed for that. So I have seen times where breakers don’t fit properly. And they can be a bit of a fire hazard. If nothing else, definitely could damage your electrical panel and cost you a lot of money to get it replaced.

Dylan Silver (16:11.352)
I probably know this, Scott, but all these issues that you mentioned here, this would cause the homeowner to fail an inspection, right? But would the home still be, could you still potentially find a buyer with these issues? Are these such big red flags that a buyer would say, you know, I can’t do this?

Scott Parker (16:33.262)
It depends on sometimes the inspector on how scary they get on the inspection. But there are some houses that are older that, man, I’ve seen 200 page inspection reports before. The average is probably 60 to 90 page inspections, a lot on the older homes. Most of the investors that I work with don’t get home inspections. They kind of buy, a lot of them buy the houses as is.

And then what I recommend they do before they put the house on the market is spend the three, $400, whatever it is, for a home inspector to come in, do a pre-inspection. Let’s get these things addressed. That way we don’t scare the buyers when they come in, when we turn over to a realtor and we’re trying to sell that investment property, that flip house.

Dylan Silver (17:21.696)
And you know, for folks that are listening and maybe unclear why this is such a big issue, if you if you’re an investor, you would you would understand, know, but if you’re on the outside looking in, you may say, well, it’s an inspection, you find it and then you can remedy it. The issue is, I’m fairly certain Louisiana is the same as Texas. If you find these issues, then they are public. It’s not like you can fix it. And then the inspection report is done. It’ll be out there that this was an issue and that it was remedied. So

You gotta imagine if you’re a buyer and you’re looking at this, even if it was remedied, the fact that there were X, Y, and Z issues in the first place, which is now public and unerasable, could cause you to say, I’m gonna pass on that home.

Scott Parker (18:05.6)
Right. I’ll tell you, there’s many states in our country that require licensed electricians to do any type of electrical work. Well, in Louisiana, if you can say electrician, you can pretty much do electrical work. And I see DIY stuff all the time on these houses, especially these investment type houses. I just see, I mean, crazy stuff. Wires sliced all over the place, wrong size breakers. You know, some people think if a breaker trips in your kitchen on a 20 amp.

breaker, they’ll just put a 30 amp breaker, maybe it’ll, you know, and the wire is not rated for that type of amp.

Dylan Silver (18:40.472)
Scott, you know, talking about these issues here, I’m sure across the your career, dealing with different eras of properties, you must have come across standard issues that come up. you know, without giving away all the game here, Scott, so to speak, if you go from 50s, let’s say to 70s and 70s to 90s and 90s to 2010s, then 2010s to where we are today, 2025s.

Are there sometimes common electrical issues that come up depending on which decade the home was built in?

Scott Parker (19:16.044)
Yes, sir. So from the 50s to the 70s, what I see a lot of is aluminum wiring. There’s many areas in the Baton Rouge. If they tell me usually kind of an area, I usually know there’s probably aluminum wire in certain areas. So aluminum wire, as you know, probably your house is about 55 % more.

you know, potential to catch on fire because aluminum wire, sometimes I see people, they’ll use these purple wire nuts and they sell them. But if you read the special listing, I don’t want to get too deep in the rabbit hole. I’m going to shoot over people’s heads because I’m a nerd that studies this stuff. But I would suggest this when you have aluminum wire in an investment property, the smart thing to do is invest in these little connectors called a lumicons. Get a licensed electrician that knows how to install them. You have to use a torquing screwdriver.

Dylan Silver (19:41.08)
really?

Scott Parker (20:08.514)
But the CSPC, the Consumer Safety Product Commission, which is ran by the United States government, recommends three fixes for aluminum wire. Number one, rewire the house. Very expensive. I mean, we’re talking $25,000 on up to rewire a house, at least. The second is called Copalume. The closest, you have to be licensed and certified to work with Copalume, and the company that runs that rents

a crimping tool to you for $4,500. They won’t sell them. You have to rent them and you have to be certified through them. The closest person to Baton Rouge is in Texas. And so an investor over here would not want to spend money on loom on Copaloon. They just assume rewire the house, you know? So the next thing, the third thing that that the Consumer Safety Product Commission recommends is these Illumicons that I’m telling you. There are some supply houses that carry them. You usually got to order them online.

But what you do is you connect the aluminum wire. You take the aluminum wire off of the device. You put it in this little aluminum con connector. And then you put copper wire from that connector to the device, like the receptacle, the light switch, the light fixture, any of that type of stuff. And then the difference is inside the electrical panel, breakers are listed for copper and aluminum wire. So you don’t have to have them in your electrical panel. So that is.

Dylan Silver (21:28.534)
Now Scott, if I’m listing my house, the home was built in the 50s, is this going to be something that’s flagged on an inspection report if it’s all aluminum with none of these fixes?

Scott Parker (21:38.066)
Absolutely, they’re going to bring it up. I had an investor call me today as a matter of fact that her insurance company on one of her rental properties is not wanting to insure her until she has the aluminum wiring inspected. And I don’t know what they want me to inspect. It’s aluminum wire. It’s there. they make, by the National Electrical Code, you can put what is called a copper aluminum.

device. They’re receptacles that are made for aluminum. What I don’t like about them is aluminum wire as it heats up, it expands and contracts. So it could get loose on that screw on the receptacle. And that’s where we see them burn up. And those houses did not have arc fault protection. In most cases, the panel, the breaker panel is so old, you can’t put arc fault protection in there. You can put arc fault type receptacles. I don’t know if they make arc faults that allow aluminum wire. The second thing I will tell you this real quick is

the two wire electrical system back in the 50s and maybe not quite into the 70s, but the 50s, 60s houses were wired without a ground wire. So there’s only two wires. And so what I see investors do, they go in there, they get their, their flipping crew and they don’t pull a permit or something. They want to change the devices and they take the non grounded, the two prong receptacle out and they put three prong receptacles. And that’s a code violation. There’s no, there’s no, there’s no way to do that and stay within code with exception two.

you can put at the, what they call the head of the circuit, at the beginning of the circuit, you can put a ground fault receptacle, a GFCI receptacle, or you can put a ground fault breaker. Then you can change them to three-prong, and you have to put a little sticker on every receptacle that’s protected by that ground fault that it is a no equipment ground, ground fault protected. So.

Dylan Silver (23:21.954)
So Scott, when investors are doing this, right, and maybe they don’t go with someone who’s licensed, right, and they’re just using their own crew, I’m imagining it’s an unusual spot because if I heard you correctly earlier, you are allowed to do electrical work without a license in Louisiana. However, I’m still imagining that if the city finds that you’re doing things improperly or not up to code, that they can shut it down.

But how would they even know if they’re not on the property? So it’s almost like a catch 22, like don’t get caught. But if you get caught, then you’re going to get shut down.

Scott Parker (23:56.33)
Well, I’ll tell you the dead giveaway is a dumpster sitting in front of a house. So I had an investor friend of mine. I do a lot of a lot of flip houses with him. This guy’s insane. He does like 10 a month, man. He kills me. But uh, he’s, he’s aggressive. Uh, he had one where he put a dumpster out front of the house and an inspector happened to be in that neighborhood and saw the dumpster and just dropped by to see what was going on. They were moving walls. And when you start moving walls and you’re messing with the structure, man, you’re supposed to be pulling permits.

Dylan Silver (24:25.762)
Right. And so at that point, know, the inspector can practically see from the street what’s going on. doesn’t even have to be in the property. And so that gives them, you know, some type of cause, if you will, to say, hey, you need permits for this. We’re shutting this thing down. OK. You know, from there, chronologically, going from 70s to onward, are there still issues or is it are we in the clear if we buy a home after the 70s in Louisiana?

Scott Parker (24:26.19)
and get inspections because you’re messing with the framing.

Scott Parker (24:56.47)
after the 70s. So the biggest thing I see, like I said, is the doubled up neutrals.

Making, so from the 70s to probably into the 80s, there were federal Pacific electrical panels and those are known fire hazards. You just Google it. Google FPE, anybody that’s watching this, if you buy an investment property or something and you got a home that has a federal Pacific FPE electrical panel, you want to get that out of there. That’s not good. Those breakers.

do not trip properly, they did some shady business to get the UL listing on those panels. Also, you want to pay attention to Sylvania electrical panels. They have some that’s called Pushmatic. A lot of those old ones from the 70s. Insurance companies, in some cases, won’t insure a property with those panels. So you want to get those out of there. They used to be panels put in that were called split bus panels. And they would have.

They would be, I’m gonna try not to go over y’all’s head here. The wiring would come from the electrical meter outside into the panel to some lug, some lug connections. And then they would have about six breakers on the top, two pole breakers. So you would have like your dryer, air conditioning equipment, water heater if it was electric, your condensing unit outside, I’m trying to, you know, 220 type stuff. And then one of those breakers would be marked main.

Dylan Silver (26:02.104)
Ha

Scott Parker (26:26.208)
and it would kill the bottom half of that panel. So the panel would be split in two spaces. So that is what you’d see in lot of 70s through 70s and 80s type houses. You will see those types of panels.

Dylan Silver (26:35.224)
So Scott, if you have a home and you’re concerned about this and you do an inspection beforehand, the inspector should know what to look for. But these are kind of niche topics. I’m imagining sometimes an inspector might potentially miss this. Is that something that could happen if you’re doing a pre-inspection beforehand?

Scott Parker (26:54.73)
Absolutely. Absolutely. I got a home inspection from an inspector recently that inspected a home. I needed to go look at this particular house because they had some issues I needed to look at. And there was no main electrical breaker in the panel, in the electrical panel. No main shutoff. You had to turn off over 30 breakers to shut power down to this house. This house was built, new construction, got inspected by a state inspector who obviously overlooked that it didn’t have a main breaker.

Dylan Silver (27:23.949)
Wow.

Scott Parker (27:24.366)
And so the inspector missed that.

Dylan Silver (27:27.298)
This is really, for me listening to this, and I’m a newly licensed real estate agent in Texas, I got my license this week, but different state here, but you hear these things and you think, well, it’s not a one size fits all because you think, well, if I bring an inspector out and I’m selling my home, the inspector will catch what another inspector catches. with some of these, you’re talking differences based on decade, 50s, 60s, aluminum, right? But then you’re talking about Sylvan, different…

brands of companies that could really cause you to fail an inspection or for the home not to be insured. And so it kind of seems like if you want to be checking off all of the boxes, dotting your I’s, crossing your T’s, you might want to have an electrician come out there in addition to an inspector if you really want to be sure.

Scott Parker (28:18.582)
So one thing I would say in hiring an inspector, man, look, don’t go with the cheapest inspector. You know what I mean? It’s just like going with the cheapest electric. You’re going to get what you pay for. Try to find that inspector. That’s, that’s got some really good reviews because I’ve got, I can think of seven inspectors here in Baton Rouge, man, that are very thorough. It’s very, very slim chance. They’re going to miss them. These guys are very thorough. Now some, some realtors don’t like them because they’re going to find everything.

Dylan Silver (28:42.306)
miss anything.

Dylan Silver (28:48.065)
Yeah.

Scott Parker (28:48.27)
and could kill a sale. But we’re trying to protect the body, you know?

Dylan Silver (28:50.656)
In a sense, yeah. You got to protect the buyer and I would imagine that if you bring out, and correct me if I’m wrong here Scott, but in Louisiana, if you pay an inspector like a pre-inspection before the state inspects it, that is not disclosed, that you can pay that for your client to know as a listing agent and then as the seller, hey, what are the things that the state could find? And as long as you remedy it before…

the state does that something that they have to disclose? Do you know?

Scott Parker (29:24.12)
don’t think so. It’s not a bad idea to let them know that you did it. My intent was this is if you pull permits to do you’re updating the kitchen and you’re going to do some rewiring a little bit of you’re to do some update, modernize kitchen because most flip houses, that’s one of the first things they do go in and update the kitchen and make the you want the kitchen to pop that sells houses, kitchens, real nice bathrooms, those types of things. you know, you may be pulling permits in other parts of the country.

Dylan Silver (29:29.174)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (29:50.264)
For sure.

Scott Parker (29:53.902)
So you’re to have the state inspector come in and inspect things. He passes. But before you list the house to sell the flip property, that’s when I would bring a home inspector in just to take a quick peek at everything. Find those things so that you don’t have a buyer come in and you have 30 issues on the house. You can address those while you have your crew there doing the flip to make some necessary, know, caulk windows and things that they might have missed doing during the flip or something. There’s so many things that inspectors find.

Dylan Silver (30:10.613)
I say yeah.

Dylan Silver (30:15.992)
Yeah.

Scott Parker (30:23.15)
cracks in bricks and doors don’t seal properly and some electrical issues. And if you could head all that off and then when that buyer gets their home inspector to come in and inspect it and he only finds maybe two or three things or nothing, then the person has a better chance of, you’re gonna close that deal better.

Dylan Silver (30:42.146)
Right, I think to your point Scott, I’m thinking about it from a Texas perspective. If you can get it resolved before the buyer finds it and you disclose everything, that’s the way you wanna be. Yeah, in Texas you’d have to let them know one way the other. If you’re getting work done to the home, you’re gonna have to disclose that. But if you don’t get the work done and then the buyer finds it and then you have to do the work, then it’s almost like, what else is there wrong with this home? If we found it,

You know, what else is there? But pivoting bit here, Scott, in your career, working with investors, working with, you know, just residential homeowners, or I shouldn’t say just, but residential homeowners who need electrical work done, what have you found has been preferable to you and also to future electricians who are looking at, do I want to work with investors? I want to work?

and more catered to families, what advice would you have?

Scott Parker (31:47.264)
I would make sure that that, I don’t know how you would necessarily do it. You need to make sure that investor has the money to do it. I did some work with an investor that went south on the, I made a mistake. This is what I did. I worked a deal with him. said, look, I will do the job. When you sell the house, you can pay me. Well, the house didn’t, he spent way too much money. The house didn’t profit. He actually lost money and I didn’t get paid. You didn’t have the money. And.

I just had to eat it. I’ve been, I’m still been after him for two years now trying to get paid and he’s like disappeared. So I would, I would carefully look at the investors. Maybe, maybe ask them some questions. How many flips have they done? How, you know, how are they strong in this? I would kind of like be weary of a first time flipper, you know, to, cause they probably haven’t stubbed their toe on a flip yet. And I know there’s investors listening right now going, Hey, I know that.

I know what I did on that first clip is I’m able to work with some that, people that I know that are solid financially. And I’m not that right electrician for every flipper, but we-

Dylan Silver (32:51.692)
You’re a two…

Dylan Silver (32:55.88)
To your point, Scott, I’ve spoken with a number of individuals who talk about their first flip, right? And it’s a learning experience. I’ve heard this term many times, an education, an education, education, right? And so you might not, you may be probable not to make money in your first flip at this point, especially with margins getting lower and lower on these flips. I can speak for DFW, for instance. And so, know, just word of caution to everybody in the real estate space is, you you wanna,

Scott Parker (33:06.711)
I think it is.

Dylan Silver (33:24.568)
have your projections accurate. You wanna make sure that you’re purchasing the property for the right amount and that your ARV and your exit is gonna be correct. Because there’s so much that can come up. As soon as you break down a wall, now you’re finding X, Y, and Z. now I learned if you’re in the 50s, the home could be aluminum. And so with the wiring, there’s so much that goes on. So just do your due diligence.

for sure if you’re a first time flipper. we are coming up on time here, Scott. Where can folks go to get a hold of you?

Scott Parker (33:59.63)
Man, I tell you, I’m 54 years old, so I’m very active on Facebook. You can find me on Facebook at Scott Parker. My Facebook handle, I think, is like Chemo Warrior. I’m a leukemia survivor, so way back when I started Facebook, I called myself the Chemo Warrior. But you can find me Scott Parker from Baton Rouge. My company is Rhino Electric Services. And you can find us on Facebook there as well. I’m also on LinkedIn.

I’m not real, real involved in Instagram, but I do have an account there. I’m looking for some young people to get me involved in Instagram more than I am.

Dylan Silver (34:38.744)
We’ll have to have you back on the podcast here, You’re actually the first electrician that I have had on the show. And I do think it’s a really interesting perspective. We could probably fill up a whole other two episodes with just little things to look out for when you’re looking at homes in different decades, specifically as a flipper or as a new buyer, right? But Scott, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Scott Parker (35:04.76)
Man, I appreciate you having me. I will throw my email address out there if there’s an investor that has a question electrically, want to just bump it by me. It’s scott.parker at rhinoelectric.net. And I’m glad to answer any questions. Just give me a minute. I’m usually working during the day, but I’ll get to you in evening. We’ll get you some questions answered. Dylan, thank you. I appreciate it.

Dylan Silver (35:22.552)
Thanks for coming on, Scott.