From Blue-Collar to Real Estate Success: The Journey

Stephen S. (00:03.118)
Welcome back to the show. We interview the nation’s leading real estate entrepreneurs. You guys are in for a treat today. Welcome back if you’re joining us for a second, third or hundredth episode and welcome if you’re joining us for the first episode you’ve ever listened to. You’re in for an absolute treat. I’ve got Daniel Harvey in the studio today. He is an absolute seasoned investor and plays around in the construction space as well going from

Daniel Harvey (00:03.432)
Thank you.

Stephen S. (00:30.902)
multifamily conversions to where now he’s focused on flipping and we’re going to talk about all things going on in the market today. He’s been investing for over 20 years and is a wealth of knowledge. So just remember before we get into the episode at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers and real estate entrepreneurs, two to five X their businesses to allow them to build the businesses they’ve always wanted to allow them to live the lives they’ve always dreamed of. That being said, Daniel, welcome to the show today.

Daniel Harvey (00:56.514)
All right, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Stephen S. (00:58.974)
I’m super excited to get into our topic. before we do that, could you just share a little bit about yourself and how you got here?

Daniel Harvey (01:05.906)
Sure, I’m a Philly guy born and raised and when I was in high school I went to trade school got really fortunate there got hired by a local transportation company called SEPTA was a union electrician as soon as I graduated so I had a really good job really really early on so I was making money early

My mom is a is is a real estate agent and she knows young guys make the money so she was like why don’t you get involved in in real estate and invest and So I started Investing no, I caught the bug. My first deal ever was a bank owned property bought it for 20 grand Fixed the property up Rented it out for a while. I didn’t like being a landlord at that time

went ahead and sold that property and I sold it for like almost like $90,000. And I was like, wow, like I made all this money in this short period of time. So it just really opened up the flood gates of what was possible. Kind of played around with real estate for a while, buying some properties, flipping them. And I was actually doing pretty good, but I was like kind of doing what felt right without any real strategy. And I was like, wow, you know, if I…

read some books, like I might be dangerous. And that’s when I got serious around 2010. And I decided by 2015 that I would leave my job at SEPTA. So I bought a bunch of rentals at that time. 2015 is when I was when I was when I turned 35 or 2000 and in the 2014 actually. And so I was able to leave SEPTA three days

before my 35th birthday. And so I’ve been a full-time investor ever since.

Stephen S. (03:12.14)
That’s awesome. Yeah, that was one of the things that I had to highlight was, mean, you went from blue collar to multimillionaire and retired, you know, at 34 to do this full time. So is that first deal that you talked about? Is that what really lit the fire for real estate in the first place?

Daniel Harvey (03:26.138)
It is, I had zero interest. I didn’t really know much about it. And just sort of understanding how, or at least getting an idea of how you can create value such a short period of time, how I basically turned 20,000 into 90,000, right? But obviously by doing the work and fixing the property up, I was like, wow, like this is really great.

And so that did really kind of spark the interest. Didn’t really at that time, I still didn’t have any idea that I would be a full-time investor. know, I was raised with that, like you get that good job and you hang on to it for dear life. Ride it out to your 60. And so that was the plan, right? And I was working that plan. But once I saw all the opportunities there,

And I became much more educated and I understood different ways to invest. It opened up my mind to other possibilities.

Stephen S. (04:34.894)
What’s one of the things that’s changed since you first got started? know you were doing multifamily conversions and now you’re primarily focused on flipping, but what’s something that’s changed about flipping from when you started to now in 2025?

Daniel Harvey (04:36.668)
So we’ll you next time.

Daniel Harvey (04:50.05)
so I started investing heavily like 2010. So 2010 is when we had the glut of a lot of the bank owned properties from 2008. So at that point, could buy a property and do a cosmetic rehab and create a bunch of value because the banks were selling them so cheaply. So it didn’t take a bunch of work.

Now you don’t really have banks selling properties really, really cheaply. So you have to do a bigger rehab to really create that equity and that value in the properties. So that’s the biggest difference. I’m still finding some deals that I would call them cosmetic because they’re not the big construction projects that I was doing previously.

But it’s more than just kitchens and bathrooms. It’s leveling, joisting, roofing, exterior. But that stuff, to me, is pretty simple because I’ve done much more aggressive rehab projects.

Stephen S. (06:09.902)
Sure, yeah, I was gonna say it’s not so much full guts, you know, building something completely brand new out of an existing structure. So like, one of the, think a natural follow-up question to that is like, how are you sourcing flip deals right now? Are they on market, off market, through agent relationships? What’s your strategy primarily?

Daniel Harvey (06:13.608)
Yes.

Daniel Harvey (06:28.774)
everything you just said. I’m a big believer in having multiple sources of almost everything, Funding, finding deals, contractors, you can’t just rely on one source. So I deal with wholesalers, those who go out there and market for deals and then resell those contracts.

I use a software that can aggregate properties that are listed for sale. put in certain variables that you’re looking for like flip profit, delta on price per square foot, and it’ll

it will pull those properties out of like the MLS. And then you can use those to go ahead and make and make like automated offers of the software, which really has increased how many deals that I can do. Right. I’m not typing up offers. I can just, I click one button and it pulls in all of my information.

And then I can send those offers out to agents. fact, the last few deals, I just put a deal on the contract. Um, what’s what’s the day when, uh, uh, like yesterday and, it was, it was, it was sight and scene and, and that’s, and that’s how I generally do it. I’ll, um, I’ll just make a bunch of offers. You know, obviously the, the offers, I think that what people think is, and I, and I hit us a lot.

I don’t know if you hear this is if it’s listed on the, on the MLS, it’s probably not, not, not a good deal. And I’m glad people have people think like that because what it does, it gives me the opportunity to make offers and not have all of this competition. And really you just make the offer that makes sense. And if you know, you, you never know what, people are willing.

Stephen S. (08:38.925)
Right.

Daniel Harvey (08:47.09)
willing to accept. But you make the offer and folks will get back to you. So that was an offer I made about a week ago. I actually forgot about the offer. The agent called me, said, hey, you sent this offer out, is that still good? Blah, blah, blah. And yeah, and so we got that locked up.

Stephen S. (09:11.626)
Yeah, so what’s one thing you look for in a flip that just tells you this one’s going to be a home run? What does that usually look like?

Daniel Harvey (09:18.994)
Sure, yeah, just sort of way I look at things is they don’t necessarily have to be kind of home runs They just really need to get things going so like it could be like a single or like double but For me again, I’m preferring that it’s not How’s that falling down? Right? I don’t I don’t want to get caught up in and in and doing a full gut rebuild of the property so I’m looking for more of

special, right? That they might have the green carpet, the pink carpets, the… And another good telltale sign is when you see that, that old towel, like I don’t know who these towels were back in the 70s or 60s, but that towel lasts forever. That’s like, is either like white, I’m sorry. Yeah, it’s like white and black, or sometimes it’s like yellow or some, sometimes I think that stuff lasts forever.

Stephen S. (10:08.888)
Yeah.

Stephen S. (10:15.565)
Right.

Daniel Harvey (10:19.122)
but it’s a good, they’re generally in really good shape and you can do a really good epoxy paint on them and it’ll bring it back to life. So those are deals I like to find and I know that I’ll look for ways to add value generally, obviously I’m looking at kitchens, bathrooms, if I can add a bathroom.

Stephen S. (10:33.87)
Mm.

Daniel Harvey (10:47.858)
If I can finish the basement and add an extra bedroom there legally. So those are the ways that I’m looking to add value. I like that low hanging fruit. Again, back to the grandmom specials, generally those houses are really segmented. So I’m gonna just kind of open them up, do a beautiful kitchen so when you walk in, you just catch it in your eye like, wow.

I want them when they walk in that basically are sold on the house and the rest of the tour is just, you know, let’s just see everything else, but they’ve already sold.

Stephen S. (11:25.026)
Yeah, 100%. Yeah, and you make a great point with that tile. mean, that tile must be like tile and titanium alloy because that stuff just never breaks. It’s insane.

Daniel Harvey (11:31.065)
Yeah

No, no, no, that stuff. if you, and if you have to tear it out, I don’t know if you ever have, it’s like with plaster and it’s this metal mesh that’s in there. mean, they really put that stuff up there back in the day. It’s not like how we’re doing it now.

Stephen S. (11:48.286)
Right. No kidding. So let me ask you this. What’s the most expensive lesson you’ve learned from a bad flip and how’d you bounce back from

Daniel Harvey (11:57.576)
Great question. I should just post or something on this I had a flip I did years ago and I want to kind of set the stage for this so people understand this is shortly after I left my job and I was a a full-time investor I Primarily fund deals with with what’s called private money, right? So just private individuals let me deals that was growing really well. I was getting a lot

Stephen S. (12:21.422)
Mm-hmm.

Daniel Harvey (12:26.876)
deal flow and I was growing really, really well. went from doing probably three, four projects at a time to doing 10 projects at a time. But I was still sourcing the deals, funding them. I was the project manager and I have rentals too. So I was still the property manager. I was wearing all these hats. And I thought I was doing a really good job until I got a phone call from

the code inspector called me up and he was really pissed off. Like, what the heck are you guys doing here? This place is a mess. Everything is wrong, blah, blah, blah. So I’m like, hold on, hold on. Let me meet you on site. Let me see what’s going on here. So I went on, on, on site, walked me through the property and he was right. Like it was trash work. There’s really no way to even, you know, try to make it sound good. And the guy was

pretty reasonable, he was going to actually let me keep some of the stuff. was just like, ultimately, was like, no, I just got to take all this. I’m talking about the plumbing was wrong, the HVAC, we had to take all that stuff out because I wasn’t, I wasn’t really managing them well. ultimately we ended up finishing that project and we put a price it to sell quickly. I put it up, price it to sell quickly on that particular deal. I lost $105,000. But I learned

I learned a couple lessons, and I’ll tell your viewers two of the biggest things that I’ve learned. One is like what got me to the level that I was at was not going to get me to the next level. Meaning me being me doing everything got me to the level where I could leave my job. But if I want to get to that next level where I’m doing 10 projects, 12 projects, there’s no way it was impossible.

that I could do all those things. was no longer a viable strategy. So I had to become a different person. I had to think differently about how that was going to get done. And that actually caused me to change up my whole structure of my business at the time. Secondly, and this is super, super important, is when you’re going to lose, lose quickly. And so I…

Daniel Harvey (14:53.608)
What a big mistake I see people do is that a project like that, they’ll try to price it maybe $50,000 higher than they thought they were going to try to sell it for or whatever. Some number where they’re trying, where they want to try to either limit the loss or get rid of the loss. And all that happens is it just sits on the market and that loss will just persist. So all the interest.

all the upkeep, all of that, it’s just going to take longer to sell that property. And the other thing is that the longer it takes you to sell that loser, it’s going to take you longer to get to the winner. So as long as that’s on your plate, generally speaking, it’s going to be hard to just kind of then move on to the next deal that can actually make you money. So I am a

big, big believer in that if you’re going to lose, lose quickly. Don’t, don’t, don’t drag it out and get tortured.

Stephen S. (15:57.23)
Yeah, 100%. I love both those lessons that you learned from it. Specifically, like what you said there was what got you to this level wasn’t going to take you to the next one. That’s something that, you know, I think you hear the the cliche saying of the definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over and expecting different results. What was that?

What was that season like for you when you were really starting to process that? Like, I’ve got to change things now once you’re full time, you have that loss. What did that look like for you to reinvent the wheel even for where you were at in business?

Daniel Harvey (16:34.034)
Yeah, I mean, again, it was definitely tough because no one wants to lose money. what it did was shine a light on a glaring issue that otherwise, if I didn’t take that loss, then it would have happened at some point, maybe worse. But it made me realize, OK, I need a different structure moving forward. So after I got through all of the projects that I was doing, I just basically shut down for like a few months and researched different ways that people

structure their businesses. How are other people doing this? Right? There’s no need for me to try to recreate something or I’m not coming up with anything novel. How are other people that scaled up, how are they structuring it? And there’s a bunch of different ways I found the way that fit my skill set. And it worked. It worked pretty, pretty well. All right. One was I bought on a

property manager that ran the day to day of the portfolio. And then I brought on a project manager to oversee all of the rehab sites. And then even with that, both of those came learning lessons, right? I had to create processes, right? How do we handle these things? we’re not treating

Stephen S. (17:50.136)
Hmm.

Daniel Harvey (18:03.016)
every tenant, like, like differently, it’s, all the same because you could spend a lot of, you spend a lot of mental energy having to kind of think up, okay, how are we going to, like, what’s the process for like onboarding tenants? Just want to have a, just want to have an onboarding process. This is very little to think about. We just follow it, basically check the boxes done. Same thing. on the, on the project management side, we don’t want to, we don’t want to, rethink this thing every single time.

How do we go about getting our quotes? How do we structure our contracts? How do we do our site visits? All of this stuff, I’m a big, big believer in processes. That’s why big companies do it. It makes things a lot easier.

Stephen S. (18:55.726)
Yeah, you know, it’s often said, you know, you don’t rise to the, oh, what’s that quote? You might, might be able to say it better than me, but it’s like, you don’t rise to the level of your goals and your dreams. fall into the levels of your systems and processes, you know, cause ultimately everything comes through action, right? And so it’s a matter of if you can predictably set up a system or a process to actually get where you want to go, then all you gotta do is run the play.

Daniel Harvey (19:09.057)
yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s great.

Daniel Harvey (19:21.032)
Yeah, that’s it. That’s it. That’s it. And then, and then what happens is too, is as you grow in scale, you generally have to bring on people that are going to be working for you. So you don’t want to, and listen, not everybody’s going to stay and you want some sort of manual module that, that those employees can go to and

see how systems work or else you have to remember how you train everybody else. It’s a little difficult up upfront to get those processes done, but once it’s done, it’s done and you get all that stuff out of your head. A lot of people really live, they live in their head and the problem is people can’t see what’s in your head. And so,

It’s really hard for people to.

Stephen S. (20:20.482)
You did it this way. No, you’re supposed to do it that way. Well, why didn’t you tell me?

Daniel Harvey (20:24.292)
Exactly. Exactly. And then otherwise you have to have just people just have to have really good memories or really good note takers. And it’s just much better if there’s, if there’s a clearly written out process. And what I do is I tell all of my folks like, Hey, if you see like these are living documents, meaning if you go through the property or you’re working or, or something on the property management side, there’s ways that this can be done.

better, let me know. I’m not a bug. I want that feedback, right? If you know, just, you know, just because we’ve been doing it this way, it doesn’t mean that it needs to stay like that. Maybe we need to add something or take something out or simplify whatever the case is. And so, um, you know, just, just if, if you empower them to kind of let you know, Hey, these things need to change. think that’s where you

Stephen S. (21:18.168)
Yeah, so speaking of systems and processes and people that usually don’t have those very down pat, what would you say are some mistakes or what do you just see new flippers doing that just like drives you crazy as somebody that’s been in the game for a while?

Daniel Harvey (21:36.358)
Yeah, I mean a lot of time, well, often they just over, over rehab properties. It’s doing things that are like, yeah, I mean, it’s beautiful. It’s super unnecessary and you won’t get any extra money for it. Yeah.

Stephen S. (21:46.283)
Unnecessary.

Stephen S. (21:51.114)
Right. You didn’t need a mountain in the front walkway.

Daniel Harvey (21:55.048)
No, no, yeah. You know, this is not TV. It needs to be safe. And I’m all about it looking nice and definitely having some pop features. I’ve seen people just go way overboard and it doesn’t fit the neighborhood that you’re selling the property in. And you’re just going to never get that money back. Not having a proper scope of work.

you know, a lot of newer investors think that, you know, you, you you, you get the property, you call this contractor, you kind of walk them through, hey, I want to get this done, I get that done, I want to get this done. And the problem with that process is you have to have a really good memory to tell them everything that has to be done. And they have to be

really good note taker. So if either one of those fell, you’re going to have some problems, right? And especially if you’re having multiple contractors that are walking through, right? Do you really think that you’re going to tell both of these contractors or multiple ones the exact same thing if you don’t have a written scope of work? And if you don’t know how to create that scope of work, then I would recommend

hire a contractor to just create that scope of work, right? Pay them to do the scope of work. Like stop being cheap. You already spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on the property. What’s another couple of bucks? You know, it’s, it’s, it’s weird where people get cheap at, but it ends up hurting them. Right. And then they’re wondering why all these things were left off of, off of the contract. we didn’t think about this. we didn’t think about that. we didn’t. Yeah. It’s because.

If you had that scope of work, you would have been able to think through all those things, and have a very coherent, basically outline for the project. And then it’s very helpful if there’s any misunderstanding with the contractor. It’s like, I didn’t say that I was going to blah, blah, blah. Hold up. We’re hearing the scope of work that we signed on. It’s blah, blah, blah. It’s right. It’s right inside of this scope of work.

Daniel Harvey (24:23.016)
that is attached to this contract, right? So I think that’s big also.

Stephen S. (24:30.102)
Yeah, I totally agree with you on that too, of where people tend to get cheap. It’s just so funny how often times when we stoop down to try and pick up pennies, dollars fly right over our heads.

Daniel Harvey (24:42.248)
Absolutely, often. I mean I I You know, I I also you know mentor people and I do a lot of presentation places and it’s it’s amazing What people skip on and then just get absolutely Destroyed later on it’s like you saved Possibly at the time a few thousand bucks nanos

Now it’s tens of thousands that is costing you, you know, cause you didn’t want to hire the lawyer. You didn’t want to get the engineer. You didn’t want, is like best case you save a few thousand bucks. Worst case it could be, I’ve seen it be tens of thousands of dollars that it costs people. I’ve seen it, I’ve seen it cost people the actual property because they just couldn’t find a way out of the problem. you know, rather than, rather than dealing with the, dealing with the issue.

at the very start.

Stephen S. (25:43.182)
Yeah, it’s that opportunity cost that nobody factors in and oftentimes opportunity cost is way more expensive than the actual cost.

Daniel Harvey (25:49.768)
Absolutely, but sometimes what it is is people just don’t believe it until they go through it just don’t believe you could tell them I tell people I’ve told many people I don’t think that’s a good idea you might think about this and a third and they just think somebody’s trying to sell them something it’s like okay and they have to they have to some people have to feel that sting that pain to know that is real like oh now I see what he’s talking about and I get it I’ve you know I’ve done that on on on some things

Sometimes you just gotta learn the hard way.

Stephen S. (26:21.368)
Yeah, absolutely. So if you had to, last question before we kind of wind down, if you had to go back to the beginning when you first got started, but you were able to take all of the lessons you’ve gathered over the last two decades, what would you do different and what would you do the same?

Daniel Harvey (26:43.026)
What would I do differently? What would I do the same? What would I do differently? I would probably have taken some money off of the table at times, meaning I was just a reinvestor, reinvestor, reinvestor, right? Constantly. That works, but at some point it can become a little risky. Sometimes I think you do need to take some money.

off of the table. And I also would have probably done some more partnerships early. just personally just, I had a bad taste in my mouth from other businesses where I had partners. And so I had opportunities to partner that I didn’t do. And I think that my business would have grown a lot faster with a lot less pressure just on me, right? Cause I mean, I’m the only principal in my business.

Uh, what, what I would have done the same is, um, focus on, uh, what I did when I first started, which was the burr strategy. And that was before it was called the burst strategy. was 2009, 10, where, you know, I bought properties, fixed them up. Um, yeah, they, they gained value, went back to the bank, uh, and, and took out a loan that was greater than the

greater than the value of the debt that I had on it, even though when I first started I was using cash. That was a great strategy. It still can be a really good strategy on the right properties. It’s what allowed me to be able to leave my job when I was 35. So I think that was a really good strategy. I think also I would have continued flipping properties alongside

Just buying rentals for a long period of time I only just bought rentals and I stopped the flipping side of the business because that side of this was just it was so it was So it was so so robust super busy, especially with the conversions. We were doing really big projects doing really Really big burr You know cash outs

Daniel Harvey (29:08.678)
But I think there’s something about just having that business that just creates cashflow, right? Income outside of the rentals that gives you a nice balance.

Stephen S. (29:26.21)
Yeah, for sure. One of the things I want to ask one last follow up to there is you mentioned that what you would have done differently was partnering more in the beginning. What value do you see now that you didn’t see back then that would have been helpful to you, do you think?

Daniel Harvey (29:45.192)
Sure. Yeah. Leaning on other people’s right? So I certainly have, you know, strengths in the business and there’s some things that I could do, but I wouldn’t call them strengths. And so I believe that had I done that earlier, that the business would have, you know, it did well, but I would have went even further. Yeah. So.

So that’s what it is. Mostly was just, I guess, thinking I could do everything, just do everything on my own and a bit of trust issues too.

Stephen S. (30:26.712)
Yeah, for sure. That totally makes sense. Well, Daniel, thanks for joining us today. If anyone wants to learn more about you or what you’re working on, where should they go for that?

Daniel Harvey (30:35.58)
Well, my Instagram page just got hacked, so I give them that right now. It is Dan, the Real Estate Man, won. But don’t go there now. Somebody’s offering Bitcoin. It’s not me. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Stephen S. (30:51.571)
Well, if you want to invest in Bitcoin, that’s fake and it’ll take your money. Go to that page, but let’s wait till he gets it back online for actual real estate.

Daniel Harvey (30:59.784)
Thanks for real estate. On Facebook, it is Dan, the real estate man, and I also have a website by the same name, dot, dot biz.

Stephen S. (31:12.658)
Well everyone go drop him a follow and show him some love from the investor fuel community Hope you enjoyed today’s show and we’ll see you on the next episode. Thanks again for being here Daniel

Daniel Harvey (31:23.144)
Peace out.