From Flips to Cash Flow: Building Wealth as a Full-Time Real Estate Investor

Christian (00:09.081)
Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. We have an exciting guest today. He’s a full-time real estate investor who has mastered the art of cashflow and rentals and profitable flips. So in this episode, we’re going to be diving into the strategies behind finding the best deals, maximizing your cashflow and just overall scaling successful real estate business, which my guest here has done. without further ado, my friend Bradley or Travis, mean, I’m going to that part out. Welcome to the show. My friend, why don’t you just introduce the audience, who you are, your background and just how you got here.

Travis D Sterner (00:40.046)
Great, thank you for the introduction. So I started back in 2017, bought my first place in 2019 or 2018, I’m sorry. And by 2020, 2019, right at beginning of COVID, I actually ended up going full time. Background is engineering, went to school for that.

fell into the career because I like math and different things. I really grew to dislike the career and the career path, seeing people also further along their career, realized that’s not what I wanted to do. Didn’t like the schedule with the pressure and started. First, what led me to wanting financial freedom was a lot of Dave Ramsey, which led me to Bigger Pockets, which got me onto like Brandon Turner’s story, Rich Dad Poor Dad, that same kind of path. I started buying rentals back when no one was really, I’d say, of this new generation.

my generation buying rentals weren’t really doing it in our area. It was really easy to find stuff that no one really wanted and pick it up for really pennies on the dollar. I’ll get into some of these numbers later to be really surprised. But just kept steadily buying while I was working. And then by the time COVID came along, we were looking at a big layoff because I used to work for the state. State was shut down on all their construction projects. And I was like, that’s the writing on the wall. And went private and we never went back.

Christian (01:53.017)
That’s incredible, man. Awesome. So how did you get your first deal? What’s the story on that?

Travis D Sterner (01:57.794)
So my very first deal that I, before I had bought a house to live in, it was actually a foreclosure on some family money, bought it, fixed it up myself and sold it. And then when I ended up selling that and it was just a place for me to live in.

the net profit on that was more than I made all last year. And then the light bulb really went off. I’m like, man, I’m in the wrong field here. It was a foreclosure, fixed it up. It was back in the days, like you used to get betting wars for different stuff. Two people really wanted this location and it sold for basically double what I had into it. And that was great. So I went from there to another owner occupied and then my first true…

Christian (02:19.328)
Yeah, sure.

Travis D Sterner (02:36.672)
investment property was in 2018 and that was off of just Facebook Marketplace and the guy actually sold me on seller financing. I wasn’t familiar with it. And yeah, my first deal was a on my first traditional rental was a seller finance deal. Thank you.

Christian (02:51.384)
Good for you, man. Yeah. And how’s that been ever since? You still doing creative finance? wow.

Travis D Sterner (02:56.204)
I still have that house today. Yeah, so I still have that house today. Yeah, we paid under $20,000 for that house, and it’s been rented for roughly $1,000 a month ever since. Crazy. Yeah. Thank you.

Christian (03:06.946)
Good for you. So I’m curious, man, you know, what, what strategies are you using right now to, to find and evaluate, you know, your rental properties and just the flips that you’re doing right now.

Travis D Sterner (03:18.574)
So right now we do a lot of direct agent and we also do some off market and we’re also buying a lot of wholesale. used to be we would buy primarily just off the MLS and just off of direct seller websites like say Craigslist and Facebook and maybe networking groups. But now we’re doing more outreach more outbound to find those leads or bring them in. We’ll still find off the MLS but we’re reaching out to listing agents and pitching seller finance or pitching cash deal that kind of thing.

investor list we’re on there looking as a buyer not really as a seller but looking for deals on there kind of just multiple streams of leads.

Christian (03:56.569)
Absolutely. Don’t want to be a one trick pony out here, right? There’s multiple ways to get a deal. Awesome, man. So when you’re analyzing a property.

Travis D Sterner (04:03.342)
There’s so many different options. my browser right now, like I even have the penny saver open. Like we found deals in the newspaper. So there’s there’s so many different areas that you could find a deal now. So it’s kind of just a lot of them are free too. So you might as well just look.

Christian (04:12.6)
Uh-huh.

Christian (04:17.93)
Absolutely, absolutely. You put some sweat equity in, Of course, man. So I’m curious, know, when you’re analyzing a property, why don’t you walk us through that process? I mean, what are you prioritizing? Are you prioritizing, you know, your monthly cashflow or long-term appreciation? Like, what does that look like for you?

Travis D Sterner (04:21.932)
Yes, 100%.

Travis D Sterner (04:36.076)
So cash flow first for us here. Your appreciation. Our area doesn’t typically go too crazy under the last few years. It’s been hard to really gauge. We’re just bringing back to market value. So we’re really heavy on cash flow. We want the dealer to pay for itself.

Christian (04:49.952)
Okay, okay, makes sense, awesome. So let’s talk about maybe some mistakes, right? I what are some of the biggest mistakes new investors make when flipping a house and how can they avoid those? Maybe we can talk about some mistakes you made early on in your journey and what you learned from that as well.

Travis D Sterner (05:07.758)
Right, I’d say one of the I tell this to new investors all the time just because you can afford it doesn’t make it a good deal. So don’t be too eager to jump in. mean, I’ve always been you good at taking action, but that can be a blessing and a curse. If you’re jumping into the wrong deal, some deals are not about or some deals are still a bad deal, even if you were to get it for free. And I did I had to learn that the hard way just buying in really rough areas early on and not being able to resell or recapitalize and put in work in places that people didn’t want to live. And there wasn’t like, I’d say think with

Christian (05:12.962)
Yeah. Yeah.

Travis D Sterner (05:37.752)
your exit strategy and you’re also your end buyer in mind either as a tenant or as a home buyer and work backwards from there.

Christian (05:47.288)
Gotcha, gotcha, cool, cool man. So what are some of your go-to financing methods for acquiring and funding your deals right now too?

Travis D Sterner (05:56.182)
Our number one right now, especially with the cost of capital, is solid finance. We’re pitching that all the time if we can. Yeah, that’s first. After that, it’ll be probably DSCR loans and then we also have big lines of credit, so we’ll put on credit and then refinance afterwards, probably into DCNR or with local bank financing.

Christian (06:00.372)
Okay, very cool.

Christian (06:15.746)
Very cool, man, very cool. So why don’t you talk about your operation? I know we haven’t had time to jump into that yet. So what does your team look like? What type of systems, what type of operations do you have put in place for all the stuff that you’re doing right now?

Travis D Sterner (06:31.682)
We use lot of software, we’re big into, we use Stessa for bookkeeping, use RemReady for collections, different softwares, TurboTenant for marketing vacancies, we’re constantly checking into new stuff as well, that helps you really multiply having a smaller overhead if you have some really heavy software, or good softwares that you can use.

As far as the back end, it’s mostly me and my wife and then we also use a lot of vendors. So most of our contractors are subcontractors, 1099 guys, they work for us and other people. So we keep the team small and we also have a good, good roll of decks of contractors and also vendors that we use.

Christian (07:08.632)
Very cool, man, very cool. So what is the big goals for 2025? You’re trying to increase the portfolio, obviously, but let’s talk about maybe some goals you got put right now.

Travis D Sterner (07:18.446)
So increase the portfolio and we want to keep our obviously get grow the portfolio a little bit. We like keeping our margins are like our overall leverage right around 60 50 to 60 percent. We don’t want to be over leveraged just just because you never know what’s really going to happen. We do keep paid off properties in our portfolio and we’ll put credit lines on those or whatever. But we like to have an overall margin of 50 to 60 percent. Just makes us comfortable. And then really we’re trying to do a lot of flips this year. It started off the year we wanted to do 10 but it may look like more like

15 to 20 so we’ll see

Christian (07:51.757)
Yeah, very cool, man. Very cool. So, you know, how are you identifying, you know, potential properties? I know you’re in Pittsburgh, right? But I mean, what to you is a strong cashflow potential deal for you? Like, maybe we can talk about how you break down your numbers.

Travis D Sterner (08:00.355)
Yes.

Travis D Sterner (08:07.598)
So yeah, mean, on dirty numbers, it’s one one percent or plus. So if you can the one percent rule, if we’re getting, you know, say, a thousand dollar rent or a hundred thousand dollar purchase, typically you’re OK. Prices that’s not always cut and dry right now with prices being a little higher for, like, say, insurance or whatever. But if you can do that or better. So if you’re in the one point five plus, usually that’s way enough margin to be healthy and fine on a rental for flips. We’re looking for at least 30 percent margin on the back end.

Christian (08:10.808)
Mm-hmm.

Travis D Sterner (08:35.726)
So 30 % plus in margin on a flip.

Christian (08:35.8)
30 % margin. Okay, cool. And any renovation strategies that you’re using to increase your rental income, your resale value, what kind of renovation strategies are you guys doing right now?

Travis D Sterner (08:49.344)
Everything looks the same. So same carpet, same paint, same trim, same like, almost the same countertops in every way. Yeah, that’s just get economies of scale using the same vendors and buying a lot of the same same kind of stuff.

Christian (08:53.344)
I like it.

Christian (09:01.944)
Cool. Cool. Well, cool, man. Well, I guess, you know, let’s talk about, you know, how, what are you doing right now, how people can work with you, you know, what does that look like for you?

Travis D Sterner (09:14.39)
So we are open to either JV deals or private money lending deals. We don’t really do too much coaching or one-on-one, but if you really want to learn operations and in the areas that we’re in, if you’re interested in looking into possibly building a cash flowing portfolio or getting some hard money out there in flips and kind of getting a backdoor entrance into what we do, just jump in on one of our deals. Show us some private money in a deal and you’ll have an open book to everything we’re doing here.

Christian (09:40.578)
Cool, cool man. Well, how about you share the email, your website, things like that. Obviously our assistant will drop that in our description on YouTube and all of our socials as well, but why don’t you share exactly where they can find you.

Travis D Sterner (09:52.674)
Yes, Arnie Miller of Sterner Homes at outlook.com and our website is sternercapital.com and either one of those, look me up, we’re in the area, Pittsburgh market area, it’s not a big market so should be pretty easy to find. Yeah.

Christian (10:08.568)
Yeah, cool man. Awesome dude. Well, I think that covers all the bases. Honestly, really that we got man. Definitely guys be ready to reach out to Travis. Travis, I appreciate your time today, my friend. Just wishing you all the best in your future endeavors and your business, man. Hoping you continue to thrive. Absolutely, man. All right guys. Well, hope you enjoy today’s show and as always we will see you on the next episode. Take care.

Travis D Sterner (10:25.55)
Yeah, I appreciate it. Thank you.