From Losing $100K on a Flip to 100+ Houses a Year | Thomas Harr Real Estate Strategy

Tommy Harr (00:00)
I think if you want to get into real estate, just make sure that you know that it is life-changing. My brand on social media is the real side of real estate. It is very hard. It is taxing. You’re gonna have long days, but there is a… It is a very, very awesome business once you figure it out. So get over that one to two year period of learning and failing and… ⁓

because on the other side is like you could literally change your family tree if you allow it.

Scott Bursey (02:00)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host Scott Bursey. And today we’re deep diving into the housing market with a true industry leader. We’re thrilled to have Thomas Harr representing the expertise of real side of real estate and legacy homes. Thomas, thanks for joining us.

Tommy Harr (02:18)
Scott, thanks for having me. I’m super excited to pour into your community and help however I can.

Scott Bursey (02:23)
For those of our listeners who may or may not be familiar with your journey, please tell us how your career began and where you’re at now.

Tommy Harr (02:31)
Sure, I’ll make it short and sweet over a long and short 10 year period. Graduated college in 2017 and became a home inspector with my dad. Started learning how to do construction, started learning from the ground up there and fell into flipping houses from doing draw inspections from banks. So learned that way, saw that those people were making a lot more money than I was and living the lifestyle I wanted to live and started to learn how to flip.

Lost 100 grand on my first flip with my uncle. And then eight years later, we’ve built a pretty sizable business of about 20 employees on staff in Columbus, Ohio here between wholesaling, flipping, $26 million rental portfolio, you name it. So I can hopefully speak at a high level to all those things and pour into your community.

Scott Bursey (03:17)
no doubt it’s going to be a high level conversation. That is quite a journey of how things originated to where you’re at right now. That’s really awesome. So Thomas, to start, what is the single biggest factor you see influencing buyer behavior right now? And how is that specifically shaping the demand for new home construction as you view it?

Tommy Harr (03:23)
Yeah.

Absolutely. Thank you.

Ahem.

Yes, I mean, I look at a lens through like when you say buyer, I think about our wholesaling business buyers, so cash buyers and then also retail buyers on the back end. see those two doing kind of the very different things right now. Our wholesale deals are more or less flying off the shelf. I don’t know if it’s like a first quarter thing. We got people with their new year, new me dreams because we’re wholesaling 15 deals or so a month right now. And people are paying a decent amount of money for these houses that maybe more than I would even pay.

And then the buyer side is a little bit up and down, you know? I mean, I’m in Columbus, Ohio where the first time home buyer price point is in the mid two to low threes. ⁓ And I always say a good product will sell, but you got to readjust your expectations that is not going to be on the first weekend anymore. It’s going to be within two weeks, three weeks, four weeks for that thing to sell and be ready for a request to remedy and everything on that backside because

Buyers are wanting these houses to be perfect. So you have to be a very, very high level and good flipper right now. If you want to make money and you want to stay in the game.

Scott Bursey (04:46)
Absolutely, that’s powerful insight. It really underscores how much the affordability picture shifts with even minor adjustments in interest rates.

Thomas, this has been on my mind since we booked you. Given the current market, where are you seeing the most significant roadblocks right now? Is it supply chain issues, perhaps labor shortage or zoning regulations? And how is legacy homes innovating to maintain its building schedule?

Tommy Harr (06:04)
I think the biggest thing right now is trying to figure out logistics on new laws that are coming in for wholesaling. So trying to figure out how to play within those confines and also just being better than other people. Like get those DMs all the time and the questions like, hey, what are you going to do about them making sure you have to like in Ohio now, you have to tell people that you’re a wholesaler and you have to disclose that you’re going to make money. And as a wholesaler, that should already be part of your sales process. You shouldn’t have to lie to somebody.

about what you’re doing. ⁓ So we got over that hurdle pretty fast and it actually helps us because people are pulling out of the market and they’re like, well, I’m gonna go to a different state. Whereas I think that’s a good opportunity where people are running. I try to dive deeper into those areas. And then as far as like a construction standpoint goes, ⁓ we’re just trying to make our product better than other people. We’re trying to make our houses as perfect as they can be with the budget that we’re allowed and try to…

Make sure we have a good name brand on our side.

Scott Bursey (07:04)
That proactive approach to securing materials ahead of time is absolutely essential. It’s clear that simply waiting for conditions to improve is not an option for successful builders today. Great point.

And if you could walk us through this, Thomas, we’re seeing a big culture shift toward energy efficiency and smart technology in new builds. What specific sustainability features or smart home integrations, I guess, are clients demanding most right now? And how is that changing your standard floor plans?

Tommy Harr (07:41)
I mean, we’re trying to make our houses as energy efficient as possible. We’re mostly on like the insulation side. We’re making sure that we’re doing the best thing we can, especially with like, if we’re doing an existing house, we’re popping holes in the walls, we’re blowing in insulation in the walls. And if we’re gutting a house, we’re making sure we go above and beyond because people do care about that. That extra $100, $200, $300 a month on efficiency is very important. And anything you can do to help put that on the desk.

or the, not the desk, the counter of the house when you’re selling it really will help you sell that house.

Scott Bursey (08:16)
Point well taken. And Thomas, focusing on long-term operational cost savings is definitely the smart play for homeowners. That makes a lot of sense, especially when the initial purchase price is already a stretch for many.

Tommy Harr (08:32)
For sure. Agreed.

Scott Bursey (08:33)
For the first time home buyers looking to enter the market, particularly in the new construction sector, what’s the one piece of advice you’d give them regarding preparation, finding the right financing partner?

Tommy Harr (08:46)
for financing partner, that’s a good question. I think it’s, I mean, just full transparency. don’t do anything really new-bility. So it’s mostly existing houses. So I honestly don’t know the answer to that.

Scott Bursey (08:59)
Sure absolutely and I gotta ask you as well what’s a couple nuggets that you like the audience our listeners to to take away from from your journey right now.

Tommy Harr (09:47)
think what I always try to tell people is you gotta stick to one thing. There’s too many things that you listen to on the internet. Even maybe this podcast, I say I wholesale, I flip, I do rental properties. You need to pick one of them and you need to get really good at it. Learn to delegate those, maybe build a team. Whether the team can be a virtual assistant, it can be somebody you bring on staff, but do it slow. A real business is built over three to five years. So you need to adjust your expectations because when I got into the business,

I thought it was gonna happen overnight and I was just, it hurt me more because I just didn’t know what I was getting myself into.

Scott Bursey (10:21)
Absolutely and on that note looking ahead to the next 12 to 18 months not quite as long as what you described but 12 to 18 months Let’s focus on that. What’s your prediction for the overall health of the residential real estate market? And what role do you see legacy homes playing in that landscape?

Tommy Harr (10:42)
I think that from a microeconomic, like Columbus, Ohio, we’re seeing consistent growth. think people are saying interest rates are not that high. So I think that finding that landscape of first time homebuyer price point, also, so what we found is if you get out of the first time homebuyer price point in my market, which is like 400 to 600, that’s when our houses sit on the market more.

But so we’re going for the first time home buyer price point and we’re also doing some luxury flips So i’m doing stuff in the 700 800 to a million dollar range as well because The people with money are going to get what they want, but the middle is going to get squeezed So we’re trying to figure out what that looks like and have a really good product And I mean, we’ll hopefully flip a little bit over 100 houses this year. So trying to really Take our construction to the next level and keep our systems in order

Scott Bursey (11:36)
Absolutely. Any golden words you’d like to leave with our listeners today.

Tommy Harr (11:42)
I think if you want to get into real estate, just make sure that you know that it is life-changing. My brand ⁓ on social media is the real side of real estate. It is very hard. It is taxing. You’re gonna have long days, but there is a… It is a very, very awesome business once you figure it out. So get over that one to two year period of learning and failing and… ⁓

because on the other side is like you could literally change your family tree if you allow it.

Scott Bursey (12:53)
It sounds to me…

Like the long game is your focus. Apply all your efforts, have good strategic management, and be it in the game for the long haul. Couldn’t agree anymore. Solid perspective, Thomas. It sounds like while there are challenges focusing on quality builds and meeting genuine demand, we’ll keep successful companies like Legacy Homes on track. And that is what we all want. Awesome.

Tommy Harr (12:58)
Absolutely.

Yes, sir.

Thank you.

Awesome, thank you.

Scott Bursey (13:24)
It was just excellent having you here today and Thomas for our listeners who would like to follow your journey or collaborate with you. What’s the best way for them to contact you?

Tommy Harr (13:34)
Yeah, one of the best ways is to head to my Instagram, TommyHarr05. I post YouTubes every Monday and Friday as well. So if you want to learn construction, if you want to learn how to flip houses, use other people’s cash, highly recommend going over there because I give a lot of free stuff away.

Scott Bursey (13:50)
Excellent. And once again, thank you for being on the show. This has been just a great, great conversation. Thank you, Thomas. And for our listeners, we appreciate you. If you got value out of today’s episode, please subscribe. We’ll have more conversations coming up with operators just like Thomas. Until next time, keep your standards high and your vision clear. We’ll see you in the next episode, everyone.

Tommy Harr (14:01)
Thanks, Scott. Appreciate you.