How Ashley Moody Says You Can Start Finding Real Estate Deals With Just a Phone

Ashley Moody (00:00)
You don’t have to have money to do this. You don’t. You really don’t. Just have a phone, call people, ask them what they want for their property. Find a buyer. If you know somebody looking or have a friend that’s got a loan or has that amount of money in that area, hey, got a buyer. And then just don’t ever short sell yourself, really. Don’t ever put limitations or underestimate yourself, really.

Scott Bursey (01:54)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros Podcast, powered by Investor Fuel. I’m your host, Scott Bursey. Glad you’re with us. Today we have a really unique pro, Ashley Moody, joining us. Starting her real estate career in 2021, Ashley has built a track record specializing in investor partnerships, strategic property renovations, and high-value home staging. She also owns and operates a thriving renovation company that has successfully transformed over 13 homes from top to bottom. Listeners, you can expect to gain strategies on how to navigate complex deal challenges, resolve transaction conflicts, and maximize return on investment through strategic renovations. Ashley, welcome to the show.

Ashley Moody (02:41)
Hey, thank you, Scott. Thank you for having me.

Scott Bursey (02:43)
It is awesome having you here, and to help our listeners get up to speed, please give us the 90-second highlight reel of how your career ignited and where you’re pouring your fuel now.

Ashley Moody (02:55)
My career ignited in 2021 when I became an agent. Then the market shifted pretty quickly, and I became an investor agent through Opcity. Weirdly enough—that’s a weird story—I got investors through there, and I never stopped. And then I started investing. But really, it was just doing renovations for them first, and then getting to where I was making enough money to where I could finally buy my own property and get going in investing.

Scott Bursey (03:20)
Well, thank you for highlighting that. What really caught my attention about you was the way you’ve been able to step directly into high-friction negotiations, resolve contract deadlocks, and keep transactions moving smoothly toward the closing table while ensuring a positive experience for all parties involved. Expanding on that, what is your greatest strength that has allowed your renovation company to successfully complete over 13 homes while maintaining high quality standards?

Ashley Moody (03:51)
Well, what helps with that… are you talking about on the closing side? Is that what you’re saying? My closing ability, really just keeping everybody happy. I take on the headache. Let everybody know the better. As long as I can get it closed correctly for everybody and everybody’s happy, then we’re good. But I take on most of the headache and responsibility—a part of real estate really is taking all that on. So I try to make it as worry-free as possible. I don’t know if that can happen in real estate if you’re an actual, hands-on investor, but we try.

Scott Bursey (04:22)
You’re referring to keeping things cohesive, happy, bubbly, energetic. How do you maintain that standard across every job site when unexpected issues pop up?

Ashley Moody (04:33)
Just love what you do, really. Honestly, just show up and love what you do. And then if something happens, it happens, because it’s going to happen. It’s going to happen. Always prepare for the worst-case thing, because then when the best-case thing happens, you’re very, very happy. And the good always outweighs the bad, always. It really does. Even if it’s just the networking, the people you meet, the people you help… it just really does. It helps a lot. Helping see your community get better—it’s never a bad thing.

Scott Bursey (05:03)
That is a huge takeaway for our listeners right there. Thank you for highlighting that, Ashley. Let’s shift gears here just a little bit. What was one early bottleneck or learning curve you faced?

Ashley Moody (06:03)
I’ve had a home appraise and then lending not go through. That was amazing that they were able to go that far! So I’ve run into things like that, but then I’ve also mostly run into where people will do these contracts here recently—it’s in my ear most—and try to sign them and don’t have an end buyer. Don’t come at me if you don’t have an end buyer! I’m sorry, but don’t—it’s terrible. You have me out there for two weeks, and I’m telling my seller, “Yeah, we’re closing, we’re closing,” and the other side informs me two days before closing that they’re not closing. I’m like, “Well, that’s just awesome.” You’re not getting your money back. But they did a mutual release, I give them their money back, but it’s just things like that. But like I said, that’s another issue that I will then come in and smooth over with the seller. So that’s my headache and everybody else’s. That’s also my cost to bear.

Scott Bursey (06:52)
Where do you see the biggest opportunity for investors today when it comes to leveraging professional staging to maximize resale value?

Ashley Moody (07:01)
God, I think that’s the biggest thing you can do. Just look at the market right now. If you go look at a distressed home in a $500,000 market area, it’s going to go for about $135,000 if you’re doing your math right. If you’re strategic and you want to move it quickly… I want my stuff going within two weeks. If not, then it’ll just be like on a waitlist type thing. But no, I think that helps a lot—just knowing what to do, what unique factors, kind of knowing your buyer appeal, I guess you could say. Kind of keep things neutral, but kind of unique in its own way. Yeah, it definitely helps. It’ll put at least $200,000 on the value of that home, and then you can turnaround and make about $125,000 yourself, if not more. But it just depends on how much material cost you have, the cost of your material, and the connections you have, really. The pricing—that’s the main thing—and the time you have to do it, really. It’s a quick turnaround. If you’ve got a good crew, you could turn around within six weeks.

Scott Bursey (07:59)
What geographical markets are you operating in right now?

Ashley Moody (08:03)
I’m all over Alabama, but really right now my focal point is Birmingham, because that’s where most of my properties are. I’ve got one in East Lake right now that we’re about to renovate and get ready for rent. So yeah, Birmingham—mainly Birmingham. Definitely a very active market right there. People are coming in with these data centers—I forgot to mention that earlier—and Alabama land is really hot right now. So that’s where I’m at with it.

Scott Bursey (08:31)
When you look at that Birmingham market, you touched on material costs and things of that nature. What is the biggest threat right now there in that specific market?

Ashley Moody (08:43)
Inflation, really. Whatever doesn’t ship across the sea. The good thing about that, though, is I like to go to old barns and things like that and refurbish wood. So there are ways around it still. That would be it, because people don’t go and look for other avenues; they just want to go and buy it, so the costs are a lot higher. But if you wanted to actually go out and do it yourself and buy with them, it won’t be as high.

Scott Bursey (09:06)
In your view, what key habit separates investors who seamlessly scale their renovation portfolio from those who sell out?

Ashley Moody (09:15)
Goodness, that’s consistency. Yeah. And then also, slum-lording. And then also you have to be strict about your rental dates and your deadlines. You cannot let people go past the 14th or 15th and not have other consequences put on there. The 5th is like when you’re not going to have to have late fees, but after the 14th, I put it in court because you start that process—because that’s them showing their willingness. But that’s going to be your biggest stagnancy right there: people not knowing how to perform, really. And I know that’s hard, but that’s what market we’re in. That’s what we’re in. If you don’t pay, you don’t stay. That sounds terrible, but it’s true. That’s our reality.

Scott Bursey (09:57)
And what excites you the most about the investment market right there in Birmingham?

Ashley Moody (10:03)
What excites me the most is being able to put myself in a position to get property at the price that people usually can’t buy properties at—they can buy them. That’s my biggest… that’s what I like to do. I like to help people that wouldn’t normally ever be able to acquire properties: seller financing, even help them to get loans, whatever, things like that. That’s what I’m here for. It was harder for me to get a mortgage and things like that, so I had to know the right people and the right avenues. It’s things like that. That’s been the main thing. And then helping people that didn’t realize what situations they had gotten in with certain things, like those segregation… like with the mortgages where they would say like, “Hey, you don’t have to pay it.” I had so many short sale deals off that, and I felt so bad for these people that I helped them fight it. But it was just a lot. That was hard for me. But then again in the end, knowing I could help was better. So even though they had to sell their home, they didn’t lose money and they were able to relocate. So that’s really hard to do, honestly.

Scott Bursey (10:59)
Was there one key moment that propelled you to go from a real estate agent into the investment realm?

Ashley Moody (11:08)
Yeah, seeing the difference in the money! Like, 2.5% to you acquiring the property and making all the profits—a really big difference. Yeah, after so long, you kind of get tired of sitting on the sidelines. You want to join too, absolutely. I was getting tired of missing all the action.

Scott Bursey (11:24)
And if you could take us down this path, Ashley, what does your professional network look like right now?

Ashley Moody (11:30)
I have a very diverse professional network. You can’t just have one. You can’t. I’ve got SubTo buyers, I’ve got creative financing, I’ve got people that sell, I’ve got people that buy, I’ve got regular sellers, I’ve got regular buyers, first-time homebuyers, investing buyers, LLCs… You cannot stay in one avenue right now. If you do, you’re going to kill your business. You will absolutely run yourself into the ground trying to be that. There’s not enough hours in the day to just be… Like, people are so scared right now in the economy to do anything really, that’s not already in this business, and I’m going to be honest with that. Unless they’ve already got to move—everybody’s always got to move, right?—but if you don’t have a reason to move, like a job or anything else like that, you ain’t going anywhere right now. So knowing a lot of different buying hubs and selling hubs… Resimpli is awesome, by the way. A good plug for you guys. You’re welcome, Tyler! So that’s a really good CRM that’s helped me a lot with this. Just every avenue: LLCs, hedge funds, banks, REOs… That helps you help people that, like I said, can’t usually acquire properties to get into them. People think this is a bad, demon-type thing, but it’s really not. It’s actually what helps people get properties. It really is. And OpenDoor is exactly what everybody else is doing, so it’s the same thing. But nobody thinks of it that way.

Scott Bursey (12:56)
Thank you for those takeaways. Ashley, if you could give our listeners just one key piece of advice on how to drive transactions across the finish line, what would it be for you?

Ashley Moody (13:07)
Don’t give up. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. You can always get it past the finish line as long as everybody’s on the same table and everything’s ethical. If not, then there’s nothing else you can do; just have your contracts in order and you’re good. Yeah, and just enjoy the process. Make sure you celebrate your achievements. Don’t be like, “Hey, next closing I’m going to do that, I’m going to celebrate that.” Don’t do that, because you never will! So celebrate all your achievements, seriously, or you can get burnt out. I love it, I really do.

Scott Bursey (13:39)
Appreciate that. And you have given us a lot of good insight on your market specifically, but are there any additional words or key pieces of advice that you’d like to leave with our listeners here today?

Ashley Moody (13:54)
Yeah, you don’t have to have money to do this. You don’t. You really don’t. Just have a phone, call people, ask them what they want for their property. Find a buyer. If you know somebody looking or have a friend that’s got a loan or has that amount of money in that area, hey, got a buyer! So, don’t ever short sale yourself, really. Don’t ever put limitations or underestimate yourself, really. Yeah, ’cause there’s no limits. The mind is a self-limiting tool, and mind can be your worst enemy sometimes. Just go with it and do it. Failure is how you learn, so never be scared to fail.

Scott Bursey (14:30)
That’s some great perspective right there, Ashley. And Ashley, for those of our listeners that want to keep this conversation moving, stay in your lane, or even perhaps collaborate with you on future deals, what is the best way for them to plug into your pipeline and reach you directly?

Ashley Moody (15:28)
Okay, I’m going to give you my number. I have Facebook as well, Instagram, grid, all that. And I’m Ashley Moody as ASHLEY MOODY. And my number is 205-855-9076. You can contact me anytime. If I don’t answer, text me and kind of let me know the roundabout so that way I’ll get back to you. Yeah, or email even. I’m out there, so you’ll see my email is out there. I could say “Google me,” but I won’t do that—that’s hilarious! Other than that, just always have fun with it. Just don’t take yourself too seriously and go for it. Why not?

Scott Bursey (16:00)
Ashley, thank you so much for joining us today on the Real Estate Pros Podcast.

Ashley Moody (16:05)
Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me, Scott. It’s been a pleasure. It truly has.

Scott Bursey (16:08)
Yes it has. Yes it has. And to our listeners, we appreciate you. If you received value from today’s episode, please subscribe. We’ll be filling your tanks with a lineup of guests just like Ashley Moody, who are learning the industry and taking the next steps. Until next time, keep your standards high and your vision clear. We’ll see you in the next episode, everyone.