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How Curt Davis Built a BRRRR Empire in Memphis | 100+ Homes a Year”

By September 29, 2025Real Estate Pros Show


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Show Summary

In this episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast, host Erika speaks with Curt Davis, founder of Discount Property Warehouse, about his journey into real estate, the unique services his company offers, and the importance of networking and communication in the industry. Curt shares insights on the BRRRR strategy, market trends in Memphis, and the challenges investors face, emphasizing the need for a reliable partner in real estate investing. He also discusses his company’s growth plans and the significance of building strong relationships with clients.

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    Investor Fuel Show Transcript:

    Curt Davis (00:00)
    I was fortunate because I got to learn how to do this business from, I guess you could say, the inside. I was surrounded by people who were doing it. And I had the added benefit of working for them. So I got paid and I was around the environment. For anybody getting into real estate, regardless of what you’re doing, whether you want to be a wholesaler or learn how to do fix and flips and whatever it is, I think one of the key things is you need to surround yourself.

    with actual people.

    who are doing this networking with them.

    Erika (02:02)
    Hey everyone, welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host Erika And today I’m excited to be chatting with Curt Davis. He’s been making serious moves in the real estate world with his company Discount Property Warehouse. Curt, it’s awesome to have you on the show today.

    Curt Davis (02:20)
    Hey, thanks for having me.

    Erika (02:21)
    I think our listeners are gonna have a lot to take away from what you’re doing. So, you know, let’s just jump on in. Can you share with our listeners what it was like getting started in real estate and what interested you to, you know, hop into that world in the first place?

    Curt Davis (02:38)
    You know, when I got interested in real estate, I’ll preface it by saying I was not looking for real estate. I had a friend, I used to be a hotel chef for 11 years before I got into real estate. And it was because a friend of mine moved away and moved to Memphis, Tennessee and got involved in real estate investing. And I stayed in touch with this friend.

    And lo and behold, one day I was offered an opportunity to move to Memphis and come work for my friend. Now, keep in mind, I wasn’t the offer wasn’t come come here and we’re going to teach you how to be a real estate investor. was, hey, we’re looking for someone to kind of be our office manager. And I was. ⁓

    I was very excited to come and do this but I was also very scared because I was doing something for 11 years that regardless of whether the pay was good or bad I did something for 11 years and now was nervous to come do something different but ⁓ I took a chance on my friend and here I am almost 20 years later still in Memphis.

    and a lot has changed since then but getting into real estate investing was probably one of the best things I ever could have done.

    Erika (03:53)
    Yeah, yeah, wow. that was a leap of faith with you starting something new there, Curt. Was there a moment in your journey that you knew this was gonna be your lane?

    Curt Davis (04:51)
    It was probably about four months after I moved here and kind of got going because like I mentioned, I was like the office manager. And then they started to teach me a few things about real estate. about four months in, by that time, I already had started working with clients.

    I learned enough on how to sell the investment properties that our company was selling at the time. And I remember four months in, the amount of money that I made at four months was equivalent to what my whole year’s worth salary was as a hotel chef. And it was kind of about four months in where I knew that things were going to change.

    Erika (05:36)
    Yeah, wow. you know, fast forward to today, you have a lot going on. You know, what kind of advice would you give to someone, you know, just getting started in real estate, having gone through that yourself?

    Curt Davis (05:50)
    You know,

    I was fortunate because I got to learn how to do this business from, I guess you could say, the inside. I was surrounded by people who were doing it. And I had the added benefit of working for them. So I got paid and I was around the environment. For anybody getting into real estate, regardless of what you’re doing, whether you want to be a wholesaler or learn how to do fix and flips and whatever it is, I think one of the key things is you need to surround yourself.

    with actual people.

    who are doing this networking with them.

    mean, you can people can watch videos and read books and even attend seminars and get a lot of great information. And that’s all very helpful. But surrounding yourself by people that you can almost kind of like a mentor type capacity, somebody that you can connect with ⁓ and answer your questions, help you out. really think that that’s that’s a huge, huge part to someone’s success, because a lot of people will get excited about real estate.

    and they’ll go to a seminar and they’ll be jacked up and they’ll be ready to do something but the excitement’s gonna die because they don’t have somebody to connect with or they’re not plugged into some sort of community and if they don’t have that you know unless they’ve got some incredible willpower and stamina to just be a super self go-getter ⁓ for most people the excitement’s gonna wear off and the daily grind is gonna

    get to them. So it’s really important to get plugged in.

    Erika (07:16)
    Yeah, yeah, absolutely. ⁓ you know, you really dove, you know, right in. So here you are today, Curt, with Discount Property Warehouse. Can you share more about, you know, what’s unique about what you do there?

    Curt Davis (07:30)
    So Memphis is Memphis as long as I have been in real estate has been a very relevant market. I’ve seen a lot of markets come and go. ⁓ But Memphis has always been very relevant. Our market is more for the long term buy and hold cash flow type investor. So in there and there’s other companies here that do what we do. But. ⁓

    It’s been a testament that we can still get great deals here. We help investors all over the country buy property here.

    Erika (08:06)
    Yeah, and you have a lot of different services too with helping investors too, correct?

    Curt Davis (08:12)
    That’s correct. what we what I guess if you could say what’s our niche, what do we do? We have a full service system here in Memphis where we where our main focus is doing BRRRR strategy deals. So we help out of state and not just out of state verse. We do have local clients, but a majority of our clients that we work with and help our long distance there somewhere else. ⁓

    and we specialize in doing BRRRR strategies. So we essentially have a full service BRRRR strategy offering program here that we help investors do. So I used to do a lot of traditional turnkey ⁓ type transactions and that was fantastic too, but ⁓ the BRRRR strategy has always been kind of a more popular ⁓

    want from investors. and rightfully so, mean traditionally it comes with a discount based off what the market value is and also they can get into properties usually with less out of pocket than a traditional conventional purchase. So those kind of two main reasons right there are what make from what we see the burst strategy very popular.

    Erika (09:26)
    with

    that full service, I’m sure you’ve noticed some things, whether, you know, it’s investors having certain challenges or maybe like a theme of,

    What have you noticed and how do you help those investors with those struggles?

    Curt Davis (10:17)
    biggest struggle that we found that investors were having is

    You have to look at it from the standpoint of, we’ll have maybe one or two phone calls with clients. And by that time, they’re usually making a decision on whether they want to do business with us. So there’s a lot of trust and relationship building that we have to put in place for someone out of state to feel comfortable to work with us. The second biggest hurdle is they’re not here to watch, to see what’s going on, to drive by their property. So what we have done to try to overcome

    that hurdle and to really give investors a peace of mind is as we have points of contacts for our clients throughout the whole process. whether they’re working with myself or my partner say on the beginning part of the phase where we’re acting as a sales and we’re helping them select properties and that kind of stuff, we’re their point of contact during that phase. Once they have closed on the property and then their home goes into the renovation phase, they now have a different point of contact.

    who will give them periodic updates, provide them progress photos, even sometimes the occasional… ⁓

    video chat walk through at the property. So they have somebody to connect with while their home is in the renovation phase. Once the home is completed and it gets turned over to property management, now they have a contact with property management who they can, you know, what’s, what’s the showing activity been like? What’s the feedback application status, that kind of stuff. So the client has somebody to communicate with through the whole thing. And we have found that that has,

    really put a lot of investors at ease because there’s a lot of companies out there that we’ve heard where they do something similar to this and then the client doesn’t get any communication for several weeks and now they’re starting to get nervous and concerned. We’ve eliminated that.

    Erika (12:17)
    Yeah, having that open line of communication is so important and relationships are everything in this industry too.

    Curt Davis (12:24)
    Absolutely,

    absolutely.

    Erika (12:25)
    And I’m sure another way, as you know, that you can help put people at ease is understanding the trends in the market, Curt. So what are you noticing in the market that you’re in?

    Curt Davis (12:38)
    Memphis has always been looked at as a cash flow market. So unlike other markets where maybe ⁓ is more geared towards retail fix and flips kind of Memphis has always been ⁓ cash flow oriented. ⁓

    years ago nobody ever really spoke about appreciation. They would always look at appreciation as being a positive or a plus if they could get it, but they were never really focused on that. But now with just especially kind of from the time of even before COVID happened, were seeing at least in our market, we were seeing ⁓ low moderate appreciation year after year. So the example that we used to say

    is if we sold you this same house next year there’s gonna be kind of like this automatic percentage higher that it’s going to be and that was kind of a similar trend year after year and then once COVID happened that kind of threw everything out of whack I mean prices were out of control it was

    Unlike anything I’ve ever seen during that time frame the market has kind of stabilized Back to an extent partially because of the higher interest rates that we’ve seen over the last few years But even with all those factors even with higher interest rates and everything like that people are still buying property ⁓ And

    We have not really, I mean, if anything, our business has been picking up in the last several years. We’re working with more clients than ever.

    Erika (14:10)
    Yeah, that’s exciting.

    And with things picking up steam, I’m sure inventory is tight. How do you consistently source high quality deals when that’s going on?

    Curt Davis (15:01)
    Great question. we ⁓ do find some houses on the MLS making traditional offers. So we do get a small percentage of our properties from there. But a lot of it really has been wholesaler relationships and relationships with other real estate agents who are

    investor centric where they get properties and a lot of times they’ll bring them to us before they hit the market to see if we want to put an offer in kind of deal but off-market properties is where we get a lot of them really through wholesaler relationships that we have so we turn down a lot of properties ⁓ and like anything you know our inventory fluctuates so right now we might have a lot of properties available and in a week and a half we might have sold out and so it’s kind of like hey

    we need to slow down on the buying mode because we have so many that we need to sell but two weeks from now it might be we need to put it into deal finding mode because we have clients who are looking for property in our inventory is low so it every it just kind of it like I said like like any business it ebbs and flows ⁓ where the buying cycles at

    Erika (16:14)
    Yeah, and ⁓ with that in mind, you probably have to pivot a lot. you know, every real estate pro has a moment where they had to do a pivot they didn’t expect or maybe a deal went sideways. Can you share one of those moments on your journey, and what you learned from it?

    Curt Davis (16:33)
    ⁓ man, Deal going sideways.

    For us, for what our business model looks like, anything going sideways is going to really kind look in one of two forms. of what we’re doing is burst strategy type stuff. With the system that we have in place, even with the long-term conventional lenders and appraisers and everything like that, for us, investors are going to have the best opportunity for success if they follow the system. Like I said, we do have a system in place.

    It’s when clients want to follow most of the system, but not 100 % of it, is where there’s an opportunity for something to go wrong.

    we see that happen when a house needs to be appraised. So the houses that we sell to clients, we do pre-appraisals on all of them from a licensed third party appraiser. So we don’t make up the market value. We’ve hired that out to a licensed appraiser. So when a client, say for example, may want to go with their brother’s friend who’s a mortgage broker in Timbuktu,

    And

    it comes time for their house to be appraised, we have no idea who the appraiser is going to be. we’ve just that’s where we’ve seen issues. Now, the positive note is that we have a ⁓ pre appraisal in hand so that a lot of times they can use that to contest any lower values that have come in. But thankfully, we don’t really have to deal with this too often, because, like said, most of our clients go with our system. And this is this is the kind of stuff that we try to help them to avoid. So

    So following the system usually results in higher ⁓ success rates so that things like this don’t happen. occasionally we can’t tell a client, no you have to use our lender. I if they want to use their other lender that’s fine. We just have to be prepared that we might have to pivot should your lender not work out.

    so that’s that’s kind of uh… you know if i had to say uh… the biggest pitfall that i could see happening that’s where i’m seeing it happen if it’s gonna happen

    Erika (18:49)
    And Curt, with you guys having those systems in place, I know you’ve seen a lot of exciting growth. So that leads me to ask next, what’s on the horizon with the future?

    Curt Davis (19:02)
    Man, ⁓ our company’s continuing to grow. like I said, have, my partner and I, on average, we’re selling anywhere from 80 to 100 homes per year. There’s a percentage of those that are repeat clients, and then there’s obviously a percentage of them that are new clients to either new to us or brand new investors in general. But, ⁓

    We’re continuing to grow, sell more properties, but we’re also focused on building a property management brand and growing our management company. Our management company right now is currently handling about 250 homes right now.

    We’re really trying to hit the 500 property milestone, hopefully within the next two years. For some people, they might say that that’s an aggressive goal, but in the last…

    This December will be the two year mark of the management company and we’re already at 250. So in another two years, it’s very realistic that we’ll hit that 500 milestone. So that’s what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to grow the property management, give very good customer service, and just really trying to overall improve on our whole process at the same time. We’re always trying to find better ways to serve the clients.

    Erika (20:26)
    Absolutely. With those plants to grow, does that mean you will be going beyond the Memphis market with wanting to double in size?

    Curt Davis (20:36)
    As of right now, we are specific to the Memphis. Now, if you look at where Memphis is at on the map, just south of us is Mississippi and just to the west of us is Arkansas. ⁓

    Great south of us in Mississippi there are there’s ⁓ a few key cities. There’s Olive Branch, South Haven, and Horn Lake. Occasionally we do get properties in that market and then occasionally we get stuff in it’s kind of crazy. It’s called West Memphis, Arkansas. We don’t do a lot over there even though it’s literally on the other side of the river but

    As of right now, we are just focused on the Memphis market. ⁓ Do we have plans to maybe branch out into other markets? It’s possible, but we just haven’t been able to put a lot of focus on it right now just because we’re so hyper focused on doing what we’re doing right now in Memphis.

    Erika (21:34)
    Yeah, yeah. And if, you know, if there’s a lot of opportunity there, then, you know, that’s an excellent strategic move.

    Curt Davis (21:41)
    You know it’s interesting because as long as I’ve been doing this and knowing how many other just individuals and companies who are doing what we do year after year, you would think, these houses got to run out at some point in time. mean, they haven’t yet. So which I guess is thankful. Like I said, has been a very good market in general.

    And it’s very, very important that for people who do invest long distance in general to make sure that you’ve just got a good partner, a good team company that you’re working with that knows the market and has the systems in place, especially if you’re going to put a lot of reliance on them to manage your investment for you.

    Erika (22:26)
    Yeah, absolutely. That’s a decision that can make or break what you have going on.

    Curt Davis (22:31)
    Absolutely.

    Erika (22:31)
    Well, Curt, this has been great. If someone listening today wants to connect, collaborate, you know, maybe they need help with their investing or property management. What’s the best way for them to reach you?

    Curt Davis (22:45)
    I mean I can give out my email and phone correct? Absolutely. You can reach me at by email at CRTDAVIS at gmail.com. You can also reach me at area code 605 310 7929. You can also find us online at discountpropertywarehouse.net

    Erika (22:48)
    Yes.

    Excellent. Well, listen, Curt, I appreciate your time, story and perspective. We need people in this space who are doing things the right way, just like you.

    Curt Davis (23:16)
    We try. We try. We’re not perfect, but we try to get close.

    Erika (23:19)
    I love it. And thanks again for being here. And for our listeners, if you got value from this episode, make sure that you’re subscribed to the Real Estate Pros podcast. We’ve got more conversations lined up with pros like Curt, who are out there building fantastic real estate businesses. We’ll see you on the next episode.

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