How One Refinance Turned a House Flipper Into a Rental Investor | Bukola Majekodunmi

Bukola Majekodunmi (00:00)

When I refinanced it, I was shocked. It was crazy. It was like an eye-opener. Normally I make about $60,000, $80,000 on my flips. And on this deal, I was able to cash out $70,000 at a 70% refinance. So I had 30% equity. And I was actually cash flowing $2,200 after CapEx, after vacancy, every single month. And I was like, “What am I doing? Why am I flipping properties?”

Issa Hanna (01:01)

Welcome back to another episode of the Real Estate Pro Show. I’m your host, Issa Hanna, and today we have Bukola Majekodunmi with us. Bukola, welcome to the show.

Bukola Majekodunmi (01:10)

Thank you for having me.

Issa Hanna (01:12)

I’m so excited to have you. A wealth of knowledge in the real estate investing space. You climbed the natural progression, I would say, as an investor: you started off flipping, and you got into rentals, and you’ve developed such a deep knowledge on real estate investing over the years that you’ve decided to help other people. Before we get into that, though, I always find it fun to get a day-to-day for my guests. So give me a day-to-day for our viewers in your world.

Bukola Majekodunmi (01:40)

Yes, my day is very, very simple. It could get complicated later in the day, but I wake up in the morning. The first thing I do is to drink water. And when I take my water, I have it beside my bed. And when I do take it, I take time out to pray. I’m a person of faith. I love to spend time in God’s presence and read my Bible and get myself charged—that’s what I call it for the day—so I can face my day.

And then I do a lot of Pilates. So I go for my Pilates at 6:30 in the morning. I have my Pilates, and if I’m running, I run as well. So if I’m running that day—so I have Pilates day and I have running day. And when I’m done, I take meetings on my advisory services. So I have scheduled my bookings between 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM. And that’s the time I take my calls for people that want help with investing. And when I’m done with that, I go out to the field and my properties, and I’m cycling my properties and going from one property to another and checking what contractors are doing or getting materials.

Issa Hanna (02:39)

I love that. And I always ask you guys, give me a day-to-day because I want to make the point to my viewers, right? When you’re a successful investor, when you’re an investor that’s on top of their game that knows what they’re doing, your day kind of starts off all the same: First of all, spiritually. You’ve got to be spiritually, mentally right if you want to be on top of your business. Exercise: a lot of investors, we start the day exercising because, once again, you’ve got to be physically, mentally right to focus, to have a clear mind and focus. The water—I love that you brought up water. We don’t drink enough water, so kudos to you on the water thing. And then the fact that you’re just on the top and you’re making sure your machine, the wheel that you started spinning, is spinning correctly, no broken spokes—that’s the type of investor you want to be. So that’s why I always start off with that.

Let’s dig into some history, though. You come from an e-commerce background, a finance background, and you did it for a while. So can you give us a story? What’s your origin story? What made you jump from the e-commerce into the real estate world?

Bukola Majekodunmi (03:43)

So my background is in finance. My bachelor’s—my first degree—was in accounting, and then I later did an MBA in business strategy. But my work life has been in finance, and then I moved into product portfolio management. And then when I started having kids—I got married and I started having kids—my first daughter, I looked at her and I had this job that I have to be traveling around the world. My husband’s job travels—we travel around the world all the time for his job. And I was like, “I’m not doing this with this baby.” I looked at her like, “I’m not doing this.” And I was like, “You know what, I’m gonna stay at home.”

And that was how I was like, “What can I do?” And that was how I started my e-commerce business. So it’s a retail store, but it’s online and it’s mainly clothing. And then we had a niche: we would focus mainly on mother-of-the-bride dresses, so for women 40 and above. So that was a niche because it was very competitive in the industry in the US and I needed to find something out that was different from what everybody else is doing. So we found that niche and we were very successful in that.

Transitioning to real estate: we’ve always had properties. When we move from one country to another, we tend to keep our houses, and when we come back to the US, we get another house. So we have quite a few properties with rentals, with people renting it and all that, but not in real estate. So I’ve always—I love design. I’ve always decorated any home that we moved to, because we moved quite a lot. And I wanted to have a home. And we stayed in a lot of Airbnbs like, “I can do better than this.” And that was why I wanted to—I had a lot of money there, and I was like, “I’m gonna just invest in this.” And that was how I started.

But when I started studying it, it was different from what I thought it was. I needed to have a whole depth of knowledge. So I decided to study it myself and take my time. And that was how I started, and I just set up the company, and I started flipping properties.

Issa Hanna (05:35)

I love that. And like I said, the natural progression: you start to raise the capital, to get your feet wet, to learn how to rehab, deal with the inspectors, do the whole nine yards, get that system in place. You’re a businesswoman; systems are universal. You have to have the best systems in place. Flipping when you first get in: best way to establish your systems because you’re doing it quick. You’re going through all these inspections, you’re encountering all these different problems.

And now I want to focus on your strength, and you touched on it a little bit: your vision, right? You have a vision that a lot of people don’t have. And a lot of it comes from the experience you have, but also a lot of it’s God-given, right? So take us into what you’re seeing when you’re coming into these properties. What makes you stand out more and you able to get these properties up and running better than the other investors?

Bukola Majekodunmi (07:03)

Yeah, so we’re talking about my strength and then looking at my experience because you mentioned it. What I found out, what I learned later on in my life, is that I’ve been in e-commerce for 12 years. That was all I knew; that was all I did for 12 good years. I’m known for e-commerce. And when I was going into real estate and being serious about it, I was like, “I don’t know anything in this. Do I know what I’m doing? Are people going to take me seriously?”

And I just went with a leap of faith and started, and I found out that your past does not determine your future. In fact, the very thing that you are is what actually makes you stand out in your new role, in your next chapter. And that defined me a lot because it was a long time in my life and I was making a turnaround and I was scared. And I discovered that what made me unique, what made me special, what actually helped my background was the fact that I was not in real estate from the beginning.

I saw things differently, coming to my strength, and that’s the fact that I’m able to see things from a different perspective: I see property as a product. And when I was flipping properties, I’d sell my houses in two days because I’m creating a product. The first open house—if it’s not two days, then it’s a Sunday: open house on Sunday, Monday I have my contract for all the properties that I flipped. And it was very unique, and the reason is in differentiation. I’m always constantly trying to create a product that does not exist. That someone walks in—if you walk into one of my properties, you’re walking into it and you’re looking in that area and the school zone is zoned to where this is where you want to be, you would take my house before any other house in the market. There’s no other way, because I am very intentional with my design. I’m thinking of the woman that is in the house. I’m thinking of the primary bedroom, the primary bathroom, where I’m trying to create a product that would make them settle and stop looking.

And I always try to tell people that your past is not your limitation; it takes you to the next level. It’s what helps you where you’re going to. And that is my strength: ability to walk into a property and say, “Hey, I see this, I see that,” and nobody else sees it. A lot of the properties that I have worked on are properties that nobody wanted or no investors wanted because they don’t see what I see. And that’s being able to look back and see what can I do—not what the property is right now, but what can it become?

Issa Hanna (09:27)

I love that, because those are the best investors. So I’m going to relate a little bit: former agent, over 250 first-time homebuyers in a very short period of time I had, and it was in the Chicagoland market. When you do that many buyer deals, you come across home flippers all the time. And a lot of them, you know them: they’ll have three or four houses on the market; over the years, you might do four or five deals with them. The ones that are really good and I got to know as an agent, I’d be like, “That’s this guy’s property. His flips are a lot better than other flips.”

So people that have that gift—I mean, you guys are killers in the flip game. And then your knowledge kept building. I keep saying the natural progression, right? Your vision is here; your vision keeps developing. Most recently, you’ve been really focused—and in the future, your future goals are gonna be buying these properties, holding on. You’ve already done it multiple times, and you’re focused on furnished midterm rentals. Can you tell my viewers why that’s such a lucrative market to be in the real estate industry right now?

Bukola Majekodunmi (11:10)

Yeah, so I’m gonna talk about how I was flipping properties and then how it just changed for me. What changed is a turning point in my life. And I decided to do a rental, because I have a lot of people around me that were doing rentals as well. I’m like, “I don’t have any rentals. I think I want to build my own portfolio. Apart from a long-term rental I’ve owned before, but I wanted to do it now that I know a lot about real estate and how to really get a good deal, I’m gonna do a rental.”

And then I bought this property and I did the rental: it’s a three-bedroom, two-bath, and I converted it into a four-bedroom, two-bath. It has a garage apartment. I didn’t convert the garage first; it was just a garage, a rundown garage. And I didn’t convert it first, but I had it in mind to convert it. And when I did the renovation, I had a long-term tenant actually for one year. I hadn’t refinanced it. And then I converted the garage into a one-bedroom, one-bath apartment, and then I refinanced it.

When I refinanced it, I was shocked. It was crazy. It was like an eye-opener. Normally I make about $60,000, $80,000 on my flips. And on this deal, I was able to cash out $70,000 at a 70% refinance. So I had 30% equity. And I was actually cash flowing $2,200 after CapEx, after vacancy, every single month. And I was like, “What am I doing? Why am I flipping properties?”

And that was a turnaround. I’m like, okay. Like I said, my investment philosophy basically is to always look at an investment, not by choosing a property, not by choosing a strategy, but first of all, looking at you: What do I want? What are my goals? What are my resources? What do I have? How much capital do I have? What is the lifestyle that I live? And what risk can I tolerate?

And that was when everything changed, ’cause I sat down, I’m like, “What do I really want? I’m flipping; I have no way I’m going.” And I was able to know what my goals are. I set my goals, and I had a direction. From there on, I discovered that, okay, this is what I did with this property: I was able to convert it from a single-family to a duplex. And I was like, that’s what I’m gonna do. And that changed everything. And that is what I do every single time with a property: I convert single-family to multifamily. But I had a goal. Everything has to align with my goal; I had where I’m going.

And what is fascinating to me with a lot of investors, even before I got to that realization, is the fact that a lot of us, when we want to buy our home that we live in, we’re very particular about what we’re buying. We have detail: how many bedrooms we want, we want a pool, we work from home so we want a home office, our mom comes around so we want a guest room that is dedicated to our mom—we’re very, very, very precise about what we want. But when it comes to investing into real estate, our hard-earned money that we’ve earned and we want to invest in our future, we are only concerned about the ARV: “What’s the ARV? What’s the purchase price? What’s the maximum allowable? Is it a 70% deal? Is it a 60% deal?” That’s what we focus on. We’re not looking at it from—we don’t have a destination: Where are you going? What are you doing? We’re not looking at that: Where do I want to be in five years? What do I need to do to get there?

We start from the property or the strategy. But rather, the investment needs to start with us and work for us. Because the other way around, you’re working, you’re trying to fit that property into your lifestyle. So that’s a mistake that a lot of us made. I was lucky to realize it earlier in my career, and that changed everything.

Issa Hanna (14:43)

100%. It’s like a light bulb goes off in your brain, right? When you realize you’re doing something, you’re killing it in one angle, and then the light bulb goes off and you’re like, “Hold on, what am I doing this for when I can just keep the same money going and just keep acquiring properties and cash flowing?” Yeah, unbelievable. You develop your buyer’s net, you develop your wheel that spins. You don’t have to reinvent it; you just build that wheel and you make sure it keeps spinning with the best operation possible. That’s what you figured out.

And now, like I said, natural progression: when people reach the top of their field, when they know so much, we want to give back, right? It’s the whole reason for this show. We want to educate people, we want to empower people, because real estate is a very empowering thing. Like you said, you had the nine-to-five, great job traveling around the world, but you bought your time back with real estate. You bought a whole different life with real estate, and it starts with having the guts to do it.

So I wanna kinda lean into now some advice for my new people, right? And then I’m gonna have you take the floor and plug your strategy business, because people can hire you to make a custom strategy, custom real estate strategy based on their specific life. But before we get into that, if I was a new guy, right, and I’m like, “Okay, I’m doing it; I’m jumping into real estate.” Business relationships, your network in this game—super important. So if you had to give me advice, I’m the new guy and you told me, “Hey, Issa, you’re getting into real estate. This is how you establish your first business relationship.” What would you tell me?

Bukola Majekodunmi (16:22)

I’ll say focus. Focus, focus, focus. And that is what happens to a lot of people, because they’re all over the place. Because they are looking at the gurus, they’re listening to, “It’s co-living right now.” “No, it’s assisted living.” People are just doing, “It’s STR.” And you need to focus. I always believe that you become an authority when you stick to one thing. Later on you can diversify when you get big, but I believe to actually make an impact wherever you are, you need to be focused. If you know how to do something, keep doing it and you will excel at it. And you will make a mark, people will notice you, and you become an authority in it, and that’s when you’re successful. So that’s the first advice I’ll give to them: get focused, stay on one thing, don’t jump from one strategy to another.

Another thing I will say is: start with you. Start with your life. A good investment is not necessarily the right investment for you. It has to do with what kind of things you have going on in your life right now. Because you can even have a strategy that works for you now, and five years down the line, it doesn’t even apply anymore. You have to continually review your life—not what your friends are doing, not what people in your real estate community are doing. What exactly works for you? How much time do you have on hand? Can you manage a property? Would you need a property manager? How much money do you have in reserve? If you want to have a property, you need to have money for the unexpected; it will happen. You wanna flip a house or you wanna take a hard money loan—how much money do you have for holding costs? Can it sustain you throughout the renovation?

Those are the questions that we need to ask ourselves every single time we’re doing any deal or any property: from the beginning of the transaction to the end of the transaction, before your refinance, before you settle, before you actually stabilize the asset—what exactly do you need? And I’m able to figure that out for people. I work with them to be able to bring all of that together. I work with the investor all through the beginning stage to the last, even before they put their money in. So it’s clarity before commitment.

Issa Hanna (18:32)

I love that: clarity before commitment. Golden words, golden knowledge. Guys, if you didn’t catch it, rewind back because that is the how-to on making money in real estate, right? Get focused, know what you want, know what you’re good at, because there’s so many different ways you can go in real estate. And if you do, you’ll be running around like a chicken with their head cut off, if you will, right?

So now I’m gonna give you the floor because you just shared so much knowledge, so much integrity, so much honesty you bring to the game. I know viewers are going to be at home like, “Okay, how do I get a hold of this lady? I need to deal with her; she’s going to make me rich.” So if they wanted to get a hold of you, they wanted to use your services, how could they reach you?

Bukola Majekodunmi (19:15)

Yes, you can reach me on my website, bukolamajekodunmi.com—it will be in the link. And you can reach me on Instagram as well: @bukola__majekodunmi. I’m on Facebook as well, just my name; you can reach me there. I can help you figure out what makes sense for you at any point in time, whether you’re starting as a real estate investor, you’re starting to buy property, or you have assets already and you need to reposition your assets. So I don’t only do advisory for people trying to acquire; I do asset repositioning, and I also do co-host management and STR management for others. I’m a realtor as well, so if you need help, I can help you buy your property.

Issa Hanna (19:52)

Amazing. Like I said, guys, make sure you get a hold of Bukola because she is a wealth of knowledge in the investing space. She’s an agent, an investor agent. Investor agents—they can really, really help you because they’re not retail agents, right? They understand the game. She just showed you how deep her knowledge is in the real estate game. Bukola, it was a true honor to have you on the show today. I’m truly grateful for all this knowledge. Thank you for coming on.

Bukola Majekodunmi (20:19)

Thank you, Issa. Take care.

Issa Hanna (20:21)

I truly enjoyed the conversation. And to my viewers at home, if you enjoyed my conversation, want to see more like it, make sure to hit like and subscribe. I talk to people every day that can bring us different knowledge on every aspect of real estate investing. Until next time, the real estate pros are out.