How Renovation Delays Kill Rental Returns | Ben Vinson on Faster SFR Rehabs

Ben Vinson (00:00)

I would say the biggest threat is the timeline. If the budget’s built out properly and you expect $20,000 in repair and it’s not done in 20 business days, and you start to bleed out into 30, 60, 90 days later, it’s gonna kill your cap, at least for year one. I think that some of the holds, the biggest things that are issues is you gotta have utility switched over and on. If you have an HOA, you gotta request permission to paint the outside of the house or replace the roof in a timely fashion because they’ll lag 30 days. So those are some of the biggest issues and holds.

Scott Bursey (01:05)

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’re delighted to be joined by Ben Vinson, founder of The House Truth, a consulting practice that helps single-family rental owners run cleaner, tighter renovations. Ben is a Marine veteran who is here to tell us all about his latest venture. Ben, welcome to the show.

Ben Vinson (01:28)

Thanks for having me, I appreciate it.

Scott Bursey (01:30)

It’s awesome having you here, my friend, and I hope our listeners get up to speed. If you could give us the 90-second highlight reel of how your career ignited and where you’re pouring your fuel now.

Ben Vinson (01:40)

My career ignited. I left the newspaper publishing industry in about 2004, went to work for a custom home builder in Lake Arrowhead, California, who happened to be my father-in-law. And the transition from the “everybody can get a loan” era to the cycle of foreclosure started earlier in California than it did anywhere else. So I started procuring contracts with Fannie Mae and with national foreclosure companies to do cleanouts and remodels. Over the course of years, I ended up rolling that into my own company, and we did about 5,000 in Southern California.5,000 properties. And then shifted into restaurant installations, doing equipment installs. Did about 700 of those and that was a three-and-a-half-year run and then I decided to uproot my family and move to Alabama and when i came to Alabama i got hired on to work for an institutional investor on the SFR side and worked there for approximately eight years and decided to open up The House Truth, a consulting company to help the upstart 350-home investors based on the American Housing Act.

Scott Bursey (02:53)

Thank you for walking us through that. How exciting The House Truth In regards to The House Truth your recently launched business, what are a couple core strengths that you bring to the marketplace?

Ben Vinson (03:43)

The inspection process to get somebody from a buy-or-no-buy decision based on a cap rate and being able to fill the gaps between list price and what that cap rate’s gonna be after the repair value cost. And shrinking timelines, which increases their lease money coming in every day on an $1,800-a-month rent is about $59. So that day value can stretch 30, 60, 90 days if the job isn’t run properly. It’s a lot of savings on one house, let alone multiplied over the course of three hundred and fifty.

Scott Bursey (04:18)

I appreciate you highlighting that, Ben. And you have a line that says the house always tells the truth if you know how to look. Taking that a step further, what do most buyers tend to walk past without ever noticing right off the bat?

Ben Vinson (04:33)

I think the easiest miss is a mechanical system, a plumbing system. If you don’t do a sewer cam or check what kind of drain lines there are, the roof sometimes is obvious. But the biggest misses are the higher-dollar items. They can actually blow a scope up before you even start work if you don’t call it out. The first thing I look at is mechanicals, electrical, plumbing.

Scott Bursey (04:55)

What’s the one repair that owners almost always underprice in your view?

Ben Vinson (05:00)

I think the easiest answer to give you right there would be your plumbing. If you’re not doing a sewer cam, you’re making an assumption that’s an unfair assumption and if you’re on a slab, that number’s gonna get real high and you’re gonna underprice it almost every time.

Scott Bursey (05:14)

Ben, you have a patent-pending venture that’s called Eyes on the House. Could you tell us a little bit about that?

Ben Vinson (05:20)

I can give you a high-level view. It is a multipurpose tool, but the primary focus is for a potential investor to take the application to a property they’re looking at buying. They populate the buy price. They populate their desired cap rate, and they go in and video in a certain walk pattern all the items. And through that video, you can get an assumptive line-item scope with bids that may need to be plugged in for bigger ticket items that will calculate and roll up into your cap rate. If you decide to purchase that property, it will also layer out a scope of work for the contractors that you assign the work to. And as that work is completed. Each line-item will be marked off and track how fast the job’s moving and how far ahead of or behind goal you are at. You’ll get a daily report at 5 a.m. That gives you that information house by house, and a report card ties in, contractor by contractor, and worker or superintendent scorecards also tie into that.

Scott Bursey (06:24)

What inspired you to build Eyes on the House?

Ben Vinson (06:27)

I can’t be everywhere. I can’t walk every house. And these smaller investors, some of them are currently doing work, but the 350 startups is what I’m trying to target initially. They’re probably gonna have their own crews that need to learn how to operate and manage a system, manage the progress, manage the lease-ready certifications. This is a tool they can use and it will provide information across all of the platforms needed. So the contractor doing the work, the worker or superintendent doing the work or managing the job. The administrative side of things will get reports so they can track and project appropriately.

Scott Bursey (07:09)

How does having a clear dated record of every dollar change the conversation between an owner and a contractor?

Ben Vinson (07:51)

Well, clear dated and locked on this Eyes on the House app. So once it’s marked complete, it’s locked and stamped as to who marked it complete. So there can’t be any back-and-forth and you don’t have to walk the same lines every time. I’ve done scopes where I’ve had 470 line-items of work that need to be marked complete or not complete. So it’s important to not have to look twice. Every bit of information tells a story. So the contractor knows they have 25% of the job done based on the worker report. And the owner of that property will also know the house is progressing as scheduled. I use a methodology of $1,000 a working day as a projected goal or a successful renovation timeline. Some contractors I’ve worked with in the past far exceed that and shrink that timeline. Others tend to not be on the job and working like they said they were going to. And when you go to verify, you got $200 a day worth of work. And it’ll show they’re lagging behind. On the back end of that job, that will tie into a report card for that contractor and they’ll be ranked. So you can decide to use them now or use them later on after everybody who’s doing the job above expectations. It has all the work they can handle and execute for you in a fast fashion because that’s gonna impact your lease-ready date and the revenue derived from leasing the home.

Scott Bursey (09:15)

And let me ask you this. If somebody’s listening and they’re thinking to themselves, hey, this is somebody that I really like and I find this quite fascinating, what would you like them to know first about The House Truth?

Ben Vinson (09:26)

I’d just like them to book a call so I can have a conversation with them. And I’ve got a link on all my socials and my website. But I’d love to have a conversation with them and ask them what their goal is. Are you looking to build your portfolio fast? Are you looking to build it moderately? Or do you want to do it one house at a time and do it over the course of three hundred and fifty months? I need those answers and I can lay out a plan for them. On how to execute. The options are almost limitless. They can use in-house. They can contract their work out to a contractor and have them self-verify. The lease-ready certification still needs to be done by the owner, or they can talk to me and see if I can build a network out for them and I can manage the projects for them as well.

Scott Bursey (10:08)

Digging in here, what do you see as the biggest threat to a rental owner’s renovation budget right now?

Ben Vinson (10:13)

I would say the biggest threat is the timeline. If the budget’s built out properly and you expect $20,000 in repair and it’s not done in 20 business days, and you start to bleed out into 30, 60, 90 days later, it’s gonna kill your cap, at least for year one. I think that some of the holds, the biggest things that are issues is you gotta have utility switched over and on. If you have an HOA, you gotta request permission to paint the outside of the house or replace the roof in a timely fashion because they’ll lag 30 days. So those are some of the biggest issues and holds.

Scott Bursey (10:45)

Thanks for walking us through that, Ben. Where does The House Truth go from here?

Ben Vinson (10:49)

We’re gonna coach and we’re gonna teach and I’m gonna pass knowledge on to those who desire to accept it.

Scott Bursey (10:55)

Does the work stay one-on-one or does the tool eventually become the business?

Ben Vinson (11:00)

It depends on how the consulting interaction goes. If somebody wants to have an in-house team, there is going to be an Eyes on the House app. And it is a pretty broad spectrum build-out that will give them a lot of the tools they need to be successful and a lot of the reporting they need. It does not deal with contractor payments. That’s gonna have to be something they set up on their own side, but it does dictate. That if a payment is made, it is marked complete and that’s when the job completely closes out. Those records are stored for seven years, two different servers. I’m getting a little bit further into the weeds on Eyes on the House and I’m still building it out. And it’s I’d say thousands of lines of code to date. So they could actually take this tool and use this tool on their own if that’s what they chose to do, Of course, there’s going to be a fee. If they just wanted some consulting, I’ve got a one house three hundred and seventy-five dollar, I will look at your house bid and give you a solid answer and opinions. They could buy a 10-pack or they could use the app on a one-month basis.

Scott Bursey (12:03)

Ben, over the course of your career, what sort of value have you received from being around like-minded individuals?

Ben Vinson (12:09)

I can’t even explain the value. There have been so many mentors and influences in my life from the newspaper publishing industry to today. I have learned from every leader that I’ve ever worked for. Some of the lessons have been fantastic. Some of the lessons have been major disappointments, but I love to fail. And a disappointment is just another failure. And the only way you learn and grow is to fail. So every person I’ve ever worked with or worked for has taught me multiple things.

Scott Bursey (12:40)

Appreciate you giving us a peek down that road. Ben, let’s dive deep. If there’s one habit that saves owners more money on a renovation than any other, what would it be in your view?

Ben Vinson (12:51)

I think my personal feeling is stand in the house or stand in the room and make it too hard for somebody to fail. And that’s kind of simplistic. But if you’re taking somebody’s word, the job is done, and you’re not standing there and verifying it, you’re only gonna hurt yourself. And you have to build a system, my system, your system, whatever it is, make it too damn hard for them to fail, period.

Scott Bursey (13:13)

That is some excellent advice right there, Ben. Pure gold. And really, you have given us a lot of great advice and words of wisdom today. Is there any additional words that you like to leave with our listeners?

Ben Vinson (13:25)

I’m pretty proud of being a youth football coach. So I’d like to bleed into that a little bit if you don’t mind. I’ve done it twice over my lifetime. I’ve got an older set of boys. I was the dad assistant/helper coach for years for them. My youngest son started playing when he was five. I started coaching five- to eight-year-olds and did it for a long run locally. In a Pop Warner-style league. And if I can teach a five year old how to put his pads on, block, tackle, hold the ball, get into a stance, and work as a team, I feel like I can coach anybody. And my passion is just passing on knowledge and coaching and making somebody else successful, and then sitting back and letting that be my legacy and learning from the mistakes I make and allowing them to make mistakes. I am not a superhuman who can give every answer. I am somebody who can give you the tools so you can be successful. So I take that from coaching the five- to eight-year-olds all the way to the 40-year-old superintendent for the first time.

Scott Bursey (14:27)

Love it. Ben, for those of our listeners that want to keep this conversation moving, stay in your lane or collaborate with you on future deals, what’s the best way for them to plug into your pipeline and reach you directly?

Ben Vinson (14:38)

I would offer that they should go to the website, thehousetruth.com, and book an appointment. No charge. I’ll give you 30 minutes. We’ll have a conversation and move forward if we desire to. And I also have free field training newsletters that they can have their team sign up for and they can sign up for and just get once-a-week 10-minute read that gives lessons on what I’ve learned and I’m trying to share.

Scott Bursey (15:01)

Ben, thank you so much for joining us today on the Real Estate Pros podcast.

Ben Vinson (15:05)

I’m happy to be here and thanks for having me.

Scott Bursey (15:07)

It was a sincere honor. And to our listeners, we appreciate you. If you receive value from today’s episode, please subscribe. We’ll be filling your tanks with a lineup of elite guests, just like Ben Vinson, who are accelerating and setting the pace for the rest of the industry. Until next time, keep your standards high and your vision clear. We’ll see you in the next episode, everyone.