How to Flip Distressed Homes and Revitalize Forgotten Neighborhoods

Troy McAllister (00:00)
We see a distressed property. look at this property, you can look at this property like, wow, this property needs a lot of help. You can see some of the properties. I wish I could show you some of the properties before and after. You can maybe go on my Facebook page, whatever, and see some of the properties that we’ve done. You would think that it had no chance of looking the way it looked. So seeing those properties come to life, those are some of the gratifications that I get, my partner and I, get. Seeing those properties.

come alive and then when once we sell it to sell it to a potential owner and those the kids come in there the their family come in there and see those property see they see they they whole life change from where they were before and how they’re they light up when they go into property and and seeing them close on the property and having they’re excited about being in the property from where it was that brings me joy that that’s a satification satisfying ⁓

act that I love about doing what I do.

Michelle Kesil (02:34)
Hey everybody, welcome to the Real Estate Pros Podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil Today I’m joined by someone I’m looking forward to chatting with, Troy McAllister, who is a co-founder of Blueprint Acquisitions, doing real estate investing for distressed homes. So excited to have you here today, Troy.

Troy McAllister (02:56)
Thank you. Thank you, Michelle. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. Thank you. I’m looking forward to joining you guys. I’ve been excited all week. Thank you very much.

Michelle Kesil (03:04)
Awesome, let’s dive in. So first off, for those not familiar with your work, can you share what your main focus is these days?

Troy McAllister (03:11)
Yeah, my main focus is single family homes. As we mentioned before, my partner and I, we are here in Texas, Houston to be exact, and we focus on more of the single family home where we go into.

the underprivileged neighborhoods and work with those neighborhoods to bring them up and bring them to put more life in them. We would love to put life into those neighborhoods. And we’ve remodeled and even built some from ground up where we was able to bring those licenses to some neighborhoods. We’ve done some single family homes in several neighborhoods where some of the elderly people can finish their.

their

elderly ways, elderly years into their homes where we putting ramps in homes or new new

new bathrooms, new kitchens, and of course, we remodeling homes and flipping them to ⁓ sell to single family homes where it be a single parent ⁓ or a parent with two kids. So yeah, so those have been mainly our focuses there. We’re looking to look going to the the warehouse district here in a little bit, but mainly here in the last four to five years, we have been very successful at going in those neighborhoods and

helping those neighborhoods revitalize some of those neighborhood communities.

Michelle Kesil (04:41)
Awesome. In which markets do you operate in? Are you just in Houston or are there other markets that you invest in?

Troy McAllister (04:47)
Right now, right now we’re just in Houston now. We’re looking to focus, we’re looking to go out, Houston and surrounding areas, where it Galveston or Sugarland. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with Houston or not, but we have Galveston, Sugarland, Pearland. ⁓

Michelle Kesil (04:54)
Mm-hmm.

Troy McAllister (05:04)
different things of nature. But right now it’s mainly mostly in the Houston area. We’re looking to expand maybe into the Dallas and Austin market probably maybe first of next year. But right now in the Houston and surrounding areas. Houston is one of the fourth largest cities in the United States and it has a great community of ⁓ single family homes where the revitalization

can be beneficial to a lot of investors. And so we have a lot of investors that invest with me. We get hard money lenders to work with and other investors to come together and we revitalize those homes in those markets. So those markets are coming up and looking to maybe expand probably ⁓ later this year.

Michelle Kesil (05:57)
Awesome. And what have been some of the main keys that have allowed your business to grow and run successfully?

Troy McAllister (06:54)
Yeah, partnerships, partnerships are.

Partnerships are everything, you know what saying? You gotta grow your partnerships with your people you work with, people that’s under you, people that’s worked with you, me and my partner. We have a great relationship and we have a good synergy together and we work together as a team and we have different things that we’re good at. He’s good at marketing and I’m good at working with the guys or vice versa. And even some of the GCs, your general contractors, working with them,

Having a good team with you is key to ⁓ a good, successful company. People with you having understanding and different things and communication. Communication to everybody and understanding what everybody’s needs and wants are and responsibility is. We communicate very well and we work very well together. are the keys to most businesses, but communication and a good partnership.

Michelle Kesil (07:53)
Absolutely. What have been some challenges or obstacles that you’ve experienced and overcome in your investing journey?

Troy McAllister (07:53)
Very good.

Yes, yes, that’s a good question too. mean, most investors who would probably tell you starting out, running out of money. Sometimes running out of money or overpaying for different things, where it be materials, where it be running into problems, where it be the foundation that you didn’t have or plumbing. ⁓ And just sometimes just be honest, is just honest and blunt, which is just running out of money could be one of the main challenges in the investor.

or

flipping real estate property model, then that’s happened several times. And that way you go into using your credit cards and different things and getting creative and obviously using hard money lenders and different things of that nature. that’s been one of some of the main challenges. Of course, know, weather. Like I said, I live here in Texas and weather can be where it’d be, how can I say, bipolar sometimes.

So it can change. never know what the weather, it can be rainy one day and it can be brutally hot the next. But those are some of the main challenges, whatever. you gotta have a good budget.

You gotta have a good plan. Sometimes when you plan on a good budget, there’s always something comes up where, like I said, could be foundation issues or plumbing issues where you didn’t foresee going into the project. those are some of the challenges we overcome. when you do find those areas where you have to come in, you just gotta adapt, adjust, and…

get the team involved and understand what the issue is and come up with a solution. And that’s what we’ve been very good at coming up with solutions and how to overcome those objections.

Michelle Kesil (09:52)
Sure. And how did you get started with investing?

Troy McAllister (09:59)
Yeah, that’s a good question. Yeah, that’s another good question. my partner, my partner David Brown, he started, he was one of the first to get started and he had started a few years before me. He had been doing it, he was a real estate agent, plus doing some investing in different things of nature and met him about seven, eight years ago and we became really good friends. And ⁓ so he was obviously in the real estate business and I think he was a real estate agent at one time.

and

doing real estate investing. So I got with him and he had been doing some different things and everything and he thought we had a good friendship and a good partnership and some other business ventures that we had and we came together to do real estate and it’s been great ever since. We have, like I said, we have a good relationship, we have a good partnership and we know what each other’s strengths and weaknesses are and we are on our way little I guess.

Can’t wait to see what’s ahead in the future. And we’ve been doing this now for about five years now. So we’ve been doing pretty good.

Michelle Kesil (11:05)
And what are you most focused on solving or scaling to next?

Troy McAllister (11:10)
What am I most focused on? Scaling?

Michelle Kesil (11:12)
Yeah, solving or scaling tunex.

Troy McAllister (11:48)
Yeah, I mentioned to you earlier, getting into the warehouse district. mean, we were in some of those where we have a big warehouse district here, a lot of warehouses and buying land to put warehouses on where we have companies, 18 Willow.

companies that go into those warehouses to store their 18-wheelers or their campers. We’re looking to ⁓ buy one here soon, maybe in the next month or two, ⁓ to invest into some warehouse districts where we can go in and build those big warehouses out and utilize them and rent them out for storage facilities for 18-wheelers, for campers, for people that have boats and need their boats stored in different

things and it’s kind of basically like a storage facility for huge vehicles, different things like that. that’s what we look, that’s the market we’re looking to tap into next. And we’re excited about that market. It’s kind of an untapped market. ⁓ And then of course, know, commercial, commercial real estate, strip centers, strip malls, where we can of course go out and refurbish a vacant strip center. ⁓

and ⁓ revitalize it, it back in life in those neighborhoods where ⁓ it’s been kind of forgotten about. So we’re looking to do those as well. Those are untapped markets here in Texas right now.

Michelle Kesil (13:18)
Yeah, absolutely.

Troy McAllister (13:19)
Yeah, those are, so you know, when you get into those markets, mean, you know, you have to just kind of focus and know where where the, where.

what’s gonna be beneficial to the client and to the neighborhood? You gotta do your comps. Obviously you gotta see the neighborhood. What’s going on in the neighborhood? What’s surrounding the neighborhood? Is this neighborhood growing or not? They ⁓ got neighborhoods in Houston now that people have forgotten about.

new construction and new businesses are going up every day. so we have to, those are untapped markets where we got to go in and revitalize those communities. So those are one of our foreseeable things that we’re excited about here in the near future.

Michelle Kesil (14:10)
Yeah, amazing. And what advice would you give to someone that’s wanting to get started in investing?

Troy McAllister (14:13)
Yes.

Yeah, man, having one, mean, one of the some of the advice I would give, having a good partner, finding somebody that’s done it before.

Finding somebody with a little bit of experience in this industry. Obviously you gotta make mistakes. Learning from your mistakes is something that you obviously gotta prepare for. So be prepared to make some mistakes, learn from those mistakes. finding a good partner, finding a good team with you, that’ll be the ideal thing I would recommend to anyone. Finding someone that have a little bit experience in what you wanna do.

you can kind of teach and grow it with those people. Those people can learn, you can learn from each other. can, you can…

You can understand how they’ve handled situations and they’ve learned from things like that. So everybody learns from each other. So get you a good team, find somebody that’s done it before or looking to do it for you and be passionate about it. can’t be good at anything you’re not passionate about. I’m very passionate about this real estate investment. So be passionate about what you’re doing and how you wanna do it.

Michelle Kesil (15:26)
Yeah, definitely. And what makes you so passionate about it? Like, what are your favorite parts?

Troy McAllister (16:12)
Yeah, passion, man. like, you know, when we come…

We see a distressed property. look at this property, you can look at this property like, wow, this property needs a lot of help. You can see some of the properties. I wish I could show you some of the properties before and after. You can maybe go on my Facebook page, whatever, and see some of the properties that we’ve done. You would think that it had no chance of looking the way it looked. So seeing those properties come to life, those are some of the gratifications that I get, my partner and I, get. Seeing those properties.

come alive and then when once we sell it to sell it to a potential owner and those the kids come in there the their family come in there and see those property see they see they they whole life change from where they were before and how they’re they light up when they go into property and and seeing them close on the property and having they’re excited about being in the property from where it was that brings me joy that that’s a satification satisfying ⁓

act that I love about doing what I do. That’s what makes me so passionate about being a real estate investor.

Michelle Kesil (17:24)
Yeah, that’s great.

Troy McAllister (17:25)
Love it, love it, love it,

love it. Ain’t nothing like putting the smiles on people’s faces. People don’t forget about what you tell them, but they remember how you make them feel. They do.

Absolutely. Solutions, convenience, and experience is what people buy. People buy solutions. People buy the makes, you know, what solution can I fix? know, people have, they want to make sure they’re…

Michelle Kesil (17:35)
Yeah.

Troy McAllister (17:51)
problems being solved. And then they want experience. They want to have a great experience when they buy a house from you or buy a property from you. And then how do you make them feel? How you make them feel is everything. They’ll never forget that. So that’s one of the joys of my life that I can bring to a family.

Michelle Kesil (18:10)
Yeah, that’s amazing. Are there any goals for the rest of this year that are particularly exciting for you?

Troy McAllister (18:11)
Yes, absolutely.

Yeah, are always necessary, man. You gotta write these goals down, have them. Dreams and goals are always. So yeah, the goals are for the rest of the years. Could this basically continue to do what we’ve been doing? Finding more distressed properties in these communities, in these neighborhoods that need property attention to. We are looking into several older neighborhoods now that…

that we’re looking at right now to find some several other properties that several single family members, family members that we can find ⁓ properties for. And just being able to help the community grow. That’s the next goal. Just continue to help the community grow as much as we can.

Michelle Kesil (19:05)
Amazing. And as you get into other aspects of real estate, what are some of the ways that you’re going to learn about these new places? Is that still through like partnership or is there any sort of education or networking that you’re into as well?

Troy McAllister (19:28)
Yeah, yeah, we learn about properties and opportunities all throughout several different ways. Obviously networking, referral base. I’m born and raised here, so I’ve been in Houston most of all my life. ⁓ So I know a lot of areas that have these properties. And so these properties come aboard, these opportunities come different kind of ways.

where it be through relationships that we built through brokers or through other real estate investors, through other real estate, through… ⁓

wholesale real estate investors and different things of that nature through partnerships, through other, through our GCs, different things of nature. So we find opportunities different type of ways. My partners, we are very active in the community through networking and networking events and different things of nature. We’re very active in all kinds of community activities. So we go to these different community activities and we find opportunities.

through several, several different ways. So we’ll continue to be out there in the community, helping the community grow ⁓ and getting our name out there and trying to work through the problems that the community have for us.

Michelle Kesil (20:44)
Amazing. Thank you for sharing all of that.

Troy McAllister (20:46)
yes.

Michelle Kesil (20:47)
Before we wrap up here, if someone wants to reach out, connect, learn more, where can people find you?

Troy McAllister (20:53)
Yeah, you can find us. I can be found obviously on my Instagram, Troy B. McAllister. Troy B. McAllister, you can hit me up on my Instagram, Facebook as well, Troy McAllister. Of course, you can go to our website at blueprintacquisitionsllc.com. And those are the three ways you can ⁓ find me.

Michelle Kesil (21:16)
Perfect, well appreciate your time and your story. Thank you for being here.

Troy McAllister (21:20)
Thank you. Thank you so much, Michelle. was great to talk with you. I hope to talk with you soon.

Michelle Kesil (21:24)
And for the listeners tuning in, you got value, make sure you have subscribed. We have more conversations with operators like Troy who are building real businesses and we’ll see you on the next episode.