The $3M Real Estate Renovation Business Model That Requires No Upfront Capital

Greg Bennett (00:00)
Our model is that we go and we, find people who need work on their property to get top dollar in order to sell their home faster and for more money. They will come to us and we will do anything from the curb back to get that property ready for market. And the unique thing about us is there’s no upfront cost and they pay us when the home sells.

Joseph Crooms (01:54)
Hey everybody, welcome to Investor Fuel Real Estate Pros Podcast I’m your guest Joseph Crooms today. I’m joined by someone I’ve been looking forward to chatting with his name is Gregory Bennett and he is in a very unique Niche, so I’m gonna let him explain that niche Gregory glad to have you here

Greg Bennett (02:18)
man, I’m glad to be here and I gotta tell you what an introduction. You know, that’s gonna be hard to follow there. Great, great introduction. So our niche, what we do, we’re a pre-sell renovation company. Our model is that we go and we, find people who need work on their property to get top dollar in order to sell their home faster and for more money. They will come to us and we will do anything from the curb back.

to get that property ready for market. And the unique thing about us is there’s no upfront cost and they pay us when the home sells.

Joseph Crooms (02:52)
That’s interesting. So how do you get paid?

Greg Bennett (02:56)
We get paid, well, we get paid at closing time. Now we are connected with a group of investors who help fund our renovation work and they take a percentage out of that closing. They keep our cashflow going such as labor and materials with a little bit of tape for the home team. And we get paid at, they get paid at closing, take their percentage off the top and we get our balance.

Joseph Crooms (03:19)
How long have you been operating in your particular field?

Greg Bennett (03:23)
I’ve been doing this going on seven and a half years. It was a rare concept. ⁓ We started kicking the tires, made every mistake you can make to get to the point to where we really refined it and got it to where it’s a cookie cutter deal now. But with RenoMaxIT we’ve been doing this a little over two years.

Joseph Crooms (03:45)
And RenoMaxIT is that another component of your business?

Greg Bennett (03:50)
RenoMaxIT is the name of our core company. We wanted to have a, we named it in a fashion, so don’t just sell it, don’t just list it, don’t just sell it, RenoMaxIT it. So we can create a verb. And so that’s the name of our company. And that’s what we do. ⁓ then the flip side to that is once you go to RenoMaxIT at your home has been Renta Max. And that’s kind of our slogan in our campaign.

Joseph Crooms (04:15)
Thanks for sharing that. So, okay, so I’m a, I wanna sell my home. But it’s not quite ready. that what you’re looking for? So, okay, so now I say, hey, what are you gonna do to get my home ready?

Greg Bennett (04:25)
That’s exactly what I’m looking for.

Well, it depends on the need. What we like to do, and I think it’s the best way to do it, because you’re going to be emotionally attached to your home. We like to come in with the realtor. And we will go through and make a list of items that need to be addressed, whether they’re damaged goods that are going to show up in your inspection report, not past FHA or VA, or they’re just dated. Deferred maintenance is a big component of what we do. Curb appeals become more important now.

So we’re going to get your home. You’re going to get the curb appeal going for you. We’re going to do the paint, the flooring, the countertops. Everything’s going to be up to code for the, for that neighborhood, for that price range. And then we’ll make a list of all of those items. What I think makes us unique is that we do it. We break it down for you by area and by room. So you’ll say you’ve got a main level. You’ll have kitchen, half bath, dining.

so forth, so on, so on. And in that estimate, you’re gonna have the material list and you’re gonna have the labor costs. And then it’s gonna total up there so you can know where you’re allocating the funds to get the top dollar. You might not wanna do all of it. That’s gonna be our suggestion. But once we’ve made that decision, that’s what we go from. And that takes about 48 to 72 hours, start to finish to get those numbers up.

Joseph Crooms (05:45)
You said you’ve been doing this for seven years. Yes sir. What has your revenue changed in the last three years? What kind of volume and revenue are you doing?

Greg Bennett (06:43)
we’ve crippled in the last three years. So we started out less than a million. I’d say our first year out of the gate doing this, we started out probably in the $400,000 range and we just topped three million for the year, for this year, for 2026.

Joseph Crooms (06:59)
⁓

Greg Bennett (06:59)
Thank you.

Joseph Crooms (07:01)
That’s not easy in this climate. Because you spoke about the climate, know, what’s happening in the real estate and how you’ve been going after the brokers, but also you’re looking for motivated sellers, I believe. Yes. OK. So what’s been the key to keeping your machine running smoothly?

Greg Bennett (07:20)
⁓ The key to keeping my machine running smoothly is being consistent, price consistent, quality work, quality crews, and staying in front of the realtor. Now the market is driving a lot of the demand now because you cannot sell a house unless it’s moving ready, unless you’re selling to a cash buyer. So our competition is do they want to sell to the cash buyer or do they want to

put it on the market and sell it themselves. That’s really, that’s it. Because in this market, if it’s not moving ready, it sits and it just doesn’t sell. You’re not going to get top dollar for it. There was a time, you know, around COVID, if you put it for sale sign up in front of your house, was cold. And many times we would, we’d go do the estimate and we’d come back on the way home, they’d call us and don’t worry about it. We got $5,000 over asking price. You don’t even have to the estimate together. It was just that quick. Today, that’s not the case. You have to have moving ready.

Joseph Crooms (08:11)
So, let me ask you this question. Now I know every operator has a moment when things got real. Maybe there’s a deal that went sideways, a time they had to pivot fast. You mind sharing one of those?

Greg Bennett (08:25)
Sure, sure.

There’s there’s things that got real on both on the good and the bad. They the let’s start off with the bad. I finished with the positive. The the bad is is that you get a deal where somebody brings us out to do the work. We get the work done. We put it on the market. We have agreed that this house is worth. Let’s just round up say $500,000, but they believe they can get 600,000 for it. Well, you know, good good luck.

Go with God and we hope that happens for you. But the market says you can’t. When you get to that six month level, it’s time to end young because that’s our that’s our ticket and they don’t want to they don’t want to bring the price down. So that’s the bad. I think it’s because they like the way the house looks and they won’t move anymore. They got their new deck. They got their new countertops. The house looks pretty good. We don’t want to move. That’s happened one time one time in one time only the good. There’s a flip side to that though. There’s the good.

And the good is is that we had a lady that was in Alpharetta and she wanted to move out to Nevada where her son was. She gave us the keys. She said, just make it, make it sell, make it, make it right. We, that house was worth in its present condition because we have investors that will make offers on the house as well. That house is worth in its present condition, $450,000 at the moment. It was in a really nice neighborhood in Alpharetta.

We put $120,000 into it, it sold for 800. And it sold, with the second the work was done, it sold within three days of being listed. It closed, even more so, it closed within 25 days. So from start to finish, which was a 90 day process, from the time we shook hands till the time we closed out was less than 88 days.

So that was a big deal. That’s a good one. That’s a great story. I wish they were all that way.

Joseph Crooms (10:48)
That’s the kind of stuff people don’t talk about enough. And honestly, it’s what separates the folks who are just dabbling from the ones who stay in the game long term. Let me ask you this. What have you been focusing on solving or scaling next? What’s your next real goal for you?

Greg Bennett (10:59)
Yeah, yes, we’re.

The next real goal, well there’s two goals that are kind of unilateral. We have a presence now in the coastal Georgia market, headquartered out of Savannah, and we have a presence in Dothan, Alabama. Our goal is to be in the markets in multiple cities. That’s the sort of, we’re kind of, we’re doing the beta testing here to build the system to do that. We’re driven a little bit more with, AI has been a tremendous help for us. We use a lot of AI to help us get to,

the next level. And then our focus is to, for instance, this week I’ll be meeting with Home Depot and Lowe’s. We’ll put together a package of A, B, C. A being good, B being better, and C being best. And those will be a ⁓ package that we will be selecting and we won’t run out of materials. We won’t have to worry about it. We know if we’re in this neighborhood, we’re going with the B. If in this neighborhood, we’re going with the A. And so you’re going to get this choice of fixtures, this choice of

of paint, blah, blah, blah, blah. So that’s going to be a big deal for us. And that gives us the ability to cookie cutter and also drives our price down and it makes us more competitive. Just because our price goes down doesn’t mean that we keep our prices the same. We really want to make sure that the seller is getting a two for one return on them. That’s our focus.

Joseph Crooms (12:28)
Well, I you all the best when you go to Savannah. That’s where I was born at.

Greg Bennett (12:31)
I went down there the other day. Harold Rogers is heading up that operation down there. I’ve worked with him for past six years and I went down there today and I think it’s a great market. It’s a great market. It’s going to be, from what I can tell, it’s going to be a lot of higher end homes. So, there’s going to be, you know, the coastal vacation type stuff.

Joseph Crooms (12:53)
Great.

that’s big especially when you’ve already ⁓ sort of been successful have been successful in the Atlantic area which is which is a major market ⁓ the next move can either compound things like trying to get this to break out your your your to expand or create chaos depending on how you play it now I know a lot of people listen are either early in their journey or look into level of I think they have been for this when it comes to

building relationships and growing your network. What’s made the biggest difference for you?

Greg Bennett (13:30)
reputation and consistency.

I think you probably when you and I were talking before the video went live, I think if we were out to ask you, you would sense that I have a very strong passion for what I do. I love what I do. I think that helps when you’re growing that. As far as networking is concerned, wherever we want to get is Chris and my business partner and she’s the prettier of the two for sure. You didn’t get the best version. Next time you got to get her. But anyways, the…

where we want to go, her and I want to be working on the business more than in it. But we’ve had to roll the sleeves up and get in and I’m taking two by fours to job sites and I’m cleaning, I’m taking my truck out and getting the trash out so we can get the house ready for the open house on Saturday. So we’ve been working in it and on it and our focus is to go on it. And when we were able to do that, I think we will be in a position and we’re there now. I’m raising my hand saying it, claiming it. We’re there now and we want to.

start positioning ourselves to network. And we are looking for ⁓ more investors to invest. The return is very good from the investment side too. So we have a package that we can present to an investor for that.

Joseph Crooms (14:42)
Can you explain what’s your volume of actual work and also, let me ask you that question. What’s your volume now of actual work?

Greg Bennett (15:32)
Actual work right now, have, I’m gonna pull it up, but I can tell you that we are working on, presently working on this, not actually waiting to be sold. We are presently working on 1.4 million at the moment. That’s the Atlanta market. There is one down in Dothan that’s a, that one’s a little bit slower, it’s just started. I think they’re working on about 150. And Harold hasn’t gotten anything started. He just, we just kicked the doors open for him.

Joseph Crooms (15:54)
And when you look for investors, how do you interest them? How do you pique their interest?

Greg Bennett (16:01)
Well, that’s a great question. think we offer a unique opportunity and I’ll use the I use the example of where we’ve met some good friends of ours and they’re one of our investors. It’s Amanda and Chuck and they they had actually called us to get work done on their house not to not for put up for sale, but we’re just doing a cast job. I was referred by a painter friend of mine and we went out and did some countertops and things like that.

They asked us the question, do you know anything about flipping houses? I said, well, we do several flips. Would love to introduce you to some of the folks who do the flips. I said, but if you really want to get into something and not have to know everything about flipping, the return on hours, your average return on hours is about a 20 % pull. So you’re going to pull 20%. You’re going to turn that every 90 to 120 days. Why don’t you invest with us?

And they said, that sounds great because we secure our debt with a security deed. Sometimes it’s a UCC lien, but most of the time and now it’s a security deed. So we’re 100 % secure. We vet to make sure that we have clear title. We vet to make sure that the mortgage is current. We vet that they’ve got homeowners insurance, and we have all those things on place. So we actually have ⁓ a certified title search that we hand over to the investor.

current mortgage statements and things like that. So they’re very much protected. Their interest is very much protected in that property. And if they can turn that into a 20 % return, that’s heck of a good return, especially if you can flip it two or three times a year, it’s real good.

Joseph Crooms (17:35)
What is the normal investment amount that you look for?

Greg Bennett (17:38)
The normal investment amount, I’m just going to give you the average size of our projects. Our average project is $40,000 and that cost is going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of $25,000 to $28,000.

Joseph Crooms (17:50)
Man, this is great. So you can’t fake that relationships everything in this business All right before we wrap up if someone wanted to reach out to you Gregory Connect with you or collaborate learn more about you what you’re doing. What’s the best way to reach out to you? You can say it twice

Greg Bennett (18:10)
Okay, obviously you could go to our website which is renomaxit.com, www.renomaxit.com. New website just launched this week. All the information is there. The investors have, if they request a package, it’s username and password protected. They’ll get a one-time username and password protected which will give them the backside story of how they can invest. If it’s a realtor or a home seller, they just stay on the front side.

And you can reach me ⁓ on my cell phone if I could give that out here. I’m fine with that. 770-530-9212. If you don’t get me, obviously shoot me a text and I’ll respond. I’m a typical contractor. I’m five calls behind already since we started this. know, mean, text is great for me. So that’s a great way to reach us.

Joseph Crooms (18:59)
Okay, and the website that they can reach out for the investors we’re going to do one more time

Greg Bennett (19:04)
reno, renomaxit.com

Joseph Crooms (19:09)
Well, listen, Gregory, I appreciate your time, your story, ⁓ your unique ⁓ niche and how you capitalized on it. We need more people in spaces who are doing the right things in the right way. Thank you again for being here. And for those of you tuning in, I know you got some value from this. Make sure you subscribe. We got more conversations coming from our operators just like Gregory Bennett.

Greg Bennett (19:26)
Thank you for having me. I’ve enjoyed it.

Joseph Crooms (19:37)
⁓ who’s out there building real businesses, making things happen in a positive way for the people of America. So we’ll see you on the next episode and thank you for joining us at Investor Fuel Real Estate Pros Podcast. Great, we say bye to everyone.