The Hidden Risks of Flipping Houses: Liens, Permits, Insurance, and Due Diligence

Angelique Njie (00:00)
I like to deep dive what a lot of people lose money on. It’s not so much how much work goes into how sometimes you need to scan things. might…

You’re buying a property blindly and when you’re an investor, the closing time moves fast. You can close in seven days, five days, 10 days. I’ve seen people buy properties with liens on there. I also am really good at doing cyber-stocking the property where I’ll look at the history of the property because that’s very telling.

Cody Crabb (00:21)
yeah.

Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m Cody Crabb with Investor Fuel. And today we’re joined by Angelique Njie owner of ANA Dream Homes in Atlanta, a rehab focused real estate investor who is completing multiple projects in a very short amount of time. We’ll get into that and is now scaling toward new construction and luxury development. With a background as a Navy CB, she’s bringing real build experience into the world of flipping and redevelopment.

This is an interesting one Angelique, I’m excited to talk to you today.

Angelique Njie (02:27)
Absolutely. Excited to talk to you as well.

Cody Crabb (02:29)
So to start out, I would love to know kind of the background of how you got into real estate and how you did this pivot. It sounds like you did kind of a major career pivot and I’d love to hear more about that.

Angelique Njie (02:42)
Absolutely. Well, as you said in my intro, I started in the Navy as a civil engineer, as a CB, which is a total different type of construction. So I was a combat engineer. But over time, I decided to start a career in cybersecurity. I’ve been in cybersecurity quite a while. And I said, okay, I want another stream of income. And I decided to go back into my building skills. So I wanted to originally start as a developer getting into new construction, but I wanted to build luxury real estate. And as you know, there’s a lot of lenders out there, but it takes a lot of capital.

And because I didn’t want to be tight, I could have started, but I want to have the funding so I don’t have to rely on something called hard money. I said, let me start with flips. Another developer kind of gave me the idea. Starting with flips is good. You can build capital and you scale pretty fast if you’re good at it. So I got into a rehabs, buying off market properties to rehab homes.

and bring beautiful homes to the Atlanta market. I love being in the West End area, so that’s like my chosen area, but I do rehabs everywhere.

Cody Crabb (03:40)
Gotcha. When you say everywhere, what do you mean?

Angelique Njie (03:43)
Well, when I say rehabs everywhere, like, I mean, different counties within Georgia, I do own real estate internationally, but I don’t have to rehab those. purchase those individually, which I would like to take my building ⁓ worldwide. But right now I’m staying here in Atlanta.

Cody Crabb (03:51)
Gotcha.

Gotcha, okay, that’s good to know. So you mentioned ⁓ buying off market. So what’s been your most reliable way to kind of find deals that are off market?

Angelique Njie (04:06)
Yeah.

Yeah. So finding those off market, there’s several different ways. There’s a lot of platforms. There’s a lot of AI tools out there now to find off market. Usually having a good investor relator was a good start because they kind of know how to find those investment properties. have connections with wholesalers. So I started that way. And then over time I learned about a website called investorlift.com and I went on that site and it kind of has like all the wholesalers list on that site, off market properties throughout the United States.

and you’re able to just kind of like scan through there, make contact with them, build relationships. And then they kind of keep your contacts and follow up with you after the fact as well and provide you different properties. That has been my easiest way. But now in the Atlanta area, attending different real estate networking events, I’ve met a lot of wholesalers. So they kind of like know my buy box is something called a buy box where they kind of know they’re like, you know, ARV you’re looking for the price range, the area, et cetera. So they all kind of like send me deals all the time and just flood me with deals. So.

I don’t even have to look at this point. They kind of just come straight to my text messaging or email. But usually networking, real estate events, websites, all those great things is how I was able to obtain properties easily. And then there’s tax auctions. Yeah.

Cody Crabb (05:58)
So tell me

about those tax auctions then.

Angelique Njie (06:02)
Tax auctions happen usually about once a month for your county. They usually list it in the paper or website, all the properties that are gonna go up at the tax auction. you’re not gonna be able to really see these properties, but you’ll go to the tax auction. You do have to have cashier’s check and you will bid on these properties, ⁓ but you’re kind of buying them blind. So I really suggest people that are more experienced do that route, but it is great because you’re gonna save a lot of money going the tax auction route.

You can also go to the tax auction and resell it on the wholesale market as well if you don’t want to rehabilitate, rehab the property.

Cody Crabb (06:33)
Yeah, mean, so just to kind of give us an idea, out of all the deals that you’re seeing, so the ones that come across these magical deals that flow right to you and things, what percentage of those end up kind of, out of all the leads you get, what percentage of those end up being an actual purchase for you? Just to kind of get an idea of this is good for me to, know.

Angelique Njie (06:51)
Yeah.

I get way too many. So I’ll be real, like I’ve been in this 18 months and I only scaled about six properties. So I’ve probably seen hundreds of deals out of those six I picked. I pick what’s best for me. Usually depending on area where my contractors are located, pricing, after repair value, things of that nature, how much rehab is needed in it. If it’s in a historic district, I try to stay away. I don’t like the additional permits.

Is it need a permit? Does it not need a permit? Like, just depend does it need a new HVAC, a new roof, things that cost more expensive I try to steer away from. So like, it’s quite interesting because I get so many deals, but I have so much criteria that I try to follow. A lot of those deals don’t make it into closing for me. But you’re going to get bombarded with deals so you can’t take them all. I wish I could because sometimes I get a little happy and I’ll call my lender like, can I do four properties at once? And he’s like, hold your horses.

Cody Crabb (07:42)
Come on. Yeah. Yeah

Angelique Njie (07:42)
Maybe one or two. You know,

you’re like, I’m really scaling kind of fast. I’m at my sixth property, but I wanted to do 10 this year. And that’s what happens. You know, once you get one, then you get two, then you can duplicate. Yes.

Cody Crabb (07:54)
Sorry, you wanted to do 10 in 2026.

And you have six already this year.

Angelique Njie (08:00)
Yes, and I started with almost, I’m already at like two, but I plan to do like three in next month.

Cody Crabb (08:06)
Yeah,

as I’m saying, and it’s April. mean, by the end of the year, you should far surpass that. So I guess a question I would have, and it sounds like this is something you’re dealing with immediately upon starting, is you’ve seen hundreds of deals and you picked six. And this is not just about money and this is not just about, what are you seeing in those that make you like, ⁓ this is a good buy for you?

Angelique Njie (08:24)
Yeah.

area. I do my own research. I look at how long items stay in the market, if it’s hot, if it’s slow, how the other homes performing. That’s very important. Also, you can have your realtor look all that stuff up as well. And sometimes I like to pick houses that I know they say you’re not living in the house, why should you care? But just in case there’s an event that I have to be stuck with the property and burn it out, or I want to burn it out and convert it to a rental, I pick a property that I would want to manage long term just in case.

So I think that’s very important because sometimes you don’t know the market is unpredictable and you wanna pick a property that you’re likely, like if you were not able to sell it fast or for whatever reason, you do wanna keep it and convert it to a rental which has great tax advantages. You wanna pick a property that you wanna be stuck with, right? So I look at it, yes, I am one of those investors that if I wouldn’t live in it, I’m not gonna pick it. If it’s not something I would personally live in.

I don’t like to take those type of properties. I know that’s like cliche. A lot of people don’t believe in that. They’re like, you’re not living in it anyway. You just all about the money, right? But I like to put a good product out there. So I don’t want a property where maybe it’s in areas that is going to cause a lot of issues or problems, permitting issues. There’s definitely those regions in Atlanta where you just know, like if I pick up this property, permits are going to take four or five, six months. Maybe the high theft in construction as well.

things of that nature. You’ve got to consider all those things because those are factors that will play on your financial component of being, rehabbing a property. So I look at everything, you know. So that’s kind of how I go about it.

Cody Crabb (09:56)
Hmm.

Yeah, well, so you bring kind of a unique experience in a way because it sounds like you had a lot more technical experience.

before you had any actual real estate experience, usually it’s the other way around. Like usually people, the people are like, ⁓ yeah, I could flip a house. you know, and they kind of know about their own house maybe, but not a whole lot. And then the real estate that they know is like, because they bought their own house or something. And so I’d be curious, like how do you think that’s been an advantage to you? Because, and it is a very different kind of construction and building and things, but tell us about your experience versus kind of how it’s helped you in.

Angelique Njie (10:11)
Yeah.

hehe

Cody Crabb (10:34)
in doing this.

Angelique Njie (11:10)
You mean like my technical background in cybersecurity? Yeah, so when you’re in cybersecurity, paying attention to detail is like very important and not letting anything like, you know, seek through, right? Like you’re protecting an organization, right? So that’s the same way like in real estate, like when you’re reviewing these properties,

Cody Crabb (11:11)
Yeah.

Angelique Njie (11:26)
I like to deep dive what a lot of people lose money on. It’s not so much how much work goes into how sometimes you need to scan things. might…

You’re buying a property blindly and when you’re an investor, the closing time moves fast. You can close in seven days, five days, 10 days. I’ve seen people buy properties with liens on there. I also am really good at doing cyber-stocking the property where I’ll look at the history of the property because that’s very telling. If there’s been any fire damage, if someone lived there and they refused to leave the home, does a home have a lot of…

Cody Crabb (11:47)
yeah.

Angelique Njie (11:57)
Legal issues. I like to look online and see how many past permits did they have or was someone else working on it couldn’t get a permit or maybe something faulty was wrong. So I actually deep dive online a lot into the history of the property, previous ownership. If it was previously lived in, that’s usually a good sign. Like, okay, some of the main components should be working. So I literally, yeah. So I like to cyber-stock my properties. ⁓ I actually almost just bought a property earlier today and I did some cyber-stocking on it.

Cody Crabb (12:15)
At least somebody thought that was livable. Yeah, I see what mean.

Angelique Njie (12:25)
and I found out that there was a lien on the property. And then in the verbiage, the wholesaler literally put that if you obtain this property and they don’t clear the lien before I obtain it, that I’m responsible. So those are all things you need to look out for. It is a lot of documentation, a lot of real estate fraud out here. So my technical background kept me very strong in safeguarding myself. I’ve never ran into any fraud issues yet, knock on wood. But I checked title. I’m very thorough.

can read my closing documentation very closely, closing statements. You need to know those things because some people are good at building, but then they’re not good at the technical and the administrative stuff. And that’s where you can lose the most money if you’re not careful.

Cody Crabb (13:04)
Yeah, it’s easy to slip through the cracks and things just a little bit at a time there. ⁓ So have you ever caught something during one of those deep dives that ended up saving you? do you know what I mean? ⁓ Well, mean, besides you mentioned one literally just now. I was just curious if there was anything else.

Angelique Njie (13:08)
Yeah, absolutely.

Yes!

a house that I purchased, I ended up converting it to a rental and it’s doing really well, performing well on Airbnb. But I did purchase a property and there was a lien and it was supposed to be handled before I closed. Somehow when I refinanced the property, the other attorney realized that the lien is still there, but the lien has been paid. So we had to get a clearing. But the good thing is I had something called title insurance when I purchased the property. So it protected me if that lien didn’t get cleared or the person that was paid off decided to keep the lien on the property.

I would not be liable because I had title insurance. Luckily for me though, the person that had the lien acknowledged that they were paid before my closing by the previous owner and they were able to clear it for me. But in an event they wasn’t going to clear it, my attorney gave me my title insurance and information and I was able to use that title insurance to make a claim if possible. So it’s really good to use a really good closing attorney as well. Sometimes you don’t have that choice. Sometimes they pick the closing attorney, but I will say if you can.

good closing attorneys make those things go away or if not make it go away they’ll catch it early on. So you want someone that is closing really well on your properties and somebody that knows what you’re doing. They understand, okay, you’re an investor, this property is quickly obtained and do their due diligence for you. That’s what you’re paying for. So that actually did happen. Yeah.

Cody Crabb (14:38)
Yeah, well yeah, I bet and I think ⁓

the reason I even asked that is because I was like, the whole point of what you did is to anticipate things that could go wrong. And so I feel like that really must come in handy in a business like this where so much can go wrong. Like before, after, during, know, everything could go wrong always. So it’s kind of interesting to hear that perspective of like, yeah, you’ve had some experience.

Angelique Njie (14:51)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes. And to add another

note, Cody, and not to cut you off, but since we’re on this subject, I want to let people know this because I find it very important. Keep all the insurance possible on your property. if you can, if you have employees workman’s comp, liability coverage. Usually when you’re dealing with hard money, it’s mandatory anyway. But I highly suggest that because you may think accidents and stuff never happened, but they do. they did on one of my sites and it was covered and I was fine.

So I’m a big, big, big push, pusher for people to have all the right stuff. Don’t try to cookie cutter and be cheap and cut corners. It’s very important to pay that thousand dollar policy. I mean, if you’re making 70 to 150 K a deal, why not spend that extra $2,000 and have the right policies in place?

Cody Crabb (15:32)
Hmm.

Yeah, I mean, it’s like you think of the alternative, so you think of the, you know, what could go right versus what could go wrong, and it kind of is a no-brainer, isn’t it? Like you kind of go, I could lose everything, or I could be down like less than 1 % of my, you know, it just seems so silly to do it any other way. Well, this has actually been really interesting and helpful. So ⁓ just to kind of, because you are just time-wise, I mean,

Angelique Njie (16:40)
Yeah.

Haha

Exactly.

Cody Crabb (17:00)
Experience wise, I wouldn’t even call you that new in the industry. There’s many people that have been in the industry longer than you that don’t have as many deals under their belt as you do. But just because you’ve done so many of these in such a rapid succession like this, my question for you is what if someone’s looking at what you’re doing and they’re like, wanna figure that out. What are the top couple of things that you would recommend they start with to get to the point where they can do what you’re doing?

Angelique Njie (17:28)
Yes, and even with my knowledge and educational background and even, you know, having some type of construction experience before, I invested in additional trainings. There’s a lot of gurus out there. You do have to vet them properly. But I think even if you’re just using YouTube trainings, there’s a lot of these real estate lenders and whole heart money lenders that offer free training a lot of times for new investors. I highly suggest take the training. Don’t just jump in there and think you know it all. Also partner with people that are already experienced.

They’re gonna teach you a lot. I had a lot of friends that were in the business that were doing remarkable. And I would call each and every one of them and get different advice and get different perspectives. So don’t think you can, it’s not about money. You can have half a million dollars ready to go, but you can lose that half a million quite quickly if you don’t, you know, exercise your educational skillset and background. So I definitely will suggest that like take the trainings, take time to learn, take time to read. And I did that a lot. So I think that’s probably why I only had one.

Bad deal, and that was my very first deal. I’ve heard horror stories in this field with new people. So I would say take time to train, just don’t jump in it. I think I took about three to four months just to understand what I was doing before I actually invested.

Cody Crabb (18:37)
Gotcha. Yeah, I hear, I always hear some combination of make sure you do your homework and don’t do too much homework or else you’ll scare yourself out of doing it.

and they’re both kind of true. They’re both kind of true. mean, it sounds like logically, if you said to me in 18 months, do you think you could do all these things? I mean, I would be like, no, that doesn’t make sense, you know, but you never, sometimes the opportunities are just there and you kind of need to be, sometimes the opportunities don’t wait for you and you kind of just, if it’s there, you gotta grab it.

Angelique Njie (18:46)
Yes.

Yeah.

Cody Crabb (19:05)
Thank you so much for all this insight here. If people want to get in touch with you or work with you, who do they need to be? Where do they need to live? What kind of stuff are you looking for?

Angelique Njie (19:08)
You’re

Yeah, I mean, I’m thinking about scaling all across the US, ⁓ California market, Miami market, not Miami, Florida market, Texas. I would say, you know, I don’t have any kind of like structured approach right this second, but my name is on LinkedIn. I highly suggest if you want to connect, work together, you can find me on LinkedIn. We can discuss further. But yeah, I think that’s.

That’s pretty much where I could be located and where I’m going. ⁓ And I’m considering doing a training and working on that. But right now I’m just so busy with all these projects. I haven’t had time, but I would love to train new investors to keep them from making some of the mistakes a lot of us investors start doing when we first get into the business to help people scale and grow. It’s a remarkable journey. Real estate is awesome. It’s great income for you. And no matter what field you’re in, you can never go wrong with real estate.

Cody Crabb (19:46)
Mmm.

Yeah, yeah, there’s always some way to kind of pull it back to real estate. So if people want to kind of stay on your list or like get stay in touch, what’s the best way there? Because if I know some people are like, you have a program. you don’t have a program yet, but they want to know about it. So how can they stay in touch?

Angelique Njie (20:22)
Yes, right now I would honestly say get to me on LinkedIn. And then from LinkedIn, I will make an email repository of those contacts in real estate and we’ll go from there. And then depending on how I bet you will get more personal contacts, I am going to come out with a training soon. So yes, I will absolutely get them on the list once they personally reach out and we’ll go from there.

Cody Crabb (20:26)
So just add you on LinkedIn.

Awesome. Well, once again, thank you so much for joining us today and all the insight that you’ve given us. And thank you listeners for joining us as well. If you liked what you heard today, please give us a like, subscribe, comment, all the things, and make sure that you don’t miss another awesome conversation

Angelique Njie (20:48)
Yes.

Cody Crabb (20:55)
Until next time, we’ll see you then, and Angelique, thank you so much for joining us, and it’s been a real pleasure.

Angelique Njie (21:01)
been a pleasure. Thanks. Bye.

Cody Crabb (21:02)
Take care. Okay,