This Housing Niche Pays: How Investors Profit Using HUD, VASH, and TIP Programs

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Show Summary

In this conversation, Molly Shepard, a loan officer trainer and real estate investor, shares her journey in the real estate market, focusing on her experiences with HUD, VASH, and TIP programs, flipping houses, and the importance of financial education. She discusses the dynamics of the St. Louis market, her strategies for making offers, and the role of a loan officer in helping clients achieve financial stability. Molly emphasizes the significance of budgeting and credit repair in the path to homeownership and shares her excitement about upcoming projects in real estate investment management.

Resources and Links from this show:

• • • Investor Fuel Real Estate Mastermind
    • Investor Machine Real Estate Lead Generation
    • Mike on Facebook
    • Mike on Instagram
    • Mike on LinkedIn
    • VETPROP LLC’s Website
    • VETPROP LLC on Facebook
    • Molly Shepard on Instagram
    • Molly Shepard on Tiktok

  Listen to the Audio Version of this Episode

  Investor Fuel Show Transcript:

  Molly Shepard (00:00)
  We have viewed in the last three months, my husband has viewed I think over 130 properties, we’ve put offers on about 40 of them. And we’ve only gotten seven. So I think with that being said, just make the offer. And some of those properties, you know, I follow them once we put the offer in some of them are still sitting. So our option is still an option. And I think that’s the thing, especially as a new investor, you get so down on yourself because you put one offer in

  and it gets rejected.

  Dylan Silver (02:03)
  Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest, Molly Shepard is a loan officer trainer and along with her husband is building a real estate empire in St. Louis, Missouri. They’ve completed eight flips, acquired multiple rentals and focus on HUD, VASH and TIP programs. She’s also an army combat veteran. You can find her on Instagram and TikTok @realestatemolly. Molly, thank you for taking the time today.

  Molly Shepard (02:29)
  Thanks for having me.

  Dylan Silver (02:30)
  Now, when we talk specifically about some of these programs, these are new to me and I think a lot of real estate investors may maybe have heard of them, maybe have not, but for folks who are unfamiliar, walk me through in broad strokes, HUD, VASH and TIP programs.

  Molly Shepard (02:47)
  sure.

  HUD VASH is pretty much the Section 8 version of the veteran side of things. So the VA actually runs it. ⁓ Similar process. So they’re given a voucher based on family size and all of that good stuff. And then they are connected with a case manager who also checks in with them at the property as well. So has some extra eyes on and actually just ⁓ gets they try to

  keep it short term for the most part. Now it can be long term, ⁓ but they like to help them become more financially stable in order to get them in their own housing and potentially use the VA loan in the future.

  Dylan Silver (03:28)
  Now, when you mention short term, is this like less than a year? Is this several months? Can people use this on a year to year lease like they might with Section 8?

  Molly Shepard (03:37)
  Absolutely. Probably more so like five-ish years. They just, they want to see their people improving in order to get on their own. That’s pretty much it. But yes, for definitely years, but not that short term.

  Dylan Silver (03:50)
  Now,

  I’m curious about St. Louis, ⁓ Missouri, because this is a market that I haven’t looked at deals in. I’ve looked at deals in so many places in the country. And I also think that I would imagine there’s a lot of like urban sprawl happening where, you know, there’s investors from St. Louis who are investing in St. Louis. I imagine you’ve got investors from elsewhere investing in there as well. So the scope of what is St. Louis is expanding. Where are you finding deals? And then, you know, if you were a newer investor investing in St. Louis,

  Where might you be looking?

  Molly Shepard (04:22)
  For sure, we actually have a pretty great market, one being in the Midwest, so a little bit more affordable. We have a lot of out-of-state investors from California, Arizona, that stuff kind of looking inward towards us. But we also, we kind of say, my husband and I stay more in St. Louis County, just because we live a little bit outside of the county. We like to keep eyes on most of our properties. So when we get into the city limits, it’s just a little bit farther for us. But…

  We have found a lot of good reasonable deals in that area. ⁓ So yeah, St. Louis County, St. Charles County. But yes, there are a lot of out of state investors that come in and try to swoop up our deals a lot.

  Dylan Silver (05:49)
  Now, I know you’ve done some flips. I’ve worked with a lot of flippers. I’ve actually worked on demolition crews on flips. So I know the flip game decently well. And one of the things that comes to mind is no two flips are alike. And that really rings true, I think, for every flipper listening, right? How did you get into the flip space and what was that process like for you?

  Molly Shepard (06:13)
  Sure, my husband had flipped our first two primary residences just like while we were living in it, which while having kids is of course less than desirable, but he had flipped those. He worked for a Fortune 500 company just in finance and was just really bored with it, but he loved doing our houses. So was like, why don’t you do this on in real life? And that’s kind of how we started and picked up our first flip.

  And then after our first flip was kind of when he realized, Hey, this is actually a lot harder than my finance job. ⁓ so I would like to scale this a little bit to where we can contract a lot more of the work out instead of him doing it solely by himself. And then we started contracting it and now he pretty much project manages the houses and kind of helps out. We’ve created a really good team with our contractors and he just helps out where he wants to.

  And then we contract the rest out and that’s kind how we got into the flip world.

  Dylan Silver (07:13)
  Now, when people are looking at flips in general, The saying is you make the money on the buy, right? And especially now, I know things are changing with rates maybe coming down, but over the last several years, I can speak for Texas specifically, and there may be some similarities in the markets that we’re talking about here. You really did have to buy the deal, right? Because it wasn’t a guarantee.

  that you’d be able to A, sell the deal quickly. So there might be some holding costs there. And then B, you’re competing, at least in Texas, with new homes as well. There’s all this ground up new construction happening from the major national corporate builders. So if you’re trying to sell in Texas terms, a home, home for 240 to $300,000, you’re now competing with brand new homes at that cost segment as well.

  Molly Shepard (08:08)
  So for sure, we’ve dealt with that a lot, especially with St. Charles County as a little bit harder. And the fact that people are going to buy like your average first time home buyer are going to buy an outdated property in order to get in the school district. So those are a little bit harder for us. That’s why we’ve kind of focused on the county side of things. We’ve also dealt with like

  looking at a ton of properties, right? We get wholesale deals all the time and the numbers just don’t work. And we spent a lot of time on the front end trying to force the numbers. If they don’t work, put it aside, move on and find another deal. I will say we’ve actually found more recently a lot of on market deals and we’ve just been low balling them ⁓ and just giving, know, like, hey, this is what we can offer you.

  Dylan Silver (08:48)
  Wow.

  Molly Shepard (08:57)
  We might not be the best option, but we’re an option for if you can’t sell it and you need to get rid of it, right? So that is how we found actually a lot more of our recent properties is on market.

  Dylan Silver (09:08)
  You know, I think as a realtor myself and talking with other realtors both on the show and then offline, there’s a mixed feeling about this, but I come from the world of working with investors and I consider myself a wholesaler when a real estate agent gets an offer, unless they have it in writing from their client that they don’t want to see offers below a certain amount, they have a responsibility to present it to their client.

  And for some of these properties, especially now and over the last couple of years that may have been sitting on market for months at a time, right? That seller would probably want to hear about that offer. you know, in many cases, I’ve even seen, you know, people do a verbal offer to a realtor and then the realtor may not feel as compelled to relay it to their client, although they ought to. And so I’ve said, you know, just make a lot of written offers, just send in as many written offers as you can. It might be…

  50, might be 100, it might be 150, but one of those will go through.

  Molly Shepard (10:41)
  Yep,

  have viewed in the last three months, my husband has viewed I think over 130 properties, we’ve put offers on about 40 of them. And we’ve only gotten seven. So I think with that being said, just make the offer. And some of those properties, you know, I follow them once we put the offer in some of them are still sitting. So our option is still an option. And I think that’s the thing, especially as a new investor, you get so down on yourself because you put one offer in

  and it gets rejected.

  Strengthen numbers, right? Like put the offer in the word. What’s the worst they’re gonna tell you? My dad always has told me that. No, in every case, they might say it in a less than desirable manner. They might say no, but that’s the worst they’re gonna say. And then you either adjust your numbers or you move on to the next deal.

  Dylan Silver (11:31)
  Now, are you submitting these offers yourself? Are you working with an investor-friendly agent who writes these offers up for you?

  Molly Shepard (11:38)
  So different ones, if it’s a wholesaler, we usually just use ourselves. We have a few agents that we work with that are investor friendly and we’ve just created relationships with across the board and they are great. They’ll bring us on market deals, off market deals, and they know on some of these, like we are not going to get this accepted, but like. Okay.

  I’m willing to take that risk, right, of them to reject it and have it in their back pocket in case push comes to shove, right? A lot of these properties have been in these families for 40 years and haven’t been touched from a cosmetic standpoint and they don’t realize the amount that…

  Dylan Silver (12:15)
  Yeah.

  Molly Shepard (12:17)
  goes into those. also am always willing to show those sellers my numbers ⁓ because I want them to see like, hey, this is actually what it’s going to take in order to give them a little bit more perspective of like, I’m not just totally screwing you over.

  Dylan Silver (12:34)
  Yeah, this

  is here’s the numbers that are going into this thing. You know, when people are going about this process, you mentioned 40 written offers and you got eight, you know, to the finish line. That’s a pretty that’s pretty good odds. You know, if that was, you know, if this is a lot of other situations, people would say, I’ll take that, you know, I’ve seen people do literally four times that amount and not have the same ROI or return on time. And so

  Molly Shepard (12:47)
  Yum!

  Dylan Silver (13:02)
  I think just making that offer does go a long way. I do want to pivot a bit here though, Molly, and ask you about ⁓ being a loan officer trainer. And I was mentioning before hopping on the show here, you’re involved in so much. You’ve got the rentals, you’ve got the flips, and you’re a loan officer trainer full time. What is it like ⁓ meshing those three? Because I can imagine that being a loan officer certainly helps in the other two.

  Molly Shepard (13:29)
  Yeah, I definitely it actually is kind of what starts like sparked my interest in real estate investing was I get to see the back numbers of people’s situations, right? That isn’t just shown across Facebook or whatever else. I get to see their actual finances. And that kind of got me thinking of like, a lot of these people are out of sight out of mind, and they don’t realize what situations are getting themselves into. And I’m a helper at nature and ⁓

  service is like my calling. So I take my job extremely seriously with training civilians on how to work with their mostly military ⁓ and veteran clients. But I also use a lot of that knowledge that I’ve gained from being a loan officer in order to like set ourselves up in kind of what niche we want to take in the real estate investing side of things.

  I just feel really strongly about helping people realize how financial freedom and setting yourself up financially can really be successful for generations.

  Dylan Silver (14:42)
  Yeah, I think that’s a great point. think and I will say that not all ⁓ lenders, not all loan officers will do that, right? A lot of times they’ll kind of look at your score, look at your situation and say you need credit repair and then come back to me when that’s that’s finished. But you know, if you if someone was maybe in that spot where maybe they’re just not qualifying for whatever reason,

  what is kind of the base level advice? I know it’s difficult because every situation is different, but

  What’s the base level advice that you would give for folks if they maybe are getting turned away from one limb?

  Molly Shepard (16:00)
  Yeah, so the lender that I work for actually has free credit repair, which is incredible, especially knowing that the people that we work for, right? Most of our veterans, like a lot of them don’t have great credit or didn’t learn financial stability or financial education in any form. So we start there and say, like, hey, let’s teach you how to get your credit repaired and get it in order and not just over here.

  reaching out to, you know, collection companies in order to try to get stuff written off. Like we want to get you to that qualifying score as fast as possible. But outside of that, I think just being real with yourself and creating a budget is extremely important. A lot of us, especially with credit cards and debit cards, we don’t have to look at the dollars in our pocket, right?

  We don’t have to look at it when we stop at Chick-fil-A or we order DoorDash four times a week. So I think just becoming really aware of your scenario and saying, hey, what’s going out versus what is coming in and how can I adjust those numbers? How many subscriptions do I have that I don’t even know that I’m subscribed to, right? Those are really important ways that we can just get ourselves kind of a step in the right direction.

  Dylan Silver (17:17)
  Yeah, I mean, look, it may not seem like much, but you know, $100 a month over a year is $1,000. And you know, how many thousands of dollars do you need if you if you’re taking advantage of some of these programs in order to get qualified, right, the minimum down? So I also think, too, that there’s not a lot that is necessarily always said about budgeting when it comes to working with lenders. I think a lot of times there’s this idea

  of you know, go to the credit repair. It’s great that you guys have the credit repair integrated into your system because you you want to feel like, okay, I’m on the path. I there’s an on ramp to me being a homeowner. And instead, when it’s you know, someone else who might feel like, okay, well, I now have to go kind of to the minor leagues before I can, you know, look back again into purchasing a home.

  Molly Shepard (18:07)
  Yeah, and a lot of these people, they can’t even go rent somewhere because of their credit, right? Or they and so starting there is such a helpful spot. But also, I think being realistic as to what is going in versus what’s coming out because we can fix your credit. But does that mean it’s going to stay that way if we have the same money that’s coming in versus money going out that we started with?

  Dylan Silver (18:12)
  Yeah, that’s true.

  Yeah, mean, ultimately it does come down to math, right? ⁓ making that impulse purchase without taking a look at the budget or putting it on credit, that’s how these situations happen. We are coming up on time here though, Molly. Any new projects that you’re working on and then as well, what’s the best way for folks to get in contact?

  Molly Shepard (18:35)
  you

  Absolutely. So we are actually doing our first out of state investor project management. So we are, we have kind of been trusted ⁓ amongst the

  our area as flippers and investors. So we were reached out to by a California investor that is looking to buy a property in the area and we are going to project manage that for them. So we also do a lot of partnership stuff and ⁓

  I’m really excited about that side of things. A lot of times we think that we have to do everything by ourselves or we have to prove, you know, hey, ⁓ I’m the best of the best, but you realize that the communities in your area, the real estate communities are usually pretty small after you kind of show up to the events, right? It’s all the same people eventually. And once you show that, hey, I’m doing the thing and I have the…

  passion and stamina to keep up with it. I think that is really what sets us apart. So I’m really excited about that project management side of things. So happy to do that for anybody else. And if you’re looking to ⁓

  Get in contact with me, yeah, realestatemolly on TikTok, Instagram, ⁓ Molly Shepard on Facebook and happy to help anybody. This is like my lane. I love training and helping people. I wanna see you do better than I can, so.

  Dylan Silver (20:17)
  Molly, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thanks for taking the time today.

  Molly Shepard (20:21)
  Thanks so much.