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Show Summary
In this conversation, John Harcar interviews Chandra Peak, who shares her journey from a professional photographer to a real estate investor. Chandra discusses the impact of COVID on her career choices, her experiences in wholesaling, and the lessons learned from her first property purchase. She emphasizes the importance of mentorship and community in real estate, and shares her current role in training others in door knocking and property acquisition. The conversation highlights the challenges and rewards of navigating the real estate market, as well as the drive to create generational wealth for her family.
Resources and Links from this show:
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- Investor Fuel Real Estate Mastermind
- Investor Machine Real Estate Lead Generation
- Mike on Facebook
- Mike on Instagram
- Mike on LinkedIn
- Chandra Peak’s Website
- Chandra Peak on Facebook
- Chandra Peak’s Phone number: (346) 600-1605
- Chandra Peak’s Email: [email protected]
Listen to the Audio Version of this Episode
Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Chandra Peak (00:00)
So I definitely took that, I get it, that people say it doesn’t cost money to do real estate. Well, it does in some capacity. Opening title costs money. Paying for a notary costs money. Earnest money costs money, right? So I learned that you know you have to have your money or other people’s money in place.John Harcar (00:07)
It does. Sure.Hey guys, welcome back to the show. I’m your host, John Harcar, and I’m here today with Chandra Peak. And what we’re going to talk about, besides her journey in business and real estate and kind of what really brought her up to today, we’re going to talk about how she has a passion for really, you know, what she does to help homeowners get out of certain situations, whether it’s foreclosure or whatever it may be. ⁓ Guys, remember here at Investor Fuel, we help homeowners, we help investors.
Service providers. I mean really all real estate professionals 2 to 5x their business We help really build that business that they’re really looking for to enjoy the life that they’ve always wanted So Chandra welcome to our show
Chandra Peak (02:43)
Thank you so much, John.John Harcar (02:45)
Yeah, I’m excited to talk about you and your journey. ⁓ But before we get into all that, right, why don’t you give our give a little background to our audience kind of, know, what got you up to today? You know, what got you into real estate?Chandra Peak (02:59)
All right, I appreciate that. Yeah, so how much time do I have again? ⁓ okay, perfect. So my real estate journey started back in 2022. Of course, you know that after COVID, many of us in the service industry had to pivot. COVID changed a lot of things and IJohn Harcar (03:04)
Yeah, well, yeah, we got 15, 20 minutes, but you know, take as long as you need.Chandra Peak (03:28)
I still am a professional photographer, but no one was photographing weddings back in 2020. So what do we do when we don’t have anything to do? Well, you’re sitting around the house thinking, you know what, let me enroll into online college. How about that, right? So I thought about getting my real estate license. That seemed like a good idea.John Harcar (03:47)
YeahChandra Peak (03:55)
I did not know that you could get licensed in six weeks. I actually enrolled into a community college and did the 12 month plan, which probably wasn’t the best idea, but we had time, right?John Harcar (04:09)
Yeah, right. You did have no rush.Chandra Peak (04:11)
Didn’t have to rush. My mom is my business partner and she’s always had a passion about basically changing our history for generational wealth, right? She wants to create it. ⁓ Between my brother and I, not together, but I have six children and my brother, he has six children.And so you could see with my mother having 12 grandchildren, basically, you know, what type of legacy am I going to leave? ⁓ What can I create for the generation and beyond? so real estate has definitely been her focus because she knows that a nine to five is not going to secure that for us. Right.
John Harcar (04:53)
Mm-hmm.Chandra Peak (05:07)
So she started signing up for different programs. And I believe the first one where she actually got me involved was with Jamil Damji and everyone knows him and started learning about wholesaling. Now, during this time, my mom was also investing into crypto, which I just don’t have the stomach for it, John. I mean,John Harcar (05:22)
Mm-hmm.Yeah, me neither.
Chandra Peak (05:36)
I can’t invest inJohn Harcar (05:36)
Not a fan.Chandra Peak (05:38)
Blink and then it be gone. I, I, whoo, yeah, that is making me queasy right now, right? But that’s the type of person my mom was. She was day trading. She, she was doing all kinds of things because she felt like anything that she can do to create the wealth is going to benefit our family. Unfortunately, not every program is designed for you to win, right?And so she was spending lots of money. But anyways, let’s fast forward into so everybody gives you a ticket and says, you know, bring your business partner. And she looked to the left. She looked to the right. She said, you know what? My daughter is going to be my business partner. And basically, that’s how I got that’s how I got started going to different places with her and learning about wholesaling. It’s funny, because when I started
John Harcar (06:58)
YouMm-hmm.
Chandra Peak (07:23)
⁓ working retail, I remember a gentleman saying to me, if you want to make more money, you need to sell bigger things. And I went from selling clothes to applying at a car dealership. So I almost took what he said, but I didn’t quite do it. Every once in a while in my life,John Harcar (07:41)
Hmm?Chandra Peak (07:51)
someone has said to me, you know, you’re great at solving problems. You love people. You would be a great real estate agent.Growing up always hearing that through my you know, 20s my 30s my 40s It’s just kind of like, you know, so when I turned 40 I said Let me try it. So with my mom losing money in crypto and day trading and What what did they call it something something fine like well, whatever she was doing when you like trade currencies
John Harcar (08:30)
yeah, I know what you mean. I know what you mean. I can’t think of it off the top of my head, but I know what you mean. Forex that’s yes.Chandra Peak (08:33)
Yeah, right. Forex, right?Yeah, yeah. So yeah. Yeah. So what they’re doing that. And I was just like, you know, we know that real estate works because people in our family are buying and selling properties, buying and holding properties, they’re landlords. So we know this tool works. But unfortunately,
Even in our own family, no one ever sat down and said, here’s a strategy for you. I mean, not knowing doesn’t stop you. You got to pay for your education, right? So you can either one way or the other, you can learn. You got to pay exactly. And so she just went on this journey. One thing that I learned in wholesaling is you didn’t have to have
John Harcar (09:13)
One way or the other. One way the other, you’re gonna pay.Chandra Peak (09:28)
a license in order to wholesale. So let’s fast forward a little. All right. So, you know, I kind of set the frame, our mindset, right? So we know we do this and we’re signing into, and we know we don’t want to do Forex. Like I couldn’t be all in with Forex with her. ⁓ I could invest into crypto, but I, the whole day trading, I was, I was like, dude, you’re making me, I don’t call you dude, but I’m like, you’re making me real nervous. So.John Harcar (09:36)
Yep. Yep.Yeah.
Chandra Peak (09:58)
I said,and then just the disappointment in, well, maybe, you know, because Europe was trading at this time and maybe I missed it and whatever. But I just knew that wasn’t the way for us to go. So we get signed up for, you know, wholesaling with Jamil Damji. And ⁓ actually, we went to his mastermind back in the summer of 2022.
We went to Arizona and I just loved the energy. I loved being around people who, you know, had the same vision and wanted to do this. And then honestly, John, I loved 10,000 for an assignment fee. I was like, really? Let’s do that. Teach me how to do that all day long. Yeah. Right.
John Harcar (10:28)
Okay.Me too. Can’t complain about those.
Yeah.
Chandra Peak (11:30)
That’s better than making $10 at Stein Mart. I think I just dated myself, but yes.John Harcar (11:34)
This is true. Yeah, this is true. A lot morework, but definitely worth the squeeze, right?
Chandra Peak (11:41)
Yeah. So here I am learning how to make offers and calculate the ARV and, you know, get the rehab estimate. And it sounds good. I’m connecting with ⁓ agents in the area. Our market is Florida. I live in Texas, but our market was Florida. And so we actually, got a property under contract.and were going to assign it, but it seems like we locked it up too high. But we didn’t know that, right? We know that we bought it in the hood or contracted in the hood. We didn’t know that, right? We just knew we got an off-market property and we were going to assign it. Yes. And we were like,oh my god our first contract.
John Harcar (12:26)
Someone said yes, I’ll sell.Yep. Figure it out later.
Chandra Peak (12:36)
Figure it out later. Ooh, that cost us. But you got to pay education, right? my mom calls me up one day and she says, I don’t want to lose my earnest money deposit. I don’t want to lose my EMD. So guess what I did? And I said, what did you do? She said, we bought it. And I was like, so what does that mean? We’re landlords.John Harcar (12:57)
We bought it, yeah, I’d say she bought it.Chandra Peak (13:06)
like no way to bid it. Okay, so we bought this property in Jacksonville in the hood. It’s a 2-1. She didn’t want to lose her EMD, which was fine. I mean, I think it was like $5,000. When everybody says, don’t put down any, you know, everybody was telling us, I don’t put down any earnest money. I give them $10,000.John Harcar (13:17)
Mm-hmm. How much was the EMD?Yeah, you have
to. You have to. mean, it’s actually part of the law of the contract. Unless you have consideration, it’s not valid.
Chandra Peak (13:41)
So this was in 2022, but everybody was telling us that they didn’t do it. So we were just like, well, this agent says, if you’re serious, the buyer, the sellers want 5,000. So we were just like, all right, okay. I guess we just gotta do it, right? mean, everybody else is putting down $10, but. we end up taking out.John Harcar (13:43)
Yeah.Mwahahahaha, Raiden.
Right.
Chandra Peak (14:09)
25,000 and you’re probably thinking is this about you or your mother, but I’m just laying down the groundwork, right? So she also dipped into her 401k took out 25,000 and got a hard money loan Yeah So here we are we’re landlords we meet the property management company and they say You actually have a tenant that doesn’t pay on timeAnd we were live. Yeah, we inherited ⁓ a slow paying tenant. Yes.
John Harcar (14:39)
so you inherited the tenant?Chandra Peak (14:48)
Because we didn’t, you know, but it’s okay. We will never make this mistake again, right?John Harcar (14:54)
School of Hard Knocks.Chandra Peak (14:56)
School of Hard Knocks. ⁓ actually, it taught me the most. It taught me that this is not the way it’s supposed to be done. I probably made all the mistakes. ⁓ And then we got to the point, we did that for two years. It was the toughest two years of my life because not only are we, this is a hard money loan. So we’re bleeding.John Harcar (15:04)
Yeah.Chandra Peak (16:05)
we’re bleeding all over the place, right? But yeah, so the good news is we were able to sell and we only owed like $1,000 at closing. Could be worse. I just went on Zillow and I took a look. So we purchased it September 2002. Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry. September 2022 is when we purchased it. We sold it. So we carried it.John Harcar (16:15)
Not a bad loss, I mean, it could have been worse.Chandra Peak (16:34)
two years and a couple of months, sold it in 2024. So we purchased it, we sold it at, we listed it at 75,900, but we sold it at 57,000. So basically she lost her 25,000. It has been on the market since May, 2024.They listed it at 135 and they’ve dropped it down to 87,000.
John Harcar (17:07)
Jeez,and that’s recently?
Chandra Peak (17:11)
yeah, it’s still listed.John Harcar (17:12)
My Lord. So we can put it in context for some of our listeners that might be in the beginning stages. Like as you, that obviously you’ve turned into your first rental. What, I mean, just through that whole process, like what are one or two or three main things that you look back and say, okay, these are the things I took from that experience.Chandra Peak (17:35)
So I definitely took that, I get it, that people say it doesn’t cost money to do real estate. Well, it does in some capacity. Opening title costs money. Paying for a notary costs money. Earnest money costs money, right? So I learned that you have to have your money or other people’s money in place.John Harcar (17:44)
It does. Sure.Chandra Peak (18:02)
⁓And then just the basics of putting a property under contract. We thought we were working the formula, you know, the after repair value 70 % ARB minus repairs, you know, and then minus our assignment fee. So we locked it up too high. But the number one thing is we did not have a buyer. Therefore, we should not have been shopping.
John Harcar (18:32)
Yeah, I mean, there a lot of people say, get a property, find a buyer. ⁓ I can understand that if you can negotiate a great deal, you will find a buyer. But my opinion, and I think now you might agree that if you have the buyer, not only do you have someone ready to close on the deal, but you have an idea of what they’ll pay. You have an idea of what numbers make sense for who you’re gonna do it. So.So you learned that lesson, what else? What else are one of the things that you took away from that that really helped kind of you not make those mistakes again?
Chandra Peak (19:03)
I learned that I needed mentorship ⁓ and honestly not necessarily paying someone tens of thousands of dollars. Maybe that would have made a difference, but I was really turned off about, I would love to be a landlord. So when I started seeking, okay, I’m not gonna get my license.but I want to do this. And I also have a personal experience with short selling a property that I had ⁓ when I was younger in my.
early or my late 20s early 30s.
And I just felt like God was calling me to help people in that same situation because I had a friend who sold his house to an investor. And it’s, know, how you hear things, but because…
So we are given information all the time over different platforms through different people, right? And when, okay, I’m not turning into a Bible thumping Baptist, but what I am saying is sometimes when God speaks to you, he’s not loud. The spirit is very quiet, right? And so, yeah, and it’s up to us to, if we’re still,
John Harcar (20:30)
Yep, whispers.Chandra Peak (20:37)
We can hear things, we can see things. And so I had someone who was in the same situation and he’d said, I sold my home to an investor. They gave me money to move. I got money for my home and I didn’t lose it to foreclosure. And I kind of just, it went over my head though, because I only knew about a short sale. I didn’t know thatthere would be investors who would help me in my situation because when I short sold my house, I had to shampoo the carpet and that was in the contract, shampoo the carpet. ⁓ I did not get any money at closing and ⁓ I did not get any assistance to move or to help me with my fresh start.
And then I’m looking at this gentleman over here, my friend, and he is in the same situation. And so, but it didn’t like, that’s a thing that somebody can help you. ⁓
John Harcar (21:40)
Yeah.Chandra Peak (21:42)
but I had no idea, but I’m glad I remembered that. And I just remember, wow, that is so awesome for you because it’s not the end of the world to lose your home. You you will find another place to stay, but it would be great to have someone to hold your hand or to assist you in the process. You’re not alone and you’re, yeah. So yeah, with that.John Harcar (22:03)
you through it.Chandra Peak (22:11)
So what was the question again? think I think I’m done.John Harcar (22:13)
Well,it was just kind of what got you up to today. And I think that kind of, you kind of hit that on the head. So what is today? Because we’re running out of time and an effort to kind of just, you know, give more to our what does your business look like now? Like, where are you doing business? How many you’re still wholesaling? take it.
Chandra Peak (22:16)
Yeah.So yes, I am. So I wanted to still do this, but I did not want to become a landlord. Not right now. So I went onto Craigslist in 2022, and I saw an ad for door knockers. You know, if you’re interested in real estate, this is our system. We need door knockers. And I said, as long as they do everything they say they’re going to do, because they said we provide mentorship,
We provide capital. We just need boots on the ground. You’ll be an independent contractor. And so I just said, as long as they don’t ask for my credit card and they do exactly what they’re saying they’re going to do, let me give it a try. And sure enough, ⁓ I filled out my ICA. I filled out my W-9. I spoke to somebody in person, not in person, but over the phone. And she said, this is what’s going to happen next. She welcomed me to the team. And she wanted to know, when are you going to…
go door knock, you’re go tomorrow or the next day. And I said, well, you know, I’ve never knocked on a door before. I’ve never cold called before. So yeah, can you just show me or can someone tell me how to do that? And she said, absolutely. And she was a sweet, she was a sweet but stern lady from New York. And you know, we got you. And that was my next step.
So I get on the conference call and I speak to my trainer, my director, and I say, all right, I’m ready to do this, you know, and he’s like, great, you were in Mary Kay. I said, yeah, I’m in Mary Kay. He’s like, okay, well, all you’re gonna do is go knock the door. You’re gonna say this to them and just call me if you have any questions. And I said, now, wait a minute. That is not what this lady told me. She said you were gonna go knock on doors with me.
And he was like, well, you sound like a sharp person. And I said, yeah, I am a sharp person, but I’m also a Black person in Texas. I don’t want to go knock on strangers’ doors. And he’s like, you’ll be fine. No one’s ever gotten hurt from doing this. So.
John Harcar (24:39)
Untilyou get the gun pulled on you.
Chandra Peak (24:42)
Right,which I will tell you, I’ve had a mistake.
John Harcar (24:45)
It’s not fun. It’shappened to me too. Yeah. ⁓
Chandra Peak (24:48)
Yeah,I’ve had several weapons. Yeah, it is a relatively safe job. I don’t want to scare anybody from it. people are emotional.
John Harcar (24:58)
Yeah. So now, nowyou’re working with a company called Epiphany.
Chandra Peak (25:03)
Yeah, Epiphany Properties ⁓ here in Houston.John Harcar (25:06)
Okay, and.You’re in Texas, but your market is Florida.
Chandra Peak (25:13)
No, so and I, so we weren’t marketing, our market was Florida, but I, yeah, I said, no, let me just focus on Texas. So yeah, so now I am, yeah, 100 % Texan.John Harcar (25:19)
Okay, got it.Awesome. Okay. And then we’re like, so what are your kind of goals for your business? Were you looking to take this and grow this? Like what things are you working on that maybe someone in our audience might be able to connect you with or connect with you and work with you?
Chandra Peak (25:44)
Okay, So we, I was promoted to the manager of Houston and I train people how to door knock and I also close with the homeowner as far as ⁓ I acquire the property from the homeowner. But we figure out what is best for the homeowner at that time. So if it’s reinstatement, if it’s a loan mod, special forbearance, ⁓John Harcar (26:02)
Okay.Chandra Peak (26:12)
if it’s a lease back, or if we conclude to sell, we start that process as well, if we conclude to buy. Right now, even though we are actively marketing for door knockers, I want to increase my inner circle with people who are motivated to do this. I want people who don’t need a job because being an independent contractor,It’s your upfront investment. I mean, we give you the leads. We give you the mentorship. We have the capital. Every rep that works with Epiphany can write a contract up to $2 million a day.
And so I’m finding that people who are coming to me from Indeed, they’re looking for a job. Even though we’re specifically asking for door knockers who have door knocking experience, they are like, I knocked on 10 doors, how much do I get paid? Well, no, we only want you to knock on at least 40 doors per week. And…
We know that with 40 interactions, you will get an appointment. Now, do reps make more appointments? Absolutely. Under 40. ⁓ Sometimes you knock on 41 and then you’ll make an appointment. Sometimes you knock on 50 and then you’ll make an appointment. But we do know that our numbers show that with 40 interactions, you will make an appointment.
And we know that about six signed contracts, at least three will go to close. Right. I was just thinking of the threats. Leans on properties. Yeah, that’s a threat to my business.
John Harcar (28:10)
Yeah.So Chandra, just, you know, once again, effort of time, kind of running out here. If there are folks that are listening to this and they want to, they want to talk to you about kind of what your business, you know, operation looks like, how you’re teaching people or maybe they want to learn from you. How can they get in touch with you directly?
Chandra Peak (28:33)
Of course, you can email me. It’s C-H-A-N-D-R-A, Chandrawithepiphany, E-P-I-P-H-A-N-Y, @gmail.com. Or you can call me or text me at (346)6001605.John Harcar (28:52)
Awesome. And we’ll put all that stuff down in the ⁓ show notes. Guys, if you’re in your Houston area, right? Are you looking for people just in that area or kind of all over Texas?Chandra Peak (29:01)
Mm-hmm.So we are currently in Houston, San Antonio, and Dallas.
John Harcar (29:10)
Beautiful. Guys, if any of you guys are in that area and you might be looking to connect with Chandra to, once again, talk about what she’s doing, maybe work with her, please reach out. Chandra, thank you so much for coming on here and just sharing it all, right? You really gave the story and I think there’s a lot of power in people’s stories and I hope you enjoyed it as well.Chandra Peak (29:30)
I did. Thank you so much, John. I’m so glad I came across your podcast.John Harcar (29:32)
Yeah, you’re
awesome. You’re very welcome guys. I hope you enjoyed it and we will see you on the next one. Cheers. -
