INTERVIEW WITH LEX LEVINRAD NOLAND ARARACAP
them and sell them. Eventually I got to the point
How many deals have you completed over
where I was locating deals, supervising the rehab
the years?
crew, and even selling the houses retail. At that
point I knew I was ready to start working by myself.
I have been personally involved in buying,
rehabbing,
My first deal was a house that I purchased for
$50,000 that required $25,000 in repairs in order to
be ready to rent. I borrowed the $50,000 from a
private lender and I borrowed the $25,000 for the
repairs from my best friend’s mom, who lived in
wholesaling,
renting
and
selling
hundreds of houses. We now count our deals
based on how many houses we wholesale per
month and our monthly target on our board in our
office is 30 houses per month.
Los Angeles. I bought that property with no money
out of my pocket (no money down). After I had
repaired the property and rented it, I ordered an
What was your most challenging deal and
what did you learn from it?
appraisal and that property appraised for $163,000
($88,000 profit). For me that was the moment
I am involved in wholesaling, fixing, flipping and
when I knew that I would be a real estate investor
being a landlord every day, and they all have their
for the rest of my life. I managed to pull out
own unique profit opportunities and challenges.
$34,000 in cash from that property by refinancing
However, one of my biggest challenges as a
and paying off both the private lender and my
relatively new investor was when I was rehabbing
friend’s mom. I used that cash as a down payment
my third house and the contractor that was working
to buy my first home in Boca Raton. So my first
on my house, stole my $10,000 deposit for the job.
deal got me a rental property and my primary
The repairs on that house cost me $16,000 more
residence.
than I originally estimated, and my profit was less
than half of what I estimated it would be. That was
the last time I gave a contractor their money up
front.
What big mistakes have you made or have
seen others make?
I believe that we all learn the most from our
mistakes not from our successes. New investors
should use their mistakes as a learning opportunity
to become better investors. I have made mistakes
along the way that I use as teaching tools to teach
my students what not to do. I caution new investors