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Flipping 12 houses at a time while living 2,000 miles away. It sounds impossible, but today's guest is doing it right now. She's going to tell us how she got there after starting with just a single property she bought for less than $100,000.

What's up, everyone? Welcome to the BiggerPockets podcast, where we teach you how to achieve financial freedom through real estate. I'm Dave Meyer, head of real estate investing here at BiggerPockets. Our guest on the show today is Dominique Gunderson, an investor who focuses on flips in New Orleans, but lives a location-flexible lifestyle traveling around the country in an RV.

Dominique was previously on the BiggerPockets podcast back in 2022. It was episode 587. And at that time, she was about three years into her flipping career and was already doing five or six projects at once. Super impressive at that point.

But today we're going to hear about how she's scaled up even further. She's doubled that volume of flips, even while managing her business from across the country. We'll also talk to her about why she's added a rental property portfolio in addition to her already successful flipping business. This is a very fun conversation. I think you're going to learn a lot. So let's bring on Dominique.

Dominique, welcome to the BiggerPockets podcast. Thanks so much for being here again. Appreciate it. Yeah, thanks so much for having me back. I'm really looking forward to diving into some fun topics today. Yeah, you have such a cool story and approach to investing. Can you just give us a little bit of background for those who haven't heard your previous appearances on any of the BiggerPockets podcasts?

Yeah, absolutely. So I got into real estate super young, right out of high school. I graduated at 17 and just knew that this was what I wanted to do. And so jumped right in out of high school, got my real estate license and started learning some of the basics of just sales and marketing. And from there, I jumped into the investing side and did wholesaling for a little bit to get started and build some capital and then jumped into running my own

investment company in 2019. So I have been running that since then in the New Orleans market and I don't and have never lived in that market. So my main focus is out of state flipping, own some rentals out there as well.

but have pretty much just been growing and scaling since 2019. Out-of-state flipping is just a term we don't hear very often. So I am really eager to talk to you about that because I know a lot of people who want to get into flipping.

are interested in doing it passively or in a less expensive market than where they live. So what led you to like going from what you were doing, which was wholesaling agent to wanting to be more active of an investor, primarily focusing on Flipster?

I think for me, going into kind of getting my license and starting doing the wholesaling, that was always like a means to an end for me. That was to just really learn the game and build capital. But even just from a young age, like being in high school and kind of getting interested in real estate, I

I always knew that I wanted to run my own company. I wanted to flip houses. I wanted to own rental properties instead of just being a middleman, whether that be an agent or a wholesaler. So for me, that was just a great way to get started and to learn. But the goal of that was always to fund my future operation and vision. So-

Tell us how you started long distance or out of state flipping, because that almost it almost sounds like an oxypore, like not something that you could actually do. So for me, it honestly combines like the best of both worlds. I love that you can pursue an active strategy where you can make a lot of quick cash and really build your your overall equity and wealth, but don't

doing it in a more passive way where you don't have to be on the job site every day. So that's something that I've learned over time after doing it and have come to really love. But honestly, it all started just almost out of necessity. I was 21 back in 2019 when I first started my own company and I had all my experience in Los Angeles area, Southern California. So it only made sense that I would just start flipping here where I had all my contacts

But it was so expensive and just felt so out of reach for me being so young, you know, knowing that I would have to be all into a deal for like minimum three or four hundred thousand on the low end. I didn't have that much cash saved up. And so it just felt a little overwhelming initially.

And so it was almost a necessity for me. I had to start looking, what market could I afford? What market would this be feasible for me? And New Orleans was one of the only markets that I had really good trusted contacts in. Not that they were in real estate, but my dad and his wife lived in New Orleans. And so that was just the one out-of-state market that I said, you know what? Even though I don't know anybody in the game out there, I know someone. I know someone who has projects.

probably called a plumber to their house or maybe knows a person down the street that's a real estate agent or something like that. I had some little bit of edge on the building the team side just from knowing people in the area. That's awesome. So, you know, when we talked a couple of years ago and when you were on the show, you were doing a lot, like five or six flips at a time, right? Yes, correct. How did you pull that off? It

Is it just all networking where you just have so many GCs and contractors that you can do that kind of volume? So there's a couple different avenues to that. I mean, one is the deal finding side, right? Keeping a good steady stream of deals coming in. Then it's also what you mentioned, the management side of having a team to actually execute those deals. So there's a lot of components to that. A couple of years ago when we chatted, I was doing probably five or six flips at a time. We're running 12 flips right now. And so scaled up,

even more. And something really cool happens when you start to scale, which it sounds kind of crazy, but it actually gets easier in a lot of ways because you're in this whole different boat of it's not just like

a side hustle or a hobby, it's a full-time business. And so in every area you have to put in full-time effort. And so let's just say on the deal finding side, you're going to be making connections with people who know that every time they have a deal available, you will buy it. You are always looking for deals. You have to feed your pipeline just to keep the business going. Where if you're only doing a couple of flips a year,

It's a timing thing. Like you can make great networking connections, but if you're not in that time slot of, you know, a couple months a year where you're looking for a new deal, you're going to have to say no. And so your contacts aren't as strong. They can't be because you're not as reliable. And same with your team members. Like,

I have multiple crews that are always working, always working just on my jobs and I can keep them busy. And so you build that loyalty and you can create really strong teams of people that are trusted and can do your jobs over and over again. And you start creating systems and processes. And so in a lot of ways, speed,

scaling up can make things a little easier as far as the systems and teams go. But obviously, it takes a lot more management and there's a lot more headaches and problems that come up. So it's a balancing scale. For sure. Yeah, that's amazing. Honestly, I'm so impressed that you said that becomes easier because it sounds so difficult to me. I want to learn more about your systems. But I think that there's probably a lot of people listening to this right now who are

are really interested in this idea of out-of-state flipping. Like, I'm personally interested in it. If I could figure out how to do this in a reasonable way, I'd be interested. So maybe we can actually go back a little bit and just talk about sort of what were the first steps you took? And maybe you could just provide some advice for people who would consider this strategy. Sure. Yeah, I think...

The absolute biggest thing, whether you're doing one flip out of state or 10, is your team, your team on the ground, because you aren't going to be there for practically any of it. You might check in every other month or something, but you have to know in every aspect between real estate agents, contractors, project managers, lenders, everything has to be in place to

to make sure that the process is flowing just as well when you're there or not there. And so that was some of the first steps for me is, okay, how can I build a team of people? Who do I need on my team? And how can I find them that I can trust without me being there all the time? And that's

That is much easier said than done. It sounds like, okay, sure, just go start networking with people and it'll happen, which is kind of true. But it truly is, you know, looking back now from where I started, it's such a trial and error thing. Like you just have to know that going in that you're not going to just find the perfect team and everything be perfect.

the same from day one and it'll just, you'll just move forward seamlessly and always work with the same people. It's just not going to happen. You always have to be networking. You always have to be looking to build and expand your team because people will maybe be good for a couple of deals and then they'll, they'll fall off or have a personal issue come up and they can't work with you as consistently anymore. So,

So the networking, I think, was one of the big places that I started attending any sort of networking groups, whether they be digital or in person, that I could and just start meeting other investors, other people in the space that I could ask for referrals or I could just meet contractors. I could meet people that I'd need to work with, you know, in person at some of these networking groups.

So just thinking about who I needed and how I could find them was definitely the biggest first place I had to start. And so how did you find them? Because for me, I can understand and sort of wrap my head around how to network with agents. You know, we have tools and bigger pockets for that or even network with other investors. I've done some out-of-state burbers where, you know, I've networked with some contractors, but...

Those were like smaller in scale. And I felt that, you know, the project scope was very clear. And I knew that this contractor I was working with had this expertise. But how do you even go about networking with GCs in another city? Were you going to New Orleans frequently? Yeah, it's funny to say, but I think it can be simpler than you may think. It's obviously easy in your own market.

because you can just meet people randomly, like you said. But I always had somewhat of a presence in New Orleans. I mean, today, I go there at least once every other month for five days to a week just to kind of check in and meet people face to face. So there's always opportunities when you're there in person. But there's so many online groups even that you can join today. Like for me, I mean, the Facebook groups in the local New Orleans market are really a big thing. Like there's a lot of great

investing groups. And like you mentioned too, bigger pocket stuff, like there's always different groups that you can kind of join and get into just get the conversation started with people. You may not necessarily meet the contractor that you're looking for, but you might meet someone who's like one step away from getting you to that introduction. But I mean, I've met some of my contractors super randomly. Like some of them have literally just been

working at a job across the street from my property and you just go over there and start talking to them and ask if they're looking for more work. And you get kind of a sense of their quality of work since they're on another job site. I've had contractors literally just walk up to me and introduce themselves to me at

meetup groups. It's been just random interactions that seem to come more and more frequently the more you open yourself up. My team is not closed. I am not one and done, like set. I'm always looking to network with more people. Yeah. All right. We had to take a quick break and then we'll be back with more of my conversation with Dominique Gunderson.

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Maybe you could just tell us, Dominique, a little bit more about your first deal and like how you pulled that off, because that might help me and maybe some other people extrapolate how you did this once and then now how you've sort of achieved this amazing, very impressive scale of doing it like 12 of these at a time. Sure.

Yeah, absolutely. I wouldn't say my first deal was perfect by any means. It was far from it. But like a lot of people will say, it's your first deal and it's the best one because you got started, right? You made the mistakes and now it leads you to go do 100 more. So my first deal...

I bought on the MLS, nothing crazy or fancy about the strategy to find it. Paid $51,000 for the house and ended up putting in about, I think about $45,000. We were all in like just under $100,000 for the house and only sold it for $115,000. So after like realtor fees, closing costs, stuff like that, I mean...

Hardly made anything, made a little bit of profit, but not much on the deal. But again, learned invaluable lessons that I can't put a price tag on from just getting started and doing a deal and meeting people even. I called and talked to so many different people just on the contracting side, just to give me bids and just learn about numbers and how people are projecting scopes of work out there.

And even though I didn't use all of them, like that already gave me a bunch of different sets of numbers of how to analyze rehab costs and what things are going to cost. And funny enough, even one of the contractors who gave me a bid on that first house that didn't do the job, I reconnected with later down the line and he did probably like 30 flips for me thereafter. Wow. So you get started somewhere. You have an actual property where you're actually doing something with it.

And that's your in to start making a lot of these connections. You know, you have something you can talk to people about that you're actually working on. You have a property. You can ask different agents to come walk and like, what can I list this for? You know, you're making relationships and same on the contracting side. So that was my first flip again, so far from perfect, but.

such a great starting point. That point about having something tangible to like center your conversations around is so important. I've stumbled into that as well. Like,

Like just talking to a contractor about some theoretical property or like, do you want to work together? It's like, yeah, of course I want to work together. But, you know, not having something to point to, like, can you do X job? Like, can you do this job by this date? It really adds a sense of urgency and tangibility to a conversation that I think makes the relationship move a lot faster. So I think that's that's great advice.

That deal seems great, relatively cheap, buying it for 50, 60,000. Now, you know, fast forward to today when you're doing 12 of these, can you tell us a little bit about what your average deal in this kind of market looks like?

Today, I'm kind of buying in two different buckets. One would be the more entry-level price point, which is more similar to that deal I just described to you, my first deal. And that would be anything that's worth, when it's done, $200,000 or less. And so those are a lot of the deals that I keep for rentals and do the BRRRR strategy on because they have good cash flow numbers at that price point. Sometimes I'll flip them if it has a really good spread.

And then the other bucket of deals I'm buying are the ones that I'm more so fixing and flipping. And those are the slightly higher end ones. Some of them have a like 300K ish resale value, but more so they're in the four to 500K resale value where you're purchasing it between like 200 and 250 and putting in like 80 to 100. So those higher end ones are more so what I'm flipping right now.

What's your what's your average margin then on these kinds of deals? So the target is always 15 percent return on investment. So 15 percent of what I put into the property. Obviously, sometimes you make 10, sometimes you make 20, 25, you know, so but target for me is always 15.

Okay, that's quite good. And how long are these deals taking you? That's super dependent on the market right now. I have some that still sell in your average 30 to 45 day timeline. And we're all into the deal from start to finish in five or six months. And

And I have some deals right now that the market's slow and it's just taking several months on the market just to get an offer. And so some of those deals are taking more like eight to nine months start to finish to be done and sold. And has that changed your approach? I assume if you're continuing to do them that they're still profitable enough to the point where you're taking on the same volume of deals as you were maybe a year or two ago or?

are you trying to scale up more? I like this range. It's a good enough scale to where you're doing a lot of volume. You're able to keep your teams busy and, and keep people loyal to you, but it's not so big that I'm trying to do like a hundred deals a year. It is just super unmanageable. And I have to make a bunch of partnerships and have W2 employees and stuff like that. So my goal isn't to necessarily get that big, but, um,

Yeah, right around this range of having 12 to 15 projects at a time, mostly on the fix and flip side and kind of keeping the best ones for long-term rental properties. Awesome. Wow. And that's incredible. Congratulations on all the progress you've made in just a couple of years.

I'm actually curious, though. You said that you're holding some rental properties. What led to that shift? I think that's something that's always been a goal of mine from the beginning as well. And it was more a capital and experience thing. The more...

deals that you're doing and you don't necessarily need to flip so many per year in order to just pay your bills and live off of the income, you can kind of start thinking about holding some of the better ones for longer term rentals. And so buy properties and let the tenant

pay down your mortgage for 30 years and I'm still pretty young. So for me, that's a decent strategy to be, you know, mid fifties to 60 and have a bunch of properties that are now paid off. And that can be something that I retire on. How are you choosing which ones you're flipping versus holding on to if you're sort of

It sounds like going through somewhat of a similar process, at least on the front end of the deal. I pretty much will hold any deal that does pencil as a rental. So in my market, there's a lot of deals that pencil as flips because you may not have quite enough margin in the deal to pull out all of your capital and make it like a perfect burr. But

But you still have a really nice profit margin for a fix and flip opportunity. Or it might be in that slightly higher end price point that I mentioned before, where even if it was a perfect bird, you could pull all your cash out. It just wouldn't rent for enough to cash flow and make any positive cash flow. So for me, any property that is in a price point where I can realistically...

pull out almost all of my cash or all of my cash with a cash out refinance and it's still cash flows at least a couple hundred dollars a month.

I will always keep it as a rental. And how are you sort of managing the capital side of that, then? Is it just making it more complicated for you, like in terms of getting different loans and managing your inflows and outflows of cash? Because I would imagine that it's just adding a whole layer of complexity in another sort of business line. Definitely. It's different and has different components for sure.

On the fix and flip side, and even the BRRRR side a little bit, up front when I'm buying the properties for cash and renovating with cash, I pretty much exclusively use private money. So these have just been people that I've connected with over the years that...

have cash and want to invest passively. They act just like a bank, just like a normal lender, but they're just a private individual. So I'll use those types of loans to purchase the properties and renovate them. And then if it's going to become a rental and

and hold it long-term, we put long-term financing with a 30-year mortgage. That would be the cash-out refinance. Once the property is fully stabilized and rented out, we'll put that long-term financing on the property and use the money that you get from the cash-out refinance to pay off the private lender.

So that way it's just me left on the mortgage and you're dealing more with just a institutionalized bank or lender that you're making the mortgage payments to every month for a 30-year mortgage. Dominique, I want to ask you more about how you were able to scale this business with a bigger team and more systems in place. But first, we need to take another quick break.

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Thanks for sticking with us. Here's more of me and Dominique talking about scaling an out-of-state fix and flip business. I want to get back to some of the stuff that you talked about earlier with achieving this level of scale. You know, you obviously talked about systems, you talked about teams, but can you tell us a little bit about like the order of operations? Because I'm curious, sort of, you can't do everything at once. Like what are some of the like first steps when you said, I want to go from five or six deals and then I want to go from five or six deals

at a time to 12 that you're doing now, you know, who are the people you brought on and what systems, what software, what other tools did you need to bring on in order to ramp up each subsequent deal? I will warn you with this question. I am a very simple person. I'm not one that has like all the fancy softwares and systems put together and built out all these, you know, different

apps and stuff that we're using. I'm pretty simple. I keep a lot of things on spreadsheets and just simple, easy tools that anybody can build and do. But from an operations standpoint, what it looks like, and this is a big mind shift that I had to make from going from five to six to 10 to 12, is you have to build out your teams. So when you're doing maybe five at a time,

It's actually probably more beneficial to find one great team, one great set of everything and just feed them as much business as you can. Keep them loyal. You can probably have a contractor because the projects are going to be at different stages that can handle that much volume. Same with the real estate agent. Same with the lenders. Like everything you can probably find one great team and really, really,

Keep them loyal and hone in on them. But when you scale up, you just can't. It becomes way too much and too overwhelming for just one great set of people. So you really have to shift to that mindset of like,

okay, my team is built, everything's closed to what we were talking earlier, where you're always looking to build new teams. You're always looking to improve. Who else can I start working with? And how can I make my teams better? Because you have multiple open slots for every position. And so there's just more opportunity to like,

refine and really work with the best of the best. So for me, like what that looks like is I have a couple of GCs who run all my projects. So I don't work directly with any subs. I just work with a couple of GCs who are managing everything on the ground and

And that just keeps things a lot more streamlined too. Even just on the accounting and like invoicing side, I'm just getting one to three bills throughout the projects, pretty much like larger chunks. They're keeping track of receipts and buying materials and things like that. So it just keeps things really streamlined. I just have one point of contact that I can keep in touch with daily or every other day to get updates on the jobs and

And each of those GCs are managing three to five different projects all the time. And then I have a project manager role. At times, I've had like two people in this role. But I think even with a larger scale, you can probably just keep one person in this role. But this is somebody who is kind of like a third party to...

all of the other roles. They're not just your contractor, just your agent. You know, they're not specialized in one thing. They're just doing any and all tasks that might come up on a day-to-day basis. So it might be making deliveries. It might be putting up a lockbox. It might be turning on utilities, like anything. It could be just, I'm sending you to the property to get me update photos and videos so that I can keep

a tab on what's going on or clean up if it's a vacant house that's been listed a couple of weeks, like sweep the floors and stuff like that. So it can be anything. Does that person work exclusively for you? No, I've had a few different people in this role and it's usually been kind of part-time. So I've typically worked with people that are within the real estate space, like doing something else within the space. And they're just looking for some like side part-time work.

So I guess that role seems super crucial to me because, you know, you always have a contractor who, yeah, they're on your team, but they also like, you know, they don't run their own business. And so I feel like it's kind of essential to have sort of a neutral party in there who's like.

works for you and can report back on the real state of things. And like, not that people are being dishonest, but like, it's helpful to have someone who is looking at every deal through your perspective, not just like hearing it filtered through the lens of an agent or a contractor who are probably trying to do the right thing, but just like have their own perspective and biases.

Absolutely. And yeah, just having more eyes on things is always helpful because people see different things, you know, and it's just kind of like a checks and balance system for keeping tabs on things. Like you said, I can't tell you how many times we've done a final walkthrough with the contractor, like the project's done, it's ready for photos. And then I send my project manager through and I get 10%.

10 more pictures of touch-up things that need to be done, you know? Right. Yeah. So just having like the extra set of eyes is super, super important. So how has this changed your role in your own business? Yeah, absolutely. I think it's in a lot of ways doing this out of state will do this to you. But as you scale up, it'll also do this to you. You have to force yourself to be

more hands off and to delegate. Even if I was on the ground, I don't think I would spend my time doing like the project manager role, for example. Those are all things I could easily do if I was on the ground, but it's not the best use of my time. And so whether I'm on the ground or not, it's a great role to delegate. And same with like general contractors. I could, if I was on the ground, run my own projects and save money, but I

even if I was, I don't think that would be the best use of my time because I have to do all these other things to keep the operation growing and scaling. So it really helps you put into perspective, just being out of state, what things are really important to delegate and what things are really important for you to do. So like for me personally,

The acquisitions, that's like probably the most important, super important in any fix and flip operation because that's where you're making your money, right? Or if you make a mistake, it's probably made there. Once you bought the deal for a certain price, if you were wrong about anything, like you can't fix it.

So I spend a lot of my time overseeing the acquisition side of things and making sure that we're not overlooking, you know, anything on the rehab scope projections, ARV projections, and ultimately just making the final decisions on what we're buying. And I spend a lot of time on the capital raising part as well.

as well. You know, making those connections with individuals who are going to lend me funds. I always have funds available to be buying more and more houses. Those are two things that I would say are really important for me to make that connection for people to know me and my face and my name to continue sending me deals and continue giving me capital. And do you like it? Like it sounds just like such a big shift. Like you've had to sort of

almost reinvent your your own business and you're doing so much different stuff at least in my career i've found times where that happens like i just do it out of necessity and then you kind of like come back and figure out like oh i actually should be doing something i enjoy more like do you feel like you're in a place with your business that's sustainable and that you're enjoying it's such a great question and i toy with this a lot too because on one hand i love

love that I can be fully remote and running this business. Like that's the greatest gift to be able to have built something that I can travel. I can do whatever I want to do all the time, be my own boss at this age. Like what a gift, you know, to have been able to do that. And so I love that aspect of it. But at the same time, when I do get to spend time in new Orleans and I go to the ground and I'm present, I'm

I'm like, wow, this is so cool. I like to be here, you know, to walk my own jobs and to see what's going on. Like you really feel like you're actually a part of it instead of just kind of running this remote thing from somewhere else and not hands-on seeing it.

But ultimately, I think for me, it makes my business better, I think, for me to not be there, to be honest. It does. The part that has forced me to delegate and to bring on really strong team members that are great in each individual role, I think has made my business better instead of me trying

to like do things that I'm ultimately not best at and then just be kind of mediocre across the board. I resonate so much with what you said. I understand the feeling of it making you better. When I moved abroad, I had sort of the same experience, just this forcing function where you're

recognize what you're good at. You are forced to become more efficient. It does make you better. But having just moved back to the US, like I love being at properties. I'm so happy, like being able to go like check out my deals and go even deals. I'm not necessarily going to buy just like going to open houses or looking at

Being with other investor friends who are like doing deals, like it is fun to be a part of it. So Dominique, in two years, you've made incredible progress again. Congratulations. What's next for you? You've scaled up, you've doubled your volume. Are you just going to keep going or what's next?

For the foreseeable future, I see myself really trying to stack up and build more rental properties and just keep the flipping operation decently stable as far as the current volume that we're doing. And hopefully just continuing to build relationships to getting better

more consistent deal flow, continuing to make sure that we're on top of the renovations and we're refining, like making better design decisions so that we sell faster. And how can we cut our rental budgets back? So efficiency is the overall goal, I think right now. Well, that's awesome. Congratulations on scaling. And we'd love to have you back in a year or two or whatever, just to hear what you're up to, because it's such a cool, unique podcast.

art of real estate investing that we don't hear about very often, but you're doing it so well. So thank you so much for coming and sharing your insights and your story with us, Dominique. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks so much for having me. And thank you all so much for joining us here on the BiggerPockets podcast. We'll see you again soon.

Thank you all for listening to the BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I'm the host and executive producer of the show, Dave Meyer. The show is produced by Ian Kay. Copywriting is by Calico Content, and editing is by Exodus Media. If you'd like to learn more about real estate investing or to sign up for our free newsletter, please visit www.biggerpockets.com. The content

Thank you.