From Near Bankruptcy to Land Flipping Success | Clay Hepler E16

In this episode of The Real Estate Junkie, Keith sits down with Clay Hepler, who shares his remarkable journey from significant real estate setbacks to finding success in land flipping. Clay discusses his costly mistakes with an Airbnb and the challenges he faced in his early investing journey, trying to scale too fast without doing the proper due diligence. After almost going bankrupt, Clay flipped the script. Leveraging what he had learned renovating rental properties, he applied these lessons to land flipping. Discover how Clay uncovered hidden opportunities in land flipping that no one is talking about. This episode offers valuable insights for anyone facing similar obstacles in real estate investing.

Connect with Clay:
https://x.com/clayhepler
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clayhepler/
website: https://landmansubmissionig.carrd.co/

Connect with Keith:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamkeithandrews
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@iamkeithandrews
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@iamkeithandrews

Interested in the Colorado Springs Real Estate Market? 
Explore Alpha Zulu Realty—Colorado Springs' #1 Investor-Focused Realty. From A to Z, we've got you covered in acquisitions, sales, and property management. Visit https://www.AlphaZuluRealty.com today.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

0:00

And so no one at RIA talks about land investing. I didn't hear land investing on any podcasts. There's no one that talks about land investing. And so I said, this is a business that is exactly like the wholesaling business. I know how to reach out to sellers. I know how to find lists. I know how to build sales teams. I know how to market direct to seller. I know how to build the operational expertise that is required to scale a business like this very quickly. And I can do this. I can replicate my success that I had in the house flipping business in a blue ocean, which is land. Welcome to another episode of the Real Estate Junkie Podcast. Today I'm joined by Clay Hepler, the second youngest guest we've ever had. Clay shares his real estate mistakes from owning an Airbnb that almost bankrupted him to a series of high ticket disasters across his entire portfolio. But through resilience, he found a lifeline in landflipping that transformed his situation and now provides him with active income to fuel and future proof his real estate portfolio. Clay, it's good to have you, man. Welcome to our show. I'm excited to be here. I saw that you're in Colorado. My wife's from Colorado and I've spent a lot of time out there. I actually used to have a house out in Grand Lake. We're actually going there in a couple of weeks. We booked an Airbnb there. Well, I had an Airbnb there so I could talk to you about that experience. Talk to me. Let's start there. Well, I mean, so. I would say that me buying that Airbnb, it was the single worst financial decision of my life. Wow. Multiple six figures, worst financial decision. And it set me back pretty far because my wife and I, so what we wanted to do was we wanted to move to Colorado and we had this very enchanted view of the Rockies and frankly, we couldn't afford to buy a home in like Vale or Brack, you know, some really cool ski town. And she has a, an uncle who owns a store in downtown Grand Lake. She grew up going, going to Grand Lake when she was younger. And so we loved it. I mean, we, we, we loved it, right. But we didn't really get a feel for the town when you're a local there. It's very different, nothing against the town. It's just really not who we are. It's like a town of like 500 people and it's pretty funky, right? It's, it's have the ski town vibes. It's dead end. It's dead end to Rocky Mountain National Park and these three big lakes. So it's pretty geographically isolated. You know, and you could say that all these other mountain towns like Telluride or Aspen are, because they're not off 70, they're geographically isolated, but there's such a population there relative, you know, in terms of the difference between Grand Lake. But we had this dream. We were going to do this. We're going to move out to Colorado. because we were living in Pennsylvania at that point. And so we bought this Airbnb, you know, seven figure buy, and we said, hey, we're gonna Airbnb this out for a couple years, and then we're gonna eventually move there. Well, we Airbnb'd it out at the end of what I consider to be this pretty significant Airbnb bust. And so we bought this old 5 ,000 square foot home. We were like, We have the experience in real estate, like we own rental properties, like we'll be perfectly fine. And really what ended up happening was we got a lunch money eaten because of we weren't good at what we were doing. We weren't really dedicated to Airbnb. We bought this thing for too much and we didn't realize the seasonality of Grand Lake, because it's incredibly seasonal. And, and so, and this house was like needed so much work. I mean, we, we spent Multiple six figures and work in this house and we didn't get it out, right? We saw it for a loss And so I mean I can go on and on and about that I think that there was a couple of things that if I were to go back would have said first of all Just don't buy it which is really stupid. It was a vanity purchase and a dreamer purchase and I'm glad it didn't you know tank us but It air me and be stuff. I mean, it's literally a hard. It's a hard business And you might get higher cash on cash returns, but the return on hassle there is just so, so high. It's, it's difficult if you don't really know what you're doing. You're not a professional operator. Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, I hear both sides of the coin on Airbnb short -term rounds all the time. I personally own one midterm. So I'm not in the short term game, but I'm on, I have a midterm and I do extremely well with it. and you know, each market's different. You're right. When you go into a market like. Grand Lake, it's definitely going to be seasonal. It sounds like you let your emotions make your purchase decision, right? You really liked the spot. You thought, you know, you had this dream behind it. So you probably weren't really doing the math equation. You were just doing the, Hey, this will feel good to buy this property. And I see a lot of investors doing that. They make these purchase decisions like I get investors all the time and say, hey, I really want to buy a rental property. And then they'll buy a rental property that makes absolutely no sense. They didn't run the numbers. It's never going to cashflow. There's a ton of work that needs to be done on it. They're not thinking it through, but it's an emotional decision because they just want to get started. You know, maybe it's, I just want to get an Airbnb, even though it's not going to make any money. So that's just a, a stupid thing to do as an investor, but it's good that you learn from it. Right. I think that going through that experience probably taught you a lot though. Right. Yeah, it certainly taught me a lot. I really wish I didn't have to learn the lesson to be honest with you. It was so much, man. I mean, like I remember we had this issue that a lot of those houses up there, depending on where you buy, they're on wells, okay? So we thought our well had run dry. And what was happening was we had six bedrooms or five bedrooms and there would be three people taking showers at the same time and so the well would be working in overdrive and We're like we need to dig another well, which is like$40 ,000 or whatever it is like deep wells, right because Grand Lake sits on this Pretty like pretty significant aquifer, but you gotta go really deep. So Basically what I came up with was like hey, let's just instead of drilling this well, let's just put on high efficiency showers and toilets So that we like, we can see maybe if we can, instead of spending 40 day, we could spend, I don't know, it was like 4 ,000 bucks. But like the problem was we didn't really have a reliable contractor because Grand lakes remote as hell. Yeah. Yeah. And so my wife literally flew out there because at that point I had a w two and I couldn't, and she literally flew out to her w two is remote and she was there for like 48 hours, man. I mean, everything that could have gone wrong with this house went wrong. She was there with a contractor, like overseeing it. It was just, it was really, really tough and we lost money on it. I mean, it was, you know, we, I would agree with your earlier sentiment. It was a, it was a bright eye, bushy tailed buy, right? And that's just like the worst thing you could possibly do in real estate. And, and you know, you can make the numbers work. You know, if you like something enough, you can make the numbers work. And I don't think I talked to enough people in the market. There's just so many additional due diligence things. I use AirDNA and I said, hey, this is good enough data. And it just wasn't good enough data. So it taught me a lot, but I really wish I didn't have to learn it. Well, hey, with that all being said, maybe we can back up and just talk about who you are. I know that you started out in multifamily and now you've kind of pivoted over to land and I want to talk that through, but maybe you can just give us your backstory of how you got into real estate in the first place. For sure. So the, the two minute spiel is I was, I had aspirations of working for the state department, was working for an NGO in Buenos Aires or Argentina, had some experience with. you know, working with the state department down there and ended up just really not liking it whatsoever. So took some time off of college, joined the family, family chocolate company, learned sales and marketing there, got hooked on the internet, gurus, grand Cardone, bigger pockets, the whole nine yards. And was, and I said, Hey, real estate could be an awesome way for me to make money because of course there's no problems with real estate whatsoever. It's really easy. And I could buy cash filling rentals all day. Right. And no, there will be no competition. So, so from there, I realized I was like, Hey, I want to get into real estate, but I needed to work with someone who had experience already in real estate. So I found a mom and pop guy in my city, had a couple hundred units learned directly from him, built a wholesaling house flipping company. We did about 75 deals in our first year. Then the second year ended up sort of parting ways because I was starting to buy units of my own. And then I started doing the burr process, buying small midsize Maltese. doing the burp process, single families, flipping a little bit here and there. And then I realized that, I mean, it was sort of all at once and it came is that my wife got a phone call the day before Thanksgiving a couple of years ago and her boss basically said, Keith, like, hey, I'm sorry, but our business is going under and you're not getting your salary. And That's too bad. I'm sorry. It's, you know, but we don't have any money to pay anyone. We thought we were going to get investors and we never got investors. And so I had to find a way to build active income. This is another example in my journey of I was this bright eyed bushy tailed young dude and I was going out there and buying a ton of rental properties. And, you know, we were buying them for great basis. We're fixing them up. We were doing everything that we needed to do. But it takes a decade. Right to get good at real estate the real estate game to understand all the things capex expenses all the things that actually go into managing asset and property managing a property and so we were buying these 1910 builds and You know, these things are a hundred years old man. They're they're they're They have stuff that goes on box gutters single pane wooden windows that rot out because it's raining in the city that I live in Sandstone foundations sandstones porous so water comes in through these foundations, I mean, everything that could go wrong. And so you get a, you get a cash flowing portfolio under a hundred units and you're like, man, I'm in the green. I'm in the green this month. I'm in the green this month. I'm in the green next month. I have a $40 ,000 roof. I have a, you know, a copper, copper piping that was ripped out by a crack head by the street down the street. I've cast iron pipes that I need to rip out because the sewer line is exploding all over the, you know, the general area. in the front of my building. And so I got to put $30 ,000 into that. And real estate's not like a walk in a park. And so I got my teeth, I got my teeth kicked in through that. I mean, we still have the portfolio. It's finally stabilized. It's finally doing well. But I realized that I had all these transferable skills. I had the real estate skills. I like the house flipping stuff, the wholesaling, because I like to transact. I like to deal. I like to trade. So I said I need to build this active income because that next year it was my wedding I had to pay for my life I was still bearing the the five figure a month mortgage from this Airbnb It was some months kicking ass in the summer and most of the months I'm having to you know Dish in cash and so I built this lamp as I said I had to find something that made actual active income real income not like an extra $5 ,000 a month in cashflow, real income. And so I needed something that could do that. I thought I was going to move to Colorado. I thought I was going to move to this Airbnb. And so I needed something that was remote enabled. And I had a limiting mindset, whatever it was, I don't want to get back into wholesaling or house flipping. I needed to find something else. And so no one at RIA talks about land investing. I didn't hear land investing on any podcasts. There's no one that talks about land investing. And so I said, this is a business that is exactly like the wholesaling business. I know how to reach out to sellers. I know how to find lists. I know how to build sales teams. I know how to market direct to seller. I know how to build the operational expertise that is required to scale a business like this very quickly. And I can do this. I can replicate my success that I had in the house flipping business in a blue ocean, which is land. And so I said I'm going all in and I did not look back. And so you are basically just wholesaling land. Are you holding on to any of the land or is it just all just a transaction? Okay, so we do two things. We will wholesale it in about 20 % of the cases. The majority of the cases though, what we're doing is we're buying it as if we're buying a house with investor capital. and we are going to improve it, value add, put the kitchen, the granite countertops in, and the extra windows, and the new furnace, and the AC, and we're selling it on the back end. We're making this thing beautiful, right? So real quick, on land, does that mean you're doing site surveys, you're digging a well? What does it mean to add that value? Right, so this is one of the reasons why I love land so much. You can do something as simple as clearing out a home site to add so much value to a parcel because people like in house flipping, if you open up like an open door concept, open floor concept, you connect the living room, the kitchen, it's like$20 ,000 of value. It's crazy. But most people can't actually see that. So you have to spoon feed it to them. And so the way that you spoon feed it to someone in land, is you cut out the home sites, you say, hey, this is where you can live, your beautiful land. And this is all rural recreational land. We're not talking about land in major metro areas. We're an hour, two hours, three outside of major metro areas. And so we'll do stuff as simple as that, but land can go from, I'm going to just bring a brush hog and cut off a quarter acre and make it a beautiful home site and then get drone photos and make this thing beautiful and sell it for a higher amount that I purchased it for, all the way to, I'm going to put a 350 unit apartment building class A in downtown Miami. And so the, the skillset that we're building as land investors is more transferable than any other skillset in any other asset class of real estate, because what we're realizing is we're finding the highest and best use of land. So where I started was I'm buying these two acre tracks in the middle of nowhere. And where I am now is I can subdivide deals. I can buy something for half a million dollars, sell it for a million dollars by subdividing it. I can buy that same thing and I can go and re -entitle it and turn it into a 200 a unit subdivision and sell it to Lenar or Toll Brothers and I can make seven figures on that deal. And so that's the whole value of Landon. I saw that when I got into it. There's no people in this, very few people. And the opportunity for me to take my five figure paycheck on in wholesaling or even four figure paycheck and turn that into a six and seven figure is there. And so that's what attracted me to it initially. Wow. So, and it sounds like to subdivide in all of this, it's more of just legwork paperwork than anything, right? It's creating relationships down at, you know, the zoning department. Right. So what we do is we find this, this flat of land, it's maybe 50 acres, right? And we say, hey, there's a demand here for five acres more than there is from 50. And so I can, maybe my 50 acres sells for 10 ,000 an acre, but my five acres, because more people can buy it, right? It's more accessible. Maybe that sells for 20 ,000 an acre. Okay? So all I need to do is I need to go find surveyors. I need to work with the local department of health to maybe put in a septic tank or pull a sewer line and sewer line taps. I need to figure out what type of electricity there is in a local area, what type of utilities there are, if there are certain types of transportation, things that I need to be aware of in terms of traffic, because I'm going to have more people in this specific area. That seems complicated, right? It is a little complicated, but it's not as complicated as you would think. And it's worth the six figures that you're going to make if you do it right. And we get paid for handling those types of transactions. Wow. So how many of these deals are you doing? The bread and butter of our business is these rural flips, right? The, I'm buying this thing for 20 ,000, I'm selling it for 40. I'm buying this for 50, I'm selling it for a hundred. Those are the bread and butter of our business. I would say we probably get three subdivisions, smaller, minor subdivides, a quarter, and then our average amount of transactions that we're completing in terms of the other rural types of rural recreational tracks is anywhere between eight to 12 a month, which includes the, that includes maybe I do one subdivision or one subdivision every other month. So we're doing a pretty high deal of volume. I mean, have a team of people. That's the reason why we're able to have this podcast in the afternoon, right? I have a team of people that are incredible and they help with my acquisitions and my marketing and my scrubbing and my operations. I didn't get into this business to be a one man band. There are a lot of people in the land flipping business, which is one of the reasons why I find that there's such an opportunity is there is a lot of people that are doing this as a side hustle man. and you can eat their lunch money if you have operational and sales expertise. And the land business is five to 10 years behind the wholesaling and house flipping business, maybe more because the house, you know, these guys are competing in these major Metro areas with the most amount of competition. And so we, I just take everything I knew from doing that in a major Metro area and apply it to a less competitive market. And so that's why I've been able to scale quicker than maybe if I would have if I was just in another wholesaling and house flipping business. It sounds like you're doing a lot of land flipping. Are you holding on to anything though for that long term, you know, appreciation and is there, is there anything that you're doing on that end? That's a great question. So that is in the land world. It's called land banking. Will I eventually do land banking? Probably. But I would think for me, it would be more advantageous to buy a really good piece of real estate like commercial sticks and bricks. Because then I can take that bonus depreciation and depreciate it against my income. And then I can 1031 it like I would with land. Okay. So most of your income right now is all active. in the land flipping business. And so do you have any rentals right now or you've sold everything? Yeah, I've probably 70 units, something like that. 70 -ish units. Okay. And that's just all it's a large multifamily or? Small like my biggest unit is an eight unit. I've never syndicated. I've always just done BRRR with partners. Got it. Got it. So you're holding that real estate that's providing some level of cash flow for you. as well as the tax advantages of owning it. A small level of cash flow. Yes. A small level of cash flow. Okay. Well, I mean, you know, there's so many different strategies when it comes to real estate. I know a lot of people, they tend to grow too fast, right? They're going after units like, I want to get another hundred units. I want to get another hundred units. And they quickly find themselves in a position like you were, right? Bad stuff happens. And when bad stuff happens, it gets expensive. And if you don't have the reserves for that, you're in big trouble. You're not going to be able to survive it. So that's why, like for me personally, like I've built my portfolio all on single family homes. And these homes are all, you know, no more than 30 years old. I think that's my, the oldest house that I have in my portfolio. And even that one, like I've updated the plumbing and whatnot. So I know it's practically a brand new home. So when I do a burr, I make it a brand new home. I'm not going to have to worry about it. Of course, you're going to have days where a storm runs through and rips off the roof. This happens. This is why you have insurance policies. This is why you have to have reserves because these things will happen. But for the most part, like I think I've been pretty, pretty fortunate. I did buy one strip of land once and I It was useless. Like I told this story before on my podcast. I bought it at a tax auction. It looked really good on paper. I picked up the lot for 10 K thought I, I hit a home run, went to the lot after I bought it. They are out there with me, found out I could not build there because there's an endangered salamander in the area. And there's all these other regulations that it was a useless strip of land. However, I was able to find somebody that for some reason wanted a useless strip of land and I was able to sell or finance it to them and make way more than my money back, which is awesome. But that's, that's so far, that's my only experience with land, right? but it is, it is interesting because I do see cities like Colorado Springs, where you have a ton of people moving in a shortage of housing. You're going to have to build more. If you can get your hands on some of these. Parcels that are in these places that are close to infrastructure or will be close to infrastructure there could be some Really good opportunities there. I completely agree. So what is your long -term strategy then? Yeah, I mean in land or in life both I mean so the land the evolution of this of my land businesses to go into Be you know becoming a developer in developing And selling them to national builders. Those are massive checks Keith. I mean those are those are seven figure eight figure checks, right? So For my land business, it's it's totally it's that it's building that out and taking the profits from the land business and putting it into Sticks and bricks putting it into physical real estate so I can gain the tax benefits of that and it could be a legacy for for my children as well the power of real estate that we can refinance it income free is a ridiculous concept. Yes. It's just crazy that we can pull out this cash and our tenants pay down the the principal and the interest and we can we get wealthier every single year. And so yes, this is a vessel for cash generation for me. And so I'm going to put that into real estate. And the real estate is going to pay for my life and be able to live the life of my of my absolute dreams with my family. And, you know, another thing is kind of in the columns of, you know, you think the land business right next to the land business is we're launching a community, a land investing community, people doing the same thing that I did. I mean, I told you about my story like I had to do this in the most competitive land market that there's ever been. Right? Because interest rates were still low enough, right? And builders were still going in and I had to build this ship on the way down. So I'm going back and building a course in a community to teach other people to do the same thing. Now, what's in it for me? It's an incredible way to share, share the knowledge that I gained that actually changed my life physically. Right? But also it's an incredible way to find partnerships. to find investors that maybe will in the future invest in my development deals, to help other people learn the business so maybe we can partner in the future. This is not a selfless game. I think that anyone that tells you that I'm doing it to give back and for fulfillment is maybe they're lying to themselves. There's an opportunity for us to create a community for a lot of people, the land man community, so that we can all rise up together, but we're in it to really build generational wealth for us and our family members. And the long -term goal is by doing all this stuff, by building out my own land-flipping business, my land development, this educational company, and investing all those profits into real estate is I want to retire my parents. I want to retire my wife's parents. I have a child, an eight, 10 -week -old child. I want this guy to have an incredible, fulfilling life. And I want to be able to give back to my wife, man. My wife... Has been with me on this ride and she has been with me through the absolute bottom through stressing if we're gonna go bankrupt every single month when we are in our first year of landflipping because we didn't know if we could pay for our wedding we didn't know if we had to pay for this Airbnb or buy groceries and I want her I want to give back to her for standing by my side for these horrible Years, I want to give to her because she's such a teammate to me. And so I want to show her, Hey, this is the man that you chose is the man that can provide for you in abundance and loves you without question. That's awesome. and it also sounds like you got a hard lesson in real estate. Like when you first got started, right? You made a lot of like bad decisions. you caught the real estate bug, like a lot of us do, and you probably just built it too fast, right? Let emotions play into it like with the Airbnb. And when you do that, sometimes you don't make the best decisions. But the good thing is you're only 27 years old. You know, I didn't really get heavy into real estate until I turned 40. So that says a lot for you. Like I made so many mistakes before I hit 40. It's not even funny. Like literally my first house flip. Yeah, I almost went bankrupt too on it. It was... I did my first house flip in 2006 and then 2007, 2009 house prices were cut in half across the country. No one was buying. The world was on fire and I was sitting on this house. I just put all my money in to flip. Here I am paying a mortgage on this house and it's not selling. So I rented it out and who did I rent it out to? somebody I didn't run a background check on and their second rent payment, the check bounced. And so I just went through so many bad things early on and I was like, I am done with real estate. Real estate is not for me. I will just concentrate on my nine to five. Don't talk to me about real estate. But it was great that I had that experience because I took everything that I learned from that to make sure that I don't repeat the same mistakes. And it sounds like now, You figure it out a way that you can get consistent, active income coming in. So it will support your, your, your lifestyle, your expenses. And at the same time, you still see like, okay, this time when I started building my portfolio out, I'm going to do it differently. I'm not going to take the types of risks that I took before. I'm not going to let emotion play into my decision making. Yeah. I mean, those are really great lessons. I was able, I was fortunate enough to learn at an age that I could still bounce back from. And like I said, we lost a lot of money on that Grand Lake house. Well, then you're definitely, it's funny because I have a good friend. He actually, he works with me in real estate and we're always sending like listings for properties out there. And you know, we both have that, I want to have an Airbnb there, but you definitely, Maybe rethink that. I think maybe I'll just enjoy staying at other people's Airbnbs versus actually buying something out there. Because you're right. It is landlocked. It's out there. It's seasonal. You know, you'll probably barely break even if you have any issues like a tenant staying there and then something goes wrong. What do you do if there's you don't have like here in the Springs? I have a network of contractors handyman. If something goes wrong with one of my rentals, I can get someone over there in 10 minutes. I couldn't say that for a place like that. That's right, dude. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. I'm happy to talk to you about it. You know, I am jaded. I'm sure you can make it work, but you have to understand the dynamics of the market. It is a three month town, four month town. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I was thinking though that during even the ski season, you would have some people staying there. And then driving off to the resorts. No, you're not. Not really. Not really. I mean, you have people during Thanksgiving, Christmas. You have some people thinking Grand Lake is a snowmobiling. And so there will. It's like a big snowmobiling. A capital like one of the top capitals in the U .S. But I mean, it's really not enough. Yeah. If you just have weekend stays, it's really hard to break even. You gotta have, if you have weekend stays and your occupancy is like. Well, unless you put a ton of cash in there and who wants to stick a whole bunch of cash into something like that where it could be working for you somewhere else. So yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Well, man, it was really great talking to you. We talked about a lot of different things in a short amount of time, but maybe you can like let. The listeners know how they can contact you, how they can reach you, how they can find out more about what you're doing. And you know, there's probably many people that are listening to this going, Hey, that's land. That's something I want to learn more about. Where can they find you? Okay. So a couple of things. number one, I'm most active on Twitter. Not everyone's a Twitter person, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram. those are the three socials that I'm active on. I have a podcast land man. I have a newsletter that goes out every Friday morning that I break down land related thinking. A lot of people love the newsletter because I do a deal deep dive every week. Hey, this is a deal that we did in our business and this is kind of a deep dive on the deal. What we liked about it, what we didn't like about it, how we conducted due diligence, what our profit margins are, et cetera. People really like that. And then if you want to learn how to build a six figure land flipping business, you can go to land -man .io. We are launching our first cohort in the middle of July of 2024. And so there's a wait list there, but if you're curious about it, you want to fill out a form on our wait list, feel free to go to land -man .io and fill out a wait list form and I'll reach out to you. Awesome. Well, definitely I'm going to have to check that out myself. It was great talking to you. you know, your, your story's pretty inspiring. I think more than anything that comes out of this is just like your drive, right? You're very passionate person and it you know, it takes the right person to be able to go through You know falling on the ground and then being able to pick yourself back up So I definitely commend you for that. Yeah, man. It was just great having you on my show Thank you. Great to jam with you Keith. All right. Take care everyone out there