Maybe the 250 people filtering into a Decatur hotel ballroom to attend a Flip This House seminar are a green shoot, a tendril of hope, signaling a reviving economy.
Flipping homes was all the get-rich-quick rage a few years back, before the housing market went kablooey. The practice largely fell off the map, but here it is, once again.
Or maybe the seminar is another sign of entrenched desperation. Many people are still rattled about the economic collapse that gobbled up families and spit them out, broke and ravaged.
They need something to fall back on, to protect themselves. Companies aren’t hiring. Retirement is not a given. So people need something, anything. And just about anybody can do real estate, right?
The middle-of-the-night TV commercials were incessant, on four different channels during one night I couldn’t sleep. They featured a handsome, earnest-enough looking chap named Than Merrill. He stars on one of the A&E “Flip This House” shows that are again popular.
Than was looking for motivated people to join his team!
A team? That seems exciting.
The Decatur crowd, seeking a whiff of opportunity or a glimmer of hope, was black and white, young and old, immigrant and Atlanta-born, those who’ve done it before and those with barely a clue.
Everyone seems to know someone who has made a bundle flipping a house or who has income-producing properties. Hey, they aren’t that much smarter than me, the feeling goes — so why am I not doing it?
The seminars provide a forum to answer that question. There were FREE! events at six hotels across metro Atlanta last week, which says Than believes the area has a huge flipping need that is unmet.
But Mr. Merrill wasn’t at Thursday afternoon’s session. Instead, a guy named Tony Natoli stalked the stage as the pitchman, barker and evangelist.
Natoli launched straight into his testimonial — his dad was laid off when he was in his 50s and ended up working at McDonalds. Young Natoli vowed that would not happen to him and, during that period, dished out $995 for a seminar that changed his life.
It was fate, he said, asking the crowd if they believed in fate. Lots of hands shot up.
“When these things show up in your life, pay attention, because they may not come around again,” he said. (In fact, there may not be the need to rush, a few flipping outfits have rolled through Atlanta in recent months, and a rival home-flipping guy is here this week.)
“How many of you think this old South Georgia boy is here to sell you something?” he asked. Most hands went up.
“You know what?” Natoli responded, grinning. “I will not let you down.”
There’s a course, a three-day program in October, he told the crowd, with a cost of $1,197 retail. The room got silent, with disappointment palpable.
But never fear, Natoli is here to close the deal. “Can you go for $1,000 … ” he, paused dramatically , the crowd was still silent. Then he completed the sentence with a flourish, ” … OFF?”
“It’s $197, but seating and bonuses are limited,” he told them. People started to wander from their chairs to the sign-up tables in the rear. Those who take the three-day seminar will have an opportunity to go further, potentially spending thousands more. About 50 people in the Decatur session signed up.
I called Karen Yaap, director at the Georgia Real Estate Investors Associations, a trade group where rehabbers meet over coffee to trade war stories and get continuing education. Her org often retrains folks who went through such programs and dumped a bundle on training.
(Merrill’s program rates comparatively well on websites that rate such programs.)
“One of our members paid $28,000 on a program; that’s enough to buy a house,” Yaap said.
Trey Elias, an Atlanta resident who is retired with 23 years in the Air Force, went to the Decatur event out of curiosity and didn’t sign up.
“Looking for a job, they are hard to come by,” he said. But he sounded a note of hope, nevertheless: “There’s money to be made out there.”
Chris Mitchell, also a vet, was looking for his wife. She had the checkbook. “I figured it wouldn’t be totally free, that they’d be selling something,” he admitted.
Mitchell works with construction companies, power-washing homes. He sees that business is popping again. He voiced an oft-repeated lament: “I wish I could have gotten into it a few years back.”
Shelleen Duncan is 60 and making 15 bucks an hour as a LPN. That will never make her comfortable nor let her realize her dreams. She wants to tour Europe. Something like this might make the difference, but $197 is like two days take-home pay. She didn’t sign up.
“I’m going to do something and do it soon, very soon,” she said.
Montrell Hightower, 26, and Taylor Killian, 24, didn’t know each other until Thursday. But they represent a new breed of entrepreneur, slow and steady, having witnessed the missteps of their elders. Both signed up and were excited by the future.
Hightower, an aircraft mechanic, is saving money for his first real estate investment and thinks he might take the plunge by year’s end.
Killian already owns a home that he bought through a short sale in Lithonia. He has watched some family members who have delved into real estate, and he got a job at Home Depot to learn rehabbing skills.
“It’s exciting but a bit scary at times,” he said. “People are looking for a blueprint.”
Michael Davis signed up and will be back at the October seminar with his son. Davis, 49, has been here before — with harsh results. He’s rehabbed and built homes and was caught with a load of spec homes when the music stopped.
“I took it on the chin,” he admitted.
But the American Way is to dust oneself off and stride back into the arena.
“I think it’ll be different this time,” he said.
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