Viktor Jiracek is a real estate investor based in Gainesville, Florida who exponentially grew the number of deals he does year after year. Viktor has gone from 20 projects per year to possibly 30 this year and with plans of 40 flips next year. In today’s show, Viktor tells me how he transitioned from a full-time job to do real estate and how he finds great off-market deals.
Real estate was something that had always been on the back of Viktor’s mind. He kept telling himself that he’d do it. But it wasn’t until 2 ½ years ago that he went full time into it.
Viktor used to work as a home healthcare administrator. But that job didn’t give him the income he wanted, and it also didn’t excite him.
On top of his full-time job, Viktor also worked as an Uber driver on weekends while he was living in Chicago. He’d make $500 a weekend then. Little by little, he started to get into real estate. Even after he quit his full-time job, he still kept working as an Uber driver. Viktor made sure that he kept a source of income. He didn’t just want to quit everything right then and there.
Finding your first deal takes some time. With Viktor, he started in June/July 2018, but it wasn’t until October before he found his first deal. His first two deals were wholesale deals. Viktor made $3,000 with the first and $3,500 with his second.
After that, he switched to doing fix-and-flips.
Viktor moved to Florida because his brother offered him a place to stay for free for a couple of months. Viktor took it and started looking around for deals in places like Miami and other parts of Florida.
Since he was already living there, he decided to look into Gainesville as well. And that’s where his dive into real estate investing really set off.
Viktor would find deals through cold calling. First, he’d go to the county and get the list of tax-delinquent properties. Or he’d use list brokers as a source. Next, he’d use a skip tracer like Skip Genie to get the contact numbers of the property owners. Viktor recommends paying extra to get quality results. Now, he spends 17 cents per record. This won’t matter much because he targets making $20,000-40,000 in net profit per deal.
Once he has the contact numbers, he’d hop on a dialer and start a conversation with the owner.
Viktor’s style is to do the opposite of what a telemarketer does. He takes it slow and based on his experience if you do it right, 80% of the time, the owners will do the talking.
He has a calm, relaxed, and laid-back attitude when it comes to cold calling. This is because Viktor believes that if you put a lot of importance on something, it won’t go your way.
While wholesaling wasn’t bad, Viktor found what really excited him was doing fix and flips. He found it cool to see the change following a renovation.
Doing renovations is something every flipper has to learn. For Viktor, it involved a lot of trial and error. What’s key was finding good people to do the jobs.
Fortunately, with the volume of work needed, he’d know from the first project which ones he would want to work with his next project. Then as he moves through each project, he’d find more people that he’d choose to continue to work with.
Viktor also hired an interior designer to stage all their properties. This helps him sell their flips quickly.
When it came to finding a money partner, it helped that Viktor had a really good deal. He didn’t really need to give much of a sales pitch. His first partner was a family member. The property was bought for $105,000. Less than $30,000 was spent on its renovations before it was sold for $170,000. Viktor pocketed a third of the $28,000 net profit he and his partner made from this deal.
His second partner was a friend he had kept in touch with. The deal they bought was an $88,000 property where they put $15,000 in. It was sold for $150,000.
Viktor believes the market is already softening. He expects that the cooling down will be similar to what happened in 2018. The market rose up so fast that it will most likely go back down to where it was before.
His advice? Just keep buying low and selling high. The larger buffer that you have, the better. Even with a 5-10% softening, Viktor knows he’ll still make money as he breaks even at 20-30%.
Viktor’s trick in being able to manage multiple projects is to keep everything simple. He doesn’t mess around or adds bedrooms to a property. He does something similar to a hotel model. He just paints the house, does the flooring, and adds a couple of retouches.
The goal is to turn them around quickly. To help with this, he hired a project manager to act as boots on the ground. She works like an in-house crew member and gets paid a flat fee.
Building a good reputation is key to getting referrals. It also makes it easier to be the first phone call of wholesalers in your area. But, he still continues to source deals from his own cold calling efforts.
What’s important is to build on the momentum you started.
With fingers crossed, Viktors wants to close out this year with 30 flips and targets 40 flips next year. For him, this is it. This is what he wants to do, and he just wants to do more of it.
To be able to do more and bigger deals, he’s looking into hiring an acquisitions guy to help him. To get to that 40 flips next year, he knows he needs money and deals.
Viktor is confident on the money part at this point. What he’s thinking about is whether he can source the deals, be comfortable taking them down, flip them, and not lose sleep over all of this.
As Viktor started getting successful, people began reaching out to ask him questions. This led him to start his coaching program where he mentors people nationwide. He teaches them everything about real estate investing from A to Z.
It is done in a group coaching setup with meetings twice a week. But people can schedule a one-on-one with Viktor. Also, with the use of Voxer, a walkie-talkie app, his mentees can reach him anytime.
For those interested in his coaching program, just know that this is mostly targeted towards people who are either real estate beginners looking to close their first deal or those doing real estate inconsistently and need help finding their niche and being consistent.
Viktor recalled having a mentor who told him to start in real estate 5-6 years ago, but he didn’t. So he recommends that those interested should get started today. Just follow and walk the line, and you’ll see exponential growth. In a year or two, you’ll be surprised at where you are then.
Life is always changing anyway. So even if you take a wrong step, at least you’ll learn something.
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