Sometimes, we reach a point in our life where we just want out of the rat race. We realize our 9-to-5 jobs keep us from living the life we want with the people we want to spend most of our time with. Our guest in this episode packed up and freed herself from her corporate job, taking back her time and freedom. How did she do it? Renee Williams and Camille Davis introduce us to Vivian Yip, an ex-Apple employee turned full-time real estate investor. Here, Vivian tells us how she found her way out of the rat race through real estate. She takes us through the highs and lows in her journey, offers tips on overcoming loss and failure, and explains different money philosophies. Join Vivian, Renee, and Camille in this conversation and learn some great lessons on getting passive income, gaining control of your finances, and hopefully building some generational wealth for your family.
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Quitting Your Corporate Job to Flip Houses with Vivian Yip
Camille and I are here with Vivian Yip with Austin House Flippers. Welcome to the show, Vivian.
Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here.
I read your bio. I saw some cool and exciting things that you've done in a short period of time. I thought maybe we would start with how you get started with flipping, and then when you're ready, take us forward to what you're doing right now.
Let's go back to 2004. That was my first introduction to real estate. At that time, it was just a way for me to buy real estate and house hacks at the same time. My mom was a realtor at the time. She said, “I found this great house. You need to buy it. It has a basement apartment that you can rent out.” At that time, I was living in Markham, Ontario, which is the Northern suburb of Toronto. I was able to buy a property at $260,000, which now is unheard of. That same house is now worth almost $1 million. Think about that for a second. Over time, real estate appreciates. By the time I was 24, I was already house hacking. When I purchased this home, it was outdated.
It was from the early '80s. It had ugly wallpaper and a stinky carpet. As soon as I closed on the property, I took an X-Acto knife and I started ripping everything out. I took down the wallpaper. I repainted everything. I bought laminate click flooring at IKEA. I started laying my own floors. It was an accidental flip. I was able to get that pretty much fixed up over a course of a month or so while I was working full time. Nine months later, I got a job offer in Chicago. I was thinking, “Should I sell this place?” My parents are like, “No, you should keep it and rent it.” I was like, “That's a good idea, but I didn't know how to do it.” My parents were like, “We'll help you out.” My parents managed properties my entire life. They knew what they were doing.
About five years after that, I decided to sell. The property had appreciated quite significantly. I was able to make almost $150,000 to $200,000 profit. I was under 30 years old. The name of the game here is to start early. I took that money and I purchased a condo in Chicago. Ask me another time and I'll tell you, I hate condos. This was at the height of 2007 when things were hot and the market was crazy. We all know what happened in 2008 when the market crashed. I had put 20% down on this property, which had lost $100,000 in value overnight.
I said, “I haven't lost my money yet unless I sell.” I kept it as a rental for ten years and lost $600 a month on cashflow on that. I learned my lesson there. I finally sold it in 2009 at a $55,000 loss. I lost all around on this property. My lesson here is location because this condo was in the up-and-coming area of Chicago called Pilsen. When the market turns, location matters 100%. That's where I figured out that from now on moving forward, I'm not buying anything unless it has a great location. Great location means great proximity to great schools, hospitals, and also highway networks.
When the market turns, location matters 100%.
From there, we continued to live our lives as normal people. We moved to the suburbs when I had my first baby. We then suddenly got uprooted to go to Austin, Texas, because I got a job at Apple. I got this amazing opportunity. We had purchased this house in the suburbs. We lost a little bit of money again because we purchased it in 2010, and things were starting to recover at that time. It never recovered by the time we moved in 2014. I lost a little bit of money there. I knew that this opportunity to work for Apple would make up for it, and it did.
Working at one of the biggest tech firms in the world is not easy. We're talking about long hours, challenging work and fun. At the end of the day, when you look at your life, do you want to be hustling from 7:30 until 6:30 at night, then you only get to see your kids for an hour or an hour and a half every night? I looked at my life and I thought, “This is not how I want to pursue the rest of my life. How do I get out of the rat race?”
I started thinking back to my experience in reading Rich Dad Poor Dad, and thinking about what passive income means, what it means to hold assets, and what it means to be free from the rat race. I read it in my twenties. I read it again. I thought I can change my life. I started dabbling in real estate, thinking back to where my parents came from. They were normal buy-and-hold investors. They bought a couple of properties every few years. My dad is 81 and my mom is 75. I see how they live their retirement. I can see how powerful real estate has been for them.
I thought this is a good way for me and my husband to pursue it. In 2017, we thought we were going to do this. I reached out to some strangers that I have never met before. This is another great clue that there are lots of nice strangers out there that will help you if you're interested in something. Use the Law of Attraction to find those people. This woman named Jennifer introduced me to another woman named Christine. They loosely became our mentors in flipping houses.
Since then, in April 2018, we found our first house to flip. We had no idea what we were doing at the time, but we figured we've done enough research and reading. We had two people that we could reach out to if we had any problems. We just went for it. In that first year of both of us working full-time jobs, we flipped six houses with two kids and two dogs, we were busy people. It gave me so much energy to feel and see that. It was something that we could do.
It was not a lot of money at the time. Probably our first flip was $9,000. Our second one was $25,000. It continued to keep growing and growing. I was like, “This is a viable solution for me to exit the rat race.” My husband exited the rat race in 2019. I had the job with all the benefits and all the stocks and all that stuff. We just kept going. Eventually, we got too busy to even hold down our normal jobs.
I love all of it. I want to ask how you met and then go back and ask a couple of questions. Cammy, how did you meet Vivian?
The crazy thing is we've never met in person.
We just got burned by the same company.
I feel like we know each other. We could be sisters, but we never have met in person. During COVID, I was going after foreclosures and foreclosure lists, and then COVID stopped all of that. I started Facebook marketing and then I found this company that would do the Facebook marketing for me. It was Amplify. They are out of business now. It’s sad because I and Vivian did well with Amplify.
What happened with Facebook marketing is Facebook started changing their algorithms. Facebook boomed all at one time. Everybody knew Facebook was the way to do marketing, then they started changing a lot of things. Anybody that was trying to do Facebook marketing, they made it hard for them. Amplify grew so fast. They ended up having 150 to 200 investors that were all in their funnel. It was too big and too fast. With the changing things with Facebook, they couldn't do it anymore. Vivian called me. You hadn't quit your job yet, right?
No, I hadn't quit my job yet. I was preparing to quit my job. I was trying to figure out how am I going to keep myself busy if I wasn't working in corporate.
She was getting referrals like, “Do you like Amplify? Are they good?” This was a lot of money to spend. It was not cheap. It's a risk to spend this money. “Are they going to bring you leads?” She called me and then I told her that my experience has been great. I ended up getting the lots that I'm building two fourplexes on by the University of Houston. I got that through Amplify. I ended up getting six deals through them. This was COVID where no one was getting deals, and it worked.
Vivian told me her story, “I'm stressed out. I've lost all my hair because of corporate. I need to make this work and I need to do it well.” I was like, “It's worked for me. I hope it works for you. I love it.” I also told her that I'm pretty creative with some of my deals to make them work. Vivian, you were successful with it. Right?
I only had three deals, but in that first year of quitting my job and only working three deals, I made $110,000. It was pretty cool. I don't know if you know this, Cammy, but I got your information or your name from a product demo with Amplify. They were demoing something and then I saw your name. I was like, “I need to call this girl.” I stalked you too.
It is good how everything conspires together to work. Vivian, where I was going with that was that come forward you meet Camille Davis and you're doing these great things, but going back in your story, you talked about you lost money on a condo. You lost big time. You lost money on selling a home that you had in the suburbs. The loss is what scares people from getting into real estate. They have no tolerance for losing anything or not. That's a failure. Why would you keep going if you clearly lost this money?
Honestly, for me and my husband, when we first started doing flipping, we lost $30,000 on our second property right out the gate. For us, the first property that we purchased, we still hold that now and it has tripled in value. It depends on how you look at it. There's a cost to learning the process. Even if you're in college, getting a Master's degree in real estate flipping, you're going to pay money. I don't think it's a bad thing if you lose money. Take those points. What did you do with it?
Here's the difference between where I was back then when I lost on those two properties to where I am now. The key rule to live by is not to be a motivated buyer. With that condo, we were excited that it had a rooftop deck, it had a pretty kitchen, and it was a brand-new build. Builders don't usually reduce prices. It's full price. We didn't know how to add value to a property at the time. We were your normal standard retail buyer that would purchase something that looked pretty and shiny.
It’s the same thing with the second property we bought, it was another pretty and shiny property. We didn't have to do any work to it because we didn't know how or we were lazy too. Now, I don't want it if it's pretty. The uglier, the better because I know that I know how to add value to it. I know that I'm buying properties way under market value now so I'm sheltering myself from those changes in the market conditions. That's a huge difference between what I am now and what I was before.
I love the term, “Don't be a motivated buyer.”
If you're an investor, you're not going to overbid on something. You're going to be careful about what your costs are. You're going to overestimate what your repairs are. You make money in real estate on how you purchase the real estate. You never speculate on the sales price. You're not going to say, "Next year in the spring, it's going to go by 20%. I'm going to overestimate what I'm going to sell it for." No, you should overestimate how much you're going to buy it for.
The other thing too in real estate 101 is you make your money on the purchase. Don’t ever forget that. You make your money on the buy because you can't change the outcome on the other side. You can't necessarily control if lumber goes up or becomes more expensive. You can't necessarily control if the bottom falls out of the market and something happens. Those aren't things you can control.
It's the same philosophy in the stock market. You buy the dip. The dip in real estate is you buy the worst condition home and learn how to add value to it. I'm not saying you buy the worst of the worst homes where there are foundation problems or you have to tear out the walls to make it more open. I'm not saying that. I'm saying start with something simple as changing the floors, painting the walls, painting the kitchen, and changing the countertop. Things that are simple. You then start growing, developing, and innovating what you can do with your skillset, and you become a real flipper.
The gurus that I've heard or the financial wealth advisors will say, “Save money for your retirement.” The goal is to die before you run out of money. I'm thinking to myself, “In what universe does that work?” We need a better retirement plan than that. I'm always posting in these groups for these major gurus. You need to buy real estate or to have some performing asset that's going to keep giving you passive income after you retire. You cannot save your way to retirement. In my mind, for me, I don't think that's doable.
It's interesting. We have to see the two different philosophies when it comes to money. I'm not a Suze Orman person, but I have followed Dave Ramsey. I also follow Robert Kiyosaki. They are two completely different paths. Dave Ramsey says, “If you follow my lead, you will not be poor.” Robert Kiyosaki says, “If you follow my lead, you will be rich.” There are very different philosophies there. I don't think there's anything wrong with Dave Ramsey's budgeting, cashflow management, and only paying for what you can afford. What I love more is that Robert Kiyosaki says that you don't have an asset unless it's making you money. You're going to be house poor unless that house makes you money. I subscribe more to the Robert Kiyosaki because now I buy assets that make me money or cars that I could write off.
I love how she differentiated between the two of those. I get that a lot. The normal population we're taught to go to school, get a job, and work for somebody else. That's the mentality. That's the difference. The normal mentality is not Robert Kiyosaki but Dave Ramsey. That's what the majority of people are going to do. For some reason, we're not taught, “Go do investments. Go buy businesses that are making money. Go buy real estate that is going to pay you. Have your money work for you.” For some reason, we're not taught any of this in school. We have to learn it outside of school. I love how you differentiated between those two.
It's funny, Renee, that you have mentioned that Dave Ramsey said that the goal is to die before you run out of money. That's the Dave Ramsey philosophy. When you look at Robert Kiyosaki, the goal is to build generational wealth. Generational wealth is a powerful thing. It gives your children and the generations after you an opportunity. Money doesn't make you happy, but it can solve a lot of problems.
Money doesn't make you happy, but it can solve a lot of problems.
I don't know that necessarily Dave Ramsey is the one who subscribes to you need to die before you run out of money. I know that from the financial wealth planner that my husband and I had. We've had several, and we've finally found someone who does real estate and stocks. Working with wealth advisors who do stocks only, there's a whole school of thought about maybe they only do that because they get paid on that. They don't get paid on real estate and so forth.
Many wealth investors have told us about this is how much you need in retirement. You need to be saving this much per month. They give you this pretty chart and a bar graph and a line graph. They’re like, “Your life expectancy is this. This is how much you want to have per month to sustain your current lifestyle.” I remember looking at that even in my twenties like, “I got to not run out of money before I die. There has to be another way.”
I didn't know about real estate investing but I knew that for me, the blue-collar people in my family lived on Social Security. There were no savings. They didn't make enough to save after they retired. Their income was too low. I thought that is a wildly limited way of living in retirement. I'm proud of everything that you're doing, Vivian and Camille, and the women that we're able to do that to help sustain our families. We can retire at any age. You left your corporate job with a phenomenal company. At what age range did you leave your job?
I was 42. To clarify, I left my job but I loved working at Apple. I was challenged and I had great colleagues. The last role that I took and all the things that were happening during the pandemic with my kids being at home, all those different things caused my stress. A lot of it was personal. That's when my hair fell out. I tell people this all the time that bad things are going to happen. When you look at those bad things, sometimes it's happening for you and not to you. Losing my hair happened for me because it gave me the signal that it was time to leave. I hope my audience will take that away as well.
I got chills. That's great. That's amazing. Life is going to be hard and things are going to be hard. Even in real estate, you're going to run into deals that lose money. You can't get discouraged. You have to say, "I'm going to learn from this. I'm going to return this bad thing to a good thing. I'm going to move forward. I'm going to kill it on the next deal or the next challenge in life. What have I learned from this?"
I took sailing lessons because I'm planning for my retirement one day to sail through the Caribbean. I saw this sign and it said, “Great sailors weren't made in calm waters.” I was like, “Damn straight.” We're going to learn some lessons in real estate, but it's only going to make us stronger.
That's good. It sounds like you have a family. You have a husband that’s working with you in the business.
We work together very well. We've been doing this together. We're in our fifth year. Surprisingly, we still love to have lunch together. We still like to go on dates. We get along well. Some people are like, “How do you guys not talk business all the time?” We do, but we have fun doing it as well. It's part of our life now. It's great. It's enjoyable. I couldn't do this without him. He's more the person that executes the flips. I'm the person that's more on the strategy side. I'm planning the financing, cashflow, deals, marketing, networking, and that kind of stuff. He's there solving permit issues, plumbing issues, problems with the flips, or even getting the flips done. We make a great team. I haven't been able to run a flip 100% without him. He has been such a great resource.
Has he enjoyed the process as well?
Yeah. He loves it. He's never been the kind of person that could stand and sit behind a desk all day. He did that for the majority of his career. He was in sales for ten years for a bicycle computer company, and then he was a sales director for another product company doing thermoses and stuff like that. He never loved sitting behind a desk. He has always loved working with his hands. This is his dream career.
That sounds so good that you guys are working together. I know, Cammy, you and Kyle do a lot of work together as well.
It has been a process. He's the spreadsheet person and organization. I'm organized too, but I'm hands-on, get in there, talk to people, and solve problems. He likes seeing something dirty become better too, so he does the rehabs. I love solving problems and creating solutions. I love that part.
Vivian, you guys have children. How old are your kids?
I have a 10-year-old and a 12-year-old.
What do they think about mom and dad's business?
They're kids. We get them involved sometimes. Usually, towards the end of the flip, we'll have them clean the windows, sweep the floors, and all that stuff to get a little bit hands-on in each of them. They're at that age where they don't know what they have. They don't realize that we have the flexibility to be with them. We have the flexibility to travel. We have the flexibility to show up and read a book in their class without feeling guilty about leaving our job for about twenty minutes or half an hour to do that.
We've been doing this long enough that it has become their normal lifestyle. They have us around all the time. In talking to them, they remember the time when I was working corporate, coming home at 6:30, sometimes working until 12:30 at night, and being a little grumpier. I was a lot grumpier because I had many things on my plate. It's not just your career, projects, school events, after-school events, cleaning, and laundry. It’s all those different things.
Now I'm able to manage my time a lot better because I own my time now.
You'll be surprised how much they're picking up because it wasn't until my oldest was about fourteen that I was like, "You are picking all this up and I had no idea." He was riding his bike to go to the gas station and he says, "Mom, here's a vacant house. I took pictures and I walked up to the door." I was like, "You're actually getting this. I had no idea.” I'll go to homes and they'll say, “Another home I got to go to.” Even now, both my oldest and my fourteen-year-old said, "If we don't do good in school, then we'll have a business as our mom does."
It's a mentality thing. Instead of thinking there's only one way that you can live your life and you got to go work for someone else, what if you're not good at school? You know there are opportunities and they can do more things. You'll be surprised. I didn't realize that. My dad is an entrepreneur and he could never work for somebody else. He tried. I picked up all these things and had no idea. I went to college.
I went and got that job as a nurse and worked at MD Anderson Cancer Hospital. I quit my job to stay home with the kids. That's when I realized I had all this business side that I thought was boring, but I learned these skills from my parents to not give up and to create solutions. I had no idea that I even learned these things, but I learned them by watching, and not even knowing that I learned them.
I know for sure they're learning. I lecture them all the time. I don't even listen to music or podcasts in the car. I'm lecturing them. I talk to them. I'm sure they're absorbing some of it.
That's why I ask because when we have children and we are real estate investors, they are picking up what we're putting down. Even though you're not maybe intentional about having them involved in your flips and stuff yet, they're getting it. It’s like what Cammy said about her son taking pictures. He randomly did that on his own. I have adult children. They are both aware that they have options.
They're both in college right now. My son was like, “I'm going to be an architect and I'm going to have a side hustle where I buy real estate to have some rent houses.” I was like, “Okay, great.” You don't have to do real estate investing as a career, but know that it's an option for you to have some cashflow coming in. It's a great option for all kinds of reasons.
We should talk about the side hustle for a second. A side hustle is extremely important because if I didn't have the side hustle of doing real estate on the side, I would have been dead in the water because I would have relied on this paycheck that I was getting from this corporate job, stressing out, losing my hair, and not having options. When you have a side hustle that's income-producing that may be a viable long-term solution for you, that's important because otherwise, you are just relying on this one paycheck or one income source, and then you feel trapped.
The worst feeling in the world is feeling trapped. I'm grateful and lucky that we had this opportunity to enter real estate when we did, and that we were progressing by the time all my hair fell out. I looked in the mirror and I said, “This is time for me to go now.” Thank God, I have that side hustle. Whatever that side hustle it is, whether it's real estate or selling Pampered Chef or something like that on the side, which I did for a while, having another secondary income is important.
I love that, Vivian. I'm going to get practical on a practical level before this escapes me. When you're purchasing properties, how did you finance them when you started before you were established? Were you putting the infamous 20% down to buy these? Were you using hard money? How were you buying your properties?
I was lucky to have a good job and have stocks and savings. We did do the traditional route of putting the 20% down. However, we didn't do the conventional loans. What I learned from my mentors is that you could get a commercial loan. When you have that magical piece of paper called a W-2, you can qualify for a commercial loan, which is half the price of a hard money lender. We started out that way with 20% down. We were able to fund all of our own renovations. That's how we started.
When you have that magical piece of paper called a W2, you can qualify for a commercial loan, which is half the price of a hard money lender.
That's good to know on a practical level because sometimes we get into these conversations and we're talking about some great things that every woman can do, but we don't get into the weeds about how you are getting the money to do these. It's important to understand that having a W-2 job is a good thing. Don't quit your jobs off the bat, ladies. Don't quit your job yet. Having a W-2 job for you or your significant other if you're legally married in whatever state you're in. Somebody needs to have a W-2 so that you can qualify for some of these mortgages that you wouldn't maybe necessarily qualify for if you were 1099.
I've been doing real estate for quite a while. I never knew about a commercial loan like that. That's very interesting. I always did the hard money or took it over subject to. I didn't qualify for the loans. I found ways to do that, but that's interesting to do the commercial loan thing.
When you partner with the right commercial bank, that's very business savvy. You can get 1% originations. You can get 5.5% interest rates. That in itself can make or break a deal because your traditional hard money lender is 2% or 3% origination, plus between 9% and 15% interest. That could make or break a deal. It's important for you to continue listening to podcasts like this and learning from experience investors like us to understand what the options are out there.
I quit my job in April. Before I did that, I ferociously called about 40 different lenders to try and figure out who was going to lend me money if I quit my job. Luckily, I found some lenders, but the commercial bank that I was working with stopped working with us because they needed that magical piece of paper. There are plenty of other people to lend you their money. You just have to know where to look.
We're not saying that you can't do it if you don't have a W-2. We're not even saying you can't do it if you didn't start young. If you're older in your 40S or 50s or heck even in your 60s and you don't have a W-2, there's always a way to do things. You can find private money. There are different ways to do it. What we're saying is to use what you have in your hand. If you have a W-2, use it. Leverage that to get loans. If you're a younger person who's in your 20s or 30s, leverage that to start flipping now and start doing it now. Don't wait. There's always a way to do things if you want it.
This is why buying at the right price is important here because your cost to borrow changes when you quit your job too. You have to factor that in. In the meantime, if you're not ready to flip yet, work on your credit score because the credit score is going to make or break a deal as well. You'll find hard money lenders that will lend to you for as low of a credit score as 580. Work on building that up. Once you get to 750, everybody is going to be running to you to lend you money.
Buying at the right price is important because your cost to borrow changes when you quit your job too.
The interest rates have changed. We have seen that over the last little bit, depending on when you're tuning in to this episode in the future. A few months ago, personal purchases or primary residents' rates were in the 2s and the 3s. Tuning into this episode months later, you may be in the 6s or 8s. I don't know where it's going from here. You never know.
That's conventional rates.
It's never a bad time to buy though. It depends on where you are in your life and your personal process. Real estate investing is never a bad idea. That's my opinion.
I agree with you 100%. Things are going to get more expensive. My son is 12, ten years from now when he is 22, the entry-level to buy a home in Austin is going to be $1 million.
That’s at the rate things are going right now.
If you buy now where the average price is around $550,000, the prices will continue going up.
I hear people say all the time, “The interest rates have gone up. I'm going to wait.” I hear them say, “I'm going to sell my house now because it's going to drop,” and all of that. You keep buying. Keep holding onto them because they're going up all the time. Don't let those fear things get in the way. Move forward.
I saw a good TikTok. This guy said that you're dating the interest rates. In a few years, you could date another interest rate. You buy now and you can refinance later. The thing is that the market is cold right now because everyone is traveling. The pandemic is almost over. People are finally getting a breath of fresh air. They are able to go to Europe and go to the Caribbean or whatever. They're not thinking about buying real estate because when they were trying to buy in the spring, they were having multiple offers and competing with hundreds of people. They lock themselves up and rent. They're renting somewhere. Come the spring, they're going to see their landlord posting a 20% rent increase. They're like, “Maybe I should buy instead because a 6% interest rate is not that bad compared to a 20% rental increase.” We're going to see that in the spring.
I would not be surprised at all. The market fluctuates. It's always best to own the property. You can always refinance as the rates go down or things change. You can buy down the rate if you need to and get a lower interest rate over time. You have options if you own the property versus if you're renting. All those are good things. You can house hack, which is what you talked about earlier. You have a family because people say, “If I have a family, I can't house hack. I don't want to share my house if I've got kids.” Tell us more about that, Vivian.
We bought this house a few years ago. It's about 3,300 square feet, single story. What was unique about this property that was built in 1976 was that even though from the outside it looks like a three-car garage, two of those garage spaces are playrooms. It had plumbing to it already. It had a sink. It's joined to our house by a roof line only. It's in the back of my house. It has a small roof line and the studio is back there. I told my husband, "We need to plumb this out for sewage. We're going to put a whole studio in here." He's like, "You're crazy." I'm like, "No, we don't need 3,300 square feet. It's just the four of us." We turned that 450 square feet into a full studio with a kitchenette and a full bathroom. I rent that out to travel nurses for about $1,700 a month.
I have totally told my husband, “We should do this.” He is like, “I don't want someone living at my house.” I keep saying, I'm like, “We got all this space in the back. We've got this big garage. Let's finish it out.” Maybe we should do it.
I'm totally doing what Robert Kiyosaki said, “Your home should be income producing.” That's what I did.
That is good. That's the way to go. Do you have to worry about restrictions? Some people start talking about, “I don't know if my town or my city ordinance or my township will allow that.” If you're leasing out an ADU or an Additional Dwelling Unit on your own property, then you shouldn't have to worry about township or city ordinances or anything like that. Is that correct?
You have to look at the deed restrictions for your neighborhood. In my neighborhood, we read the deed restrictions carefully. It said you could only have one home per property. Because the studio is joined by a roofline, it's technically one home. It happened that way.
Ours is joined by a roofline too. We started an Airbnb in Southern Utah because my family is all there. We built a brand-new home and then we had to end up selling it. We should have kept it and rented it. The point was to go stay in it when we could go visit. We ended up having to sell it. The city does not like Airbnb. They won't let you do it. Even there though, if you live in the home and you have somebody renting a section of the home, then it's okay. Even there, that's okay. I would say in most places because that one is pretty strict. I would say in most places, if you're living in the home, you should be able to have the right to rent out another space.
In Austin, it's a little bit tricky. There is a permitting process. The way I get around it is my studio is not rented like an Airbnb. It's rented for more than 30 days at a time. Therefore, I bypass the occupancy taxes paid to the city. I bypass the permit process, and I get a housemate for thirteen weeks at a time because I'm renting to travel nurses.
That was the same with Southern Utah. As long as it was a 30-day rental, you’re good.
Such good information, ladies. All these little tidbits give people ideas and insights like, "I have a W-2 job. I can't become a flipper, but I can do this at my house." What it's all about is inspiring women to get some ideas about things that they can do to get some passive income, to get control over their finances, control over their life, and hopefully get some generational wealth going for their family.
Now my mortgage payment is about reduced to half. My mortgage payment plus the property taxes is now reduced to half because I have this roommate that pays for half of my expenses.
It’s exciting. Now I've got to go look for a house that has an extended garage or a mother-in-law for a safe.
I'm thinking that. I need to go buy one of those. My husband and I are not doing anything now where we are doing short-term rentals or anything, but I would love to be able to house hack for our next primary residential purchase. I'm going to be looking for that, Vivian. Thank you.
You're welcome.
As we get to the end of our time with you, we want to know how our audience can connect with you if they want to follow you. Where can we find Vivian Yip and Austin House flippers?
We're on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook, @AustinHouseFlippers, which is our handle. Not to be confused with the other Austin flippers. They're Austin Flipstirs. The Austin House Flippers is a picture of myself and my husband there. They can also find me through my website, which I'm now expanding and branding my midterm rental company, which is CorporateRentalsAustin.com. Instead of running short-term Airbnbs, I'm also running midterm Airbnbs.
They can find me through there if they have any housing needs while they're visiting Austin or checking it out. Come check out some of our content on YouTube. We have these fun short episodes. Most of them are under twelve minutes. It shows our audience how we take an ugly stinky home into something beautiful. Tons of pro tips in there showing you how to add value, what to look for, how to walk a property, and lots of different things like that.
She has great videos. I'm totally entertained every time I'm watching them. I think I'm watching house flipping on the TV and love it. You're doing a great job. She's also starting an investor women group in Austin. She is going to be doing some coaching too. That's what people want. They want coaching. After they learn all this stuff, they're like, "Can you help me do this?"
I'm still working out the details of the coaching but I've come to terms with what I'm going to call it. I'm going to call it Yip Flips.
I love it. If anyone is in or near the Austin area and they want to connect with you when you do roll out that coaching program, should they follow @AustinHouseFlippers on Instagram or DM you there?
Yes, or they can join us the first Thursday of every month starting in September 2022 for the investor Meetup group. We already have a lot of speakers lined up, including Cammy. She'll be speaking on November 3rd. I'll be the first speaker on September 1st. I can't wait to share my story with you. I have case studies to show, numbers, and how you get paid by BRRRR-ing out as a strategy. We'll talk about the BRRRR strategy. We'll talk about how timing is everything, how to invest in real estate, multiple strategies, and lots of different things. I've already done this speech one time before and people are like, “This is totally attainable. I can totally do this.”
I want to show the audience how to do this. I want to share Cammy's experience with how she buys property without using her own credit and her own money. I have a friend of mine that's going to speak in December and she's going to talk about wholesaling. I have another one talking about doing new builds. She's 26 or 27 years old doing multimillion-dollar new builds while holding out a corporate job. I have some great speakers lined up. I can't wait for people to show up at these meetups and experience learning about real estate in whatever part of your journey you're in.
I will be driving to Austin on the first Thursday.
This is 2022. Sometimes people are tuning in to this way in the future. They've already missed these dates. Will we be able to find any of this stuff on your YouTube channel or will you be creating a separate YouTube channel recording for it?
There is a Meetup group for investors. They can always find her around there, Austin Investor Meetup. They can find her there too.
Good deal. The last thing is BRRRR. You mentioned that. For the newbies here, can you tell us what the BRRRR strategy is?
The BRRRR strategy is taking a very undervalued property. You buy it, you renovate it, you rent it out, refinance, and then you repeat. What that does is add value to the home. For example, I bought a $200,000 property. It was in dire shape. I spend $55,000 renovating it. I rented it out and then I refinanced it. When I refinanced it, the bank saw the new value at $405,000. I was able to pull money out as part of the loan, and then cash-out refinance. I took that money that they gave me as cash after getting the new loan and then I bought more property.
That's tax-free income when you pull out the cash.
It’s because it's debt. This is something that Robert Kiyosaki teaches. There's good debt and there's bad debt. Good debt is real estate debt. Bad debt is credit card debt, car debt, and sometimes even house debt if your house is not making you money or if you’re house poor.
“There's good debt, and there's bad debt. Good debt is real estate debt; bad debt is credit card debt.”
You are teaching on such a great level, both of you, about all of this. I'm grateful for your time, Vivian. Camille, as always, you look lovely and I will see you soon. Thank you so much. @AustinHouseFlippers is where we are going to find you on social media, and then The Real Estate InvestHER Meetup group for Austin is where we'll be able to look for you. Ladies, thank you so much for your time. This has been so great. Vivian, we will talk to you soon. Thanks again.
Thank you, ladies.
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About Vivian Yip
Vivian Yip is an ex-Apple employee turned full-time real estate investor. She's been an investor and house hacker since 2004 and took real estate investing seriously beginning in 2018.
Vivian and her husband flipped their first 6 houses with full-time jobs in the first year! Her husband was able to quit his corporate job in 2019 and she left Apple (after nearly 7 years there) in April 2021.
They have two kids, and two fur babies and they invest full-time now. Together they have flipped 25 homes and sold 9 rental properties.