Archive for Real Estate

Sammy Lyon – GoodRents

When one thinks of real estate in cities, the first thing that comes to mind is small, overpriced homes in bad locations. Up-and-comer Sammy Lyons is challenging and changing this notion of living in urban areas. Originally introduced to real estate by a co-worker, Sammy, who according to his website holds an “M.A. in Education, Leadership & Change from Antioch University and spent 10+ years leading innovative education programs at schools and non-profits,” became obsessed with real estate. He started by investing in out-of-state rental properties before starting his business. Sammy now runs GoodRents, a successful real estate business in Los Angeles, CA. His company set itself apart by doing what’s known in the real estate business as “house hacking.” Essentially, Sammy buys a property and rents units or apartments off said property to make it more affordable. Not only that, GoodRents also donates 5% of their revenue to various social and environmental organizations to further benefit communities. Through his business, Sammy constantly tries to prove to people that it can be possible to affordably live in expensive areas like Los Angeles.

Since founding GoodRents, Sammy has expanded his business ventures in many ways. Sammy now offers the traditional buying and selling of homes along with project management for those who want to build, instead of buy, houses (an often cheaper alternative to buying an already built home in cities like LA). He also helps people get into real estate investing, move up to their next property, and/or buy their first home. Sammy also intends to buy apartment buildings in LA for additional rental income and wants to be financially free by age 40. To read more about Sammy and his real estate ventures, visit entrepreneursherald.com and check out his website lyonideas.com.

Isaac French Found His Niche in Rental Cabins

Isaac French, at the age of 25, has developed a strong presence in rental properties with his company Live Oak Lake. Having a dad with a background in construction, he was wanting to create within the hot real estate market in Texas. With an entrepreneurial spirit, French bought 5 acres of empty land with a plan to build seven cabins. The Scandinavian-styled cabins are between 550-650 square feet. He built welcoming spaces for renters by including hot tubs, firepits, and floor to ceiling windows in each cabin. He drew a lot of inspiration from nature and added a lot of high-end finishes in order to feel “completely lost in nature.” The cabins are surrounded by trees and are scattered around a lake, all a couple hundred yards apart.

White Rock cabin, Live Oak Lake

French began his business with his own money and credit from his father’s construction company. The total cost was $2.5 million and took about nine months complete. French contributes a lot of his success to the advice he got from his peers about automated property management systems and videos from Robuilt, a YouTube channel created by another short-term-rental entrepreneur. French prices his cabins higher on the weekends and his cabins have an occupancy rate of about 90%, with much of the booking traffic coming from the Live Oak’s Instagram account. Since their opening in March 2021, they have produced over $550,000 in bookings.

Mr4to8

  1. Blake (aka mr4to8) is a young entrepreneur that is really good at building a community. He shows everything he does so that others can learn from his success and mistakes. He has a great understanding of the stock and crypto markets. As well as the real estate market. Specifically how to run AirBNBs.
  2. His drive is to be financially free and to give back to his family and others that helped him build. As well as use his businesses for social good. Such as using his AirBNBs to give make-a-wish kids a grand vacation.
  3. Uses the already established AirBNB industry to grow a huge portfolio of them. By either purchasing the property or sub-leasing it. His other business, WiseGuy Investing, an investment education community. Uses Discord to connect with the younger generation to educate them on how to trade and invest. He brings in other professionals as well to post in their “journals” for the community to learn from.
  4. Obsession with growth, both in business and personal life. He is constantly giving, learning, and teaching.
  5. He used Tiktok to promote his brand and ended up going viral. During COVID he used the opportunity of everyone being on their phones to start creating educational tiktoks. After doing this he quickly went viral, gaining over 1M followers. Using Discord for educational purposes was also a newer idea when he first started it. Typically it is known for gaming. But he found it also worked well for his purposes.
  6. His desire to use his business for social good inspires me to do the same with my business. Having a mission behind the business gives a great motivation to grow it rapidly. He also gives glory to God for all his success. Which is a great reminder for me to do the same.
  7. The principles of giving and growing a community around your brand.

Willow Tufano (Prime Real Estate Flipping)

Recently this year when Florida was hit with a recession young entrepreneur Willow Tufano took advantage of the period when others were fearful to buy and purchased a house that would’ve sold before for $100,000 for $12,000. Then he renovated it and rented out the house for $700 a month less than a year later.

Being an entrepreneur is all about taking risks and seeing opportunities that others missed or don’t take advantage of. This young kid was able to see that there was a chance to make some money by buying at a low cost and then selling at a higher price just as you would do with stocks — but with real estate instead.

It is a very simple concept, but one that is very entrepreneurial and one that can be very lucrative if done correctly!

Doorsteps: How Akshay Ruparelia Successfully Disrupted the Real Estate Market

Meet Akshay Ruparelia – the man who at age 17 created his U.K. based real estate business: Doorsteps. Typically the term “disruption” is a term that carries negative connotations, but in a business context, disruption is actually a very good thing if done well. When Ruparelia was young his family went through the grueling experience of selling a house – apparently the commission and agent costs were so high they scarred Ruparelia for life – because this experience is what would inspire him to create Doorsteps. What makes Doorsteps unique? Its the price tag. Ruparelia says that he wanted to make the whole process more affordable, so he began his business by charging each customer a flat fee of £99. In the beginning, the going was tedious as it took many rounds of knocking on doors to draw customers in. But, it paid off, largely due to Ruparelia’s strong focus on providing excellent customer service, and knowing his market well.

Read more about what inspired him, his role models, and his leadership methods here:

https://www.forbes.com/uk/advisor/personal-finance/2020/08/21/quickfire-questions-akshay-ruparelia/

Stephanie Purcell: Redesigned Classics

Stephanie Purcell is a young entrepreneur who founded the company Redesigned Classics. This is an interior design business focused on eccentric, new, and often vintage design styles. Stephanie works with her husband who is part of a real estate investment business. I thought this was interesting because it allows her to express her design ideas on houses her husband is showing.

Stephanie’s business is different from other interior design businesses because she focuses on re-purposing items, being low-budget, and making the space unique. Often times interior design is extremely expensive, but Stephanie’s goal is to lower that cost while still getting the same, amazing design elements in a home.

Stephanie is also a freelance producer, so often times she spends her days working on projects for that job. Her typical day can vary a lot, but she has a blog for her interior design company and writes many articles. To stay organized, Stephanie creates many weekly lists in order to stay on track. She also keeps a monthly list for her design goals for the month. I think this is an essential aspect of a business; making lists ensures that things are getting done to keep it up and running.

To begin her interior design process, Stephanie first meets with the client to bounce ideas around and get a feel for what they want in their home. After this, she creates a 2-D concept online for what the space will look like. I think this is very unique and differentiates with others who may just draw out the space. Stephanie’s use of modern technology is a helpful aspect to her business.

Stephanie says her background as a Producer has given her many helpful management skills needed to run her business. She recommends that when starting up a business that you don’t do it all on your own. There are many mentors and resources out there to help you grow your business.

I believe Stephanie’s business Redesigned Classics is an innovative way to design and recreate homes. She uses her producer skills as well as the help from her husband who is a real estate agent to make her business flourish. Creating low-budget, re-purposed, and unique spaces is the heart of her business, and it has gotten her very far in her entrepreneurial career.

 

 

Source Used:

Stephanie Purcell – Founder of Redesigned Classics (ideamensch.com)

Millionaire House Flipper

Akshay Ruparelia is just your regular 19 year old millionaire from North East London. While moving with his family, he found that commission rates that estate agents charge in London are outrageous, charging up to 2-3% for the sale. Ruparelia wanted to change this, so he did as any 19 year old would do, he made a website. His website, Doorsteps, only charges 99 pounds, compared to an average of 10,000 pounds for an estate agent. After just over a year, the website is now worth 12 million pounds, which is just incredible. His first sale came from someone who just stumbled upon the website in East Sussex, after proving the model worked, the same person sold more land through the website. In total, he has sold 1,500 homes for 120 million pounds, saving people over 1 million pounds in fees.

Ruparelia’s endeavor is definitely proof that there is opportunity everywhere around us. This website was founded simply by him getting an idea while moving houses. The cool thing about this is that it is not an original idea necessarily as there are already estate agents selling property, Ruparelia is just making the process better for the person selling the house. I tend to think that entrepreneurship is strictly creating something brand new that the world has never seen before, but that is not what it is all about as we can see with this story. Entrepreneurship can be making an already known process better, like selling houses in London.

Doorsteps

Akshay Ruparelia is a 19-year-old kid from Harrow, North East London who runs an online real estate agency worth millions. Doorsteps was recently valued at around twelve million pounds are just one year of business. Within just a year Ruparelia has raised over $530,000 along with over 500 investors owning a total just over 3% of his company.Akshay Ruparelia

He sold his first house while in still in school. Akshay, without a car, would use his girlfriends brother at the time to drive him around to these homes to take photos for his website. Each client looking to sell a home would pay Akshay 99 pounds to take photos of their home and post it on his website no matter what house it was. This price was market breaking considering other real estate agencies would charge 2-3% commission for each sale which equates to around ten thousand pounds.

As of now, Doorsteps has sold more than 1,500 homes all worth around 120 million pounds as a whole, saving customers over a million pounds in just one year. The average sale time is 20 days when dealing with Doorsteps; while the nation’s average is 57 days. Akshay currently employs 15-20 local agents to take pictures and show prospective buyers around. Doorsteps offers a dedicated agent, 24/7 operation, a live online portal, and the opportunity to reach millions of buyers for just 99 pounds. As of 2017, Doorsteps was claimed to be the 18th best real estate agency in the United Kingdom; Akshay claims that in the near future his company will be number one. At this rate, his goal seems as if it is very close to becoming a reality.

Akshay Ruparelia

Akshay Ruparelia is an impressive 19 year old entrepreneur who has spent alot of time studying for his A-levels. He has accomplished a lot in his academic career but the real interesting thing about Akshay is he has done this studying while setting up a multi million dollar real estate company. At 19 he set up Doorsteps.co.uk which aims to revolutionize what he refers to as the “archaic and backwards” UK housing market by offering up to a 97% discount on home-selling. His passion began when he was young and had moved houses. He was disgusted by the absurdly high commission which real estate agents were charging for a very simple task.

His website cuts overheads massively, allows buyers to take more control of the process and involvement, including hosting viewings, and save money on what a typical agent would charge. Akshay charges £99 upfront and there is no commission on the sale of any properties made via the site. This idea came to Akshay before he was able to drive and he would get rides from his sisters boyfriend to visit properties. He plans to attend Oxford and before he was even a college student his company was valued at £12 million pounds.

 

 

Akshay Ruparelia Doorsteps.co.uk

Young Entrepreneur Shocks The Real Estate World

Akshay Ruparelia is a nineteen year old entrepreneur from Britain and founder of Doorsteps.co.uk.  Doorsteps.co.uk is a multi-million dollar company that is based both online and offline.  The company is seen as “the Uber of the property world” because it hires self-employed local property agents for each property it has to sell.  Akshay developed his company while in college.  He had to balance his studies, taking care of his deaf parents, and developing his business.  Akshay had a lot on his plate as a kid, this helped him to mature quicker than most.  His work ethic learned from being a carer to his parents is one of the reasons he is so inclined to succeed.

Doorsteps.co.uk is different than other real estate companies because it costs a lot less and provides the best of the best customer service.  A person can sell their house through Doorsteps.co.uk for 99 pounds as opposed to 1,000 pounds through an agent.  Akshay’s is able to work more and harder than most to develop ideas and find gaps to change the way people think about markets through his outstanding work ethic developed over his years.  I am inspired by how much Akshay has accomplished at such a young age.  It helps me to see that if you put the time in to really think about and develop your ideas you will be closer to succeeding your goal.  I have learned that no matter your age you can change the world.

https://doorsteps.co.uk/