In this instructional video, real‑estate agent Joe Homs walks viewers through a step‑by‑step process for locating and evaluating potential house‑flipping deals. He begins by demonstrating how to use the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) with custom keyword filters (e.g., “distressed,” “as‑is”) to surface long‑standing listings in Orange County, highlighting price ranges, days on market, and visual cues such as a lack of interior photos that suggest a fixer‑upper. For viewers without an agent, he shows how to replicate the search on Zillow by applying the same keywords. He then introduces the Pelago platform, entering the property address to retrieve MLS data, the after‑repair value (ARV), and a set of comparable sales (comps). Joe emphasizes the importance of selecting comps that are geographically close to the subject property. Using a built‑in profit calculator, he inputs purchase price, estimated rehab costs, buying/rehab loan structures (cash vs. hard‑money), commissions, carrying costs, and holding period to model profitability. He iterates on assumptions—adjusting loan terms, commission rates, and holding time—to illustrate how ROI can shift from a modest 3 % to over 11 % when financed with cash and expenses are optimized. Throughout, he stresses a target minimum 10 % return, discusses market dynamics (transition from seller’s to buyer’s market), and advises viewers to partner with investor‑friendly agents. The video concludes with a promise to visit the highlighted Mission Viejo condo for an on‑site walkthrough and an invitation to contact him directly for further assistance.
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In today's video, I'm going to show you how to search for potential flips on the Multiple Listing Service. Coming up next. The market is turning. That may scare most people, but for those savvy investors, that means there's going to be opportunities available that might not have been available a few months earlier. In the unprecedented Are you looking to live the life you've always wanted through real estate? That's exactly why I made this channel for you, the new and experienced investors. Make sure that you subscribe, hit that like button, and share this with your friends. Okay, what I have pulled up here is the MLS itself. I'm obviously a real estate agent, and what you need to kind of focus on— I've created a keyword search So it gives me all the properties here in Orange County that are distressed in somehow, some fashion. And what I try to look at now, I've got it by price here, so you can see it, it goes from $350,000 for a 2-bedroom, 2-bath condo in Santa Ana, and then I have it all the way up to $1 million, but this is just going up to $850,000 right now in Garden Grove. The other thing I look at is days on market. So if I click that, we're going to go and change this to days on market, and I want to click the most days on market. So as you can see, this property in Santa Ana has been on the market. It's fine. I mean, I'm recording the audio on here. This property is on the market for 218 days, Santa Ana. So, you know, you want to look at these properties that have been listed for quite a long period of time, and those might be some great opportunities to immediately go after. So the next thing I've done is I've searched again, I've searched by price, and then I look at a particular price So I found one here locally in Mission Viejo that we're going to go take a look at, and this is the property in Mission Viejo. There's only 6 photos available of this property, and that's a really good indication, and they're all outside, really good indication this property is a fixer because they don't want to put the photos of the inside. They would rather have you come over and take a look at the property. So anyways, this is a property on Mauve in Mission Viejo that we found. So now if you do not have an agent that you're working with, you're free to call me, but if you don't have one, then you can go on Zillow. And what I did is on Zillow, I put in the Mission Viejo area, it highlighted that, and then you go to the filters And on this filter, I put a keyword search of as-is and press done. And then you can see that it popped up the exact same property we're talking about. So here it is on Zillow, $599,000, and the keyword was as-is. You can put fixer, you can put all these keywords that you might think of in here and, uh, and then search for the property. So if you're, if you're doing, if you're not an agent and you're doing something like this, Zillow's a good alternative to go to and figure out, okay, well, this is the property. So with Zillow, it gives you the basic information on what it pulled from the MLS. So this is literally contacting the agent, gives you the last time it sold. So it gives you basic information but doesn't give you really what you need. So the next thing I do is I go on to the Pelago website And I type in the address and now Peligo pulls this up. They give you all the information and it's an active listing. It was at $615,000, they just lowered it to $599,000. Peligo says the after repair value is $726,000 and we're going to go ahead and save that for right now. And then as you go down, it gives you all the same information because it's pulling from the MLS as well. But the next thing it does, and the next thing you should concentrate on, is, is the comps. So as you're looking at the comps on this page, you want to make sure that you try to stay in the same area as, as this property. So it looks like there's quite a few. This K property is not in the same area, so you'd have to go over to where the K is And I don't even think it's highlighted honestly, but yeah, it's not even highlighted. It's in a different area, so it's not using that as a comp. It's only using the ones that are in this particular area, and that's what you want to do. You want to stay in this particular area as close as possible. This Bee is actually not in that area. Jade is in the area. California Street, because I work the local area, I know is not in that area. California Street's not there. Jade is there. So now I've revised this to these 2 comps, and you can see them side by side. They're pretty much very close. There's, there's one with 1,300 square feet. Our property has 1,221, so this would probably be the best comp. So $733,000 in value. So now we're coming back to the calculator, and so the calculator has $736,000 because I adjusted it, and then purchase price. So let's just say We're going to pay $599,900 for this property cash. And we're going to go in and we're thinking it's going to take about $35,000 to rehab it. It literally takes you through all the calculations. So if you were to buy it at $599,000, you were able to sell it at $736,500. Buying costs, $12,000. Carrying costs. Selling costs, $40,000. So now let's start doing some adjustment. The biggest adjustment that you could do— so we've got a resale profit of $21,000, which isn't bad, but it's not great. It's got a 3% return on there. I like at least a 10% return on my profits. If I wanted to get up into a better profit area, this is of course buying with a hard money loan. So if I were just to pay cash for this property, so I removed the purchase loan and the rehab loan. You can see that my profit now jumps up to $52,000 because again, I do— I don't have a partner in this deal, which would be the hard money lender. So now I'm up to— okay, let me start it again. Recording in progress. Okay, so let's, let's start tweaking some of this stuff. In my case, you see that there's a listing commission of 2.5%. I am an agent, so obviously I'm not going to charge myself a commission. But if you want to, that's fine. But just simply not charging myself a commission, I brought this deal up to a $71,000 profit or 11.07% return. A selling commission, you know, this market's changed. I was offering 2% to the selling agents. 2.5% is probably appropriate now. It's turned from a seller's market to a buyer's market, so we'll leave that there as well. You know, we've got homeowner association taxes, and this is all based on a 5-month carrying. That's a long time for a condo. You shouldn't be carrying that condo for, you know, more than 3 months. So if I change that to 3 months, then obviously it changes all the calculations. A little bit. So on this deal, I'm up to an 11.42%, but remember, that is cash. So that's a lot of money to have out there, you know, while you rehab this property. If you're a full-time flipper, I would honestly, I'd probably go back to the hard money because I can use my money to flip more properties. So we're again, we're at $73,000 profit, 11.4%. 11.4%. 2% return. If I become— if I go back to my money partner, that's going to bring it back down to a $50,000 profit, 7.58%. Remember, I like 10%. But would you do this deal for $50,000 profit? Yeah. I mean, it's a condo. You know, we're actually going to go out and take a look at this property so you can Look at the, at the video. We'll probably post it right here so you can look at it, what it looks like inside. And I'll talk about what I would do for this flip. We'll see if that $35,000 rehab is good or if I have to go up more or maybe even less. I don't know. It just really depends on what, what's going to happen until I get out there. But again, I— if you're, if you're an agent, use the MLS. If you're not, use Zillow. And if the property is anywhere in California, anywhere in California, Washington, D.C., or Florida, our brokerage Pelago does the same thing that I just showed you here in those 3 states. And this is a great way to find out if this property is good. You can do this for any property. I get a lot of wholesalers that send me deals This is exactly what I do. If it doesn't come out to a good profit, I'm not going to get up and go take a look at it. In this case, it does, so we're going to get up and go look at this property that's on the MLS that maybe we can negotiate with them a little bit more. It has been on the MLS for 20 days, not a really long time, but compared to 6 months ago, this thing would have literally been gone by now. So anyway, so that's how I look for properties, and you can do the same thing even if it's on the MLS. You can do the same thing as well. So just, just take a look for the properties, and, uh, and then we're going to head out right now and we're going to look at this property. And again, take, take a look at the video Uh, cuz you'll get some, uh, further insights. Although prices may still be inflated, leaving agents and sellers pricing their homes too high, the days on market as well as the rising interest rates will most likely turn a seller's market into a buyer's market. Be smart with your numbers, account for upcoming price cuts, and save your money. It may be best to team up with an investor-friendly agent to help you put in offers If you want to know how to find an investor-friendly agent, just click on this video right here. You can also always message me directly or book some time one-on-one. All my info is down below. As always, I'm always here to help.
