Tommy Dobczyk and two co-hosts analyze a $2.6 million Southern California lake house near Big Bear. The property shows negative cash flow for 2025 and only $20-$45k projected NOI in 2026, requiring $25-$100k annually just to break even. Pretty photos can't fix bad numbers.
Chapters
What you found was over in— is it in California?
Yes, it's right here. Hold on. Do you— are you familiar with Big Bear? Okay, so Big Bear is up here and then like Arrowhead's here and it's right here in between another awesome lake called Lake Gregory. So this is a very well-known mountain lake spot in Southern California.
I don't know what else we got.
Okay.
What did Deal Hunter say?
Real good.
Okay. Using the numbers from your sheet, the deal is improving but does not support 2.6 on current performance. This is still a value-add seller finance retreat growth deal, not a clean bankable income deal today. And then I don't know if you want me to read this or if you just want to take a look.
Scroll down.
Scroll down at a steady pace.
So something— October was so low.
Well, that's because they got married, maybe. But it shows. They think— did you include the $23 million in there too or no? Okay, maybe it'll show.
This is a perfect example of people think that their company is worth more than it actually is. They're valuing it based on feelings rather than the numbers. So if your income is only like $200,000 or $197,000, go down, go down. So right there, right there, income $197,000, but their expenses were more like it was a negative. You understand that?
Reported NOI on the 2025 goes to negative.
That's a problem. Pre-debt operating income, like it doesn't even support the debt. It can't even support itself. This is running in the negative. This is why we run all the numbers.
So based on 2026, it shows that you're going down. It shows that it's just not going to make money. Yeah, maybe a $20,000 to $45,000 NOI on a $2.6 million property.
Again, remember like when you were— when we were playing cash flow and it had the minus $100,000 cash flow or whatever. This is minus $25,000 a year. Do you have an extra $25,000 to throw into a money pit?
Bend over. Personally, no.
This would be a bad deal. Like there's nothing that they could sell it for to make it like, to compensate for it. Literally, you having to like put an additional $25,000 a year just to keep it at breakeven. Do you understand that? Like, it's, it's none of it makes sense, right? Like, this needs to be like, what did we learn? We learned that marketing and pictures look amazing. And then you do the numbers and then you go, oh, and the numbers tell you what to do. So it sounded incredible. It looked incredible.
Leans into dating profiles. Imagine real estate like dating profiles. Okay. So because when you get into real estate, it's like getting into the dating game.
So with certain deals, like for example, with this deal, is it— could it potentially be like they are just really bad business owners, but the property is valuable? Does that ever happen?
And so you got to do the numbers and let the numbers tell you what to do. Even if they're bad business owners, how long will it take you to get it?
