I'm Spending $250K+ Renovating Our Personal Home // Matthew Tooker

What's up guys? You're used to me showing you how to make $100,000 assignment fees, showing you how to work with developers all over the country and make loads of money. But I want to give you an inside look at what it looks like to walk into a quarter million dollars in equity on a property that you can make completely your own. So this is actually my wife and I's personal home. It's demo day today. We're about to gut this thing, take it down to the studs. We're building a pool, a spa, the whole works in the backyard. And it's gonna be our dream home for the next couple years of life. So come on inside. What is that? The fuck? I don't know what drugs look like. I've never been a druggie. Smells like soap. We're good. We're literally ripping this whole entire shit apart. This whole wall's coming down. We're gonna be vaulting the ceilings in the living room. So they're gonna go from where they're at right now, which is probably 9 feet, 9.5 feet, something like that. And we're gonna be lifting it up all the way to like 15, 16 feet in the living room. It just gives it a big open feel. It's what my wife wants. So what the wife wants, the wife gets. This whole wall is getting taken out and we're opening this whole entire space up. So again, this roof is going to be so much taller. You can kind of see in these skylights up here how high the roof is going to get. That's what it's going to be like in here. And it just, it gives it more of a grand feel. Um, the people that lived in here were actually the original owners. They never really touched anything, but that's exactly what I was looking for. I was looking for someone who had an older home that needed a full gut remodel. Um, and we were able to find that off market and get a great deal. And our house actually appraised about $125,000, $150,000 higher than what we locked it up at. Um, so we were able to walk into equity initially, and then we're going to be doing a full remodel. Gutting everything. I'll show you exactly what we're gonna be doing, but we're gonna be walking into about a quarter million dollars in upside on the back end, which is amazing. $815,000 is what we went under contract at. We paid closing costs and all that jazz for the seller. We ended up somewhere around $825,000. We're gonna put about a quarter million dollars into this house between a full remodel. You know what? I didn't include the pool in that budget, so add another $70,000 or so. But this house afterwards is gonna be worth between $1.3 and $1.4. So we're gonna be walking into great equity. We're gonna be all in for just under $1.1 million. It's gonna be worth around $1.3 to $1.4 million. And 2 to 3 years from now, I see this house probably trading for around $1.6 to $1.8 million, somewhere in there, depending on what the market does. So either way, even if it just stays where it's at right now, We have great numbers on this deal. I always look at a deal and say, if this was a flip, would I buy it? Because I wanna walk into as much equity as I can, and a lot of people look at a house and say, oh, if the numbers work for me, I'm just gonna do it, I love the house. I do the same, but I wanna find a house that I not only love, but I could flip if I needed to. So this house is something that I could easily throw on the market and make a couple hundred grand, but I would rather just bank that as equity in the house, and then I'll see it 2, 3, 4 years from now, And after 2 years, you don't pay capital gains tax on the first $500,000 that you make in profit on a house like this. So that's what's also great about waiting 2 years is the first $500K is completely tax-free. This is what really drew my wife and I here. When we first came to look at it when it was off market, before we had got under contract or anything, we walked in the backyard and we were like, "Yes, this is the place for us." Reason being, we have so much privacy back here and we have no neighbors behind us, no rooftops to look on. And we really have just complete access to the mountain. We have a gate out our backyard that we can go directly onto the trail. We love to hike. That's something we're going to definitely be doing every morning or evening. The sunsets back here are beautiful. We have no neighbors that can really see into our yard, which we love. And we're going to be doing a pool and a spa. We'll throw up some images on the screen for you guys to see of that. We're going to be doing travertine decking all around here, um, a big grass area over here, a huge slider that opens it up to out here, expanding this, uh, whole entire patio. And the backyard of this place is just going to be, um, a little mini hotel for us to just hang out at all the time. I'm excited to have people over, um, and entertain, but the backyard is what just sold this place for us. And I know down the road, 2, 3, 4 years from now, whenever we do sell this property, that someone else is going to see that same exact thing. There's not a lot of properties that are against the mountain preserve here in this Phoenix area. And location, location, location is everything in real estate. And when I buy real estate for myself, I always look at the best location. So when I found something that was backing up against the mountain preserve, I was willing to pay a little bit of a premium for it. Reason being, I know I'm going to see that money back on the back end because it's going to be special to someone. I'm going to be able to list for more than someone would that's not against the mountain preserve, just because someone's going to come in the backyard, see that they have no neighbors behind them, that they can walk directly onto the mountain preserve and go hiking, and that they can sit out here and have a morning cup of coffee and just listen to the birds, watch nature, and just enjoy everything that Arizona has to offer. Come right through here. Kitchen's gonna be all along this wall and this wall. There's gonna be a big island right here. We just ordered, I believe, 7 countertops. We got Taj Mahal, it's really popular right now. It's what my wife wanted, so we did it. And this wall right here, guys, is being completely demoed and taken out and put right here. So we're gonna be bumping out our master bedroom about 5 feet this way. Reason being, we have a really small master bathroom right now and we wanna expand it. After we take this whole wall out, vault the ceilings and open up this space, you're not going to realize the 5 feet of dead space. Because also right behind us in the kitchen, I'm going to have a, uh, 12-foot slider that completely opens this space up to the backyard. Um, and this extra 5 feet that we add to the bathroom is going to be able to get us that big grand master bathroom that we're looking for. Here is our master bathroom right now. I mean, my wife could be, uh, doing her makeup and I could be in the shower and we could bump into each other pretty much. So we are completely demoing this, moving this wall back 5 feet, um, closing it in with our current closet space, and it's going to be a big grand, uh, bathroom. We're going to have a freestanding bathtub, a big shower, a double vanity, and it's just going to be a great spot for us to get ready in the morning, not have to bump into each other while wifey's doing her makeup. Right outside the master bedroom is a little space over here, guys. Um, we are going to be doing a little bit of a wellness area over here, so we're going to be doing a cold plunge, a sauna, um, an outdoor shower over here for after you get out of the cold plunge. We're going to have a hot tub in the pool, a red light sauna, a cold plunge, an outdoor shower, and it can really be somewhere that, um, we can take care of our bodies here. We love to go to the gym, and there's a gym 5, 10 minutes from here. But being able to wake up in the morning, have a cup of coffee, then go in your cold plunge at your own house is something that was important to us to be able to do. So this is going to be our little oasis right here. We're going to line it with ficus trees and it's going to grow up and give us some privacy. So super excited for that aspect of the project. Whole roof is getting replaced as well. That's one thing you got to look for on these older, older homes that people have had as like original built. And original owners, if someone's never done work to the house, these things add up like the AC unit needs to be replaced, the roof needs to be replaced. These are pretty big ticket items. I mean, we're looking at somewhere around $40,000 to $50,000 all in for just those two items. So if I wouldn't have known that going into it, if I wouldn't have gotten a roof inspection done, even though I didn't have an inspection period, guys, I already had nonrefundable earnest money up. But I still went and got a roof inspection because if they would have told me there was mold or there was one of those little shitheads that get in the 2x4s and stuff. Fuck. Termites. Termites. If there was fricking termites in the house, I mean, I would have walked away from my earnest money. I would rather walk away from the— I think I had $10,000 up. I'd rather walk away from that money than have to deal with termites and mold and different stuff if that was the case. So I still got an inspection done. They pointed out some stuff, but it was all stuff that I knew we needed, nothing more, thankfully. So we're doing a new AC unit, new roof, and again, this is all going to be decking space. There's going to be a big pool right here. We're so excited to just be able to hang out in our pool, our hot tub, have a great view of the mountain, not have to worry about privacy whatsoever. We're going to have no neighbors that can see us, which is great. And then right behind us is the mountain preserve. So it's really the best of both worlds. Yeah. So we do have a neighbor right next to us right here, and we're going to bring up that wall about 2 feet. That way we really have complete privacy back here. There's no window from any neighbor on either side that can see into our yard. We're going to line it with ficus trees on both sides. Which give it a year or so and they'll grow pretty tall and kind of fill in and we'll have complete privacy out here on the sides will be completely blocked off. And then the back obviously don't need any privacy from this view. So we're super stoked for the backyard on this project. We know it's going to be an area that everyone loves to hang out. So excited to take you guys along and show you the progress as we go. If you want your roof done in Arizona, and you don't really care what it looks like, if it looks kind of shitty or not, this is the guy right here that could do it for you. No, all jokes aside, his name's Austin. He owns ProGuard Roofing. You'll see a sign in the front yard. He's killer, the best to work with. If you need him, call the number on the screen. He's doing the whole house, the roof and the whole house, trying to capitalize on the views that we have out here. Um, that's Piestewa Peak right there. It's kind kind of an iconic mountain around this area. We're going to be bumping out this, uh, seating area that we're looking at right now, and we really want to capture being able to hang out in our front yard. It's a super quiet neighborhood, there's never traffic driving by. We're going to have 4 or 5 big steps going all the way down to the sidewalk here, um, and that's just like the best way we can do it. We wanted access for people to not have to walk up the driveway to the house, so they can just walk up some steps to this area somewhere they can sit around a fire pit and look at the mountain. Um, and we're going to be able to capture all of that out here, have a glass of wine in the evening, talk to the neighbors who are walking by, get to know them. We're super excited for this front area because of the views that it has. So again, we're doing the front yard, the backyard with a pool, spa, cold plunge, sauna, the whole works. Complete remodel on the inside, and I'm excited to show you guys the progress as we go.