This month we went off the court and into the field for our very first real estate feature.

Travis Carpenter is the owner and CEO of CarpHomes, an Indianapolis real estate operation that flips houses, runs a rental portfolio, and doubles as a licensed brokerage and general contractor. He sold somewhere north of 600 houses before he ever went out on his own. 

Here is how he built a one-stop real estate shop in Indiana. 👇

I am Travis Carpenter, born and raised in Indianapolis. I started in real estate in 2018 and founded CarpHomes a little over three years ago when I went full-time on my own.

The primary focus is flipping houses, buying fixer-uppers, renovating them, and selling them. But I am also a licensed realtor, so I list my own homes, and I have a rental portfolio I keep adding to. I am a licensed general contractor too, so for my investor clients I try to be a one-stop shop: I help them buy the house, they hire me for the construction, and I get it rent-ready so they can drop it into their portfolio and start making money.

I graduated from Indiana Wesleyan in 2016 with a degree in recreation management and started out managing gyms and working for the YMCA.

Then the owner of a company called Ben Buys Indy Houses cold-recruited me at my gym. He walked up and basically told me I should get into real estate and join his company. I did, and within a few months I was flipping houses on the side while my actual job was selling them. I was there seven years, and it got to the point where I had enough experience and enough money saved that I could split off and work for myself.

The very first one was a creative-financing arrangement with my professional mentor. I found us a good property, he funded the whole thing, and in exchange I bought it from him at a slight discount and made payments to him on land contract for a few years. He was basically the bank, and I was the tenant after we renovated it. A few years later I had enough to buy him out.

My first house bought with my own money was a partnership with my dad. We found a really cheap place in Elwood, a rural town where we knew we would have to drive, in rough condition, and just put in a ton of sweat equity. After that it was one at a time. Every flip, we would take the profit and roll it into the next one.

A lot of it is that I have been really blessed, and I do not want to take too much credit. But a couple of things helped.

First, I had to strip out the bias and emotion and ask myself honestly: if I had no prior relationship with this person, would I still want them as a coworker or a manager? That is hard, and some people just cannot compartmentalize enough to do it. For these two guys, I was confident the professional skills lined up and that we could be honest with each other and handle conflict well. While I love all of my family, that does not mean we would thrive in a close business environment with every single family member or close friend.

Second, we got ahead of it. We had honest conversations up front about the fact that conflict would come, decided how we would handle it, and put things in writing. Signing a contract had nothing to do with trust. It was about being transparent from the jump, before the train is on the tracks.

I am trying to diversify as much as I can. Direct mail is a big one. We keep a list of about a thousand higher-value targets and send them postcards about once a quarter. We do pay-per-lead, where marketing agencies pass along interested sellers. We do Google ads, and I am about to ramp up Facebook to balance it out. We do not really cold call.

Beyond that, I want organic, local growth: optimizing the website, getting my name out at local events, and turning every transaction with another realtor into a relationship. I will ask them to make me their first call when a fixer-upper comes across their desk.

Two things go wrong the most, and not just for new investors. One, you overpay at purchase. Maybe you are too confident it will sell fast and high, maybe you got emotional, maybe you felt like you had to beat someone else's offer. Overpay from the start and you have given yourself no fighting chance.

Two, mishaps on the construction side. A bad contractor, poor management, overdoing the rehab when the house just needed to be a clean rental, not enough cash reserves for change orders, taking too long, or running into red tape with the city on permits and zoning.

Best: My second flip ever, a former insane asylum in Anderson that we turned into a six-bedroom single-family home. We saw value no one else did, bought it for around $80K, and cleared about $67K. 

Worst: A lake house in Martinsville I just closed on. It was my first time dealing with a private HOA and a private utility system, and between sewer issues at the road and a hillside affecting the foundation, an $80K projected profit turned into a $33K loss. The one upside is that the buyer's agent was so impressed with how I handled it that she has already brought me new deals.

Favorite book? Not much of a reader, but the Bible. For leisure, the Chronicles of Narnia, probably The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Entrepreneur, dead or alive, you'd trade lives with? Whoever founded the first food-delivery company. I sketched out the exact DoorDash and Uber Eats idea in high school, delivering Taco Bell late at night, and I would love to compare notes with whoever actually built it.

Current hype song? "Forgot About Dre" by Eminem.

Favorite basketball team? Indiana Pacers.

Favorite all-time player? Steph Curry.

Favorite games you've witnessed or played in? The Pacers' comeback win over the Knicks in last year's playoffs.

📈 Today's issue was sponsored by Sam's List, a marketplace helping founders find vetted, industry-specific accountants, bookkeepers, fractional CFOs, and financial advisors. It's run by Kimi, one of the founders here at Founders Basketball, so if you need help finding the right fit, reach out to her directly ([email protected]) or at samslist.com.

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