Graham Whitfield’s shoulders dropped as he walked through the doors of the investment property he’d self-managed for over ten years.
The long-term tenants had moved out and left $35,000 worth of damage. It was like they had never bothered to clean the home in the decade they’d lived there.
The father-of-three had bought the place to make money, things were tough and it wasn’t a loss he had expected.
This wasn’t part of the property investor plan – but it ended up paving the way for him to become a multi-millionaire.
Speaking to FEMAIL Graham revealed how he turned the terrible experience with renters into a million-dollar business ‘flipping houses’.
He explained part of his struggle to accept the damage done to his investment property was that he was at fault.
The busy dad had gone to the property in Coolbellup, Perth‘s south, to get his tenants to re-sign their leases over the years.
But he had never done thorough inspections – until it was too late.
‘I just wanted to get rid of it,’ the 40-year-old father-of-three said.
It was mid-2021 and the Perth market was still recovering from the free-fall it experienced the year before. It was a bad time to sell. And in the condition the house was in he would have to sell at a loss.
‘I knew I had to fix the damage. It was renovate and re-lease or renovate and sell,’ he said.
Not handy in the slightest, the dad forked out for tradespeople to re-do the kitchen, bathroom, laundry, replace the floors and fix the yard.
The vanities were so badly water damaged they needed to be ripped out, there was rubbish everywhere and the kitchen was a mess.
Graham spent $35,000 – money his wife had banked after becoming redundant as a new mum – on repairs and renovations and another $3,000 to have the house styled for sale.
It sold in a week – for $550k. He had spent $398K on it eleven years earlier, spent a year in it, then had the long-term tenants in it for ten.
‘I thought there is something in this, it wasn’t a strong ten years in the market and I still turned a profit. It was neutrally geared the whole time I rented it out.’
He then completed a house flipping course and flipped two more houses to the tune of $130k.
One of the homes he didn’t touch, he simply resold it for a $38k profit – after fees. The other he renovated and sold three months later for a $98k profit.
That’s when he quit his FIFO job and decided to flip homes full time.
In the first year he had successfully bought and sold seven homes – only one of them at a loss, something he claims gave him invaluable experience and led him to develop a cookie-cutter business model.
He uses the same kitchen, blinds, lights, paint and flooring for every home.
He’s now flipped 26 homes and will add a few more to that before the end of the year.
‘I know exactly what I am getting into with every home. I know the type of reno I need to do – either a $30k cleanup which is a paint, flooring, blinds and lights or a $90k full gut job which means bathrooms and kitchens,’ he said.
‘I use the same things for every house so I know how much they will cost and I have a good relationship with the suppliers,’ he added.
‘For example I know for $5k you can lift the floors and put down new hybrid flooring. For $20k you can paint and add blinds.’
Graham said he tends to stick to properties in similar areas and targets investment buyers who want to rent them out.
‘These aren’t the areas I want to live in, but they have good growth,’ he said.
A lot of the homes he buys are off-market properties.
‘They are usually pretty messed up. Either landlords have had their places trashed and don’t want to deal with it, or someone has died and their kids don’t want to deal with it.
‘I have had drug houses, hoarder houses, stuff no one else wants to deal with. Stuff that wouldn’t sell on the open market.
‘I basically take on other people’s problems.’
He then lead his team of builders, contractors and cleaners to do the impossible – bring the properties back from the brink and restore the derelict residences into something people can actually live in.
By April 2023 – just two years after he first walked through the doors of his own trashed rental – he was making such a good living flipping he decided to share tips online.
In August he started coaching people one-on-one after they became obsessed with his content.
By October demand was so high he had developed and launched his own house flipping course which teaches people how to buy and sell houses for a profit without getting their hands dirty.
‘I have made over $2million flipping houses since 2021, it has changed my life and I love teaching other people how to change their’s,’ he said.
In 2019 Graham’s wife left work to have their twins, his work dried up and he had to go FIFO on a $150k salary to keep the family afloat.
‘For many people this sounds like a lot but we went from a $400k family income. Things were tight. We had a big mortgage,’ he said.
‘In 2020 we even needed to take money out of our super to get by.’
Graham adds that people don’t need money to start flipping.
‘I could not get a loan from the bank when I flipped my first house. I had to go to a third-party investment partner to get the money.
‘But if you do it right then the 15 per cent interest doesn’t hit hard. I have my homes turned around in less than three months. The longest period was four months,’ he said.
Graham has kept five properties as investments, and on-sold 26. He plans to target markets outside of Perth going forward.
He also said his brush with difficult times has changed the way he spends money.
‘We go on holidays and stuff but I don’t need the flashy house and car. I drive a 2014 Nissan Navara.
‘We aren’t going to buy another family home for a while – we will just rent where we want to live and invest other places.
‘The closest I will come is buying a holiday home which we lease out when we aren’t using it,’ he said.
‘Oh and I bought a boat – but I deserve a nice toy.’
Graham’s house flipping training runs for 12 months but only eight weeks of that is coursework.
He claims his students have made up to $360k in their first flips and many of them have gone on to have four or five good deals in their first year.
