- Business partners Kevin Hart and Mike Gorius have built a strong and diverse real estate portfolio.
- Their strategy involves the rolling and wholesale for money and renting for long -term benefits.
- Their tips for new investors are to start with a flip to bring money and then expand to the rent.
Kevin Hart began to think about real estate as a business applicable to college when he was renting a Duplex with his brotherhood brothers.
“We had both sides, there were 10 boys and we were all paying $ 500 a month for this owner,” the University of Kentucky Grade told Business Insider. It seemed like a relatively simple way to bring thousands of dollars a month, “so I always had it in the back of my head.”
He graduated, began a career in accounting and found his mind wandering as he sat in his room all day, “sending his speech,” he said. “I was dreaming of real estate or other businesses, thinking,” How can I get out of here? “”
His curiosity led him to websites like Biggerpockets. He learned about various investment strategies, “but I put real estate in the back burn because I just thought it was very difficult to start. I didn’t have money and I didn’t think I could do it.”
A career pivot for insurance in 2017 ended by placing the map in red. He began working as an independent contractor for State Farm and issued a business loan to help marketing expenses.
A big silver lining was that she introduced her with house flippers in his area in Louisville.
“They were my clients on the security side and motivated me to flip a house and see if it really is for me,” Hart said. “I started working with some local wholesale sellers, found a good deal and bought this first house with $ 8,000 down using a hard money lender. My wife was super surprised to what I was doing because I didn’t I would never have done it before.
He said he and his first business partner bought property for about $ 70,000 in March 2019, set approximately $ 40,000 in it, and sold it for about $ 160,000.
“Together we all shared $ 30,000 profit,” Hart said. He was fixed, bought two more rolls before the end of the summer, and left his work later that year. “I had these salaries that were triple what I paid for myself on the state farm as a self -employed insurance agent. That was extremely exciting.”
Hart and Gorius have worked together in real estate agreements since 2022. They formed an official partnership in 2024. Kevin Hart and Mike Gorius’s courtesy
The current business partner, Mike Gorius, took a different approach at the beginning of his real estate career, which began as a side project to help mitigate credit card debt and car loans. He began by buying a duplex at Louisville, despite living in Phoenix at the time, and turned it into a long -term rent.
“I spent about $ 35,000 on paying my money. When I got my first rented control, profit was like $ 400,” said Gorius, who worked on sale and recruitment throughout his Corporate career. “I remember thinking,” Oh man, it will receive a lot of $ 35,000 payment for me to withdraw from this. “
Gorius and Hart, who were initially linked when Gorius was seeking to buy in the Louisville market, have made agreements together since 2022. They formed an official business partnership in 2024 under the exclusivity of Buybuyer and, in the year Full of them full of working together, 50 transactions between wholesale sale, whole and rolling. They also own more than 20 rental properties, including short, medium and long -term, Louviville area. BI verified the ownership of their property and the history of the agreements by viewing the settlement statements and closing the documents.
Thanks to real estate, Hart says he was completely removed from bad debt, and Gorius, who left his corporate work in 2023 to work on full -time real estate, expects to have paid it in 2025.
“There is not much more where you can make amounts of amounts to help you pay that debt,” Hart said. “Is a good business to help you build your own savings account.”
Their main point is financial freedom and the option to never have to work again for income, though they are not the types that should be in the Golf Course five days a week. They said flexibility is more intriguing.
A two -way wealth building strategy: flip to bring money, then buy and hold rents
Hart and Gorius are narrowed to a real estate strategy that works for them – and they encourage new investors to use a similar approach: Start with a flip for a cash infusion and then use money to buy and rented.
“If you have 10 Grand, you can usually go to find a deal, set down the payment and hope you are making $ 15,000 to $ 30,000. This is a quick boost of capital to help you go,” Hart said . “If you start fliping some houses a year, whether you have a W2 or not, it will put you in the right direction to be able to do other things like buying rent.”
It is easier to say than to do.
An ordinary and costly mistake in the rolling world is going with the first contractor you find, rather than interviewing some.
“Try to get references from other rolling. In that way, we hope they are not burning for a bad contractor,” Hart said. “You definitely don’t want to hire the cheapest one you find. They’re probably cheap and available for a reason.”
Another novice mistake is to get a very big project. You do not want to cheat the house or move the walls to your first flip. Instead, start with more a cosmetic flip where you are updating floors, paints, closets and light matches.
“In reality, if you are making a lot of flip, flip is a very boring business. You’re using the same paint colors, you are using similar floors. At the one -style it’s in style that year, we’re like, ‘good, for The next five houses, this is what we are doing, ”Hart said. “We are making neutral colors, neutral flooring and simply making everything fresh and clean in order to appeal to most of the potential people.”
The money that comes from their rolling and wholesale finance their lifestyle and savings.
“Roll and wholesale, that’s what I want to do. That’s my day’s job, so I’ve turned it into ‘my salary,” Gorius said – and can be lucrative.
He quoted their most recent deal: “We got a property property 16 days ago, closed today, and we have added it to $ 24,000. Because it’s a majority, it’s a great profit. That It’s an extreme case. This is a fantastic deal.
A successful or wholesale flip can help you build enough savings to start the addition of rental properties to your portfolio. The problem with starting with a long -term rent is that it is likely not to generate too much cash flow, if any. In their market, for example, they can benefit about $ 100 to $ 200 per month.
“If you don’t have money in the bank and a tenant calls you because the water heater went out, there goes a whole year of your money flow,” Hart said. “You really need to be prepared to be able to make these repairs.”
They look at their long -term rents like their pension funds.
“They probably won’t make a tone, if there are, money in the short term, but if you keep them for 20, 30 years, then this is your pension plan,” Gorius said.
As Horn put it: “Purchase of renting properties is like a slow retirement burn. No one is receiving much wealth immediately, especially not in Louisville.” But over time, “tenants pay the mortgage, we build capital every single month, and eventually, we can sell and have a beautiful pension plan with it.”