A Failed Flip Deal – Led To An Interesting Discovery!

Does anyone remember Post #3, where I talked about a house I converted into a Mid-Term Rental (MTR)?
Let’s continue from there.

Fast forward a few months.

I’m just finishing a flip and listing it for sale.
In my opinion, the house came out beautiful — modern, large, 5 spacious bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms, you name it.

After 30 days on the market, I received one offer that didn’t really excite me.
No big deal — after many flips, I don’t get stressed if a house doesn’t sell immediately.

At the same time, I was riding the success of my previous MTR property,
and getting continued encouragement from my British mentor (who I was working with at the time)
to open my mind, challenge my thinking, and shift my mindset.

So I did.

And “by accident,” I came across a video of a guy in Texas who buys large houses
and rents them by the room — regular rentals, unfurnished, but per room.

That got me thinking.

Maybe I shouldn’t sell this house at all — maybe I should turn it into an MTR?
But it’s a fairly large house, which means I’d have to charge a high rent to make it worthwhile,
and that significantly limits the number of people willing to pay that price.

And then another idea came up…

What if I rent each room separately —
but each room as an MTR?

Meaning:
Furnish the entire house,
and rent each room individually,
at a reasonable price,
to one person per room.

I ran the idea by a few people in real estate,
and the response was pretty unanimous:

“Who would want to rent just a room and live with other people?!”

So I asked myself:
What’s the cost of the mistake?

Furniture cost: about $8–10K.

And then — surprise — I decided to go for it,
despite the huge amount of uncertainty.

And guess what?

There are actually quite a lot of people who want exactly that:
A comfortable, furnished room,
in a modern, beautiful house,
at a reasonable all-inclusive price,
for a few months while they work in the city.

No dealing with furniture.
No setting up utilities.
No hassle.

So what did this “unsuccessful” flip lead to?

A proof of concept — and it worked.

With financing on the house,
I increased the monthly cash flow
from $200–300
to $800–1,000
(depending on the season).

I manage the houses myself.
Yes, there is more involvement —
but honestly, it’s nowhere near as time-consuming as people imagine.

(I was just in Thailand for a month.
The business survived, and three new tenants moved in.)

And hand on heart —
all the credit goes to my mentor.

Without his push,
I would never have shifted my mindset
or exposed myself to new ideas in the first place.

Next post:
The power of mentors (even outside of U.S. real estate).
It’s not cheap —
but every dollar came back to me many times over.
Not in cash flow — but in mindset.