The “graying” of the U.S. population will have broad effects on the country’s housing markets, from increased demand for affordable housing and rentals to changing home ownership demographics, according to a new report.
Kathi and David Duncan were 15 minutes into the introduction to Armando Montelongo seminars, the Mega Millionaire Event, one evening in April 2010.
“David looks over at me with this tense, am-I-going-to-feel-the-same-way-he-does look,” Kathi recalls. “And he asks ‘What do you think about this?’”
She smiles at the recollection.
“I go ‘Hello? It’s totally a no-brainer,’” she says with a laugh. “This is exactly what we were going to do.”
At the next break, they went to the back of the room and registered for the next event. Two years later, the couple from Irvine, Calif., has progressed through the educational system, to the point of doing multiple house flips – and the honor of teaching students on the VIP Bus Tour.
“I think back to that day, and then I flash my life forward to where we are today…” David says, his voice trailing off for a moment. “I never in my wildest dreams…”
He stops for a moment, choking up. “I’m a pretty emotional guy,” he says. “This has completely changed our lives.”
And it all started with that look.
Laid Off – and Happy
When the couple went to the intro event, Kathi Duncan was getting back into the work force after staying home as their two children were growing up. She quickly shifted from a 9-to-5 job, though, to finding, fixing and flipping homes.
David continued to work as a key account rep in the footwear industry, a career that had paid the bills for many years but held little appeal to him anymore. He worked as a real estate investor when he could, and they started slowly, using their own money to buy and fix houses. They set a goal to be working together full-time by the end of 2011.
In July of that year, he underwent knee replacement surgery. After three months of rehab, he went back to work – where he was told he was no longer needed by the company. They went to a Bus Tour a couple of weeks later, telling some of their friends about the layoff.
“They were like ‘That’s great, you got fired! That’s so freaking cool! Good for you!’” says David, who admits his initial reaction wasn’t as positive. “But the reality was that it allowed Kathi and me to focus more on our business.”
His wife calls it the “best thing in the world.”
“We were working toward that goal anyway, and it just solidified that goal,” she says. “We had no reason to procrastinate. We’re full-speed-ahead. It motivated the heck out of us.”
Positive Future
Kathi ‘s “no-brainer” reaction at the initial event has carried through the last two years.
“I knew I was going to love it, but it’s even like ten-fold more,” she says. “I can’t imagine not being able to do this, and I can’t imagine anything I would rather do.”
Their projects are all in Southern California, a rich market for house flippers that is close to home for the couple, and they have started investing in buy-and-hold properties as well. Their long-range plans include bringing their daughter into the business.
“She’s 20, so she’s young,” David says. “She should have a fun time. But we want to create something for her. And we have a son who has learning disabilities who now lives on his own. But we need to build something into a special-needs trust to protect his finances and to make sure that when we’re gone, there’s something there that will keep him safe, and there will be an income flow that’s protected.”
The couple didn’t go into the process with the aim of being mentors, but they were asked to be in the master mentor program after less than a year and progressed to the role of bus leaders.
“It was a gift,” David says, choking up slightly. “It was really a gift. The fact that they picked us was pretty amazing.”
Bus Tour Leaders
The Duncans’ style on the Bus Tour is a combination of Armando’s push-your-limits style and their own experiences as parents. They foster a sense of community among their students, while at the same time making sure everyone understands the process.
“The greatest gratification, I think, is teaching,” David says. “We do things on the bus to mix it up, things that force them out of their comfort zones like Armando talks about.
“To see them come out and say ‘Yeah, I got it, I got it’ is so cool. It’s just remarkable.”
David recalls a student at a recent Bus Tour who was attending with his daughter. He quickly developed a negative attitude, one that the Duncans noticed right away. David spoke to the man, noting that he needed to let go of the negatives in his life.
“I told him ‘You will have wasted your money and three days of life, and you will not have allowed it all to sink in,’” David says. “And then I went to his daughter, who was like 21 or 22, and said the same thing – ‘You need to pick your dad up.’”
The next time David noticed the man, he had shed his attitude – to the point where he was wearing a bucket on his head and taking part in everything his group was doing. Two days later, they met again, in the lobby of the hotel.
“He had really gotten involved and he had learned a lot,” David says. “I gave him my number. He’s never called, but I suspect he’s doing OK.”
As are the Duncans.
“It’s a natural high,” Kathi says of the radical change their lives have taken in the last two years. “You develop the belief that you can do real estate, that you can set these goals and achieve them.
“You get the means and the motivation in your heart and mind, and the dedication to do whatever it takes to get wherever you want to go. It just blows my mind.”
David agrees.
“For all these blessings, we have to thank Armando for seeing something in us that we did not see,” he says. “The true dedication to our success has come full circle, and we are eternally grateful.”
Are you ready to make the kind of change that David and Kathi made? Visit ArmandoLive.com to get started. And feel free to share this post and/or leave your thoughts below:
Check out the highlights and all the faces of the April 2012 Armando Montelongo VIP Bus Tour by clicking the arrow in the box below to see a slide show.
You also can see the photos, complete with captions, at our Flickr site.
If you were there, be sure to check and see if you made the collection. Enjoy!
Look like fun? It’s twice as educational…leave your thoughts below:
For people of all ages, the sound of an ice cream truck rolling through the neighborhood brings back very specific and pleasant memories of childhood summers.
For Raul Mateos, it means something completely different. At the lowest point of his life, it stood for failure.
“When the ice cream truck would pass through, and I didn’t have a dollar to buy my son an ice cream, that was really tough,” he recalls. “Other kids are running over there and I see my son, and I have to tell him ‘no’ . . . “
He holds up his forefinger and thumb, an inch apart.
“. . . as a man I felt literally that big.”
Just over two years ago, Mateos (on the right in the photo) and his childhood friend and business partner, Mark Perez (left), were out of work. Their plans to buy and sell houses were floundering. They had lost cars to the repo man, their homes to the banks. They were Southern California statistics of the Great Recession.
Mateos and his family moved in with his parents, jammed into one room.
Perez’s situation was the same. “If it hadn’t been for my in-laws,” he says, “we would have been homeless.”
In their desperation, they saw an infomercial for the Armando Montelongo Live Event, the introduction to the house flipping system. They went, and the positive atmosphere absolutely stunned them. They soon were ready for the biggest step, the VIP Bus Tour, which is a three-day seminar in which students learn from Armando and his team, absorb the complete house-flipping process and see properties for sale.
“We knew we had to get on that bus tour to be successful,” Perez says. “Raul and I were flat broke. We were living on, like, $5 a month, just struggling with wife and kids. It was extremely stressful. We knew we had to do it.”
The deal
They didn’t have anywhere near the money they needed. So they approached two investors, people Mateos knew from a former job. Perez and Mateos explained their plan to learn from the man they considered the “No. 1 house flipping expert in the world,” and they offered to pay back all the money – plus the profits from their first three house flips.
The investors agreed.
In April 2010, Perez and Mateos went to the bus tour, with its high energy and long days of intense, hands-on training.
“I’m naturally shy…it was really uncomfortable for me,” Perez says. “But I remember telling myself, ‘Well, we just spent this amount of money, and whatever we had been doing hadn’t been working.’”
They both, as they put it, submitted themselves to the process. “We wouldn’t even take restroom breaks, because we didn’t want to miss a word,” Perez says with a laugh.
At the end of the bus tour, they went home and went to work.
The schedule
They started working what Armando calls “millionaire hours,” waking at 5:30 a.m. every day, looking for properties and networking and making contacts, often until 2 a.m. or later.
“When people tell me they submitted 20 or 30 offers, that’s nothing,” Mateos says. “At the beginning, our goal was to submit 20 offers – a day. I was going through ink, paper, toner, everything, very fast.”
The original funding for their first flip fell through at the last minute, but they used contacts from the bus tour to find a private investor. The money arrived with 20 minutes to spare, and RMP Investments, Mateos’ and Perez’s company, was up and running.
They repaid the loan for the bus tour. They turned over the profits from their first three deals. They kept working.
“We worked those crazy hours for the first six months,” Perez says. “Networking, talking to people, just basically doing everything that Armando told us to do.
“We listened to every word he told us and followed the steps. You do that and you can’t fail.”
Giving back
Today, multiple house flips later, they no longer are working 20-hour days. They have established a system, with project managers and contractors and investors. They are back in their own houses, Perez in Riverside, Calif., and Mateos in Haceinda Heights.
“Our lives have done a 180 from where we were two years ago – flat broke, lost everything, moving in with our parents and in-laws – to now having our own homes, cars again, financial stability,” Perez says. “It’s just amazing, being able to be part of a great family and create some amazing friendships.”
The business partners, who are 32, are producing videos of their projects and posting them on YouTube, mainly as a way to inspire future students. (Click above to see one of their recent videos; click here to visit their YouTube channel.)
They also have stayed in contact with Armando’s company, to the point of serving as bus tour leaders. Every six weeks, they share their unique experiences with a bus full of students – teaching the system, offering suggestions, providing leadership.
Russell Cable, who was on their bus in December, says he was impressed by their work ethic and their dedication to the system.
“One of the best parts was when we actually got to see a house they had rehabbed,” he says. “They walked everyone through it and explained in detail why they did this or did that.”
Loren Lavine, who was on their bus in January, says they were “inspirational and motivating.”
“They are living proof that it doesn’t matter what your background is, you can make Armando’s system work for you,” she says.
Their background never is far away. When all the leaders are introduced at every bus tour, their story is resurrected: A photo of a Southern California ice cream truck is projected onto the giant screens behind them.
Are you ready to make the kind of change that Mark and Raul made? Visit ArmandoLive.com to get started. And feel free to share this post and/or leave your thoughts below:
The “graying” of the U.S. population will have broad effects on the country’s housing markets, from increased demand for affordable housing and rentals to changing home ownership demographics, according to a new report.
