Real Estate Fundamentals: Find, Fund, Fix, and Flip

Armando Montelongo is a real estate investor, educator and philanthropist who made his first real estate investment in 2001 and became a star with A&E’s “Flip This House” from 2006-2009. Armando has spent the past decade optimizing his system for flipping houses and now teaches it to over 300,000 students in person and online.

In addition to his real estate education programs, he actively invests in commercial and residential real estate. He has profited over $50 million in residential and commercial real estate and currently owns more than 150,000 sq. ft. of commercial property.

In 2001, Armando Montelongo was $50,000 in debt, had a credit rating of 501, and was living with his wife and toddler son in his in-laws’ garage. He changed his fortunes by learning to flip houses: buying them on the cheap, fixing them up, and reselling them for a profit.

“My son was two and a half. I remember thinking, One day, he’ll think of his dad as either a winner or a loser when it came to money. That’s when I decided to enter the real estate game.”

With the help of an investor, Armando would buy a distressed house for $60,000 that was originally valued at $150,000. He would then put $20,000 into repairs and get a home inspector to certify that the property was in living condition. Armando put the house on the market for $120,000, and it would sell within 30 days.

“I kept doing this over and over again. It was a volume game. Within three years, I had made $3 million.”