I flip homes in the Hamptons. I made $360,000 on Airbnb last year, and I use brand partnerships on Instagram to save money on renovations.
Blythe Graham-Jones left a career in advertising to renovate and sell homes in the Hamptons full-time.
Her first project was a home she purchased for $635,000 that Zillow now values at $1.8 million.
She partners with brands, promoting their products to her Instagram followers, to help defray renovation costs.
This is an as-told-to essay based on a conversation with Blythe Graham-Jones, 39, a former advertising executive who now flips and rents out homes in the Hamptons, documenting her projects for 10,200 Instagram followers @Via_Norfolk. Graham-Jones makes money from renovating Hamptons homes, renting them out on Airbnb, consulting on design projects, and various social media revenue streams, including brand partnerships. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
I used to work in advertising. I worked with some of the most amazing creative minds, but didn't really consider myself a creative. I was the organized, left-brained person for these amazing talents.
My husband Cody was a real estate agent when we started dating back in 2008. Now, he works in tech sales, but we have both always loved real estate. We used to be the ones who'd organize a Montauk share house for our friends. We loved driving around looking at rentals together.
We never believed that your first purchase had to be your primary home. In 2017, we were still renting in Brooklyn and expecting our first child when we bought a three-bedroom home in East Hampton for $635,000.
It wasn't a hot property. The previous owners were in the middle of a divorce, and it was a bit neglected. People just didn't want to deal with the hassle.
There were boxes everywhere. They hadn't even cleaned out the medicine cabinets. It was a weird layout, too: The refrigerator was in the hallway, the living room was in the back of the house, and there was no primary bedroom.
We had renters that first summer. By September, I was on a mission to fix up the house for cheap. I got white paint and Ikea rattan furniture.
For two years, we continued to rent it out on Airbnb and reinvested every penny back into the house. We started out charging $1,000 per night during peak season.
In 2019, we refinanced and pulled out a home equity line of credit, or HELOC, for $250,000. With that money, I finally got to do a big renovation. I ended up opening up one bedroom to make a living room and an open kitchen. I added a bathroom to make a primary bedroom.
Now, the home is valued at $1.8 million, according to Zillow.
I realized that doing this was my thing. I could see the potential in homes. Managing through the chaos was natural for me from my previous role. At the time, I also wanted to spend more time with my kids, who were 1 and 3. I left my corporate role in 2021 to pursue renovations full-time.
One of the first steps I took was hiring a freelance designer on UpWork to build a brand identity. For $2,000, she created my website, brand identity, logos, colors, and official fonts. I think it really helped me land deals with brands.
For instance, I work with home and kitchen fixtures company Kingston Brass. For three properties, they've gifted me an entire house's worth of products — probably $20,000 worth — for showing them off during my renovation videos on Instagram. It definitely helps for the ROI of the eventual sale.
Now, the goal is to sell one house each year while renting out the other two on Airbnb. Last year, our two properties in the Hamptons brought in $360,000 in Airbnb revenue. Both have five bedrooms and pools.
I only invest in homes in East Hampton because I like its rules regarding short-term rentals. There are minimum two-week stays, but with four exceptions you can use them throughout the year, which I usually time around holidays like Thanksgiving.
There's the profit from flipping, our Airbnb rental income, and the brand partnerships I bring in through Instagram. I also offer design consulting that starts around $1,000 or $5,000 a month to work on retainer. I also generate income from my LTK page, where people can shop the products I use in my renovations.
Instead of one job, I have multiple streams of income now.
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