EXCLUSIVE: ‘The Mother Flip' Stars Treat Real Estate Listings Like Dating Profiles—and Say All Homebuyers Should, Too

Yahoo

2 days ago

Friends and home flippers Kristy Etheredge and Rebecca Franchione are sharing how their experience with motherhood has made them savvy real estate investors—in any neighborhood.
Now, they're revealing the surprising advice that always delivers with viewers on A&E's new series, "The Mother Flip."
Etheredge, 45, is a mom to son Winston, 15, and daughter Harper, 13, while Franchione, 49, has sons Wyatt, 21, and Gunnar, 16, and daughter Isabella, 19. The new reality stars live just three houses away from one another on the same street in Wimberley, TX.
The pair first became interested in house flipping while walking around their neighborhood together.
"We call ourselves the walking realtors even though we're not realtors. We got weighted vests recently, we're on that trend right now,' says Etheredge, who credits her and Franchione's social skills and authentic connection to the Texas Hill Country community for their success in real estate.
'I think the secret sauce is how we find the houses,' explains Etheredge.
"We're always behind the scenes out talking to people, networking, kayaking. We have so many people in the Hill Country that don't necessarily want to list their house with someone unless they know them.
"I mean, that's the one thing about Texas, is there's just this feeling, this connection, and so it is just the adventure of finding them. We will go to all lengths to find a good deal.'
The moms didn't have to go far to score their first deal.
When their contractor friend, business partner, and co-star Roy Salinas was searching for a place in the highly desirable Hill Country area, Etheredge and Franchione pounced on an off-market opportunity they were privy to.
'Kristy said, 'Well, the house across the street from you, next door to me is a cat hotel—[The] people moved into a retirement home, and they just come over once a day and feed the cats; I bet we can get it,'' recounts Franchione. 'We ended up brokering the deal on a napkin.'
After Salinas bought the house, Etheredge and Franchione renovated it, and the property became the trio's 'international headquarters' for their newly formalized house flipping partnership.
Their very next project was a cabin in the woods that they purchased for $425,000, put $65,000 into it, and sold a few months later for $715,000.
Business "snowballed" from there, and the savvy moms have relied on their friendships and motherly instincts to guide them ever since.
Indeed, their favorite piece of advice to follow and recommend sounds like something a parent might say to an adult child who's wading through the dating pool.
'One of our good friends, he's a realtor in Bryan-College Station, he said, 'Think of every Realtor.com® listing as a dating website profile, so the best pictures are the first and that's going to reel you in, but you've got to go to pictures, like, 25 to 28—those are the pictures. Once you start diving down in there, you don't know if you want to date that person or not,'' says Franchione.
Avoiding 'hot messes' might be preferred when looking for love, but when it comes to homes to flip, Franchione insists the messier, the better, because it gives her and Etheredge a blank slate to design something that will stand out to buyers.
'We try to find the houses that we don't want to date, but we want to marry later,' says Franchione. 'We love to make something one-of-a-kind per home, something that is so unique that when you go on Realtor.com, it's the only house that has it. We don't like cookie cutter. There's nothing cookie cutter about any of our homes.'
When cooking up custom features for their flips, Franchione and Etheredge often utilize an important skill commonly acquired in motherhood: resourcefulness.
'We built this amazing outdoor shower at one of our river houses,' shares Franchione. 'We used rocks from the property and then we found a log along the river bed and so we piped water through it, which saved us thousands of dollars.'
'Rarely do [we] ever go buy new rocks and gravel, it's just all there,' notes Etheredge about the area's natural resources.
Another money-saving move the pair frequently makes is reselling items left on the properties and investing those profits into the makeovers.
'We're flipping a 3,600-square-foot monster house right now, and we found some copper wire and I just sold it yesterday for $800 cash,' says Franchione.
'We've always sold things, and that's an approach that a lot of flippers don't use,' adds Etheredge. 'They'll just go and demo everything, rip everything out. We do that, too, but we try to sell as much as we can or reuse as much as we can. That's sustainable design, sustainable flipping, [which is] so much better for our environment.'
More affordable design tips Etheredge and Franchione swear by include shopping at discount stores and making sure to 'clip the coupons' whenever possible.
'As moms, we're always trying to find the best deals,' admits Franchione. 'We love Habitat For Humanity ReStores. I just found a ton of tile there for a laundry room floor, and so we love to utilize that. I always tell flippers, get your lights there, get your tile there, it is such a great savings.'
Franchione notes she just purchased a $2,300 couch for her bedroom for just $320 at her local Habitat For Humanity ReStores location and has even picked up decor off the street for free.
'My patio furniture is from the side of the road,' she says.
'The Mother Flip' stars also champion doing renovations in phases.
Both Franchione and Etheredge say that their own homes—and in particular, their kitchens—are in need of an upgrade, but they're taking time and finances into consideration as they plan for future work.
'We've done half of our remodel and that was a big undertaking,' says Etheredge. 'I'm talking load-bearing beams, connecting the house, structural engineering, so we are half done.'
'Everyone gets in a rush saying, 'I have to do this all at once'," she adds. 'Take me, for example; I did half and that's what worked for my family because we wanted to put a lot of money towards this flipping experience. You don't have to do it all at once.'
But perhaps the best budgeting pointer Franchione and Etheredge can offer fellow renovators is to carefully vet all contractors and bids.
'I always tell people [to] get multiple bids,' says Franchione. 'So many flippers and people who want to renovate their home can pay five and six times [the real cost] if they're not careful.'
It's a lesson Franchione and Etheredge learned the hard way.
'When we were building, nobody knew we had Roy in our back pocket and so they thought it was two women they were dealing with,' says Franchione. 'We would get, for example, a concrete bid for foundation [anywhere from] $22,000 to $43,000 and all over the place, thinking they are going to rip Kristy and I off, thinking we're two stay-at-home moms who don't know what the heck we're doing.'
Etheredge acknowledges those unique challenges of being a mom operating in 'a male-dominated industry' but says she and Franchione are up for the challenge of demolishing the proverbial glass ceiling as they overhaul homes.
'We're regular moms, but we wanted to prove to our daughters we can do this—you guys can do this,' says Etheredge.
'The Mother Flip' premieres Saturday, Aug. 16 at 12 p.m., on A&E's HomeMadeNation.
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