turned out to be one of the most complicated deals Lin has executed. “What happened is that my friend knows the man- ager of a hedge fund in New York who buys non-per- forming notes and was liquidating their assets. This Malibu property was one of the last assets they had. So, they tried to get this guy living in the house out of the house. They couldn't, so they foreclosed on him. And then he still wouldn't move. So, it became an REO. And then they hired an REO agent to list it, but the guy still wouldn't move. So it was on the market at $1.37 million
or something. They couldn't sell it because nobody could have access to it.” “What we did was negotiate directly with the seller, which is the hedge fund. And we negotiated the deal down to $985,000.” Lin bought out his friend’s ownership in the home and eventually launched the eviction process to remove the non-paying tenant. It end- ed up taking eight months to remove the previous owner, who fought throughout the process. “It was not easy to say the least,” Lin said. Finally with access to the property, Lin began the remodel. “The remodel actually wasn't that bad itself,” he said. “I had to redesign and clean up the whole thing.” He also had to fix the leaks that showed up after a big rain. “I didn't know the roof was leaking until it started raining,” he said. “Then I found out there were leaks everywhere — in the deck, the roof, the windows, everywhere.” Other than managing the leaks, the majority of the remodel project
focused on cosmetic updates to the home, which was built in the 1980s and featured a suitable floor plan. Lin sought out to re-imagine and re-design the space to bring it to the current aesthetics. Given it’s in a prestigious Malibu neighbor- hood, he gave it a soft, modern coastal makeover. “The key to the success of the project is the design,” Lin recounted. When entering the Malibu house, guests are immediately greeted by a dramatic staircase, which Lin decided to lighten up by replacing the railings and painting all the walls white. “Everybody loves the stairs,” he noted. The ocean view closely follows the stairs as the favorite aspect of the house. Lin used the ocean’s essence in his design decisions throughout the house.
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“The design is white, it's bright, it's calm, it's luxurious. It's a lot of details and high quality,” he noted. “[People who tour it] pretty much love everything about it, seriously.” He recounted how a fellow investor, who owns 12 hotels, drove two and a half hours just to see this house and told Lin, “I own a lot of real estate. I don’t have any emotional attachment to houses. But this one is special.” If that’s not enough to prove the success of this renova- tion, Lin sold the property after only three weeks on the market for $1,970,000. That’s right, he sold it for double his acquisition price. All in all, the full process from acquisition to final closing date took more than a year, required a lot of hard work, and caused a lot of stress. But, Lin’s real estate investing experi-
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ence, aptitude for problem-solving, and ability to handle the full scope of a deal on his own shines through all of that. “I know what it takes to be successful and it's hard,” he said, “Once in a while we can get lucky, sure, but generally speaking you're going to do hard work. And it's not an easy business. A lot of people watch the TV show flipping this, flipping that and thinking they can make easy money. But, not really.” •
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Lin He is the President of Rellion Inc, a premier builder, developer, and real estate investor in Southern California. Learn more at RellionInc.com or by calling (949) 209-9610.
14 | think realty magazine :: january / february 2019
thinkrealty . com | 15
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