Money is made at the purchase, not the sale.”
JESSIE RODRIGUEZ OWNER CAL AMERICAN HOMES
of work; Rodriguez was more involved in the hands-on duties on the “Vintage Flip” homes for filming purpos - es than he typically would be for houses he flipped in the “real world.” “I don’t lay tile,” Rodriguez said. “I run the financial numbers and make sure it’s a good deal. I know how to buy the right deal and manage a construction crew. On the TV side of it, it looks like, ‘Wow, Jessie did the demo, laid the tile and installed the wood floors.’ So, that part isn’t true compared to what it really is like flipping. But I imagine a TV show would not be too exciting to watch if it was me reading a spreadsheet, looking at comparable listings and then saying, ‘Go buy that deal.’” His construction involvement on “Vintage Flip” might have been a byproduct of the magic of Hollywood, but every other part of the process was as real as it would be for his actual house-flipping business. He found the deals, purchased the homes featured on the show with his own money, and paid the contractors. Just like in real life, there were no guarantees that the homes would turn a profit. “We bought real deals that either made or lost mon- ey,” Rodriguez said. “They don’t always make money, and that part I’ll say is real life. And that is real life on every TV show. If anybody ever says, ‘This is fake,’ it’s not. It’s real. What’s fake is me doing tile.” AREAL, REAL ESTATE LIFE To label Rodriguez as a real estate TV personality would be to diminish the impressive real estate reper- toire that he’s built over the past two decades. He owns
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