How a Dallas Teardown Became $500,000 Profit: Duplex Builds, Infill Lots, and Luxury Spec Strategy

Eric (00:00)

Now the rule of thumb, anybody out there taking notes, you probably should write this down, is you want to purchase land around 20 to 25 % of what the new construction homes are selling. So if you have a 4,000 square foot home selling for a million dollars, you want to find land around 200 to $250,000. If you can find that, then you’ll be able to make a nice pretty penny off that deal.

Dylan Silver (01:56)

Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest is a real estate investor investing in both Miami’s and the greater DFW area and is currently in the process of creating a real estate fund. I’m a big fan. Please welcome Eric Crutchfield. Eric, welcome to the show.

Eric (02:15)

Hey, thanks for having me, Dylan. I’m excited for what we’re going to talk about.

Dylan Silver (02:22)

I’ve been following you for a

mentioned to you before hopping onto the podcast here, I said we must have the marketing dialed in because we’re really coming across some great people. I always like to start off at the top of the show by asking folks how they got into the real estate space.

Eric (02:40)

Well, you know, I was definitely on the wrong track growing up. know, wasn’t the best brightest student, didn’t go to college, wasn’t educated, actually landed myself in prison for seven and half years. And I read a bunch of self-development books while I was in there. ⁓ you know, the self-development books kept saying that real estates made the most millionaires out of any other asset class. you know, 80 % of millionaires were in real estate as somehow.

So I was like, hey, let me get on the good odds, the good side. And so that’s what I did. I would say for the next five years, I was in prison about seven and a half years, five years straight, all I did was read real estate books, development books, and business books. And yeah, I got out, got into my first flip. I was probably out of prison like three or four months, ended up being a successful flip, made $53,000.

to my pocket and then what do I do with that? I’m like, hey, let’s do it again. So what I do, I invested it, found another one, did another one. Well, I was new to the flipping world and I guess this wasn’t the best flip to buy, but it was the best new construction to buy. So I actually turned it into a new construction and figured that out, brought in a partner.

Dylan Silver (03:42)

Yeah.

Eric (04:08)

We built that up, it actually was a duplex here in Dallas, Texas. And then when that thing was like half built, I bought the land next to me and I built another duplex. And then I ended up buying the other land and I had six units going up, three duplexes. I’d never built anything in my life. I was out of prison like a year. Well, next thing you know, I got the deal done. I made half a million dollars to my pocket. And that’s after the split with my partner.

Dylan Silver (04:26)

No.

I want to ask you about figuring things out on the fly. mean, we’re talking about getting into and really diving head first into the real estate space. Did you have any kind of construction background or anything to lean on when you were going through this?

Eric (04:49)

No, I had zero. I was a personal trainer. I nothing. I didn’t know how to swing a hammer. Barely fit a screwdriver in the screw.

mean, it was bad. And I still don’t know how to do it, honestly.

Dylan Silver (05:52)

Walk me through the process.

I I wanna ask you first about that first deal, where you made a good rip on that first deal. What year was it? How’d you find a deal on market, off market? Did you have partners? Walk me through that first deal.

Eric (06:05)

Yeah, I out of prison late 2018 to early 2019, got that first flip within three or four months, sold it, you know, within six months or something like that. And then I would say I purchased my first, my second flip, which turned into a new construction, maybe late 2019, early 2020. So right near COVID.

Dylan Silver (06:29)

It’s the time to do it, right?

Eric (06:33)

So yeah, yeah, so 2020.

Dylan Silver (06:36)

I think a lot of folks on this podcast have really shown to me and demonstrated that some of the strategies that have worked in the past don’t necessarily work in every market condition. ⁓ So those first couple flips you did great. Were the next couple in single family? Were you looking in multi-family? How did the business scale from those first couple?

Eric (07:00)

So is that first flip. That’s the only flip I did. And then the second flip turned into a new construction, which is actually was a duplex. It was a duplex was my very first build. My second flip turned into a duplex. So I built this duplex. It was a four story with a rooftop. We’re overlooking downtown Dallas. And I didn’t even finish it completely before I bought the land next to me and the land next to me. And I had those six units going up. They’re really like Miami modern.

all had rooftops all overlooking downtown Dallas. They’re really cool. They’re really popular in East Dallas. And yeah, that’s what I got into. And I sold that for the half a million bucks. And I’m like, man, this is crazy. know, each one that I sold, I was making like 75 to like $125,000 on it. And I was just like, this is, I mean, this is crazy. It’s the most legal money I’ve ever made in my life. And so, you know, just like that first slip, I made the 53,000.

I’m like, all right, let’s do it again. I’m ready because I didn’t have any direction. was lost still. One of the biggest things was I was sitting in prison. was like, man, I was kind of scared to get out because I was like, I don’t want to come back. What am I going to do? I don’t have any skills. I don’t know what to do. it’s great that that second flip that I bought turned into new construction because I love real estate development and I love new construction. I hate flipping though.

Dylan Silver (08:11)

Right.

Eric (08:24)

Flipping wasn’t what I really liked to do, but I do like to, I’m more of a visionary type of guy. So when I see like raw land and then I start looking at the neighborhood, you create it into my mind. So I really liked that process of creating it in my mind and then building it out and actually selling it to an end user. So I really enjoy that. yeah, so I made that money, you know, we went from 53 to basically 500 with those and then.

I’m like, hey, I got to buy more. I got to buy more. So I didn’t spend a single penny for two and a half years. Not nothing. didn’t, you know, now I got crazy car collection. I got crazy jewelry collection, all kinds of stupid stuff, right? But for two and a half years out of prison, I didn’t spend a single penny. I was shopping at Ross. I was eating basic food, cheap food. mean, everything, every single dollar that I had, I reinvested it into the pipeline, into land.

so I can build more homes. That’s all I did for two and a half years straight. My business partner, he went off and bought a Bentley and a Rolex and wasting his money here and there. I was singular focus tunnel vision. I was like, I’m building out my pipeline. This is my career. I’m going to make millions and millions and millions of dollars off of this. There’s no plan B, there’s no turning back. And that’s what I did.

Dylan Silver (09:38)

Yeah.

I want to ask you and pivot a bit here, Eric, and talk about land deals. So I buy trade.

I’m a wholesaler. That’s really how I learned the craft. And I started to notice specifically in DFW, a lot of the buyers that I was working with over the last year had more of a difficult time doing

because they were realizing like, some of these new builds are only however many $10,000 more expensive than these flips. If someone is going to purchase a home, big investment for them, they’re going to go with some of this new construction plus some of the incentivized rates that they can get with some builders. So I had to pivot.

my business as a wholesaler and start looking at like infill lots, raw land. Now because I’m in the land mindset, I’m like, okay, well I don’t really know about building out subdivisions, but what if I could find some raw land that maybe could be rezoned for residential use? That’s how I fell into the land deals. What was it about land that really attracted you?

Eric (11:15)

You know, I just, like I said, I didn’t know what to do. And once I saw the type of profits that were being able to be made for myself from the work that I was doing, I was just like, man, this is this is awesome. You know, I don’t do really big land deals. My basic bread and butter is buying in established neighborhoods already, bulldozing the home.

and building a new beautiful home. So a lot of gentrified neighborhoods and a lot of established neighborhoods. Like, you know, now I build in only the prestigious areas and Dallas, it’s Highland Park. That’s the most prestigious neighborhood in all of Dallas, anywhere there is. There’s no land. If you’re getting two acres, you’re paying, you know, 15 million for it, right? So, but it’s a lot of older people. So unfortunately there’s a lot of deaths. There’s a lot of divorces. There’s a lot of people moving. So that’s how I come across the land.

And then I bulldoze them. build a nice big beautiful home based off the price per square foot. That’s where all my profit is. So that’s kind of my bread and butter and how I got into it. But yeah.

Dylan Silver (12:23)

want to ask you

about that strategy. Maybe give away some of the gold, but don’t give away the whole gold bar. So when we’re talking about looking at bulldozing, ⁓ really building new structures on existing.

You’re having to find, I’m imagining heavily distressed areas and then also potentially multiple distressed homes side by side and purchase them together. Or tell me a little bit about, again without giving away the whole gold bar, a little bit about the strategy that you use to find some of these deals.

Eric (12:58)

Yeah, so you know when you’re first coming up, obviously you can’t afford the most prestigious neighborhoods. Like I was saying Highland Park minimum lot value is $2 million. That’s minimum lot value. Like you said, yeah, some of those stress neighborhoods you can buy them a little cheaper. Some of the gentrifying areas you can get them a little cheaper because they’re a little bit more sketchy neighborhoods. They’re not not as safe yet. You know they’re still on the come up, so that’s kind of where you can make your money.

as a beginner.

Now the rule of thumb, anybody out there taking notes, you probably should write this down, is you want to purchase land around 20 to 25 % of what the new construction homes are selling. So if you have a 4,000 square foot home selling for a million dollars, you want to find land around 200 to $250,000. If you can find that, then you’ll be able to make a nice pretty penny off that deal.

Dylan Silver (13:49)

I want to pivot a bit here, Eric, and ask you about getting into the social media and marketing yourself. Was that something that you always had the vision for, or were you having a bunch of people coming up to you saying, man, you should put this online. You should really put this out there when they saw the success that you were having.

Eric (14:06)

That’s exactly right. It grew organically. Never in a million years would I think that I’d be doing podcasts and teaching. I never thought I’d be teaching. In prison, had my whole life mapped out, the vision board and all the stuff. It was never teacher, ever. Not one thing on there. Real estate was on there, real estate investor, real estate developer, all that good stuff. One of my favorite books is by Donald Trump, The Art of the Deal. It actually got my mind.

running about like how wealthy you can get off development. So yeah, I had all my goals and everything for my life out and never was a teacher. So that organically grew just because of the success that I had achieved from prison, you know, within the first like three years, you know, I started having money. started building my own personal house. I started getting the McLarens and the nice cars and

Dylan Silver (14:53)

Yeah.

Eric (15:40)

you know, I had my Rolex watch and whatever it was and you know, society looks

up to those things. don’t know why, but yeah. So that’s when they started gravitating towards me and saying, Hey man, how’d you do it? You were just in prison for seven years. Like what in the world? Tell me your secrets. What teach me? How do I do it? So like, just kept happening over and over and over. So, you know, I sat down and I was like, man, you know, I’m tired of these people ask me, I want to teach people, you know, so I said, Hey, I’m gonna host a mastermind class next month. And this was in December, I think of like 2023.

And I hosted that first mastermind class in January of 2024. And I told my fiance, was like, if I sell 10 tickets, I’ll be, you know, happy. There are $1,500 a piece to come to this class. teach you everything about what I do. And I sold 40 tickets like that. $60,000.

Dylan Silver (16:33)

This is another revenue stream. That worked. There’s proof of concept.

Eric (16:36)

Yep. And I was like, holy

shit. Okay. Me as a developer, right? A builder. You know, I got to buy the land, design it, build it, sell it. This is like a 10 to 12 month process, depending on the size and complexity of the homes. Well, I host this class in January and I make 60,000 in like a blink of an eye. I’m like, okay, well, this is kind of cool. So that’s when I got more into the, you know, the social media and

the info product business, which I’m still a developer every single day, day in and day out. Right now I have $80 million in the pipeline. My goal is to have 150 million in the pipeline by December of this year. So we got a few more months, which I’ll probably get very close. And that’s my day to day. That’s where I make probably 90 % of my money, but it is nice to get, you know, the quick money like that too. So I like to work also. I don’t like to…

Dylan Silver (17:31)

I wanna ask you…

Eric (17:34)

I don’t like to have downtime. I like to be constantly working and working and busy. I remember sitting in prison, man. I was sitting there and effort fucking days and days, thousands of days just staring at the walls with nothing to do. And I was like, God, when I get out, I want to be so busy. I don’t have time to think. And that’s exactly what I did myself.

Dylan Silver (17:54)

I want to ask you about Miami, pivoting a bit here, Eric, because I live in Santa Domingo in the Dominican Republic, lived in Dallas for a year, was in San Antonio for five years before then, but I’m going back and forth between Fort Lauderdale, Miami area, southern Florida in general, and I tell people this, it’s like you can’t even picture a nicer place. I’m like, this is as good as it gets. I mean, I think there’s other areas. You agree with me, right?

Eric (18:10)

love it.

It’s the best. It’s the best. I’ve been, yeah,

I’ve been all over the world and it doesn’t get better than South Florida.

Dylan Silver (18:27)

I think there’s just something about it. You’ve got so many different people from coming all over. I’ve heard also this generalization that people from the West Coast go to the West Coast of Florida, people from the East Coast go to the East Coast of Florida. I don’t know how true that is. I’ve heard people talk to me about Tampa. I’ve heard people talk to me about Orlando. But being in, I know this when I was in downtown Fort Lauderdale earlier this year, walking around, it was freezing cold on the ranch that I was living at in Denton, Texas.

But in Fort Lauderdale, it was a Tuesday. Everyone was out. You had super cars on the street downtown Fort Lauderdale by the beach. And you’re able to talk with like, you know, an older gentleman who had built and sold a company. You’re chopping it up with him. You then see so many young real estate people who are truly…

Eric (19:12)

Yeah.

Dylan Silver (19:18)

hustling and it’s all over the map. People from all different parts of the country seem to be concentrated down there ⁓ hustling.

Eric (19:28)

Yeah, no better place in the world than South Florida. You could be sitting there thinking you’re doing well in your supercar and the next hypercar is about to pull up that’s $5 million Bugatti. And then you think you’re doing well and then the $100 million yacht is about to drive by. And it’s nonstop. This is every day all day. You think you’re fit and then somebody just walks out of the grocery store. is like 0 % body fat. You’re just like, ⁓ man, I got to get back to work.

Dylan Silver (19:54)

Ha

ha ha!

Eric (19:55)

And so that’s what I love about it, man. It’s just super motivating. You know, everybody’s there to inspire and and really everybody encourages you here. You know, sometimes sometimes here in Dallas, like you film yourself like this and people start looking at you like sideways, you know, like what are you what are you doing? Why are you doing that? You do that in Miami and they’ll probably like help you. They’ll bring out their tripod and be like, here, use this, you know, put this on here. You know, everybody’s got tripods. Everybody’s filming. Everybody’s having fun enjoying their life. So.

Dylan Silver (20:11)

Yeah.

They’re joining in.

Eric (20:25)

I really like it. I have a lot of assets here in Dallas, own about 95 rentals and I think we got 17 new construction projects going up right now. And so I also have ⁓ projects going up in Miami as well. I’m being, I stay in the next two to three years because I have a son that’s a sophomore in Highland Park High School. So once he graduates, my goal is to be fully.

transition to Miami full-time and then Dallas part-time. So right now I’m Dallas full-time and Miami part-time, but I want to flip-flop it here in about two years, so.

Dylan Silver (20:55)

Yeah.

Eric, we’re coming up on time here. Congrats on all the success and to your continued success. I know you’ve got a fund that you’re in the process of creating. Where can folks go if maybe they have a deal that they’d like you to take a look at or if they’d like to reach out to you, get in contact with you?

Eric (21:20)

Yeah, so you can follow me on Instagram, Eric Epic 23. Also YouTube is the same handle, Eric Epic 23. I teach real estate development. I help people get into real estate basically from A to Z. I have rentals, I’ve wholesale deals, made $200,000. I know a lot about real estate. So if anybody’s interested, go ahead and send me a DM or yeah, check me out. Bunch of free content on YouTube if you just want to learn real estate development.

If you have any questions, let me know. I’m here for you.

Dylan Silver (21:51)

Eric, thank you for coming on the show here today.

Eric (21:54)

Yeah, thanks for having me. That was a great talk. I wish it was longer.