Rob & Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk about why selling high-profit items on eBay is the perfect side hustle for realtors.
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Reseller Hangout Podcast – Why Selling High Profit Items On eBay Is A Perfect Side Hustle For Realtors
Rob: What's up, guys? On today's episode, we are talking about why selling high profit items on eBay is a perfect side hustle for realtors.
Melissa: So let's dive in.
Rob: All right guys, so today we are diving into why selling high profit items on eBay is a perfect side hustle for realtors.
Melissa: Yeah. So this is gonna be fun to talk about cuz we were talk, we just, how'd this come up? We were talking about it during our run this morning. So we're like, we wanna dive in. This could be a great opportunity for realtors right now.
Rob: Plus we love real estate. Yeah, we, I almost got my realtors license years and years ago.
I love investing in real estate. I love everything about real estate. It's one of those things that's near and dear to our heart. We constantly wanna buy more real estate, not necessarily sell. We've sold properties and
Melissa: always kicked ourselves in the end always.
Rob: So it's one of the things we want to keep buying real estate, but it's one of those things that we do not wanna sell.
So, as a realtor, realtors, yeah we'll get into some, some cool features about being a realtor that you have time, you have resources, you have things that you can actually do really well at high profit flipping. So.
Melissa: So the first one would be that you already understand how to do comps. So wanted to elaborate on it.
Rob: Absolutely. So as being a realtor, you go in and you see what houses are worth. You find out what the market's bearing, what other square footage houses around it have sold for, bathrooms, all that kind of stuff. How many bathrooms, how many square footage? You compare very well what the market, I guess what the market bears will bear for that house, how much somebody could get for that house.
And flipping high profit items, we do similar stuff before we buy an item. I like to think of us as not gamblers. Back in the day, before we had smartphones, before we had the internet,
Melissa: it was more of a gamble.
Rob: Exactly. It was much more of a gamble. You had to hope that what you were getting was worth more than you were paying for it.
Now we can do a very, very educated guess? It's not a guess, it's a, an educated decision synopsis. Yeah. If that's the right word, but yeah decision to be able to know if you're investing $50 into this item, you can turn around and sell it for 500 to a thousand dollars. And you can find all that stuff just by doing comps, jumping on eBay on your phone.
That's it. Jumping on eBay, seeing what is actively listed, seeing what has sold within the last 90 days. You have that access at your fingertips, that you can do that. So, realtors, you kinda already understand what's going on with the real estate market, you understand, how to do the comps and this is no different.
You can just apply that skillset that you already have just in a little bit different manner, and it's pretty awesome what you're able to see just by doing those comps.
Melissa: I think that's a big thing too. A lot of times people think, well, you're, you're risking a lot of, you're taking this risk and, and it might not sell well.
Some of the stuff we might sit on for a little bit, but we do know that it will sell and we do know that if nothing else, we will not lose money on the, on the item. I mean, of course everybody has bad buys here and there, but for the, like, if you're gonna spend $50, you know, all day, you can get $50 on marketplace.
So, you know, you know, like the, you're not gonna lose any money on the item. Yeah. So, and you're making an educated Yes. You're not risking everything.
Rob: Even just do it at the time of this recording. I just bought some hospital, sorry, ambulance, stretchers. I paid roughly, what did we figure out? About $183.
Yeah. $183 per stretcher that I got that is a little bit on the higher end of our investing. Yeah, I bought 12 of 'em. But I knew the payoff at the cheapest. I should be getting $2,000 and at the most expensive I could ask a lot more money for these and at the most expensive, $2,000 per, bed that we got, and up to $4,000 and $5,000 for some of the beds that we got, because they're different, models.
They're same brands with different models.
Melissa: They could go quick for a thousand dollars each and you still make your money.
Rob: Exactly. So that's one of those things that yeah, you're, we're doing educating and we're not talking about investing $20 to make $25. The title of this is high profit flipping.
Melissa: 10x is the goal.
Rob: Exactly. So I know on these beds, I should not have to take any less than $1,800 if I wanted to move 'em really, really quick. And if I wanna sit on 'em for a little bit longer, I can even get a higher price for them. So, that's just, it's something, for example, that we just bought. We bought those last week, a week and a half ago. Yeah. That we got 'em all. Well, we got the majority of them listed, so, but that just kind of gives you an idea of what is out there, what is possible.
Melissa: So another cool thing about, realtors is you create your own schedule. So, I wouldn't say necessarily spare time, but there's times where in your day where you know, you might not have appointments back to back or you create your schedule.
So you might have that time, that yeah, you can create. So, which is cool, it's like pockets of your time.
Rob: So, because we might have a scheduled showing, out of, of a house. And then you might have no show. Yeah, a no show. Or maybe you have an hour or two before your next one and you have some time.
You can run to a thrift store. You can jump on and scroll some apps. You can do that stuff. You can make.
Melissa: Scrolling apps is your favorite thing to do.
Rob: I love it. You can do it. You can find some really, really cool deal deals, but throughout the day, instead of losing some of that time, that you could be focused on making more money. You guys, you have time to do that. In this business you can do this at any hour of the day, any hour of the night, you have time that you can actually put into listings, put into finding items. Any of that stuff, you can do it in the pockets of your day when you do have that time.
So it's really, really cool about being a realtor that you have some of those pockets that you can use to really, really excel your business.
Melissa: Yeah. Another thing is that this industry that we're in the reselling business does really great during times of recession and all, you know, thrift stores deals, like all those types of things do a lot better in an economy that's a little bit shaky, and I know like real estate might not be doing that great during this time, so if, if, as if those slow down, this increases. So it's a great side hustle so that you can make the extra money if it's slowed down for you.
Rob: Yeah. And recession has been a word that has been thrown around for the, probably the last six months, dealing with some of that stuff and to where you can see, and I, I have personal friends who are realtors and I have seen them, their businesses have slumped because of the interest rates going up. Not as many people are buying. It's one of those things where when that stuff happens as a realtor, what can you do?
What can you pivot or what can you add into your normal routine when you do have a little bit more is this high profit flipping. You absolutely have the time and this is something you can build your skillset, you can get better and better at it, to where you can make really, really good money on high profit flips, and it doesn't ebb and flow with the, the way that the economy is. People are always looking for great deals on eBay. Whether it's a super high economy and people, even in the low, low economies, there's still business out there, businesses that are starting, businesses that need commercial equipment. There's people out there that renovating their houses absolutely.
And they're trying to get better deal on the items that they're buying versus going and buying new. They're trying not to waste money. They're trying to do that. So, this is no conscious con cautious c cautious. Both, yeah, both of those
Melissa: of, of their spending. So they might go buy the say, like the nice brand that they want, but buy secondhand, so.
Rob: Absolutely. And that's one of those things that, yeah, this is just a great grade side hustle that you can get in, learn the skill sets and get really, really good at it. And it will pay off. Definitely you'll be able to make some money.
Go ahead.
Melissa: One. I was gonna say one of the biggest things I think of that is one of the biggest benefits, of being a realtor is you have access to contacts.
You know, when people are moving. So people when they move, they get rid of stuff like crazy. So, I mean, we had even a friend who was a rental property manager. Yep. And she would give us stuff all the time that people would just leave and like, she's like, "Hey, do you guys want this? You can, can you sell this?"
And she needed it out of there, so she would just give it to us. And it's crazy the amount of stuff that people will just like, they have to go, so they'll just leave and then you can get it for free. So if you can, you know, you have a couple of those contacts or you know, when people are moving, you can get stuff for dirt cheap.
Rob: Absolutely.
Melissa: And be able to sell it.
Rob: So the other thing with your network, you probably know when people. Updating kitchens, updating bathrooms, updating that kind of stuff when they have to get rid of old appliances. Some of those old appliances are not, they're not trash, they're not, there's nothing wrong with them.
Somebody just wants to go and update a kitchen. That's where you can swoop in. And really, if they want to give 'em away, if they wanna sell them for very cheap so they can get new stuff, you can really get good deals, appliances are our jam. Absolutely.
Melissa: Appliances are great and furniture too.
It could be another big one, but.
Rob: We, we make so much money on appliances. Yeah. Appliances that are used, appliances that for whatever reason people have discarded or got rid of because they're updating their kitchen, whatever, whatever reason it is. You have some of those contacts where you know when people are doing those updates and you can grab some of those things and then turn around and sell 'em for a great profit.
Yeah. So the biggest thing is your network and I don't know any realtor who's not out there and networking. Networking, exactly. Networking. Cuz it's part of your business, you, that you create friends, you create relationships, so when somebody does go to sell a house, you know them. They know you, they trust you, and that's how they do it.
So, you have a great network around you typically, that you can take advantage of when people are doing this kind of stuff, when they're selling a house and they need to get rid of stuff, when they're updating their kitchen, when they're renovating, whatever they're doing. Typically if you're the go-to on hey, I take this stuff, or I can get rid of this stuff, I can, I can get it moved for you quickly.
If you're that person, then you can really, really make a great side income. Yeah. Doing this.
Melissa: And you can look at it a couple different ways too, cuz you can be, you could just get this, if you get a lot of this stuff for free, you can go ahead and do, turn it quick on marketplace usually, although marketplace has been a lot less, profitable than it has been in the past.
Yeah. Cause they're trying to make you do shipping and stuff. But, you can do it, turn it quick and you're not gonna make as much money or you, you still could turn it quick. You just have to list it on eBay and then ship it. So that's our business model. We choose to list it on eBay and we can get so much more money for these items because we're willing to, we're getting to a bigger market and we're willing to ship it to them.
So, that's why people always are, are curious why our business model works. Because why would somebody just not like, how can you make that much money on a hundred dollars? They can get it for a hundred dollars. Why are you getting a thousand dollars? I don't understand. But that is why, is because we are willing to put it on a big market like eBay.
More people can see it than in your local market. And then we're gonna ship it to them.
Rob: So, yeah, and that's a huge point that Mols just said is you're taking it from a local market, which, marketplace, Facebook Marketplace, OfferUp, Craigslist, all those are limited to the local market. Typically when you do a search on OfferUp, when you do a search on a Facebook Marketplace, they ask you how much of a perimeter or a diameter do you want to go from your dot where you're at.
And typically you can go, I think it's up to 30 miles on some of 'em. 30 miles, they're gonna give you the radius of the searches in that area. Now, eBay doesn't do that. eBay does everywhere in the United States and in the world. You can even offer global shipping for some of your items, to where eBay's gonna ship it overseas to different places.
So that's why when you're actually selling, you want to be on eBay, you wanna be on the biggest platform that has the most potential for the buyer of that specific item. And that's the biggest key is getting it on eBay and then being able to ship items no matter what it is. And like I said, that's our jam.
Our jam is throwing some of these things on pallets, throwing 'em in boxes. Whatever we have to do, we will ship absolutely anything. And that's what's so much fun and so cool about our business, that we get to do that. And the more items, usually the bigger the items get, the more profit there is on them and people can't sell 'em in the local market to where when you do offer 'em on eBay, that's where the profit's at and you just have to be willing to ship those items, get 'em listed on eBay and be willing to ship them.
Melissa: Yeah. So we think this is a great side hustle for realtors and maybe it's something that you can add in an extra income for yourself. And we are also just about to kick off.
We're super excited about it, is your first thousand dollar flip. So if you're curious about making these higher profit flips, we are doing our first ever four week live training on how to do that, how to make your first thousand dollars flip. So large item flipping is what we're doing.
Rob: Start to finish.
We've never done this before. We're so excited about it. We're gonna do live the live workshop we're actually doing on doing the trainings, answering any questions that people have throughout the trainings, making sure people have a great understanding of how to do this. Very, very excited. If you guys are interested, open enrollment right now.
Melissa: Oh, 1000flip.com.
Rob: 1000flip.com.
Melissa: We'll put it in the show notes. And we kick it off January 24th. So we hope you hear this before then. And if not, just go, check it out. We'll talk to you guys soon.
Rob: You guys rock.