Boise, Idaho Real Estate 2026: Inside a 90-Day Fix & Flip Strategy That Actually Works

In this episode, we break down the Boise, Idaho Real Estate 2026 market update and uncover a proven 90-day fix and flip strategy that’s working in today’s shifting housing market. Mikey Seaman shares real numbers, hard money costs, holding expenses, and how investors are navigating higher interest rates. If you're interested in house flipping, real estate investing, or the Boise housing market, this episode delivers actionable insights. Don’t miss this deep dive into flipping homes fast and profitably in 2026.

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Transcript

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so during Covid we had what we're calling political refugees escaping you know crackdown or or you know cities and and states that had just tougher laws on Covid Idaho is a very conservative state but we were very open minded about Covid so we saw huge influx during Covid so our market spiked and was just out of control for about 18 months since then we've kind of simmered down to a more balanced market we're still at about I don't know 2 or 3% single digit stuff hello everyone I'm Tim Jones with foreclosure.com Today I'm interviewing Mikey Seaman to learn more about his unique strategy which is a 90 day fix and flip strategy in Boise Idaho Mikey thank you for joining us today yeah my pleasure thanks for having me out today great yeah can you give us a a brief background of your real estate um history yeah so I've been a realtor for 8 years mostly just single family residential here in Boise and hooked up with my partner a couple years ago to get more into the fix and flips and still do quite a bit of retail business retail is just traditional you know homeowners buying homes so if I say that that's what I mean you know Bob and Mary wanna buy a home they come to me to help them buy a home and then the fixing flips renovation you might hear me say wholesale but retail is kind of a traditional what you think of when you wanna buy a home awesome awesome well let's dive in I'm excited um before we jump into your strategy can you give us a quick you know high level snapshot of the Boise market and specifically I'm interested how it's changed uh since before Covid and after so during Covid we had what we're calling political refugees escaping you know crackdown or or you know cities and and states that had just tougher laws on Covid um Idaho is a very conservative state but we were very open minded about Covid so we saw huge influx during Covid so our market spiked and was just out of control for about 18 months since then we've kind of simmered down to a more balanced market we're still at about I don't know 2 or 3% single digit stuff year over year rates were obviously super low during Covid now they've been in the sixes for a couple years there was a time where the market kind of paused when rates were going up and people were waiting for the rates to come back down to you know 3% and I think after a couple years of not seeing that people are finally acknowledging that it's OK yeah I got a buyer now who's been waiting for three years and then just decided alright this is not gonna get where I wanted so I'm just gonna buy now so the market slowed down a little bit from a really brisk pace so it's slowed down and it's still what I would consider just kind of balanced and healthy um we're seeing just in the last probably six months to a year it seems like days on market is going up from super low it's not it's not high but it's higher than it was so days on market is up um list to sold price is another metric that we track during Covid it was you know in some areas over 100% meaning you listed at 500

you had multiple offers and you closed at 5:10 or 5: 3:10

50 um I think like 97% of list prices like more average and we're kind of getting back to that and sellers are trying to find the market so it's always a good time to buy when you're motivated and you can afford it and some people can afford to list their homes and just wait for the right price and sometimes they get it but the number of price reductions is up days on market is up inventory is a little bit down so inventory number of homes that are available and so people call that the absorption rate so it's basically uh homes are selling at the rate they're selling how long would it take to sell all the homes that are listed and we've kind of considered a balanced market like four to five months of inventory during Covid we had just a few weeks of inventory cause homes were just selling that fast and yeah now we're not at four to six months we're in two to four depending on the area so it's getting to be what I consider to be more reasonable so I think the market's just healthy and um back to manageable okay great no that's that's some great insight and so how is that shift changed how you comp properties and and and really even get them underwritten in today's market yeah uh it used to be you know we use the MLS for a lot of our comps and there's you know you can look back three months six months 12 months and you really couldn't go back more than three months during Covid and during the high season because if something sold six months ago could be 5 or 6% higher when you're looking especially if you're going to buy something flip it and you're looking two months into the future um now with uh a little bit less inventory and a little bit less activity we're going further back in time and I feel like that data is still pretty reliable um it it used to be historically you could go back 12 months and look and and now I I kind of started six months and if I have to go back further I will but uh six to 12 is I think pretty reliable now and then during those three month kind of look backs you're in a season change typically right so if you're looking in February looking back to November those homes might have listed in August right and then you kind of have to count for that how yards look um how activity kind of slows down in the wintertime um obviously boys are a little different from Florida Timmy it's not a ton of snow but um the number of transactions comes down in the winter time right it's easy to live in the summertime it's easy to look for a home in the summertime um so things the market doesn't slow down but the number of transactions does so uh when you can go 12 months or or six months sometimes you can navigate those seasonal changes a little bit more easily but during Covid looking back three months you're like I don't know it's a little trickier right market's hot and you're looking at somewhat unreliable data right listed in August versus listed in February it's not the same thing yeah that's very interesting yeah there are definitely some parallels between um Idaho and Florida after that you know during the pandemic boom you know ha um but it's pretty much the opposite as far as the seasons I think you know because most people are coming here and wanting to buy during the winter when the weather is a little bit nicer than up in the northeast for example well I'm really excited to dive into what what you know I came here to learn more about which is can you walk us through your 90 day fix and flip strategy that we discussed on our discovery call and and really explain why that works today yeah well so today we're looking at a market of sellers that are trying to find the market and so we get probably about 1/3 of our deals from the MLS and then the other 2/3 is from various sources uh a lot of that's agent relationship um some of it's wholesaler is recent out whether it's foreclosure.com kind of things like that so all these sellers are just kind of wondering like what their house is gonna get sometimes if it's listed in the MLS we might write a quick offer on a Friday and the seller says yep I'll take it great thank you and sometimes they say wait we're gonna wait for the weekend and get multiple offers and that's definitely the way to get the most money um what we offer is the quickest money typically so as long as we can find enough sellers to to move quickly that's the name of our game like we're when we close if we can close in the afternoon we demo that same afternoon so we can close at noon we have our demo crew in there you know most demos we do are a day sometimes they're two days if there's a lot of personal property leftover you know we buy homes as you can imagine I'm sure a lot of these homes that you're listing and and seeing full of personal property and um it's all gotta get removed and then cabinet tree and and drywall sometimes comes down and then once that's down we go inside and kind of get a lay of the land it's usually kind of hard to see the specifics of what needs to happen but we're doing demo we're doing our walkthrough and then we're getting our subs lined up and part of my responsibility with my partner is organizing the subs um couple things on our subs we have good ones obviously they need to do high quality work but they're also able to work in crowded environments and everyone all these subcontractors like to be the last one on the job right and they don't want anyone else there cause you know the cleaners cleaning and then the there's someone making dust and then who made the dust did the cleaner not clean it or did the dust guy do it after and there's finger pointing um and then some subs just don't want other people in there whether it's listening to the radio you know walking over their stuff and so our subs usually by now they all know each other pretty well and they have to be willing to work on a crowded job site you know if you were to get a painter to remodel your house they don't want you home they certainly don't want electrician in there or you know someone in the crawl space or any that stuff so the relationship that we have with our subcontractors is is crucial um they don't work for us as employees they sort of act like that right if we call they answer and if we tell them I need you there tomorrow they usually do um so we give them you know anywhere from probably 30 to 60% of their business we're paying you know a volume discount rate um so they get higher on a traditional retail client but they take a lot more business from us as a result they're willing to uh work on short notice or in crowded job sites and uh organizing everybody is is challenging um and then balancing kind of how things change as well if if one sub doesn't finish their work and then doesn't tell us or is like oh I was gonna come by in the morning I mean that that could back up a few other subs um so we have everything just timed really tight and that's for us seems to be like it's not the only way to make the margin but when you have tight budgets you have to be moving very quickly and we have people on our job sites every day doing something yeah no that that makes a lot of sense and I think you need that to have that short you know time frame of what 30 days you wanna be in renovation um and then max goal yeah the max you create those boundaries for yourself and then and then additionally you're marketing the property and then closing the property right yup yup so you're you're basically mention from my understanding it's you're emphasizing how important it is to have these relationships with your subcontractors to move quickly because the margins are smaller but you're you know because you're doing this in bulk almost the timeline is very important yeah and you know for us we're doing we did 24 last year and we're on track this year to do closer to 40 and that's a little more average of the last couple years and if you're gonna get into this or doing this you really have to understand like what are you valuing and sometimes it's money right obviously that's where a lot of us doing it we've got 10 employees now and then we've got a handful of subcontractors and part of the value that we get from doing this is giving them jobs and you know paying some of their bills or keeping their kids in dance or whatever yeah cause we make money in every flip right and so sometimes we're breaking even or you know obviously you know you're losing money on some of these yeah so you got in it to make money you've got a different strategy and part of what we're doing with having you know three or four projects going at a time is get on to the next one and not worrying too much about the one that we're in um if it sells at a loss you know fine everyone got their bills paid all the employees got their paychecks and we're on to the next and we're on to the next so uh we're obviously trying to deliver a high quality product um and most of the time we're giving it there's someone in the first time home buyer market you know we just closed one yesterday at 900 and we're closing one uh we listed one at 400 today and we're closing one at 430 today also um so providing a entry level product is satisfying also so you're in it just to make money you might be targeting I don't know luxury homes or manufactured homes I don't know where we like to be in the first time home buyer space yeah for a number of reasons but um delivering a a product that's affordable is is is nice so if you're uh able to get value from different sources meaning like the satisfaction of the employees there's tax write offs with that as well obviously profit on the flip and then delivering this product then you're not as hung up on the specific numbers of any given property you know yeah no and I I bet um you know one that's a great reason why you're doing it and I'm sure through helping other people that only helps expand your business to new clients as well right because you're getting a good reputation in your community and and people want to work with people they trust so now that makes a lot of sense it brings up a big question I was like are you using cash for these projects or or how do you fund these projects and um how do you make sure you're covering your cost it seems like that sometimes doesn't happen and I guess that's why the timeline is so important but yeah exactly that's kind of the main driving force of the timeline is we usually use hard money and okay hard money is you know 2 and 12 is pretty common right so two points and 12% so the easy math on that is one percent per month so if you're gonna buy a house in the first time home buyer market for us let's say you buy it at 300,000 two points is 2% so six grand up front and then about a thousand or about a thousand per month for every hundred you borrow so it's gonna cost us like 3,000 a month that's a hundred bucks a day yeah you know plus the six grand up front so the hard money is um very reliable two and 12 is a pretty common amount for us to have access to some get a little better maybe some different terms you know I know you get into this on some of your lending but you can get the rehab cost in there or not sometimes we use our own cash for the rehab cost and just the hard money loan on the purchase but each day is $100 whether we're on the job on the market in escrow whatever it is it's $100 a day and that doesn't seem like much but if you've got five projects going that's 500 bucks a day it's 25 a week and 10,000 a month just for holding cost you know and then we're closing on the product on the property when we buy it so there's a couple thousand bucks there then we're gonna pay realtor fees and marketing fees and close on it again so you know it would not be uncommon for us to spend$40,000 in costs on a property that are not the uh renovation uh not the you know uh subs or labor but just in closing costs holding costs wow yeah that that makes sense how you keep that urgency yeah to the renovation that important so um I know you mentioned how you're sourcing deals a little bit earlier but how do you evaluate these deals and even the ones that are listed slightly above market value since the market is still kind of growing it seems like yeah um it's it's interesting now cause I feel like the boisey uh metro like the surrounding cities around boisey um I have little pockets that are a little different

you know we just sold one the other day at 3: 15:45

50 and we listed at 3 60 and we had no activity at 3 60 and then kinda did some more really digging in in that community and I thought 3 50 is a magic number we dropped the price and we got an offer same day so now we just need to really sharpen our pencils and um that was something that we didn't really have to do as much during Covid you could kind of look city wide you know or we have these little MLS areas and you could kind of work within the MLS um but we're definitely seeing a shift with buyers that are buyers have a little more power they're a bit more nuance now so they care about the lawn you know during Covid you could sell a house with no sprinklers no sod and people were just happy to get into a house they were escaping clean panic whatever and now we're putting in sod and sprinklers in the backyard you know not just curb appeal but like in the backyard um and we're seeing buyers have a little more power as far as choosing things you know we're getting feedback sometimes on you know not enough pantry space or uh just little things that seemed kind of nuance that we didn't really have to consider before so we run the comps um we're just trying to be super conservative and as decent as we can and then sometimes we pass on stuff right if it's a big lot and the house is in the front and you can't really access the backyard I mean is a half acre really better than a standard lot I mean ideally you'd have a bunch of numbers that showed you yeah you're paying a premium for this but it's it's not always the case and then maybe that's a deal we just shy away from you know that's good that's good point I kind of want to go into the next question which is a little bit different but I and you kind of talked about this earlier but for newer agents that are in the Boise market that want to be a flipper right why would it make more sense to work with an established flipper rather than trying to do it yourself or is it more risky for flipping the home themselves when they're getting started you know I think there's definitely home runs out there that are worth you know figuring it out like if you've got a deal that's the asset and if you can control the asset great um you know people talk about timing and like it's not a right time or whatever if the deal is good enough the time doesn't matter right so if you got a house that you can't afford but it's a screaming deal get the money you know go talk to investors figure it out and that's if you have a really awesome deal and and those are really I think rare right so if you've got an average deal and someone can make some money on it and you wanna make some money on as a flip or someone could flip it when you talk to an established flipper typically they're gonna pay you a commission right and on all the deals that we list in the MLS that we lose money on the buyer's agents still getting paid their commission right like they they make more than us sometimes and so um that's the easiest way to kind of start doing it and that's basically how I got my start with my partner my partner's uh with Cather Williams um his faith is super important to him and I you know I was chasing down some house that was being renovated I'm speaking Spanish talking to some guy I'm like hey like I'll talk to the owner and I'll be his realtor right and then I'm seeing this house getting worked on and then I find out that it's this guy my partner Chris Wolford I'm like man I see his signs all over town yeah so I hit him up I said like bro who are you and what are you doing he goes well let's have coffee and I'll tell you everything I do and he did and it was fantastic and I just started staying close to him I would go out and try to find an off market buyer for him for one of his properties and we can get into more of why that's a great strategy but um I just stayed close to him and I was getting paid on you know I'd go find him a buyer and or maybe find him a deal and get paid somehow and you know uh one of the deals that I thought he like stole from me right I was like tracking this guy and then I see the name change on title like damn it they had a sprinkler flood flooded the basement and it's like one of his worst deals ever so I was glad to be out of that one wow um so these new agents have like just so little to risk and um it's also really challenging I think when we're talking to to people who are bringing us deals or talking to us about how expensive it is to to do this right like just like I said$40,000 in closing and holding costs like that's a lot of money yeah it's easy to see the wins as you know like easy money all you did was go and get new cabinets and paint like yeah but you know maybe we won on this one but we lost on two others yeah so um the new agents that want to get into this the best way is to get paid with a buyer you know or get a assignment fee or some sort of commission and then you've got no skin in the game and building relationships and that's where most of our deals come from is some form of relationship whether it's professional or or casual people are bringing us deals because they don't know what to do with it yeah and then I feel like everybody every buyer's agent every realtor at some point comes across someone who's like in a bad spot and you could list it maybe but like pictures or access you know it can be tough and sometimes it's that time that is most important to whoever that is so if you can help someone take a big project off their plate maybe they could make more money doing something else maybe if you flipped it you know I mean what's that phrase that Brian's always says wish if wishes were fishes we'd all have a fry or something like that would be nice but uh easiest thing to do is get paid your commission you know find a buyer give him the deal and sometimes you could also um maybe work out a range where you list it for them so hey look I've got this asset I'll let you flip it you buy it and then when you go to sell it list it with me like that's an opportunity yeah and really just uh finding a mentor to maybe help you and um start with giving up your first deal and you're like oh man this guy's gonna make 50 grand maybe not right he might not and your number's probably wrong and maybe he's only making 10 or 20 but if you got your you know two and a half or 3% whatever it is that's eight 10 grand and you did nothing yeah you know so sometimes it's just about lowering your expectations right you find this great house or it's your neighbor across the street you're like man this is like a huge spread on this deal you can make 10 grand the easy way yeah yeah or you can make 10 grand the really hard way or you can lose 10 grand the hard way you know yeah no I get it that it seems like a win win win you know cause the the not only are they not having as much risk they're also learning from the experience you know they're getting a master class and what to do and what to not to do and what could happen during a deal like you've probably Learned through all these different flips yourself so this is great information I I think I think it's gonna get a lot out of it um we're almost out of time but you know now that I got you what what do you think is gonna happen with the Boise real estate market going you know going into the spring summertime do you see any shifts happening what is your you had a crystal ball what would you what would you say I go to Vegas with my crystal ball okay that sounds good I'll meet you there yeah um honestly just in the last like six weeks I feel like I've seen more people or more houses going over asking um it seems like it's a little bit of pent up demand you know like I said people were waiting for prices or rates to go down and they're not they've been pretty steadily in the mid to low sixes you know if with rate buy down you're into the five and a halfs and I think people are finally fully accepting that and um this spring market seems to be poised to do really well and it's you know I talk to my buyers and say oh you know you should be able like this and this happens and all of a sudden it sells off like for way more than I thought and we're all just kind of recalibrating so sellers are trying to find the market um you know they're not greedy for listing high but they're genuinely trying to find the market some will adjust their price quickly based on showings and activity and and some don't and then some realtors are listing at what they think is a good price and things are getting snatched up I mean I had a client on a Friday night she worked until 6 she wanted to look at two houses we saw one and didn't like it and the other one went pending Friday night I mean takes an offer on a Friday night right like no good realtor except one who's got a great offer for their client so you know usually Sunday or Monday is a better time to accept but if you got something fantastic on a Friday night take the money and run and so people are out there and I'm seeing just definitely an uptick in activity and I think people are uh you know a little have a little cabin fever and they're ready to get out there in spring so we're seeing a pick up for sure that's great well good luck the rest of the year I I uh wish you and your partner a lot of success um if you enjoy can I just tell you one one part maybe final comment yeah please please so you know if you're looking at sites like foreclosure.com I I feel like as a as a realtor on the retail side you're calling people you're doing open houses you never know where your next deal is gonna come from right you go to open houses nobody comes in then your friend calls you or you call 30 people and then you bump into someone at the grocery store but if you're in the business of looking for deals you're doing the activities something will come from you and especially in with foreclosures there's usually life happening when that's when that's going on right so whether you're getting married divorced having kids all that life activity starts to increase motivation and uh you find deals sometimes just in the act of looking not necessarily where you expect to find them so if you're working with people or talking to people that are going through life changes that's great and you're not taking advantage of people who are in a tough spot um but if you're doing life stuff then sometimes you need quick cash sometimes you need to sell whatever it might be so um you know the agents that are out looking for deals you know keep looking cause you never quite know where it's gonna come from but the place where there's activity and and life changes is a good place to be looking yeah um someone said to me once you you don't always have to buy but you always have to do the due diligence um and yeah you can't even start that process unless you're looking so that makes perfect sense and that's great and people are making money by not buying homes right some of the best deals that you've ever done are the ones you passed on cause it was you know whatever bad foundation or you just missed it somehow and that was great so yeah yeah sounds like it with the with the one with the had the leak in the in the basement that didn't sound fun yeah yeah hopefully that wasn't during winter time uh it was actually it was yeah it was recarpeted and all windows and it was big loss yeah wow well thank you again Mikey um of course if you guys enjoyed this content please don't forget to like and subscribe to our channel for more real estate tips um and and also check out our free foreclosure alerts um to help you get more details about your your city or county near you until next time I'm Tim Jones and thank you for joining us today