Irving company buying homes for flippers plans to double its national footprint

(DALLAS) – May 18, 2022 – An Irving-based company that buys homes across the country to sell to flippers expects to double its national footprint this year.

New Western, which has bought more than 40,000 homes throughout the country since it was founded in 2008, says it is on track to expand its footprint from 40 to 80 locations this year. That includes offices in new markets such as Chicago and Washington, D.C., and additional locations in metro areas where it already has offices.

“We’re in a rapid expansion mode right now,” said Kurt Carlton, the company’s co-founder and president. “We’re really going to every major city. There’s really only a handful we won’t be in at the end of the year.”

Unlike iBuyers such as Opendoor and Offerpad, New Western doesn’t repair homes itself. Instead, the company sells the properties to a network of 100,000 rehabbers — including 20,000 in Dallas-Fort Worth — who then sell them or rent them out.

Last year, the company sold about 1,800 homes to its rehabbers in D-FW and 10,200 nationwide. This year, it expects to sell more than 15,300 homes, with over 2,600 in North Texas. That will bring roughly $569 million worth of residential real estate back to the local market.

Carlton describes many of its rehabbers as “corporate refugees” who had a typical day job and wanted to try something new. The company holds events to find rehabbers in new markets but often relies on word of mouth.

Carlton and CEO Stuart Denyer launched the company in 2008 during the foreclosure crisis, targeting investors who wanted a quicker method to acquire houses than working with real estate agents.

“They could just come to us and get a house from us the same day,” Carlton said. “We were able to supply all of these real estate investors through a process that they enjoyed.”

The company focuses on vacant properties, such as homes with fire damage. More than 16 million homes are vacant across the U.S., according to a LendingTree analysis of U.S. census data.

New Western primarily shops for those vacant homes rather than competing alongside homebuyers, Carlton said. The average age of a property the company shops for is 60 years old, and the average price is $232,000.

“We’re in the middle of an inventory crisis, an affordability crisis, that’s driven by a lack of supply and an overabundance of demand,” Carlton said. “Our job is really to find those homes and get them aligned with a local rehabber that can get that property back on the market.”

Carlton said that because of the market’s low inventory, flippers may not need to do as much to a home for it to sell. They may also be motivated to sell their properties at a faster pace.

“Because of material costs, holding costs and all those things, they want to get the inventory out much quicker,” he said.

With its rapid growth plans, the company has been adding to its leadership team. This year it added Dipak Joshi, former corporate financial controller for Google, as its chief financial officer and Kuba Poraj-Kuczewski — who has led marketing at tech companies including Redfin — as chief marketing officer.