Brockton Rox – Richard Davis of The Real Deal

Back in April, we highlighted the new Flip This House TV show starring Richard Davis, which is called The Real Deal The Real Estate Pros. In the special season opener for the show, Richard Davis made his way up to the Boston area to buy a piece of the Brockton Rox. At first, we had a hard time confirming that this was actually true, however, the Brockton Rox now display Richard as one of the eight Owners of the Brockton Rox on their front-office information page.

The Real Deal The Real Estate Pros TV show, following Richard and his crew, has definitely put out some decent episodes, but truly, it’s a neck-and-neck race for the best Flip This House show between The Real Deal The Real Estate Pros, and Flip This House – Than and Paul. The consistency between the two shows is that they follow around a good group of folks that are having a good time doing what they are doing, and making a good profit to boot. It’s hard not to watch the Flip This House – Montelongo Team, but there’s just something off with this show, you get done watching, and you feel like something shady has happened.

Review of The Real Deal TV Show

The Real Deal The Real Estate Pros TV show, which is the “new and improved” Flip This House series which follows Richard Davis’ Trademark Properties as they buy lemons and make lemonade, recently aired. The first ran Saturday on TLC, and overall, the show was a home run.

The new show is professionally done, filled with much of the same antics as the previous Flip This House series (even a run in the with the police), and leaves you motivated to go out and buy a flip.

The Real Deal TV Show

This past Saturday’s show followed Davis as he purchased, renovated, and tried to sell a house that was on the market for over nine months and had not sold (more than likely for the moisture issue in the floors, the murky pool, and the claustrophobic kitchen).

The show almost exclusively focused on Richard, and Ginger, Richard’s investment coordinator, and featured studio one-on-one interviews, rather than the “drive in your car and talk to the camera” interviews from previous shows.

Overall, a great first episode, and we suggest the following:

  1. Involve some of the others on the team; Richard and Ginger are great, but part of the fun is the interaction and relationships that are developed and formed during the flips.
  2. Tell us how much you actually made on a deal, rather than “projected” profit – with many of the other flipping shows, there’s a tendency to focus too heavily on anticipated margins, rather than taking the time to look at the actuals (i.e. perhaps sales to listing price ratio is not 100%, carrying costs, etc).

For further background on The Real Deal The Real Estate Pros TV show, see our previous posts (Flip This House History, and The Real Deal Launches).

The Real Deal TV Show (Flip This House)

The Real Deal, the new TV show chronicling Richard Davis’ Trademark Properties team, premieres this Saturday, April 21 at 9:00pm EST on TLC (channel 31 here in Boston).

The Real Deal TV Show

In the first episode, Team Trademark tackles the impossible by investing in a house that’s been on the market for almost a year. They renovate a five bedroom eye-sore with mold and make it a thing of beauty in just five days. But this job comes with a myriad of problems.

Richard Davis and his crew were formerly on Flip This House as part of the A&E lineup, until a lawsuit separated the parties – read more from our previous Flip This House post to get caught up with background information.

Flip That Condo

You may have been wondering what’s been up with all the repeats of Flip This House on A&E lately. If you’re like us, you probably have come to enjoy the antics, drive, and the kind heart of Richard Davis and the Trademark Properties (note that they just launched a new website today) team that was featured on A&E’s season 1 of Flip This House.

Flip This House

Unfortunately, Richard Davis and the Trademark team did not return for season 2 with A&E due to a July 2006 Flip This House Lawsuit that Trademark Properties filed against A&E alleging breach of contract and fraud – a chronicle of the lawsuit can be found on a website dedicated to the proceedings called Flip This Lawsuit.

Season 2 of A&E’s Flip This House moved on, with teams in Atlanta and San Antonio – neither team has been received by the public as well as Davis’ team.

A&E’s Flip This House Season 3 is moving closer to Boston, as they have added a New Haven, CT team to their roster. Time, and perhaps the market, will tell if the show makes its way up the coast to Boston – Richard Davis, coincidentally, is looking to build out his flipping teams with his new Trademark Properties Partner Program, which poses another possibility for some Boston flipping teams to make it big on TV.

Richard Davis and his team have signed a deal with TLC for a new show (same concept) called The Real Deal The Real Estate Pros, which is scheduled for initial airing on April 21, 2007. The forerunner episode of The Real Deal The Real Estate Pros was ‘A Home Run For Trademark’, which was a special that aired this past weekend centering around the relocation of Shoeless Joe Jackson’s historic Charleston home, while at the same time helping to renovate the life of former number one Major League Baseball draft pick Josh Hamilton, who just played his first Major League game yesterday, Monday, April 2nd.

Davis has definitely done well for himself, with his Clemson football stadium box, to his recent purchase of a Massachusetts minor league baseball team, the Brockton Rox. Let’s not forget the $7,000 Ginger found in Richard’s Suburban when she decided to clean out his truck!

We wish Richard the best of luck with his new venture – it’s great to see a good guy, with savvy business sense, and determination do well for himself, have a good time while doing it, and help some others along the way.

If you are looking to get into flipping houses, or condos, a good book to get you started is the recently released Flip – How to Find, Fix, and Sell Houses for Profit.