EXCLUSIVE: ‘Zombie House Flipping’ Star Tommy Harr Reveals Bold Tactic for Building Wealth by Buying Up Abandoned Homes

Real estate investor Tommy Harr isn’t afraid of renovating rundown homes that scare most people away on his new series, “Zombie House Flipping: Family Business,” because he knows firsthand the payoff of living in one after it's been brought back to life.

On Harr’s A&E show, which makes its debut on May 30, the 31-year-old Columbus, OH-based house flipper remodels “zombie” homes—abandoned properties stuck in the foreclosure process—with help from his team of family members.

Harr’s youngest brother, Will, is training to be a project manager, while his other younger brother, Jake, and their father, Chris, do pre- and post-construction inspections. Meanwhile, Harr’s mother, Katie, fills the dual role of interior designer and real estate agent.

Though they aren’t official members of the crew, Harr's wife and 2-year-old son are also involved in the family business, he tells Realtor.com®, being that they live inside one of the 400 finished house flip projects he’s completed over the last “eight or nine” years.

Keeping a home flip for himself has been a savvy financial strategy Harr reveals he’s employed “a few” times.

“For my personal houses, I like to buy really distressed homes and basically do what we do on the show, like, buy a house, fix it up,” he explains. “But instead of selling it to a family, I just refinance it and keep it as my personal residence. I think that's a great way to build wealth.

“Instead of putting a monstrous down payment on a house, you can bake in the equity doing it by buying a house cheap because nobody wants to buy those houses,” he continues. 

Taking on a home that needs a complete makeover also makes for a smart design move.

“I think it's a great way to add the custom touches,” he says. “My wife's been able to design our last three houses to exactly what she wanted.”

Though Harr and his wife were able to personalize much of their new place before moving in six months ago, he confirms there’s still a lot more work to do.

“We actually just moved into this house the day before Thanksgiving. It's in a really nice area of Columbus called Grandview. I’m very, very excited to live in this house. It’s a house we can grow into,” says Harr, before detailing the to-do list of projects he hopes to tackle this summer.

“There's a bunch,” he concedes. “We just moved into our house. We did a lot of the stuff, but me and my wife are trying to build a garden in our backyard and I'm trying to have the greenest lawn in my neighborhood so I can have bragging rights. 

“I’m a dad now,” he explains. “My son's 2 years old, so I'm interested in dad stuff now. I'm mowing the lawn, keeping it green.”

As the father of one makes plans to further settle into his family home, he’s still keeping his options open if a killer deal on another zombie home happens to appear.

“I’ve always got my eyes on the next one, and that's maybe a little bit of a downfall being a real estate investor, you’re always looking for the next deal and opportunity,” says Harr.

While Harr eagerly awaits his next house flip, he understands the appeal others see about getting in on the gig for themselves, but warns rookie house flippers to be cautious and realistic about what it takes to actually turn a profit.

“It takes a lot of money. It takes a lot of resources. It takes good contractors, so just start slow building good relationships. Don't jump in right away. Make sure you do your research. Make sure you find somebody locally that you can trust and build your network,” he advises.

“I think the misconception is that it's really easy,” he continues. “I mean, there's a lot of people online and [who] maybe watch my TV show or somebody else's and say, ‘I can do this myself.’”

Harr knows all too well the pitfalls of a house flip gone wrong, pointing to the first one he ever took on.

“I lost $100,000 on my first house flip with my uncle,” he begins. “My mom's brother, he was the mastermind behind this whole thing 10 years ago right before I graduated college. … We ended up buying a 5,000-square-foot, five-[bedroom], six-bathroom mini mansion and lost our shirt on that. It was not a great experience. Thanksgiving dinner got a little weird for a while there.”

Looking back, Harr can now identify a multitude of rookie mistakes he and his uncle made that contributed to their downfall.

“Every cliche that people say [not] to do, we did: We didn't buy an easy cosmetic renovation. It was [located] at a stoplight on a double yellow road. There was not a lot of comparable sales. It was big. It was built in the late 1800s. We didn't fire our contractor fast enough. It was just everything that you should not do,” he recounts.

After seeing the disastrous house flip through, Harr has since learned how to better discern whether a deal is worth it or not.

“It's gonna be based on numbers,” he states. “If [the] seller is unrealistic on their price and they won't come down because everybody thinks they have gold on their hands, then we'd have to walk away from that deal.”

Sticking to the budget is essential in the business of flipping homes, and Harr has sharpened his sense of knowing where to spend and where to save.

“If you're the homeowner, really nice windows or over-upgrading your roof is important, but I would not over-improve your windows and all that stuff if you're flipping a house,” he notes. 

“It's always the cliche, the kitchens and the [bathrooms], they do sell the house, but just don’t cheap out on your floors,” he suggests.

“A lot of people will do the cheapest LVP they can find and then once somebody moves in, they crack and they chip. Go with a nicer, thicker LVP or an engineered hardwood. It's really, really nice for your end buyer.”

Before putting a finished zombie house flip on the market, Harr likes to put each space through his “piggyback test,” which consists of him running around rooms while carrying one of his brothers on his back. The family tradition is something the siblings have done for years.

“Growing up in the Harr home, [I’m] one of five kids and we had four bedrooms: My mom and dad had one and then the rest of the bedrooms, we had to kind of fight for the others,” he says. “We’d roughhouse and we'd make a mess and the piggyback test was just something that we would do [to see] if there's enough room for activities, like if there's enough [room] to roughhouse and play soccer.”

These days, that type of family fun helps the Harrs survive the stress of renovating zombie homes together, and their approach is one any renovator can take to keep the peace.

“It's like sports, like, if there's anything that happens on the field, you don't take it off the field with you,” says Harr. “That's how we are. If we feel like we're irritated, we're going to get over this and we get to the next thing. It’s fun. I wouldn't do it with anybody else.” 

“Zombie House Flipping: Family Business” premieres Saturday, May 30 at 11 a.m. on A&E’s Home.Made.Nation.