Finishing Touches Remodeling was recently featured in the February 2018 edition of Building Savvy magazine. Read the full article below.
If you watch HGTV you may recognize Blake Johnson as a contractor working with Ashley and Andy Williams on Flip or Flop Fort Worth. Blake always did some kind of construction work on the side — building displays for art galleries and doing handiwork for family and friends. He knew he would eventually find that “hook” which would enable him to put a full-time focus on the business that he loved. In 1999, Blake founded Finishes Touches and has built it into a firm that rehabs more than 200 properties per year. It took some creative thinking and a lot of persistence and perseverance at cold-calling in the beginning.“
I noticed the bus stop benches with the signs: ‘We Buy Houses For Cash,” and started making a list of those phone numbers. Eventually, I had a legal pad with a bunch of numbers on it and started calling the investors. I figured they needed somebody to fix up the houses that they were buying,” Blake said. He was right. The Finishing Touches team began with only a few employees hungry and willing to tackle any job that needed to be done. The focus on doing rehab work for real estate investors proved to be a gold mine and soon positioned Finishing Touches as the premier investor home rehab company in Dallas/Fort Worth.
“We manage an average of 30 projects at a time — from Wylie to Weatherford. Obviously, we have expanded our staff to handle all of that. It just happened
organically because we know what it takes to ensure that properties sell and that the investors see the returns they are looking for,” said Blake. “We put ourselves in the investors’ shoes and are not satisfied until the job is done right.”
“Being on Flip or Flop Fort Worth was a great opportunity for us and couldn’t have happened without the support of my staff. Gregg Jordan and my wife Nicole basically put their lives on hold and helped me manage up to 120 people at a time, for 14 hours a day, six days a week to be sure the projects being featured for the show as well as our other projects going at the time all went smoothly,” Blake said.
From curb to alley and foundation to roof, Finishing Touches handles every aspect of a rehab project. It stands behind its workmanship and warranties its
work. They also teach real estate investors how to get started. The company website offers tips on how to buy and start building a team (including lender, real estate agent, contractor, insurance agent). The site provides links to city websites where the unique laws and guidelines in regards to rental or investment properties can be found. They encourage investors to contact Finishing Touches as soon as an offer is accepted to get a plan and an estimate. Every project is set up on a cloud so that investors can see the progress being made via pictures, videos, message boards and a job calendar. Finishing Touches can coordinate directly with an investor’s property management agent on the final stages to make sure that the property is move-in ready upon the sale or lease of the property.
Like Ashley and Andy, who knew they could count on Finishes Touches to rehab nine houses in four months for their HGTV series, many others know that Blake and his team will do what they say and do it right. Crazy deadlines and challenging fixes are part of Finishing Touches’ everyday business.
