Tag: Flipping

HGTV stars Tarek El Moussa and wife Heather Rae El Moussa have been flipping houses together for years—but their working relationship hit a very rocky patch in the latest episode of their hit show, “The Flipping El Moussas,” which saw the duo having an epic fallout over a property purchase.

The drama began to unfold when Tarek, 43, tours a home in Orange, CA, with his friend and colleague Adam Lindholm, who is president of his real estate investment firm, TEM Capital. The duo cannot agree on whether the $710,000 property would be a good investment, even after a lengthy conversation about the price and the potential to extend the abode with a 400-square-foot bonus room.

So, Tarek takes the rather risky step of using a coin flip to make the decision for him, telling Lindholm that if it lands on heads, he’ll buy the home for the full asking price.

Lo and behold, the coin lands on heads, and true to his words, Tarek makes an offer on the home, before heading off to tell his wife.

“Well, lovey, I think we bought a house,” he tells her—leaving Heather, 37, flabbergasted.

“What do you mean?” she asks in disbelief. “You better not have.”

Tarek seems taken aback by his wife’s less-than-positive reaction and continues to explain himself, telling her that he bought “the one I just looked at with Adam in Orange.”

The confirmation of the home’s location does little to calm Heather’s temper, and she proceeds to grill him, questioning why he thought it was OK to purchase a property without “calling or talking” to her first.

“We were under the gun,” Tarek explains, attempting to defend himself. However, his bravado begins to falter when he then admits, “I’m iffy on the house.”

Understandably, Heather wonders why he even put in an offer if he wasn’t sure of the home’s potential: “Wait, then why did we buy it?”

At this point, Tarek is backed into a corner and is forced to detail the unusual method he used to decide on the purchase.

“Adam felt more confident and we flipped a coin and…” Tarek tells his stunned wife, his voice trailing off.

As Tarek chuckles nervously, Heather’s jaw drops in shock.

“You didn’t think calling your wife might be a little bit better than flipping a coin?” she asks.

Tarek tries to defend himself again, saying, “That’s how we always used to do it.”

His wife then points out that this kind of behavior may well have been the standard in his past but that it should remain of a time that was “pre-Heather.”

Somehow, Heather manages to see the funny side of the coin, later joking to the cameras: “I flipped a coin to marry him, just kidding!”

Tarek joins in, saying, “It was a double-sided coin with, like, both—both heads.”

“Yeah, he tricked me,” Heather jokes.

Despite his wife’s horror over his decision-making technique, Tarek later doubles down on using a coin to determine if he should buy the house, insisting that renovating homes is always going to be a risky business—coin or no coin.

“Flipping houses is a gamble. It’s not the best idea to buy a house, you know, based on flipping a coin, but the market we’re in is tough,” Tarek tells the cameras. “There is no inventory, right? There is a ton of competition. And this agent wants an answer today. So if we want to be in the game, like, we—we have to take some risks.”

But the good news is—they seem to have a sense of humor about the situation. Hours before the episode aired, Tarek and Heather posted a clip from the show on Instagram in which the two argue about the coin flip.

In the caption, Tarek wrote: “What do you guys think is crazier? Buying a house without consulting the wife or leaving it up to a coin toss…”

Followers commented on the post, many playfully poking fun at Tarek.

“You got in trouble that day lol,” one noted, and another wrote, “You have been lucky this time… Not try again.”

In the end, his gamble pays off.

After buying the house for $710,000, putting $219,000 into the rehab, and paying $74,000 in carrying costs and selling costs, their break-even price is $1,003,000. They list the house for $1,149,000, and after just three days on the market, it is sold for $1,200,000. That means these two made a fantastic profit of $197,000.

Related Articles