The question I get more than any other is some version of this: I have got enough for one big one or two small ones. Which do I do?

Most operators call a lender after they are already in contract. It is the most expensive habit in this business. Here is how it goes wrong. You find the deal. You run your numbers against what you think a lender will do. You write the offer. Then you start shopping capital and find out your actual leverage is different from your assumption. Now you have three bad options. Renegotiate and look shaky to the seller. Bring more cash than you planned and starve your next deal. Or

There is no best month to buy in Phoenix. Anybody telling you otherwise is selling something. There are two different edges, they never show up at the same time, and the operators who make money know which one they are buying. FROM DEVON'S DESK Here are the two edges. Price. The deep summer is the best time of year to negotiate in this market. June, July, August, the buyers are gone. Nobody is walking houses in 112 degrees. If you are standing there with a check, you have alm

FROM DEVON'S DESK I want to tell you this one carefully, because it would be easy to tell it as a brag and that is not what it is. A repeat borrower of ours brought a deal to another lender who quoted him a better rate. That was a completely rational decision. Rate is the easiest number to compare, it is the number every lender leads with, and he is running a business. He did not owe me an explanation and I did not ask for one. Then, days before he was supposed to close, that

Flipping is a cash-suck business. And I mean that as a compliment. FROM DEVON'S DESK Here is a frame I shared with my investor list recently, and the more I sat with it, the more I realized the people who need it most are the operators I lend to every week. Every business on earth is one of two things. A cash-flow business pays you on a schedule, money in every month, smaller pops, steady engine. A cash-suck business consumes cash for months and then pays you in one event. Fl

51% of the single-family listings in Maricopa County have cut their asking price. I think that is the best acquisition news operators have gotten all year. FROM DEVON'S DESK Fresh data crossed my desk this week from a title partner we work with, Altos Research's weekly read on Maricopa County. One number jumped off the page: more than half of active sellers have already reduced their price. Only 3% have raised it. Most people read that as a soft market. I read it as a window.

Two headlines dropped the same week, and together they redraw the map of this Valley. Headline one: TSMC announced another $100 billion for its North Phoenix campus, $265 billion total, now the largest single foreign investment in U.S. history. Four more fabs, advanced packaging facilities, and tens of thousands of high-paying jobs on top of the supplier ecosystem already forming around it. Headline two, quieter but just as important: the West Valley is finally getting a life

Two partners. One deal. Halfway through the rehab, the partnership ended. It happens more than anyone admits in this business. One partner brought the capital. The other brought the construction expertise and the license, he was the contractor and the agent. Classic money-plus-sweat structure. Then they disagreed, and they split. Mid-project. Think about what that means for a second. The capital partner had real money in the deal and every reason to finish it. What he did not

June was the biggest month in the history of private lending. Not my opinion, data. Lightning Docs documented 7,606 loans in June, the busiest month they have ever recorded. And buried in the county-level data is the part that matters here: Maricopa County has posted top-10 national bridge volume three months in a row. The money found Phoenix. Here is what makes this moment interesting: that record wave of capital is arriving in a market where buyers, not sellers, hold the le

Our fastest exit this year took 42 days. Our slowest took 497. Same lender. Same money. And here is the part most people get wrong: the slow one is not automatically the bad one. FROM DEVON'S DESK We have closed out 19 loans so far in 2026, so I pulled the exit data this week. The spread is wide, two to three months on one end, well over a year on the other. The lazy read is fast good, slow bad. That is not the lesson. The lesson is this: match your timeline to your projected

New Phoenix REALTORS data landed this week. Closed sales in Greater Phoenix rose 8.1% in June versus 3.2% nationally. First-half sales are up 5.4%. Median price held at $485K, up just 0.2%. And days on market climbed to 78 from 72. Two weeks ago I told you the Valley had shifted toward buyers. June's numbers add the nuance that matters: pending sales have nearly leveled off after falling 8.4% through March, inventory actually declined in June, and sellers are still capturing

Most operators who lose money on a flip in Phoenix did not make a bad deal. They made a good deal with a blind spot. This week I want to talk about one of the most common blind spots I am seeing right now, and why it is about to get a lot more expensive for anyone working near South Mountain. WHAT IS COMING TO AHWATUKEE Upper Canyon is coming online. It is the largest housing project in Ahwatukee this century. Roughly 1,050 single-family homes plus multifamily across 373 acre

The first half of 2026 was our strongest yet. And the part I am proudest of is not the volume. It is the discipline behind it. Stronger borrowers, cleaner deals, faster exits. We grew the right way by being more selective, not less. Heading into the second half of the year, here is what is actually on my mind: I want to do more of this with you. WHAT WE ARE SEEING IN THE MARKET Quality deals are still moving fast. Well-bought fix-and-flips with realistic rehab budgets are exi

Three things the latest market data is telling us, and what they mean for your next deal. THE VALLEY HAS SHIFTED INTO A BUYER'S MARKET Demand has cooled from where it was at the start of the year and the market has flattened out with buyers holding the leverage. The practical translation for operators: homes are taking longer to sell, and your exit timeline needs more cushion than it did a year ago. Build the extra time into your holds and your interest reserves now, not late

Quick read from the desk this week. Three things the market is telling us right now and what they mean for your next deal. THE VALLEY HAS SHIFTED INTO A BUYER'S MARKET Demand has cooled from where it was at the start of the year and the market has flattened out with buyers holding the leverage. The practical translation for operators: homes are taking longer to sell, and your exit timeline needs more cushion than it did a year ago. Build the extra time into your holds and you

Quick read from the desk this week, because what we are seeing in the data matters for anyone building or flipping in the upper end of the market. Based on what we are seeing across the Valley right now, the $3-7M price point is the slowest-moving segment out there. Inventory is sitting longer here than almost anywhere else, and the gap between what sells fast and what lingers has gotten wide. If you are an operator landing a project in this range, that is not a reason to avo

Most lenders give you a loan calculator. We built you a deal analyzer. If you have ever used a loan calculator on a lender's website, you know what you get: a loan amount and a monthly payment. Maybe. What you do not get: the actual fees. The closing costs. The selling costs. Whether you are going to make money on the deal. Most lenders do not show you that because they do not have to. They get paid whether you win or not. We think that is wrong. INTRODUCING THE 42 SOLUTIONS

I have funded 74 loans to fix-and-flip investors across Arizona. The ones who consistently execute, close deals, finish projects on time, and pay off loans without drama almost always have one of two backgrounds. They are either licensed real estate agents or they have contractor experience. This is not a coincidence. It is strategic advantage. Let me show you why, and what it means for you regardless of which category you fall into. ADVANTAGE ONE: THE AGENT BACKGROUND Agent-

I have been talking about stepping into new construction for a while now. This week we made it official. 42 Solutions just funded its first ever ground-up new build. This is a milestone we committed to in 2026 and we delivered on it. It is a big deal for us and I want to share the full breakdown with you. This is not a fix-and-flip. This is ground up. We are financing the full construction of a brand new home in Phoenix from the foundation up. It is a different deal type, a l

I got a call last week from a real estate agent here in the Phoenix Valley. I'll call her Sarah. Twelve years licensed. Knows the market cold. Over the last few years she has been acting as project manager for several of her investor clients, overseeing renovations, managing contractors, coordinating timelines. She saved up capital. She had her contractor crew lined up. She had deal flow from over a decade in the market. She was ready to do her first fix-and-flip as the owner