Hello!
We are Tom & Sara Rogers and are the owners of Whidbey Investments (formerly Magnolia Realty).
We’ve been married 5yrs (together 12yrs) and have been business owners since 2013. We started investing in real estate in 2019 and decided in 2021 to jump in full time. We specialize in flips, short term rentals (Airbnb), small multiplexes, & centennial rehabs.
Tom is the go getter! He runs all our construction, finds deals, is a networking wizard, and our #1 project finisher! He’s extremely knowledgeable when it comes to construction and has yet to come up against a project he couldn’t accomplish. He’s passionate about helping people and therefore loves working directly with our sellers to create deals that are a win-win for all.
Sara is the business/finance person and project manager. She keeps the budget on track, makes sure documents are created and put in the proper hands, and runs all our PR. She loves the design part of all our projects and has the capability to jump in on construction when needed.
Together we make a great team and are forever working on how to be better partners in business, life, & marriage.
Keep scrolling and we’ll share more about us and our history of REI!
We bought our very first house as a primary residence back in 2015. We paid only $100.43 out of our own pockets as we qualified for a 1st time home buyers grant and rolled the other expenses into our loan. The equity in this house grew relatively quickly and we refinanced out $80k in equity in 2019 to buy our first investment property.
Our 1st investment house was a 2bd/2bth located downtown Bellingham. We found the listing on craiglist and bought the property before it was publicly listed. At the time (2019) Bellingham had outlawed Short Term Rentals (STR’s) but we knew of a zoning loop hole which allowed us to get a permit and operate as one of the city’s only legal Airbnb’s.
We sold this property in late 2020 and started investing in Spokane, WA.
The years that followed the sale of that 1st investment property were full of challenges and changes. We sold our primary residence, bought 3 properties in a single year (all of which needed major work), lived in an RV so that we could be mobile while completing renovations, somehow survived operating the yoga studio with covid & lockdowns and then a catastrophic flood.
2021& 2022 feel like a blur but the invaluable education of running our businesses, working together under the worst of times, and completely reinventing our life to create a better future was worth every second of it!
