At our fourth quarter 2024 Charles Town Investors Group luncheon, we got to hear from local power couple Larry Barkdoll and Naomi Rohrer. They’ve been flipping and renting for over half a decade in and around the West Virginia Eastern Panhandle. One of the things we especially appreciate about Naomi and Larry is the quality of work they put into their flips, and the high priority they place on fostering and maintaining good relationships with everyone they come in contact with. They are a glowing example of successfully doing business while prioritizing people over profit.
Here’s some excerpts from their presentation, highlighting some of their past flip projects, and the lessons they picked up along the way. (Credit to Naomi for much of the information and pictures used in this article).
About Their Team:
Naomi has a background in education, as a travel agent, and managing commercial real estate (self storage facility). She’s been known to swing a hammer or two, and also manages a lot of the administrative side of their business.
Larry has been doing residential construction and old home restoration for decades. He does a lot of the work on their flips himself, and serves as the general contractor when they decide to use subcontractors.
Chloe, their daughter, just moved to the area and has recently joined the team. She utilizes her background in design and art and her passion for finding good deals to help plan and source beautiful and tasteful finishes for their projects. Having grown up in a builder family, she’s also gotten sucked into the job site more than once.
Eman, Chloe’s husband, currently works as a general contractor in Virginia, and has leveraged his extensive experience and connections to help the team scale up. He’s currently working to get his WV contractors license–something we’re excited about because finding skilled contractors is always a challenge!
Project Highlights: Their First Flip
House: An old (1907) brick duplex with “lots of potential.”
Location: Hagerstown, Maryland
Deal Source: A wholesaler they met at a Martinsburg Real Estate Investor (REI) meet up.
Financing: Home Equity Loan
Project Time: About 8 months.
Total Profit: A bit over ten grand. Not huge, but they didn’t lose money. Not bad for a first flip.
Project Highlights:
“We put our son to work cleaning out the nasty basement. Specifically removing about three layers of carpet that were both on top of, and underneath, a dirt floor! Chloe helped with design and colors. Eman laid ceramic tile in the kitchen, and Larry and I did almost all the rest of the work.” -Naomi
By the end, they had completely renovated the kitchen, including new quartz countertops, gutted and redone the bathroom, painted everything, and resurfaced and restored the hardwood floors.
Here were their top three takeaways from this project.
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Old, multi-story homes are killers. Awaiting you are fun surprises like, hidden knob and tube wiring, a downspout masquerading as a sewer pipe, acres of lead paint.
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Just spring for replacement windows! “We thought it would be cool to restore the original double-hung windows and put new ropes on the window-weights. But NOPE! Never again!!!” Turns out, if you try to restore old windows, you might have to test for lead paint at the start, and again at re-installation. Whereas if you just replace them with new windows, there’s no additional testing.
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Befriend the neighbors, city officials, and be kind to your subs and family. “I still get texts from the neighbor in the other half of the duplex, who confessed she was sure she would make her life miserable. Instead, her friendship made many of our workdays enjoyable.” Being kind and honest with the city officials seemed to help getting approvals and permits. Being kind and generous with the subs was a good way to keep this project at the top of their work priorities list.
BEFORE
AFTER
Project Highlights: An Exercise In Patience 
House: 1840s single family home
Location: Shepherdstown, West Virginia
Deal Source: An investor they met at a Martinsburg Real Estate Investor (REI) meet up.
Financing: Personal cash and line of credit
Project Time: Two years from offer to acquisition, then about 5 more months to work through things with the historical commission, then about 9 months to rehab and sell.
Total Profit: About fourteen times better than the first flip!
Project Highlights:
The property was owned by two parties, and it took about two years for both parties to agree to the purchase price and sign. But patience and persistence paid off! Chloe created an artistic rendering of their plans, which proved very helpful with navigating the intricacies of the Shepherdstown Historic Commission. Naomi and Larry also did lots of extra research into the historic commission guidelines, even attending multiple town workshops, so they would better understand what they could and couldn’t do with this historic property. One of the challenges they had to overcome was proving that the house was not constructed of actual logs–which is what was recorded in the 1970s. Another was proving that an old cement block foundation on an addition had no historical significance, and thus, could be replaced with a new, sound foundation and a two-story addition. About five months passed from the time of purchase, to when they were approved to start renovations.
Here were their top three takeaways from this project.
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There are exceptions to the “Don’t buy older homes” rule.
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Patience is golden! Persistence is key. Our initial offer was accepted in 2018, and closed in 2021. Patience (and kindness) also went a long way when dealing with the Historic Commission. It took five months to get everything approved, and there was some give and take.
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There are lots of jobs in a rehab that are well worth hiring someone else to do, even if you can do it cheaper yourself.
Project Highlights: A Mountainside Goldmine
House: A not-quite-completed “new build” single family home
Location: Shannondale (Harpers Ferry, West Virginia)
Deal Source: Josh Beall, at a Martinsburg Real Estate Investor (REI) meet up.
Financing: Hard money lender.
Project Time: Four months from purchase to resale. (It sold FAST. Ten offers in 5 days!)
Total Profit: About ten times better than the first flip.
Project Highlights:
The house was partially completed (to the drywall stage). Someone had started building it back in 2007 for a family member, but things changed, and after thirteen years, they were done. Some modifications were needed, but compared to the historic homes of past flips, this house had far fewer issues and surprises. Chloe and Eman participated heavily in this project, further helping things to flow smoothly and quickly.
Here were their top three takeaways from this project.
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Good realtors make your job easy. Josh and Jess were genuinely interested in our project before, during, and after. They made sure we were making a good acquisition offer that was a bargain for us, but still fair to the seller. When it was time for us to sell, they were realistic, but optimistic, and arranged staging and helped us make good decisions for the type of property we had.
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Hard money made this purchase possible. Even though we always thought the interest rates and points were too high, we never would have been able to do this profitable deal without this short-term loan. We borrowed from a trustworthy lender we met at the Winchester REI meet-up.
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Being able to share the joy is as rewarding as making a good profit. We were able to loan the profits from this house to our daughter, who bravely invested it in her first flip in Edinburg, Virginia.
Note: Lots of AFTER pictures & a video tour here!
The Future!
Larry and Naomi continue to look for rewarding flip projects in the area, specifically Jefferson and Berkeley Counties. Now that their daughter and son-in-law have moved nearby, they are excited to tackle new houses with the next generation.
Want to learn more? Got a project lead? Larry and Naomi’s company is Larna LLC. You can email them at larnallc@gmail.com or call 304-671-9913.
If you have a Virginia project and are looking for a reputable general contractor, you can contact their son-in-law Eman at, Radiant Homes Investment Group, 703-868-1488.
