How to Find and Fund Your Next Deal: What Asheville Investors Are Doing as the Market Cools

Asheville investors are not walking away from deals, they are just running tighter numbers before saying yes. That was the message at How To Find & Fund Your Next Deal, the July 2025 AVLmeetup at The Mule at Devil's Foot Beverage, where hard money lender Drew Axtell of Heritage Private Capital, property manager Sandra Peplinska of Iron Creek Properties, and longtime Asheville flipper Thomas Wolfe of Lobo Builders compared notes on sourcing and financing deals in a market that has flipped from sellers' favor to buyers'.

Key Takeaways

• Attendance came in at 73, down from an average of 114 the year before. Zac Ruiz read the drop as fair-weather investors sitting out now that the market has gotten harder.
• Thomas Wolfe has flipped houses in Asheville full time since 1997. His first deal came from showing up every Tuesday at 6:15 a.m. at the Ingles in Oteen to grab "the I Wanna," a classifieds sheet, before anyone else could, a tactic from a Ron LeGrand seminar his father sent him to.
• Drew Axtell lends around 70% loan to value at Heritage Private Capital. A brand-new borrower typically brings about 10% down, and Heritage funds the rest, including closing costs, with terms improving as the relationship builds.
• Sandra Peplinska closed her first investment property in December; by the July panel, six or seven months later, she said the numbers she originally ran "are not" holding up.
• Thomas Wolfe pointed the room to The Daily Deed, a $10-a-month tool from local Brent Sefton that publishes the prior day's closings across Buncombe County, a way to stay aware of where prices are landing.

Why the Panel Opened With a Flywheel, Not a Forecast

Zac Ruiz opened with the Ruiz Report recap: supply beating demand, listings sitting longer, price reductions becoming common after years where that barely happened locally. He turned to Jim Collins's Good to Great and its five stages of decline, arguing many investors are now in stage three, denial of risk and peril, telling themselves rates will drop any day instead of accepting the market has changed. His antidote was Collins's hedgehog concept (what you can be best at in Western North Carolina) and flywheel, illustrated with AVLmeetup's own loop: authentic relationships lead to shared knowledge, which leads to transactions, which leads to reinvesting in and growing the community.

How Sandra and Drew Found Their First Deals

Sandra Peplinska found her first property through Mike, a wholesaler and hard money lender she met at an AVLmeetup event. Drew Axtell's first deal came through his brother-in-law, who found the property; Drew managed it start to finish using a hard money lender who has since become his business partner.

Tighter Buy Boxes and What Still Pencils

Every panelist described getting more conservative. Axtell said Heritage is "sharpening our pencils a lot more," underwriting both today's value and a value nine to twelve months out on every deal; if it does not pencil, they pass. Wolfe pointed to a widening gap in his construction business, customers clustering at $200,000 and below or $1,000,000 and up with a thinning "missing middle" in between, a topic AVLmeetup's 4th Annual Affordable Housing Panel picked up the following month.

Sourcing has gotten more deliberate too. Axtell talks to wholesalers every week, evaluating each lead as both a possible loan and a possible purchase. Peplinska drives Asheville neighborhoods looking for distressed properties, then checks GIS records for ownership.

What still works: Wolfe sees demand for vacant, buildable lots, including subdividing a larger parcel into several. Peplinska said four- and five-bedroom houses are in demand because a group of roommates can split the rent down to a more affordable number each. Axtell's lending "gold standard" is a 3-bedroom, 2-bath property; Heritage does not lend on new construction and refers those deals out.

On partnerships, the panel agreed fit matters more than access to money. Axtell warned a high-net-worth partner who has only invested in stocks can become, in his words, "a train wreck." Wolfe, who has had several failed partnerships, said plainly, "I'm not a partner dude," and credited knowing yourself as the real first step before taking on anyone else's money.

Questions

• Is it safer to react to the market or try to predict it? Peplinska said she runs her numbers, and if they work, she moves and figures out the rest along the way. Wolfe called a reactive stance a hasty one, and said slowing down to make deliberate adjustments is what turns reacting into predicting. Axtell tied it to patience: he looks at hundreds of deals a month but buys very few.

• What loan-to-value and down payment should a new borrower expect? Axtell said Heritage generally lends around 70% loan to value based on the after-repair value. A first-time borrower typically brings roughly 10% of the deal, and Heritage funds the rest, including closing costs, with terms improving as the borrower builds a track record.

• Do deals in Asheville actually pencil as both a flip and a rental? AVLmeetup co-host Rodrigo Afanador asked the panel directly, noting he has struggled to find deals that work both ways. Axtell said the loans he has underwritten in Asheville have penciled for both, though he stays strict on loan-to-value at the sale point. Wolfe said the combination has not worked reliably in Asheville in over a decade, but argued the storm's downward pressure on both purchase and rental prices creates an opening now, since he expects rents to recover first.

• What is the biggest mistake people make when raising capital? Wolfe said he has given up too much of a deal out of fear of not getting funded, and it went badly; his advice is to set real boundaries first. Peplinska said investors rush, skip details, and get so focused on profit they miss red flags. Axtell watches for unrealistic timelines: a pitched "slam dunk" puts him at a 90% chance of passing.

• If someone has a deal but no money or experience, what should they do first? Axtell said find someone who has already done flips and bring them the deal. That person typically already has the contractor, lender, and attorney lined up, so partnering assembles the rest of the team fast. His broader take: "If the deal works, you'll find the money."

Zac Ruiz closed with a plug for the Ruiz Report, a monthly Buncombe County market breakdown he has published since March 2020, and REMC.co, an MLS analytics dashboard covering every market participant, from brokerages down to individual listings and agents.