Nathan Morris is a builder. During his nearly 30 year career as member of the legendary Grammy-Award winning R&B group, Boyz II Men, he has been responsible for shaping harmonies on such hits as “End of the Road” and “I’ll Make Love to You” along with his fellow bandmates Shawn Stockman and Wanya Morris. While Boyz II Men still performs regularly, including a residency at The Mirage in Las Vegas, Morris has been shifting his interests to real estate and, more specifically, flipping houses. This passion has led him to star in the brand new show Hit Properties with Nathan Morris on the DIY Network.
The show follows the singer on his journey to renovate and flip a 8,200 square foot abandoned mansion in Miami, Florida. We caught up with Nathan Morris to find out if he has any advice for people looking to get into glipping houses and what the future holds for Philly’s own Boyz II Men.
From Boyz II Men to flipping houses
Boyz II Men singer Nathan Morris. Photo Credit: Mariah Bowers
What first got you interested in flipping houses?
Well, it’s funny. I’ve been investing in real estate for a while. Some pretty lucrative deals with my manager and another partners that we have. As far as the construction and design stuff, I’ve done that more on the personal side with my homes and everything that I’ve done but I’ve never really brought the two together. Over the last year and a half or so, we’ve been trying to do things of that nature and this happened to be one of the bigger projects that we were doing and we wanted to come up with an idea to do a show around it and it made sense. For me, it makes sense to do both at the same time because I love doing the construction and the interior design stuff. I was invested anyway. So, it made all of the sense in the world to me.
Did flipping this house help you understand the difference between investing time and investing money?
Sweat equity is important! I realized that from flying back and forth from Las Vegas every weekend — or every other weekend — when I had to get there to work on the show. There is a different understanding of it when you do it. When you think about why people tend to charge so much for kitchens and bathrooms it’s because there is a lot of time and sweat equity put into it. But when you do it this way, you do understand what the differences are.
What were some of the hurdles that you encountered during this project?
As a creative person and a creative artists, the toughest hurdle for me was focusing on staying neutral. Because when you’re flipping a house for a sale there’s a difference versus buying a property that you’ll keep and then maybe sell one day. You’ve got to keep it as neutral as possible so you can get as many people as possible to come through as you can. In my case, I’m creative so I like to do a lot of different things. But, I had to kind of back it down just a bit to make sure that it wasn’t corny and so “blah” that it was boring but it was neutral enough to still have some energy and some pop that people would want to come through and invision themselves living in that house.
Not injecting your own personality seems like such a thin tightrope to walk.
It’s one of the things I learned early when I sold my first house and moved. I did all of these custom things in my house and the realtor came in and was like “alright, we’re going to paint over these walls!” I was like “Oh, I did a whole lot of gold finish painting on these walls!” and they were like “yeah, you’re trying to sell this house. I know you love it. But people need to come in and invision themselves living in this home!”
It kind of crushed me a little bit. But I had to realize that it’s not my house anymore. Once you start to sell it, it’s not your house anymore. So, you have to learn how to detach. I learned early if you stick with neutral colors and a neutral pallet you can make it work. You just have to spice it up so it’s not boring.
Do you have any advice for those looking to get into flipping houses?
Yeah, I think that’s it. I think nowadays because home flipping is so popular you get these designers who come in and try to put a stamp on it. That’s great. But you still have to walk a tightrope because you channel a buyer if you become to personal. You limit the pool of people who will want to come and walk through your home. You’ve got to try to make it as neutral as possible. That would be my advice to anyone doing it.
What is going on with Boyz II Men? Do you guys have any upcoming plans?
We always have plans. It’s funny — maybe a lot of people don’t know — but we’ve had a residency in Las Vegas for the last five years. So we’ve been out there performing at least 20-22 weekends a year alongside all of the corporate gigs and stuff that we do in between. Then we take on specialty projects. We still do music but I don’t say that we would do the typical “let’s go into the studio and make an album” thing. But we’ll do the specialty albums that are a little different. We just did a doo-wop album that was a collection of classic doo-wop records and we jumped on an album with Charlie Puth that we thought that was really great. We do things now in our career that we enjoy doing because we don’t feel like there is much that we can do that would hinder our career. Over 27 years, we’ve built up enough creative options that we have the options to do what we like and what we don’t like. It just makes life a lot easier.
Hit Properties with Nathan Morris premieres on the DIY Network on Saturday, October 6th at 10:30pm.
