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Can you put a price tag on good vibes? In the rarified world of Los Angeles real estate, the answer is a resounding yes. It’s how Claire and Sam O’Connor, two sisters who founded the O’Connor Estates team in Pacific Palisades, built their mini real estate empire. They find aesthetically challenged homes in coveted LA neighborhoods, crunch the numbers, hire interior designers to renovate them so they look good on Instagram and then list and sell them for a tidy profit.
Sounds too good to be true, right? It’s not. Claire and Sam O’Connor are living your HGTV-inspired rockstar Realtor dream life. They closed nearly $40 million in volume in 2024, “vibe flipping” luxury homes.
Can their strategy work in less expensive cities? To find out, we sat down with Claire and Sam O’Connor. They walked us through their exact strategy for building a team, finding homes to renovate and sell and which renovations get the best ROI at the closing table.
Claire and Sam O’Connor: By the numbers
- Market: Los Angeles, California
- Niche: Renovating luxury “character” homes to sell
- 2024 team sales volume + sides: $39,211,000 + 11 sides
- RealTrends Verified ranking: Claire O’Connor: 4,978
- Primary lead generation strategy: Open houses, social media
- Number of Instagram followers: 30,000
- Real estate coach: Watson Powers
- Highest ROI real estate software: Follow Up Boss, Landglide
Make your mistakes with buyers first
Most would-be luxury house flippers want to jump in the deep end. They get their license and immediately start looking for hard money lenders and homes that are flip-worthy. This is an excellent strategy if you enjoy losing money and crying yourself to sleep every night.
To succeed in renovating luxury homes, you need to understand what buyers want. The most efficient way to do that is to work with buyers, and lots of them. This will give you an intuitive sense of what they respond to. Every good buyer’s agent knows “the look” buyers get when they walk into a newly-renovated kitchen they don’t just like, but love:
“Our partnerships with designers work so well because we can give our real estate advice based on our market knowledge and the feedback we’ve gotten from buyers over the years, and they can make it beautiful.“
Making a mistake with a buyer might still sting, but unlike flipping homes when you don’t know what you’re doing, it won’t force you into bankruptcy.
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Work with a real estate coach from day one
A good real estate coach is critical for success in flipping luxury homes. Sure, you can learn the ropes of house flipping by reading sites like Bigger Pockets, but a good coach will keep you accountable and help you hone your strategy.
Claire O’Connor’s coach helped inspire her to take action on her first flip:
“I knew about this house that had been on the market for months, and it was genuinely shocking how badly it was presented. It was built by a famous California architect, Quincy Jones. It had this horrible 90s renovation and terrible furniture and terrible photography, and I knew there was more value there. It would make an ideal candidate for my first flip. I showed it to a friend who does some development, and he didn’t see the vision. Then I told my coach about it, and she said, ‘Why don’t you just message the listing team?’ So I just sent them a message and met with them at this house, and the rest is history.”
Not sure which coach will work for you? Check out our deep dive on real estate coaches here:
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Build your team before you start looking for listings
Claire O’Connor started her renovate-to-sell journey with a listing, but today she recommends building out your team first. Having a team in place means you can hit the ground running instead of scrambling to find capital and talented designers to increase the home’s value.
Here’s her formula for an effective renovate-to-sell team:
- An agent who knows the market and what buyers want, and has the marketing chops to present the home on the market
- A creative interior designer who can bring the agent’s vision to life
- A developer, investor or hard money lender who is on board with the vision
Finding the right people for your team isn’t easy. The most talented designers in your city will be booked for months, if not years, and new designers might not have the experience to bring your vision to life.
Here’s the strategy one of O’Connor’s buyer agents uses to find designers and listings:
“She finds cool up-and-coming designers on Instagram, builds relationships with them and then pounds the pavement to find off-market listings they can collaborate on.”
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How to find vibe flip-worthy homes
Once you have your team in place, the O’Connor’s suggest pounding the pavement (literally) by knocking on doors in your farm area to find listings. You can also scour MLS listings to look for poorly marketed homes with vibe flipping potential, or work your sphere to drum up pocket listings or off-market homes.
Here’s what to look for:
And what to avoid until you have a few flips under your belt:
Renovations that have the best ROI in 2025
Asking which renovations reliably increase a home’s selling price is a bit like asking, “How do I speak French?” There is no one-size-fits-all fixes that work for every home in every market. The O’Connors rely on a blend of deep market knowledge, taste and the vibe-building skills of the designers they work with when deciding how to renovate a home to sell.
However, when pressed, they revealed three renovations that almost always add value to a home. How much value? Well, that puts us back in “how do I speak French” territory. They were quick to point out that their advice comes with the proverbial grain of salt.
Renovation 1: Increasing permitted square footage
Generally speaking, larger homes sell for more money than smaller homes. However, rising construction and material costs mean eking out an ROI from an addition can be challenging. Instead, the O’Connors look for homes with unpermitted square footage and work with an expediting company to get the square footage permitted.
Renovation 2: Taking (calculated) design and staging risks
Part of creating a vibe that sells is taking risks. Everyone can tell a cheap Home Depot cash grab flip the minute they walk through the door. They might not be able to articulate why, but they’ll know.
The O’Connors work tirelessly with their designers to create a stylish, trendy vibe in their listings. Their goal is to create Instagram-worthy listing photos and videos and to wow anyone who walks through the door:
“I think what our team really excels at is creating a feeling and an emotion in our listings. The first impression someone has when they walk in the door of one of our listings is paramount.”
Sweat the details. Fresh-cut flowers might seem like overkill for an open house. Still, they help create an emotional tone for the listing that matches the professional photography and videos they pay for to promote the listing on social media. Here’s why it works: Studies show that people make decisions based on their emotions and back them up with logic.
Renovation 3: Improving the layout
The O’Connors also said that awkward layouts can be deal killers for otherwise desirable homes. However, tearing down walls can be expensive and won’t always lead to a higher selling price. Do your research before changing a home’s layout.
Your turn
Know an agent who’s thriving despite the odds and has actionable insights to share? We’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us here: vetted@housingwire.com.
