From flipping homes to stars of reality show 'Flip Men'

SALT LAKE CITY — Mike Baird earned a B.A. in business management from BYU's Marriott School in 2002. But even before graduating, he made up his mind there would be no corporate employer or high-rise office in his future.

That's because Baird, despite not knowing how to hang a door or even paint a wall, aspired to build a business out of flipping foreclosed homes.

So for his graduation present, Mike's father took him to Home Depot and bought him $700 worth of tools — including his first tool belt, hammer and tape measure.

Nine years later, Baird's business of buying, restoring and selling residential property is not only thriving even after the housing bubble burst, but Baird and his partner, Doug Clark, now find themselves in the middle of a roiling national debate about best practices for dealing with the glut of foreclosed properties that weigh down housing markets across the country.

Perhaps you're curious just what kind of bona fides Clark and Baird possess that qualify them to dispense expert-level analysis on an issue of national importance. They're the freshly minted stars of "Flip Men," a new reality TV show about the acquisition and restoration of foreclosures.

"Flip Men" is an unscripted series that follows Clark and Baird as they juggle their revolving portfolio of 15-20 foreclosure properties in Salt Lake County. Each half-hour episode documents a single property from the time of purchase — often sight unseen — at one of the daily foreclosure auctions in Salt Lake City's Matheson Courthouse all the way through to its eventual sale. The show airs Tuesdays at 9:30 p.m. MDT on Spike TV.

Clark and Baird, who have been flipping properties together for five years, are ambivalent about their newfound status as reality TV stars. They earnestly embrace the attention and efficiently navigate publicity requests, but also consciously wrestle with stereotypes about their line of work that potentially could cast them as parasites feeding off the misfortune of families who've lost their homes to foreclosure.

"There is this real negative pushback about real estate investors, that they're criminals who cause a lot of the market speculation," Baird explains.

"There's a lot of negativity there. But believe me — no one else is going to get involved in buying these properties and making them livable again. … Nobody's fixing them up except the free market and investors that are out there doing this.