“As an actor starting out, you can have so much free time on your hands,” Winters said. “I used to have the nicest apartments and people would say, ‘Hey, can you help me out?’”
Renner and Winters, who were both in the Oscar-winning film “The Hurt Locker,” started flipping a dozen years ago, turning around a $600,000 house in the Nichols Canyon area for $900,000.
“We didn’t have any clue as to what we were doing,” Winters said of the first flip. “But we made a really nice chunk of change.”
They sank the profits into another house and another, often living in the homes they were renovating early on, he said. “We would sleep on the sofas.”
The challenge and artistic outlet has proven a fit for their talents. Winters likens the flipping process to “figuring out the Rubik’s Cube on how I can make this house flow better.”
They have sold most of their homes furnished, which meant settling in the next place and starting from scratch — sometimes without power or water, Winters said. “My office used to be in an SUV.”
