‘Million Dollar Zombie Flips’ Star James Dainard Unveils Moody Bar at Arizona Dream House That He Flipped His Way To Affording

“Million Dollar Zombie Flips” star James Dainard makes a killing flipping nightmare houses into dream homes—including almost every one of his own abodes.

Indeed, the Scottsdale, AZ, mansion Dainard calls home is the only domain he’s moved his family into that didn’t first require a life-saving overhaul, he reveals in the latest edition of Celebrity Sanctuary.

Typically, the 42-year-old real estate investor snaps up “zombie” homes—abandoned properties that are stuck in foreclosure—to quickly remodel and resell for a monster return on his investment.

The savvy strategy is on full display on “Million Dollar Zombie Flips,” which premiered its second season April 11, as the A&E personality has applied it countless times on the series and over the course of his 20-year career when tackling both professional and personal renovation projects.

“We do something called the live-in flip,” explains Dainard about the approach he and his wife, Clair Dainard, often take when purchasing properties for themselves.

“Our first original place was a zombie condo,” he shares. “It was trashed. We went in, renovated it, increased the value, increased the equity, and then we could sell it, and it's tax-free gains because you live in the house. 

“We've always used that to trade up,” he adds. “We've done that six times. This last house is my wife's dream house and so, you know, we earned our way to get there.”

Though much of Dainard’s real estate work is centered in Seattle, his most recent family residences have been located outside the Pacific Northwest. After living in Newport Beach, CA, for five years, James, Clair, their son Jameson, 12, daughter Bianca, 10, and four family dogs relocated to their Scottsdale manse in August 2024.

The change of address also marked a change to their “live-in flip” routine. To date, the five-bedroom, eight-bathroom, 9,200-square-foot French chateau-style estate is the most turnkey home the Dainard family has ever owned.

“Every one of our houses has been a zombie house except for the one that we just bought in Arizona. It's the only house that I've ever bought and moved into,” states Dainard.

While the move-in ready experience forced Dainard outside his comfort zone, he’s found complete contentment at the new dwelling, particularly inside his moody home bar. Here, Dainard details all the design upgrades he’s done to give the place new life.

The first time I ever partnered with a flipper, where I put up the money and they flipped the house, it was in Arizona. When I did that project, I kind of just fell in love. Arizona's really easy to live [in]. There's restaurants and things to do and that's what really attracted me to it.

Then when I found this neighborhood, it's a really green neighborhood, so there's grass and trees and it doesn't look all desert. That's important, coming from the Northwest, to me. I have to see trees. And so once I found that neighborhood, I was like, “Wow. It's warm, it’s sunny, people are happy.” That's the best of all worlds to me.

What made me choose the home was my wife looked at me and goes, “This is my dream house.” She has moved quite a bit of times with me and this is her dream house.

The way the house sits, it's so prominent. When you hit the corner, the street presence and the drive up presence, I would say is next to none. As soon as I pulled up, I was like, “Oh, wow. This is a place.”

It’s a big French chateau built in 2016, which is the newest house I've ever bought. It’s a little bit more traditional because it is a French home done by an architect named [Mark] Candelaria, who's a very renowned French architect in Arizona.

It had a very timeless feel, but it was a little bit dated. It [had] a lot of warm whites throughout, had a lot of natural travertine-style stone, a lot of dark woods, very traditional cabinets. I'm actually a big midcentury contemporary guy. It's polar opposite of what I usually buy. 

We've renovated just kind of light things throughout it. We did rip out all the tile on the main floor and we put in marble black and white checkered [tile] throughout. We added a lot of wall paneling and wainscoting. 

We have taken it from a very neutral home where everybody's gonna like it 'cause there wasn't much not to like—now we've added a lot more style to it as far as the checkered floors, darker, moodier things, swapping out the light fixtures, [and] giving it a little bit more of a new age feel. But I don't want to take away from that French architecture, so we're trying to be very subtle with it.

The cool thing about French architecture is you don't need to make it loud and dress it up because it's supposed to be timeless.

For me, a traditional French home should have a lot of millwork details because it's all about that craftsmanship and detail work. There's a lot of millwork. It was 8,000 square feet of wall paneling throughout the entire house and then we did add in a lot of wallpaper. We added wallpaper to the dining [room] and our bar room to give it more of a moody element.

It's the lightest renovation we've ever bought, as far as moving into.

It was so weird for me because the fact that they gave us keys and we can move in that day—I had never bought a house that way in my life. I don't know if I liked it. Like, every project we've ever done as a family for ourselves, they've always been very big and very challenging, but then once you're done, you're like, “OK, I built this beautiful home for my family.” I kind of like the intensity. The anxiety keeps me going.

It was a different experience, but it was also kind of relieving, too, because it's like we finally earned our way to where we didn't have to rip a whole house apart for a year and a half before we moved in. 

But you know what I don't like? When I usually do them, I renovate everything and so everything's new. I like to get it done upfront. This one, it's like the constant bill. Homeownership is expensive. My AC units just went out.

When you're renovating as many homes as we do, and do as much as we do in Seattle, you do want to be able to just take a pause from life. A place where I can spend good family time—that is my sanctuary. Like weekends, I really try to just narrow in on family time. I work a lot of hours Monday through Friday and so being at home as a family unit or creating memories there, that's the sanctuary space for me. 

It’s the home, but the room that I love the most is like a large secondary media bar area where the kids aren't running everywhere, because we have sometimes, like, 10 boys over and, like, eight little girls, and they're running around, they're going crazy. This is like our space where it’s, like, “We don't need clutter here. This is where the grown-ups hang.” It stays a little bit more organized. 

When you come in the home, my wife has her office on the left. There's a bathroom, and then there's a big, large bonus area, and it's got a bar built in. It's a large room; it's probably 30 feet, 40 feet long. 

You come in, there's a bar that we made very moody. We painted all the cabinets black, put in some dark countertops, and then we wrapped it all with some dark, deep, green, high-end wallpaper. We built in four TVs, so there's a main TV with two TVs on the wall.

There's a TV behind the bar and then it naturally leads out to our undercover patio with the fireplace. There's French doors that go out to there, so there's a lot of good indoor-outdoor space. It just has a very dark, moody, kind of cool, eclectic vibe. Adults only or kids if they're behaved. 

We have a lot of family photos. The photos are always the biggest thing for memories, but my client, she’s been a client of mine for 10 years and she bought me this huge lion painting—I’m really into animals and eventually I want to open an animal sanctuary. It's a picture of a male lion that was done by an artist and it's just this beautiful photo. It’s a really cool piece.

Because it's got a dark background, it just ties in really, really well. 

Sentimental-wise, I think it's more the hangout aspect [of the room]. The guests love it. We got our bar there. We love hosting and entertaining. We have a lot of people come over all the time. I like that feeling where people can just kind of walk inside your house, that neighborhood feel, like, no doorbells just come in, hang out.

This is definitely a spot where people pop in and we're just kind of hanging. Especially when you're moving to a new city, it's been a great spot to actually build friendships and relationships.

I don't know if I'll ever have a forever home, but I told my wife and kids that we would not move until they’re graduated from high school. It’s too big of a house so once they go out of high school, we will be downsizing.

We're very passionate about traveling and I kind of want to live in multiple cities throughout the year. I want to live on the East Coast, West Coast, central, so I don't know if it's our forever home. And honestly, I have a problem, I have to sell things.