Flipping houses sure looks easy on the TV home improvement shows. People hire a Realtor who shows them several ‘great deals.’ The people then buy some nasty rundown house, hire the host, and voila – in a half-hour show it looks like the house should be featured in Architectural Digest.
And somehow, it only cost the homeowners $30,000 to completely gut and rehab it.
Flippers in the real world know it’s not that easy. To make money on a flip, you have to:
- Network and market to uncover great deals (they are not usually sitting on the MLS)
- Evaluate the deals to include estimating the After Repair Value (ARV), and all the rehab costs
- Find funding for the deal
- Hire contractors, do paperwork, pay for material
- Deal with contingencies and repairs uncovered during the rehab
- Pass all the inspections
- Clean the house and possibly (probably) stage it
- Market the property…
JP Moses
is a real estate investor in Memphis, TN, with experience ranging from land lording to note buying, rehabbing, and wholesaling. However, wholesaling is the area that he enjoys most and where he bring the most experience and expertise to his students.