Who has flipped a house?
 

just wondering if anyone here has ever flipped a house? My friend and i found this nice piece of property that could use some fixing up.

its a farm house and barn and 2 car garage all on a 4 acre lot (assuming the original owner sold the farm land off since there are newly built houses behind it in the 750k-1m range) all for $179k.

From what we have seen so far the house on the inside looks pretty well maintained, just needs a bit of sprucing up with new carpets/hardwood and paint.

Exterior of the house needs a good overhaul (new paint, new window trims, ivy taken down, a few trees/bushes move, etc.)

the barn would be our major project. i know it needs a new roof for sure. our plan is to convert this barn into the ultimate garage/man cave while keeping the the barn appearance. i am assuming the worse when it comes to renovating that barn lol

and the 2 car garage is just for storage lol.

http://images.longandfoster.com/View...coId=16&size=0
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and the newly built houses behind it
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Boxed in yellow
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b2...Untitled-3.jpg

i intended this thread to be in the lounge...but i guess i should have posted in the pictures...if need be, mods, please move. Sorry :-) lol

I'd just buy it and live there. Looks pretty sweet, lot of land.

thats the plan. it would be my primary residence, along with 2 other of my EXTREMELY good friends from high school, for a decent amount of time. we practically live together now since we hang out so much.

+1

if you can get it for a reasonable price it looks pretty swell... I live on a farmhouse with 30+ acres. We have a barn, but theres nothing we can do with ours to make it garage style.. we had to build a full metal building to do that.

Alot of times, when you go to flipping a house, unseen problems show up and it becomes a pain in the ass.

Also, I'm not sure how your state works.. but permits may be required to do work...a contractors license may have to be provided in order to do the work.. inspectors...all that garbage.

I'd check into all these things before going in and buying it and doing the work..

Yeah I'd definitely wait on flipping a house until you're financially stable. Plus flipping a house and then living in it kind of defeats the purpose. There's a lot of work and money involved and time is of the essence. You gotta make sure you can afford the mortgage for the amount of time you are renovating the place and then if it doesn't sell quickly, you're kinda up shit creek.

I would just be careful buying a house with a bunch of buddies. You may be really good friends now, but anything can happen when money is involved. Say one guy wants to move out, then you have to buy them out and everything and things can get ugly. If anything, one person buys the house and then just charge rent for the roommates.

building permits are required but the work doesnt have to be contracted out. and even if it does, i can contracted to my uncle who has been in the business for 25 years.

you did watch the whole fucking real estate world just implode right? Flipping was a product of the bubble and can't be supported well outside that sort of absurdly over optimistic hyper-inflationary housing market. You can add value to a home with some sweat but the cash investment in supplies and tools is still fairly large and the final product is still at the mercy of a very very tenuous marketplace right now.

A longstanding mantra of the upwardly mobile in America: "If you want to accumulate wealth in the long term, buy real estate." Notice there's no mention of short term liquidity in that. Because you should never count on there being any short term upside.

If you want to risk that kind of money with a similar chance of gain, sell short on the Euro.

Bad.Idea.

I agree. But It didn't affect all of us. Some of us have continued to make money. :D



Flipping is a bad idea. Too much work for a lump sum of cash. Buy a 2-3 bedroom house under 120k, rent it out. You don't have to be too heavily involved, and better yet, they are paying your principle. Plus some cash flow for you every month.

An even worse idea is splitting a mortgage with your friends. One of you's got to own the house, and chances are, they are going to leave that person with the payment eventually. Money ruins friendships, and relationships.



edit: 4,000 posts!

So true.

The best thing you could hope for is that living community wanting to expand, and buy your property.

bingo again.

but hell if I could afford that property, Id just live there myself and wait for the buyout offer.

If I were him i'd keep it an eyesore so they definitely want to get rid of it. Then you have them by the balls.

The only thing that would tell me that the community owner is not interested is the fact that he HASN'T bought the property yet.

That area could hold 3-4 homes. And i'm sure he could pick it up for around 150-160 grand out the door.

Now days if you want to make money on property you are better off renting. My retired uncle has been doing it for awhile

Right after the housing market crash my he started buying duplexes like crazy. I rent from him right now and he owns more than half the street I live on. Every single place is occupied and he is very specific about picking his tenents. When he started buying the street was crap (it's called mountain ash and they called it mountain trash) but every place he gets his hands on he makes look better further raising all of his properties values. Now the street is actually a nice place to live.

ironically i watched a movie on the housing industry in my business class today. yea, its a bad idea to flip. the more i watched and thought about it...i'd rather buy it, and rent out the rooms to my friends if anything. lol.

good idea to buy the house.

make your friends sign a lease agreement. 1 year.

That would be the way to go. Flipping is only really beneficial if you get some beat up place for almost nothing and then have a good hook up with contractors or are able to do a lot of the work yourself. In a lot of the shows I've watched on flipping, the most successful people are the ones where there's a guy who handles the money and business side, and another guy handles the actual work. Labor ain't cheap, especially if you want good work done.

Going into it with buddies sounds like the risky part to me. A lot of knowledge, planning, and financial backup sounds like is needed.

The only think I can really add to the topic is thay my girlfriends mother has lived in a few houses for a short period and sold them for profit after fixing them up a bit. She never did it purposely, just can't live in a house without making it nice and moves all the time.

If you're going to buy a house, then definitely rent out the to friends. That's what I plan on doing in 3 yrs time. Charge a few buddies $400 a month for rent and there is your mortgage.

the labor part isnt the problem. i have family in the hvac/plumbing, construction, electrician etc, and i can do most of the work myself (minus LARGE scale wiring, i hate wiring). i have a long time to think about this though. thanks for the input.

i bought my house 6 years ago, remodeled the whole thing. I wasnt planning to flip it though, i just wanted a nice house. It is a ton of work to completly remodel a house.

for what its worth, my house is worth 21,000 less today than it was 6 years ago.

in order to flip you have to buy a foreclosure that is WAAAAYYYYY under market value, renovate it for under half of the differnce between price and what its worth, then hope to hell somebody would buy it.

That's cool that you know people and all, but the bad thing about that is most likely they aren't getting paid or not getting paid very much. That means they'll get the work done whenever they can since it would be like a side project. You're only one man, and while it seems you can do everything, trust me, all that crap adds up and becomes a pain. Definitely take your time thinking about and wait until the market starts going back up cause right now, people are buying cheap houses cause they can.

Yeah. When people ask me to do electrical work as a favor, I tend to do a shitty job.

I keep family/friends away from my work/business.

actually, i should say i love wiring stuff...in cars...houses is is different thing b/c of all the damn regulations.

First I would like to say, I didn't realize Kudzu has made it's way that far North. ( 1st pic of the house). Have fun dealing with that shit in the next few decades.. LOL,

But flipping any house or just trying to sell your house can be tedious, People want all new stuff, but you have to stay on your budget to make a profit.. Some people won't notice less expensive stuff like, appliances, carpet, flooring, if it's new it still looks ok.

A big selling point is Curb Appeal. Landscaping can add loads of value.. Watch some of those shows on HG channel, they're pretty informative, and sometimes fun to watch. ( my wife makes me watch them with her).. :o

I work industrially so we don't have inspectors. Just Underwriters Laboratory. They aren't too strict.


I did a little residential when I was right out of high school, and I never got any shit. I usually did everything the correct way.