I did a couple times. Seems interesting but I assume you have to know how to fix the house to do well.
I saw it too. I would love to get into that, it seems like something I woiuld actually enjoy doing. However I suck when it comes to fixing things. I wish I knew more.
I watch the show. However, notice almost all the houses are in California or in Las Vegas. That's where you get the crazy wild prices. Flipping in Houston would be buying a $60k house and putting in $20k and selling for $90k. Good money to be sure but you're not making $150k like in these shows.
A worst case scenario: 10 mistakes that made flipping a flop By Noelle Knox, USA TODAY SACRAMENTO — If there's a poster child for everything that went wrong in the real estate boom, it just might be Casey Serin. In one year, the 24-year-old website-designer-turned-real estate-flipper bought eight homes in four states — and in every case but one, he put no money down. At his peak, in April, Serin had $93,000 he'd taken out of the homes as he bought them. By July, he was broke, desperate for one last deal. Now? Serin has $140,000 in credit card and credit-line debt and five houses in foreclosure. Last month, he started iamfacingforeclosure.com, a blog that's drawn both notes of condolence and expletive-laced condemnation. "I did some stuff shady, but I'm not going to hide from it," he says. "Somebody can learn from it. I've already had people contact me and say, 'Hey, I'm in the same place.' " The rise and fall of Casey Serin is a tale with moral and financial lessons for real estate buyers, lenders and regulators. Having consumed real estate guides and seminars, Serin made just about every mistake a newbie could make — most of them, he admits, were no one's fault but his own — from fudging loan applications to buying homes sight-unseen. That he began with bold dreams of class mobility makes his fall a peculiarly American saga. Serin didn't know much about real estate at 19, when he bought his first condo. As a website designer, Serin was earning $35,000 a year at S.M.A.R.T. Association, a maker of marketing systems for health care providers. He quit to start his own Web-design company but couldn't earn enough to cover his mortgage. So he moved in with his parents and sold the condo a few months later. His profit: $30,000. "My goal was to reinvest that money," Serin says. "But I also needed a car. My car was falling apart. I used some of it to keep me going, and for living expenses and things. And I used some of it to go on dates." He also stopped working for three months. By the time he married in 2004, the money was gone. He and his wife used credit cards to cover living costs because Serin's business wasn't bringing in enough money. When he found a job that summer as a Web designer, the couple had piled up nearly $20,000 in card debt, half of which they'd spent on real estate courses. He bought Carleton Sheets' No Down Payment real estate program and attended seminars by Russ Whitney, author of The Millionaire Real Estate Mindset, and others. "Sure, they used pressure sales tactics to get you into it, but looking back on it, I don't regret it," he says. "They told me how to start safe, but I really didn't start safe. I went all out. So it was my own fault." As with all investors, Serin's goal was to build wealth. He was intrigued by Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money — That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not! "My eyes were opening up: 'Oh, OK, this is how the world works.' " I think he was more of a failure due to his slacking, greed, and taking short cuts rather than the pitfalls of flipping, but a lesson nonetheless. With my experience of dealing w/ contractors & repair men, I think this would be a major source of stress among other things.
Well, you wouldn't be actually fixing the things - you come up with an idea on what to upgrade in the house (kitchen, bath, living room, etc.) come up with a budget and hire contractors for the certain jobs. It's more management than anything else- you want to upgrade the property within your budget to get the biggest bang for your buck.
Ironicly, there was a flipping show on tonight called 'property ladder' that featured a couple buying a house in Spring, TX. The house cost them 120, their expenses were 10k, and after 3 months, they hadn't sold the house and the wife had to go back to work so they wouldnt go bankrupt. The show ended there. People make mistakes when they think they can buy a house on the cheap and flip it for 5 figures. It happens, but not often and very rarely to these knucklehead novices on these shows, and the shows even help them with advisors. Flipping houses is for experts who know what they are doing. The lady on the show I saw tonight was prying up carpet tackboard with a hammer alone. That says it all. Most folks don't know what they are doing and will get burned. The real money is in rental property. You buy a house on the cheap that needs superficial repairs, and rent it for more than you pay out in mortgage, insurance, taxes, etc. A good job is getting back $200 a month. Most people are greedy so they go for the flip, but $200 a month x 10 houses x 12 months a year= 24,000 a year, every year, and that's much better than the people in the show I saw tonight. Not only are you making that money, every year you own the house, it appreciates and you gain more equity. So yeah, these flipping shows are fun, but don't get sucked in by the hype or rush of quick cash, because it takes experience to pull it off.
Yeah, the one thing I really appreciate from the show is that you can tell both 'teams' have the business down like a well-oiled machine. And you know there's more behind the scenes work that doesn't make it in the episode because it's not entertaining TV.
Flip that House usually features experienced house flippers...Property Ladder seems to almost always feature novice to beginner flippers who get in over their head. One of the episodes I saw featured a newlywed couple just out of high school that decide to flip a house; did absolutely no research on the neighborhood (poor to lower middle class neighborhood, lots of hosues for sale already), market, or house (no home inspection done), overspent on their expenses because of their lack of research and thorough investigating...husband had to quit his job just to get the home finished (they opted to get most of the work done themselves)...in the end they got really lucky and ended up selling the house in 9 weeks and managed to break even...though considering the husband quit his job they probably lost money in the long run. And then I recently found Flip this House; pretty cool that it's based in SA.
That was the first mistake. The Greater Houston area is not a prime flipping market, and actually, might be one of the worst in the U.S. because houses here are so cheap to begin with. There just isn't alot of room for a decent profit here like there is in California or other parts of the country.
