House Flipping

A few months ago my father and I had a talk about what he might want to do with his new found free time once he retires in March. One of the ideas that he mentioned was House Flipping. House Flipping is when you buy a house with the sole purpose of selling it for a profit. Usually House Flippers buy a house with great potential but one that has been neglected by it's previous owners. They make some quick renovations like a new kitchen, landscaping, paint, carpet/hardwood floors, etc and quickly put the house back on the market.

My dad being very handy and experienced with tons of home improvement projects thought this might be a good fit for his retirement time. I told him we should look into what it takes to become a sucessful House Flipper and see if it was something we could do together. If it all worked out I'd partner up with him and help fix up these houses. Now it was time for some research to see what House Flipping was all about.

We bought some books and magazines and started reading. It seems like House Flippers need lots of great contacts in the real estate industry. It's good to know agents, mortgage lenders, foreclosure people, contractors, landscapers and tons of other folks who do this stuff day in and day out.

While House Flipping seems like a business suited for someone who's good with a hammer, it's actually more tailored for someone with salesmen's personality to create and maintain all these relationships. And you'll definitely need these relationships in order to prosper.

Our house flipping idea wasn't going to work out so my dad began focusing more on his wine making hobby and we didn't give it another thought.

Last night while flipping through the channels, I found a show on A&E Network about house flipping called Flip This House. Besides being entertaining, it shows you why some house flippers are successful. The key seems to be having good contractors and other contacts that you trust to get work done quickly.

In the show I saw last night, they bought a house for $849K, put in $50K in about a week and then sold it for $1.5mil.

It seems that buying a house, doing the work yourself and holding on to it for too long is a great way to lose money. I think I'm going to invite my dad over to watch this show while we enjoy a nice bottle of homemade wine.