MSU Red Cedar Message Board

Yes. Now is a great time to flip houses.

Want to buy mine?

Yes. I will buy it for $50,000 sight unseen.

In this market? I wish you luck

Like any new business startup, it's going to be a lot more work than you anticipate. Be sure to have a good amount of money saved up for living expenses if you're planning on doing this as your primary job. Also be ready to work 10-12 hours/day, 7 days/week in the beginning. I don't personally flip houses, but I have looked into it.

1. I'd recommend becomming friends with a realtor so they can help you assess what houses are selling for in the area where you're looking to flip. Don't just rely on what people are listing the houses for, but actually investigate & find out what recent houses have "sold" for.

2. If youre qualified, try and do as much of the work yourself. Dealing with contractors can be a nightmare. If you must hire out, I've had really good luck hiring guys off of Craigslist. Most of them work for larger construction companies, but will do work on the side to help supplement their income. You'll get the same work for quite a bit less $.

3. Lastly, be sure to follow all local building codes/permit requirements. These can end up being a MAJOR problem if you don't know what you're doing.

In theory this sounds like a good idea, but im pretty sure home appraisers are randomly asigned so fraud like this cannot be commit.

Whaaat? Flippers do not use Appraisers, they conduct their own Value assessment. The people buying the houses are subject to their Lender ordering an Appraisal.

Not as easy as it was 5 years ago. I have a good friend who started flipping about 7 years ago. Somewhere around middle of 2007-2008 the banks started to want a lot of information from the owner/flipper on the purchase price of the house before the improvements, what improvements were made etc. Right down to wanting to see billing of material and receipts, permits, the whole 9 yards.

What this did was have the mortgage lender to the buyer start dictating what they saw as a fair profit and limit the amount they would lend on the home. What was a lucrative business went to hell real quick.

You can make money with the right property but with so many foreclosed and soon to be foreclosed homes as unsold inventory there are a lot fewer decent opportunities out there.

Pick a good market you are familiar with.

Next year, we are flipping a house we bought this year, and maybe selling another one or two rentals. We should do OK, but nothing amazing. All our places are in an area we know very well, and we certainly wouldn't be doing this in a down market.

Don't f up.

They're suppose to be random, but there are ways around that.

You an still make good money if you have immense knowledge of the purchase area and have reliable subs who do quality work cheaply. I'd estimate that less than 5% of people have the resources to be successful in today's market.

Serious question: does flipping houses serve any socially useful purpose, or is it simply the case that the people who are doing the flipping are, in aggregate, adding to the costs of the houses on the market?

Also, I suspect that many people flipping houses are looking to--or eventually end up looking to--get foreclosures cheap, cheap, cheap. I read an article recently that said some banks are getting incredibly aggressive at foreclosing. I don't pretend to know the ends-and-outs of all this, but I personally would feel like a crap-ass doing that (based on my current knowledge of foreclosure, etc.).