Newbie from Minneapolis - seeking advice on getting into flipping

[Sarah Burridge]

Hi all,

My name is Sarah Burridge. This is my first post here - I wanted to introduce myself and also get your advice/thoughts on what my partner and I are thinking about doing in the next couple of years.

We live in Minneapolis, and have purchased and done a bit of fixing up to two duplexes in the past two years. We live in one duplex and rent out one unit, and the other duplex is fully rented. We actually really love our apartment and plan to stay there long-term, though we will probably want to expand our unit into the the attic eventually.

Both of us are currently working at desk jobs that we don't especially enjoy, and have been trying to figure out how to make the jump into more flexible work. Our duplexes have improved our long-term financial outlook dramatically, but that doesn't really change our circumstances in the short-term.

Recently, we've been looking at flipping, which seems to be happening a lot in Minneapolis. For example, a house in our area recently sold for $66,000 and was relisted two months later for $189,000, with a new kitchen and a finished basement, among other things - and went under contract in two days. It just seems like there's so much opportunity in our city right now.

So we are sort of tossing around the possibility of getting our licensures in general contracing (me) and realty (him), and attempting to do this professionally. I have gotten to be pretty handy since we bought our first property and have amassed a respectable tool collection as well, though I still have a ton to learn. Licensures would probably take a year or two to get sorted out, but it seems like the best way to maximize our profits from resale, and it would also allow us to basically pay ourselves for our own services, rather than us slaving away at our desk jobs while we pay others to do these things.

Lacking an enormous pile of money, we are contemplating asking family members for short-term loans. We have family who have expressed interest in this in the past, after seeing how our little duplex ventures have worked out. However, we'd probably need to mortgage our flips, at least at first, and devote our family members' loans to rehab.

Good idea? Bad idea? What am I failing to take into consideration here? While we are not planning to make the jump right away, we would like to be setting the wheels in motion re: working on realtor/contractor licenses over the winter.

Thanks in advance for your insights!