Newbie in Pittsburgh - Just finished our 1st flip

[Neil Metzger]

I am a DC native in Pittsburgh, decided a few months ago to finally jump in and try a house flip. I had run a property management company in Western PA for about a year and had gotten to know the basics of the rental business, and more importantly, met some very skilled tradesmen.  We bought a vacant property, completely renovated it, and are now waiting on what will hopefully be a quick offer. 

I am very interested in learning about strategies to buy, renovate, refinance, and rent properties long term. Flips are great, but building a portfolio of rental properties is more appealing to me from a long term financial standpoint. 

I am hoping to collaborate and learn as much as I can on this forum. I have a great crew of guys waiting on the next project, and there are quite a few opportunities in P'burgh to buy wholesale properties to renovate and rent. 

[Rick Turman]

Congrats and welcome aboard Neil! Sounds like a mirror image of our first. We also listed early August and had planned for an early July listing to market. We kept adding items to the home as we worked because we were behind schedule. This led to our thinking that we could fall into the next best level of value.

We had our first open house 3 weeks in and couldn't keep people out of the house! We thought for sure we were getting an offer. Wonderful feedback.... Everyone loved it..... 22 people walked out house and signed oir books however a week has past and not one offer. This tells me the price may be a bit too high for the area. With this being said, we dropped 10k and punted today hopefully that offer will roll in-in the next few days or week.

We will still make a great profit for our first, but will be no where near where we thought it would be after all was said and done. I think of it this way, our loss is now out gain. More or less like tuition. Had we not done what we (you and I and everyone here on BP) have done since day 1, we would not know nearly what we do now. You're never broke if you make a profit!

I too would love to get into rentals. Right now, not sure if I am ready to take the leap as I would like to build equity to pay cash for a few more flips prior to jumping into the rental business. If you think otherwise or have a plan you wish to share, I would love to hear as it may be the missing link to boost all motivation towards the rental genre.

With this being said, and my apologies for the long story and the hijacking of this thread., I wish the best in your endeavors and to a successful journey that lies ahead!