Looking to make my first purchase - an out of state flip!

[Michael J. Lemus]

Hello everyone! My name is Mike Lemus.

I'm from Santa Barbara, California, born & raised, where the median home price is around a small $1 million dollars! So ya, looking purchase my first property but definitely no where close to where I live. I've been thinking about the Midwest - perhaps Ohio or Michigan - where I can purchase a SFH with the intention of rehabbing and flipping. I like the Midwest because the prices work well for me but I'm also not set on any area in particular, mainly because I don't know any of those states too well. Open to suggestions!

My job has a very irregular schedule which makes getting a loan a bit tricky, so I'm thinking it might be a better idea to just use cash for my first fix and flip. With that in mind, I feel most comfortable with a purchase price somewhere in the $50-75k range, allowing for another $15-25k in repairs. Of course, the idea is to try and sell for around twice of my purchase price so for homes the $50-75k range, I'd like to try and make a profit of $35-50k after repairs. I feel like this is an acceptable amount of profit for the work, time, and money put in, seeing as getting experience for the whole process is also quite valuable to me. Also, being my first flip, and doing it out of state, I don't want to put all of my cash savings into one single deal.

The nice thing about my job having such an irregular schedule though is that being there in person during a lot of the process shouldn't be much an issue. Again, I don't really know the Midwest all too well so if anyone has any suggestions let me know! Hopefully I can be of some help to someone else here in the future!

[Zeke Liston]

Originally posted by @Michael J. Lemus:

Hello everyone! My name is Mike Lemus.

I'm from Santa Barbara, California, born & raised, where the median home price is around a small $1 million dollars! So ya, looking purchase my first property but definitely no where close to where I live. I've been thinking about the Midwest - perhaps Ohio or Michigan - where I can purchase a SFH with the intention of rehabbing and flipping. I like the Midwest because the prices work well for me but I'm also not set on any area in particular, mainly because I don't know any of those states too well. Open to suggestions!

My job has a very irregular schedule which makes getting a loan a bit tricky, so I'm thinking it might be a better idea to just use cash for my first fix and flip. With that in mind, I feel most comfortable with a purchase price somewhere in the $50-75k range, allowing for another $15-25k in repairs. Of course, the idea is to try and sell for around twice of my purchase price so for homes the $50-75k range, I'd like to try and make a profit of $35-50k after repairs. I feel like this is an acceptable amount of profit for the work, time, and money put in, seeing as getting experience for the whole process is also quite valuable to me. Also, being my first flip, and doing it out of state, I don't want to put all of my cash savings into one single deal.

The nice thing about my job having such an irregular schedule though is that being there in person during a lot of the process shouldn't be much an issue. Again, I don't really know the Midwest all too well so if anyone has any suggestions let me know! Hopefully I can be of some help to someone else here in the future!

 Hi Michael, I would look into the Columbus, OH market. There is a ton of population and economic growth. Columbus is also very much a seller's market, which is ideal for flips.