Newbie Real Estate Investor- interested in Flips

[Ashley Murray]

Hi All,

My husband and I just moved to South Carolina from California and are newbies in the real estate market. We have capital from selling our home in California and are interested in doing our first flip. I'm curious how most people are purchasing the properties? Did you create an LLC and purchase the property through the business? Are you paying cash? Are you purchasing the property in your name with a hard money lender? And how are you avoiding paying capital gains if you make a profit from the flip?

Any advice would help. Thanks so much! 

[Andy Sabisch]

We purchased a property that was listed as vacant and driving by seemed to be vacant.  The bank had foreclosed 18 months earlier.  Guess what . . the original owner was still there with shades drawn.  We had to go through the eviction process and luckily the individual left the day the sheriff was going to remove him.  Thankfully there was no damage but that can easily go the other way.  Friend of mine also bought an owner occupied property and when they got in, there were holes kicked through most of the walls and cement poured in the toilets . . an expensive addition that was unexpected.  If you buy an occupied property, be prepared for the worst and bid accordingly - you might be pleasantly surprised but better then find yourself underwater.  The COVID moratoriums have ended but there is a line of evictions to process so check with a local real estate attorney that handles evictions and see what time you are looking at - in our case we bought the property in August and did not get access until October which impacted the planned timeline to flip it.

Be happy to share lessons we learned the hard way . . . message us