First time flipper worried about finances

[Account Closed]

Hi all -
I am a rookie real estate investor who purcahsed her first two rentals this year. The rentals have been great and the cash flow is awesome. However, I REALLY want to get into fix and flips.
I've had my eye on an up and coming neighborhood for some time and a SF just popped up for sale last week. I have $50K cash available. The asking price is $49K (the house beside this one sold for $133K in 2009 so I think this could be a good buy). I can manage the purchase on my own (as long as I don't get out bid by another investor) but don't know where I will come up with the money to do all the fixes needed (the most pressing is it needs a new roof). It is habitable so I could rent for the short term to give me the opportunity to save up some cash to afford the repairs. Any other suggestions? I am new to all of this so I am unfamiliar with the other financing options out there. Let me know your thoughts. Thank you in advance.

[Matthew Lee]

@Account Closed  I am a Rehabber and Have Been Buying and Rehabbing over the past 8 years...

MY Suggestion is to know your goal over the next 3-5 years...

I first started in a great real estate market, and I still made a ton of mistakes in my investing career. Thank God I was in a good real estate market because it helped us to recover from those mistakes because the market was appreciating so fast prior to 2007.

In my case if I were to start over again...knowing that I wanted to have a career flipping houses(Fix & Flips)...I would go and find a successful investor that is already doing Fix and Flips and see how to get them to mentor you(or Partner with you)...The value of their Experience will accelerate your learning curve.

In my experience every rehab deal is different and has different challenges that can pop up during the process...enough that in some case just one mistake can cost you a ton of money.

There is no way you can learn all the mistakes you must avoid by reading a book or taking a 3-day training program. That is why I recommend people look at their first 5-10 deals as a part of your training process...and if all your split was from every deal is 10-20% of the profits you'd till be making out because of the experience you will gain.

Generally the experienced investor will have tons of relationships in place that you will be able to leverage that will save you 10,000's in time, money, and trial and error.

Hope that helps...

PS The best thing about a mentor in your local market is a great mentor will know the market well enough to know a deal without having to use guess work, they typically understand the little differences in neighborhood that might cause a radical drop in house values of homes that might look like deals, but  are really "Money Pits".