First Two Flips

[Thomas Martin]

Over Christmas break last year a buddy and I decided to purchase and flip a house.  We each liquidated several retirement accounts and began researching foreclosed properties and talked to several guys in our area that had flipped homes.  It took some time to get all the money in hand, but eventually in April we purchased a foreclosed home on Homesearch and bought a duplex owned by a bank.

The house is a 3 bedroom/2 full bath, brick, cape cod with a one car detached garage in a good neighborhood.  We had a contractor that we had worked with in the past put in all new windows, but otherwise we did all of the rest of the work ourselves.  The best surprise in the deal was how great the 3/4" oak floors looked after we refinished them.  They had been covered with a terrible linoleum for years.  Otherwise, the interior simply needed a lot of cleaning and painting.  The exterior work consisted of replacing an old fence, residing the garage, installing a new garage door, and rebuilding the front porch.  I listed it with a local realtor and it sold in about 4 weeks.

We decided to try to wholesale the duplex essentially "as-is."  After going in and cleaning it up and repairing a couple of minor plumbing issues to pass inspection, we listed it on Craig's List for a week and had four interested buyers.  This is a property that I know in a few years we will say, "Damn, we should have held that one and rented it out" but right now our needs are to pay down personal bills before we can buy/hold.  At any rate, we got a full price offer and sold the property.

After all was said and done, we earned $32,000 on the house and $31,000 on the duplex, before taxes.  While we learned a lot in the process, we didn't make any major mistakes and I am looking forward to buying and flipping two more in the near future. 

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