Scaling our Flipping Business

[Ashley Wilson]

Hello BP Community,

Almost two years ago, my father and I started a flipping business together.  Since then, we have flipped three houses (two already this year), and will be closing on our fourth in a couple of weeks.  We have done quite well on each house, and are now looking to scale our business. 

Our plan is to start doing two houses at a time.  We are going to achieve this by staggering start dates, as well as vary the scope of work (as two of our last three renovations were full house rehabs). 

I would like to ask your input on the following:

1) Do you have any additional tips, than the ones listed above, for doing more than one house at a time?

2) After we are successful at doing two at a time, we want to move on to three at a time, and so on.  What is your experience with the number of houses one Project Manager can handle?

3) What are the things we should look out for when scaling?

4) As our area is very competitive, we often find ourselves being outbid.  While we know the volume of flips that some of these competitors do is often a reason they can outbid us, we also know they have dedicated teams working on their projects, so they can severely undercut the cost of the rehab.  In your experience, what is the "magic number" of houses per year where we could get these dramatic reductions in rates?  (For both materials and labour). 

Thank you in advance for your time and your knowledge!

Sincerely,

Ashley Wilson