method of finding deals

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Hi everyone,

I am looking to do my first flip, and have seen some houses. I think I might be overestimating the cost to repair. The way I got my repair cost was just calling up local contractors putting prices of various services in an excel. I am curious to know how others estimate cost to repair.

After viewing some houses, I ran into several problems.

1. When you are remodeling a bathroom do you replace the plumbing. A lot of the houses I see were built before 1950, so the plumbing must be worn out. It would suck to remodel a bathroom, only having to tear it out when the plumbing goes bad. The problem with this is it adds significant cost and I suspect my competition wouldn’t take the extra cost.

2. Do you replace the drywall? Some of the houses look so dirty that I doubt painting over would give it any life. Some of them are like bowing inwards. When I see the pictures of other flips, the walls look so straight, so clean.

3. I noticed that brick houses looked a lot nicer. With vinyl and aluminum siding a lot of the houses looked really ugly. Replacing the siding would be very expensive.

Please share your experience and your opinions. I saw before and after of flips, but never really seen the detail of worked to create the finished product. In the Metro Detroit area I don’t think you could put in more than $30k because most houses will only sell for $120k. That’s why I really want to get my repair cost as low as needed to sell the house.