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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.

[Dean I.]

I was a painting contractor in another life, so while I can't say much about plumbing I can say that if you have a good and ethical contractor, he will tell you if and when the plumbing may need to be replaced or upgraded. 

As for the drywall. In most cases, you can simply patch up the holes, calk in the cracks and skim a few walls to make them look new again (newish). If the walls are bowing, then there probably are other problems behind that wall. Once the prep work is done, you will want to use a low luster paint. 

Flat hides the most, but it also attracts dirt, so depending on how long it takes to sell the house, you may have hand prints everywhere that you will have to frequently touch up. Also, the house will look like crap just after a few months of someone living in there. Some investors don't care about that, but I do. 

Eggshell is typically the next lowest sheen available to most paint brands. It is relative cheap, hides some stuff, but still has enough sheen to highlight the imperfections. It is very washable though, so it is a good choice for rentals. 

What you probably want is a low luster or matte finish sheen, which is between flat and eggshell. It looks flat with a slight sheen, washable once cured and easy to touch up. You will spend a little more, but it will make the walls look a lot better. PNG and Benjamin Moore are good brands for this type of sheen. You can get the contractors grade and save a lot of money.

Trim is different though. You generally want to go with a higher sheen than what is on the walls (satin, semi-gloss, gloss), but just like the walls, the higher the sheen, the more it will show. Since you probably wont be replacing all the trim in the house, you will probably want to go with a Satin. It will hide a lot imperfections, but still make the trim pop and look clean. I would not any higher than semi-gloss. 

As for brick houses, they certainly can be cheaper when it comes to renovations since in many cases, all you have to do is pressure wash and fix a few boards or siding pieces on the soffit and facia.

With all that said, you probably want to find a contractor or two or three that are willing to look at some potential flips and give you some prices as well as some guidelines on estimating the renovation costs on other houses. Always estimate a little more than what they quote you because rarely does anything go as planned.