Flipped 5 houses in 8 months - but lost money on 2

[Caleb Rigby]

I haven't posted in a while, so thought I'd share what we've been up to. We've flipped properties 3 through 7 since February and are in the process of buying two more to fix up. What value can I give to anyone that is reading this? Probably the most valuable lessons have been the ones that taught us we weren't invincible. We lost money on flips #4 & 5 and I have nobody to blame but myself. Here's a few things that went wrong with them: Flip # 4 was in Layton, Utah and everything seemed to be going good from the beginning. It was your pretty standard flip, but there were 4 things that we made mistakes on that ended up costing us: (a) Comps didn't support our ARV (1 comp did, but that was it), (b) contractor forgot to leave room for a fridge on the one wall – yikes, (3) garage door was too short to fit anything inside besides a car (Sorry, no Soccer Mom's) and (4) we didn't fix the terrible popcorn ceilings in front room and it was a huge eyesore as soon as you walked in. We ended up losing $3k on this house.

On to flip # 5: Flip 5 was in Ogden and we bought this one from a wholesaler. Where we got hurt on this one: (a) didn’t manage my contractor well enough – he worked pretty slowly and it took probably 3-4 weeks longer than it needed to, (b) did not get my initial budget correct – concrete work and unfinished basements did me in, and (c) it’s harder for my wife and I to flip further away (30 mins from our house). We lost $4k on this house.

Luckily, flips #6 and #7 got us back on track and we should get to the 6-figure mark for 2017. My 2018 goals are to flip 9 properties, wholesale 6, and buy 1 rental property. Take a look at some of the before and after pics.