Flipping profit

[JAMES Coleman]

I've been studying BP lately and have a question I've been unable to answer through my search.

My wife and I stumbled upon a good deal on our home two years ago, renovated it, and are listing it for sale next week. We have done 90% of the work ourselves and hope to realize a net profit of $35k when we sell (that is the number I arrived at after deducting all associated sales and renovation costs).

My wife and I have a strong desire to continue in our real estate investing, beyond our primary residence. One point of consideration is we love doing the renovation work ourselves but it's slow and physically taxing. For our next deal (other than our primary residence), I'm toying with the idea of utilizing seller financing or a hard money loan to finance a rehab property that we aren't also living in.

My question: assuming all contracting work is hired out, what is a good rule of thumb for estimating profit on a flip? I value time and money and if I can do one flip per year doing the work alone versus two or three hiring the work out, I would rather hire it done! That being said, I'm not opposed to a little hard work and "payment of dues" to learn what we need to learn to be successful.

Thanks for your thoughts,

Jim