My first flip at age 21. Numbers and pictures!

[Wil Reichard]

Thank you for taking the time to read about this little journey. I had just turned 20 when I bought a 3/1 SFH in Greenville SC. I found it on the MLS with help from a realtor and it only took 7 months and 9 above-asking offers before I got mine accepted! Not as easy as I thought it would've been.

I wanted to find a house that would work well as a rental when I decided to move out. We closed and I put around 5k into it. This included the closing costs, down payment, and a little TLC (thanks to seller concessions). I usually kept a roommate or two in there when I lived in the property. This offset my mortgage to less than $400 a month, and if I had both rooms occupied, I was cash flowing $12 dollars or something like that.

After the neighborhood blew up in value, I decided it'd be best to sell. I hired a GC and got a quote to do the rehab. After about a month and a half of time spent doing the renovations, I had it listed on the market. It was on market for 4 days before I received a full asking price offer. We closed around 45 days after. 

Here are the numbers: 

- I bought it for 94k. Used seller concessions and paid $3,700 at closing. TLC work roughly $1,300 at move in.

- Rehab cost me 28k

      - I sold it for $159k

          - I profited 28k after closing

Now in saying this, I hope this doesn't come off as easy or simplistic. I made plenty of mistakes I didn't need to and this was beyond stressful at times. I'll list out a few mistakes I made below. 

Mistake 1: Not sticking to my budget. My rehab budget started at $10,500. As you can see I clearly did not estimate this well enough and kept adding things on towards the end. Thankfully I had room in the numbers or this would have been a very bad mistake.

Mistake 2: Not having enough reserves. I won't go into detail but I had a LOT of close calls. I scraped by on this project. I really should have set aside more funds to tackle this but I'm more of a "jump first then learn how to swim later" kinda guy.

Mistake 3: Not negotiating with the contractor. He was a family friend that we had known for many, many years. Although, I should have been a more savvy when it came to negotiating with the contractor. Not to be "that guy", but if I were to have asked for a lower price on a few things here and there, I could have walked away with a few more grand back in my pocket.

I hope in reading this that it gives you a bit of courage to jump in and do the next project that you have your eye on. I know diving into unknown waters can be frightening at times. It all comes down to getting outside of your comfort zone. 

"Don't let the fear of losing be greater than the excitement of winning"

- Rober Kiyosaki