Take the plunge or not?

[S B]

I'm a single guy in my early 30's. I have a successful career in Information Technology that I've built over the past 10 years. I've been looking into real estate investing as a possible part-time and maybe full-time opportunity down the road.

Over the past few years, I've come the conclusion that I despise my field and the corporate lifestyle. I'm tired of the 50-70 hour work weeks (salary) with no pay or reward for all the extra work hours that I put in. I'd really enjoy being in a different field where I'm not being woken up to emergency calls at 3AM every week. I just feel like I'm wasting away every day at my job each day and I need a new challenge in life.

I've always enjoyed reading about real estate and reviewing properties online to find potential deals, but never had the courage to pull the trigger. I don't watch or believe any of those flipping shows on TV, but I do think there are great opportunities out there for people who are willing to work hard.

I've learned a lot over the past year by reading this forum and other resources online. I understand there is great risk involved when it comes to flipping and strict rules (70%) need to be followed in order to turn a consistent profit. You folks are great at sharing important information and experiences.

Unfortunately for me, my father knew how to rehab anything by himself when he was alive and I was never interested in learning any of it. It's only now that I'm realizing how incredibly young and stupid I was back then, lol.

Needless to say, I'm not a Handy Man and I plan on keeping my full-time job for the time being. I'm looking at this strictly from an investment perspective. I would like to purchase the property and then hire a general contractor to do all the work. I've read Mike LaCava's "The Lazy Man's Way to Fix and Flip" and thought it was a great read. However, does anyone on this forum handle everything through a GC when doing their flips? Is it still profitable or do you find it to be much harder if you're not doing it yourself? Where are you finding the financing to do multiple flips at once? Did you setup an LLC for your first flip or did you do it as an individual so you would only be taxed at 35% vs 50%?

I have started to assemble my team over the past few weeks. I found a real estate attorney, CPA, reliable General Contractor (vetted by many independent reviews). I'm having trouble finding a Real Estate Agent that specializes in REO's though, so I'm still looking around.

I have set aside $150k of my own cash to start for this project. I'm hoping this will be enough. I just need to find the right property for me.

The one negative I see is that labor is so expensive in Massachusetts when compared to most other areas. I've found some $50k "As is" cash deals in the past with 130k ARV's, but many of them still can't be rehabbed due to the cost of labor and amount of repairs needed.

Anyways, do you think I'm in the right position to take the plunge or do I need to save more capital? I'd be interested to hear your experiences. Thanks!