Finding the right market for Flips

[Tanner Grindel]

New Real Estate Investor Here

I am looking to get into flipping in the Fort Lauderdale/ Miami area and am having a hard time determining a more specific neighborhood or zip code to focus flipping in. What is the best way to pick a market to focus on? Should I do a neighborhood that I know well or one that I fits more with the type of homes I like?

Tanner

[Evan Polaski]

@Tanner Grindel, personally, I would focus on the neighborhoods you know.  If you live in a neighborhood, you are more likely to have a better sense of the end value. Or if there is a neighborhood you spend a lot of time in, that helps too. 

Different pockets within a metro demand different things. Some will value high design some will like more standard finishes. Some you need high end materials, and others don't. It worked out to be one of our best from an ROI perspective, but we did a property in a more budget conscious neighborhood, about 2 miles from ours, and missed the mark. My wife loves design, so did a few more creative things that in our neighborhood the buyers respond to, but there, we could not get a premium that we thought.

Your budget will obviously dictate a lot of the area you can invest in starting out.  If you only have $100k, you won't be able to do a high end $1mm house.  But, I look at RE investing like Warren Buffet does stocks: it should be easy to understand.  In real estate, I let that mean: if I would live there and I would buy the end product, I know others like me will too.  But, particularly location, if I wouldn't send my wife, with my two small kids there, then no one else will either, and you could have trouble selling.