Unintentionally Fix and Flipped Our House-Getting Started!

[Heather Dickison]

Investment Info:

Single-family residence fix & flip investment.

Purchase price: $185,000
Cash invested: $30,000
Sale price: $285,000

We purchased a home that we thought would be our forever home. We completely renovated it; moved walls, added walls, doors, trim, floor, windows, basement remodel, all of it. We saved a lot of money by doing almost all of the work ourselves! With the crazy real estate boom, we knew we could downsize and move and get a lot of equity out of it to reinvest elsewhere.

What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

We thought this was going to be our forever home and kept improving it over time. We knew the market being as it has been was way too good not to make some sort of money moves, making us sell.

How did you find this deal and how did you negotiate it?

We found it on the MLS. The seller was not at all willing to negotiate.

How did you finance this deal?

I believe I had an FHA loan and was actually able to get an IHDA loan to cover almost all of my down payment.

Lessons learned? Challenges?

In hindsight, we could have taken out a HELOC on the house (although we wouldn't have gotten as much money back out of it). On the flipside, if we knew we were going to sell, we definitely wouldn't have done as expensive of finishes as we did.