First Live-in Flip done in Windsor, CO

[Justin Koehn]

Hi BP! 

First post here as I just learned about you guys this summer! So, here are the details of our (my wife and I and now a 1.5 year old son, and 3.5 yr old daughter) first flip. Well, really the first house we have ever bought. 

Paid $96k for a 2 Bedroom, 1 bath HUD home in downtown Windsor, CO in Nov. 2013

3.5% down, FHA with escrow account - we had 30 days to paint exterior, get water, gas, electric turned on. Someone had stolen all the breakers out of the panel so I had my buddy Nelson help to cobble it together enough to get it turned on. I then remodeled nasty bathroom (down to the studs) and cleaned the whole place enough to move in.

We put about $26k in materials into it. We had a lot of help from friends and family and YouTube. 

We sold it in May, 2016 for $233k. After all was said and done, we had made $100,000 while I was working full time as a math teacher making about $40k a year, but with summers off. We moved out for two 60 day periods into my parents barn (apartment) while we did major work. 

Except for the two bedrooms, I took every room down to the studs = new wiring, plumbing, insulation, drywall, flooring, fixtures, counters, doors, trim, windows, appliances, roof, gutters, landscaping, fence). We had a hail storm that helped to get a new roofing, and we paid for carpet and gutters. But other than that, we did it all.

What I learned - a TON about remodeling. We had all the RIGHT puzzle pieces sitting in our laps (great realtor, carpenters, and mortgage broker as close friends and family) so we just had to simply put them together (with a lot of hard work and having a family of 4 living in one room at a time for a couple years.)

We are now moving to Roslyn, WA and hope to start a similar (although not as extensive) project there and also try to acquire some SFHs in Kittitas County to start our REI education/climb to billions. :)

This feels like bragging, but it was a lot of market luck, hard work, amazing friends, and a wife with an eye for staging. Thanks all. 

Justin