First Flip in Ferndale, MI

[Diego Ortega]

So tomorrow our first flip will go up for sale! It's been a long 7 months, but a valuable hands on learning experience. Excited to see how the market reacts. I'm counting this a success already just for working up the courage to do it after creeping on the biggerpockets site and leaning a ton. Before I show the before and after pics, a little background on why I decided to do this with my family.

I went to school for Industrial Design and work in the auto industry mostly. Ever since graduating, I've always dreamed of owning a nice modern home or even renting one. I soon realized that "luxury lifestyle" look only tended to be possible if you were buying or renting an almost half million dollar home or loft. I felt like a lot of young professionals wanted that, but couldn't afford it. So after living in the area for so long and getting a good feel for where that demographic might want to live, I settled on Ferndale. I love the city and it's constantly growing/welcoming small local businesses. It's nightlife is also amazing with plans to expand the downtown with more lofts, etc. I'm also a designer by heart and wanted a chance to be creative while also investing. I teamed up with my father and mother. I handle the designing and contract work with my dad (he's amazing at his craft) and my mom loves decorating. Our thought was "worst case scenario, we own a house we would be proud of". So we dove right in and I'm hoping it will do well in the market. It will be up for sale in the next day or so. I'll share the numbers and how well or not so well it does when it's sold.

Now, on to the pics and video! We did pretty much everything ourselves and saved a ton of money that way. We thought that was important for the first one. For the next there are some parts we would contract out to speed up the process. The stress was real, but worth it at the end. It's a 3 bed 1 bath near downtown with an open concept and lots of custom designs. Very modern. We worked with what we had and think we achieved something special.

Before:

As for After, I feel a video is a little more fun: 

Video Tour on Youtube!

Hope the goal was achieved, but I will keep you guys updated on how it goes. A little nervous, but glad we finally started investing.  I'll post some after pics too this week.

Cheers,

Diego

[Sean Graham]

Very cool Diego! The house looks beautiful and Ferndale is a great location. What is the address of the home? Perhaps you could share a link to Zillow once it is posted. It'd be great to see the numbers after you sell it as well.