Flip of a fire damaged house in Austin, TX

[Jeremy VanDelinder]

Investment Info:

Single-family residence fix & flip investment in Austin.

Purchase price: $102,500
Sale price: $225,000

This was a fire damaged house that had been abandoned for several years. It was a full rehab including electrical, plumbing--even some restructuring to open up the floor plan.

This house appeared on season 6 of HGTV's House Hunters.

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

The year prior I had done a very similar property less than a mile from this one and had done quite well on it.

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

I purchased this from a wholesaler.

How did you finance this deal?

Private loan from another investor.

How did you add value to the deal?

Full rehab from the studs on.

What was the outcome?

We didn't do as well as we had hoped on this one--several unexpected cost over-runs, a stolen AC unit and a bit slower sale than expected all combined to hammer the budget. The biggest upside to this project was it's appearance on HGTV!

Lessons learned? Challenges?

Not all "full guts" are the same--we had based our estimates on a similar property but the city made us do more on this property which was the source of a good deal of the budget problem.