All Forum Posts by: Jonathan Yip

I have a ton of mistakes from my first flip I could go on about...

One personal lesson that stands out: After dealing with countless flakes, scrubs, and big talkers, I learned not to wait on potential "buyers" before taking any necessary action to sell my house. I had shoppers who "loved" the house and were so "serious" about making an offer, blah blah... I held off on lowering my asking price a couple of times because I had these people in the wings who just needed to get a cosigner, or get a pre-approval, etc... Money talks. Unless you have a cold hard contract or money in hand, don't wait up for anyone. You're more likely to waste precious time and drain your funds in holding costs than for the average tire-kicker to follow through. Focus on getting your house sold ASAP.

Too much good and free information online to spend thousands on a course with a limited number of classes and resources.

House looks great! Congrats on getting it sold. Good luck with your next one(s)!

To follow up on this - today my agent showed the property to this guy who loved the house. Turns out he was under the impression that it was a "rent to buy" deal with an impossibly low rent. He claimed he had spoken to me (he knew my first and last name) on the phone and I had already sent him all the paperwork! Exactly what you guys were saying.

Moral of the story - scammers suck I guess.

I've worked on a few projects with Habitat for Humanity. While it can certainly be a great learning experience (and a valuable/enriching experience in general), I wouldn't say it is the most direct way to acquire rehab knowledge specifically. A lot of the work they give you is basic grunt work (loading/unloading, moving stuff around, shoveling, etc). They aren't going to leave any important or critical tasks to normal volunteers, and I doubt they will involve you in any financial details of the projects. That said, it's a positive activity to consider for benefiting yourself as a person. If you find that sort of volunteer work rewarding, go for it.

@Amber Smith I closed at the end of October, so I've just recently hit the 90 day mark. There has actually been an uptick in inquiries; I also dropped the price recently, so it could be the result of both of those.

@Fred Heller I feel like you just described my house. =/

@Teri B. @Catherine D. I originally planned on staging the house, but my agent suggested it would make it an easy target for thieves breaking into a vacant house (unfortunately it is that type of area).

He did bring up the idea of virtual staging, a service where you send in your photos and they populate them with furnishing and decor that look totally realistic (I looked at a few samples). Does anyone have experience with this?

@Ron Hall I'm using private money and paying interest. I'm currently in it at about $175K.

This is something new to me... My house flip has been on the market for a new weeks now. My wife was browsing the local Facebook Marketplace page and found our exact house, using our exact photos, listed for rent by some random guy in the Philippines!

We dug around further and found a couple more postings of the same thing! One guy even posted a screenshot of ANOTHER guy's repost, claimed it was a scam, and said to contact HIM instead!

I found this totally bizarre as I can't imagine any reason for doing this, other than trying to line up a renter before buying the property. If so, it doesn't seem like a very good strategy.

Has anyone ever seen this before? I'm genuinely puzzled as to what the possible endgame could be...

@Alfred Edmonds The second bathroom is actually original; we left largely as is to focus on the master and save on rehab costs (only repainted, reglazed tub, and replaced floor and toilet).

As far as light fixtures - what would you recommend instead for reasonable ROI on a not-that-great area?