It's not a great time to do a first flip with high labor costs, high materials costs, high property costs, and high rates.

It was a long and expensive journey, but eventually, we won the court battle and were able to move them out.After they were gone, we cleaned up the house and decided to list it as-is instead of flipping it.

@Kerry Hermann - the posts by @Michael Ewers and @Samuel Coronado were solid advice (I don't know Nita Cook whom Sam referenced, so that's the only part of his post I can not comment on).I second what Michael said about the market here - it was fantastic from 2017 (when I started) through 2022 - then it really started to crater in 2023 (although we still found some deals), and the bottom completely dropped out in 2024 (found one small commercial deal and one residential flip deal in 2024 - that's it). 

Everything around the lot is older but the neighborhood is less than 5 minutes away from downtown, hospital and colleges. see this all the time in and around downtown columbus OH, we have frindge areas that are getting rehabbed and flipped like crazy and then the new builds come in. 

If you are doing a live-in flip why not use that equity for a down payment with a refi or HELOC?

Than I thought it was all the things that could go wrong in the flip, hidden gems like K&T hidden in the walls, shot main-lines, etc.....   

@Steven DiazFor anything construction related, I am not very knowledgeable, but there is a real estate group called The Mills Group in town that works a lot with investors and they themselves do a lot of flips so maybe they would be a good starting point.For STR I would do the two units separately.

Heloc’s are best utilized with a short term strategy, ie flx and flip, to BRRRR, etc.

Good luck with your upcoming flip!

I mainly focus on do ing flips and flip to rent, but I also facilitate STR and MTR in the area too.