What a journey! Today we wrapped up a LONG almost 9 month project when you include the prep, finance process and flip but we learned a Ton along the way and we are moving forward.

Late 2017, after listening to many podcast the BiggerPockets Podcast 247: How to Buy Your First (or Next) Property by the End of the Year [The 90-Day Challenge!] (thanksBrandon Turner) popped up and like most hour long drives home I listened to it, but this episode lit the fire. I had been gathering bits and pieces of information from each podcast but this one finally got me to my kitchen table figuring out how I could do it.  In mid 2016 my wife and our family had bought a very small 2 bedroom 1 bath and rehabbed it before we moved in, after the rehab and a years time we had around 100k in equity sitting there, sooo we went ahead and began the process to refi cash out 80k.

This moved us on to the deal finding. At that time wholesale and auctions seemed daunting so we mostly scanned the MLS, and zillow multiple times daily and after a we put an offer in for a 2 bed 2 bath with a 1bed 1 bath in the back of the property and got badly outbid! Eventually we found a 3 bed 2 ba just a few mins away from our home and got it.( both are not scary, lol and this is where Ive found my next deals)

For financing we had pulled out the 83k from our residence but needed to figure out the financing for the purchase. I had called a hard money lender and probably sounded like a rambling child! I listened to BiggerPockets Podcast 009: Using Hard Money Lenders to Grow Your Business with Ann Bellamy and figured out how to prepare a proposal and show that I understood what I was getting into and the process move so much smoother. Through  the BP network we found Orchard Funding and Chris Aepli was able to fund our deal. 

We got a 3 bed 2 bath for 104K and began the rehab in march. My buddy and I were convinced we could do all the work ourselves and get an entire rehab done in 2 months....this didn't exactly happen! We made some good progress early on demo, and picking the material etc... and then realized how much more time the fine details and finishing touches took. We ended up passing our 8 week timeline and then ran into previous planned trips, family events etc, and our timeline went way off. There were also some curveballs that we came faced through the rehab. We called in some more family members for help and then got this thing to market in early June.  

The second day we got a full price off at 177k and were beyond excited! Then the next day came and their timeline passed to sign...the panic began and soon we learned that the buyer had found another house they wanted and bailed on ours. From here we spent about a month with healthy amount of showing but no deals. We were getting eager and made a price drop, another two weeks went by and we decided to make another drop. This brought a lot of traffic and led to multiple offers and we reached a deal at 167k.

Over all this was a great experience and was a great deal to learn from and understand the process. We went over our timeline, over our budget and learned a lot of lessons. We ended up profiting a little over 10k, but I really feel the lessons learned will benefit us so much more! 

We are excitedly wrapping this up and in a few days going right into the next flip!