Bought our first flip for $70,000 wholesale +$5800 commission = $75,8000 total cash outlay. Did the painting, landscaping ourselves plus a few minor construction projects and contracted out the rest. Total rehab costs plus buying, utilities,etc was $104,500. Bought the house the beginning of April, put it on the market beginning of July, sold in 12 days for $163,000. After all closing costs( we got cushed in closing costs) walked away with a check for $148,000... made$43,500. Next one we are contracting out more of the work. We are ok with a smaller return because we killed our selves in doing the work because we both still hold full time jobs!

Hi everyone,

My partner and I just completed our FIRST FLIP and we are so excited about it!!! We have both been in construction for nearly 10 years now, and have been talking about trying our hand at our own projects for awhile. Well, we finally took the leap and it was worth it! It was not easy, but we are so glad we did and now we cannot wait for the next one!

$163,000 - Purchase Price

$133,000 - Total Cost (Reno & Operating Expenses)

$17,000   - Commission

$378,000 - Sale Price

$65,000 - Profit

21% - ROI

The project took about 6.5 months. 3 bed, 2 bath 1,400 sq ft single family house outside of Greater Boston.  Take a look at the photo's and let me know what you guys think! Also, a big Thank You to everyone who is a part of this great community!

Originally posted by @Steven Rubino :

Hi everyone,

My partner and I just completed our FIRST FLIP and we are so excited about it!!! We have both been in construction for nearly 10 years now, and have been talking about trying our hand at our own projects for awhile. Well, we finally took the leap and it was worth it! It was not easy, but we are so glad we did and now we cannot wait for the next one!

$163,000 - Purchase Price

$133,000 - Total Cost (Reno & Operating Expenses)

$17,000   - Commission

$378,000 - Sale Price

$65,000 - Profit

21% - ROI

The project took about 6.5 months. 3 bed, 2 bath 1,400 sq ft single family house outside of Greater Boston.  Take a look at the photo's and let me know what you guys think! Also, a big Thank You to everyone who is a part of this great community!

Nice looking work and profit!  But why didn't you keep the 70's wall paneling?  Lol.

@Steven Rubino nice!  I can't wait until I can post about my first deal.

How did you source the home, and was it in Stoneham?

Blake

Originally posted by @Blake Denman :

@Steven Rubino nice!  I can't wait until I can post about my first deal.

How did you source the home, and was it in Stoneham?

Blake

Hey Blake - Thanks! I can't wait to see your first deal too! The house was in Maynard. We actually found in on the MLS, it was a foreclosure that wasn't getting a ton of interest. Are you looking to do flips too?

Originally posted by @Steven Rubino :

Hey Blake - Thanks! I can't wait to see your first deal too! The house was in Maynard. We actually found in on the MLS, it was a foreclosure that wasn't getting a ton of interest. Are you looking to do flips too?

I'd have been bowing down if you'd found a house in that condition in Stoneham for that price haha, but still an AWESOME deal!

Great to see that people are finding deals on the MLS in Eastern MA too!

I guess I'd define my strategy as a bit of everything - looking to build some capital wholesaling, then flip or hold properties I find depending on how the numbers work out.  Much more interested in the long term benefits of holding though.

Also planning to buy a 2-4 family in Eastern Essex County this winter to househack.  Looking for $100+/month/unit cashflow in a value-add property.

Hi everyone.

We just completed our first project in Hilo, Hawaii (96720) and wanted to share our story.

We found a bank-owned, single family house that had been sitting on the MLS for a while. It was cash only, overpriced, and the worst house in the best neighborhood.

We used all we had learnt from the past 6 months of reading books and listening to podcasts and made an offer 17% under the asking price - $300,000. The bank went for it and we pulled money out of our savings and HELOC to purchase and renovate (+$60,000). 2 months later the property is worth $425,000 and we have a renter paying 33% more than we had estimated!

Last month we refinanced out a large chunk of the cash with a local credit union and plan to use that to close on our second house in Hilo next week - another fixer-upper.

We love this strategy and as long as we can keep finding good deals in Hilo we plan to just keep going.

Thanks for reading and let me know if you have any questions.

David

Wow!! It looks amazing!!  Great Job!! Congratulations.  I am looking for properties in Florida for investors to do the same.  Wish me luck!!!

We acquired this property off MLS. I loved how it turned out and we made a nice profit but it took longer than expected due to several hiccups along the road (contractor mistakes, not being on top of the project management as much as we should have been, unethical inspectors, etc.). We definitely learned some valuable lessons along the way and plan to implement some changes on our next flip.

 Purchase Price 182k

Rehab 65k

Holding Costs $3,800

Closing Cost 13k

Sales Price 335K

Profit $71,200

(Being a Realtor I earned roughly $5,500 on the commission when purchasing and saved 3% on selling commission which is why cc is so low)

@Jodi G. Congrats that looks great! How did you fund the deal/rehab costs? Cash? HML? Private Money? Can you give a broad breakdown on the rehab costs? Was the property a REO/HUD property or on the MLS for a long time.

Look forward to learning some more detail! Congrats again! Can't wait to hear about your others in the future

@Kevin Pruitt Thanks! I funded the deal and rehab costs through a commercial loan with a local bank. Put down 25% of purchase price and rehab costs were rolled in. 1% origination and 5.75% interest only for a year. We had multiple offers within the first two days as the market was hot during July. We were in contract at 356k but the buyer had 5 different inspections one being an unscrupulous mold company that said there was mold in a sunroom (which in all actuality was like testing a basement or garage as this was not an air conditioned space) The company used invasive air sampling and also poked over 350 holes throughout the residence with their moisture detector. Long story short, we had to take the home off the market to get a TDI mold remediation expert to refute the inaccurate report and wait for this company to make repairs to the damage they caused to the property.

By the time we got all of that ironed out the market had significantly slowed down and showings were few and far between. I went back to the bank and restructured the loan to be amortized over thirty years and was intending to hold for a rental for a couple of years. 

Thankfully another buyer came along and I don’t have to use that exit strategy. We are set to close in an hour and I couldn’t be happier to get this one off my books. 

As for acquiring the home it was actually listed on mls for 189k, I offered 185k the first day in the market and negotiated another 3k off during option period. As you may know Houston experienced significant flooding a year ago and this Home took on less than an inch of water in the back bedroom because of debris clogging up the French drains, no other homes flooded in this neighborhood or ever have for that matter. The two conclusions I can come to is the agent was using other discounted flood properties as comps and shouldn’t have done so or she was just inexperienced. I’ve actually picked up three mls properties this year that were steals and agents were not familiar with the particular neighborhoods and priced them significantly below market value. 

@Jodi G.   Great job Jodi.  I actually saw that listed as a For Rent a week or so ago when doing some research (we are under contract on a smaller property not too far away).  The pics were amazing!  Glad you're able to get out on your own terms.  Best of luck!

I wanted to share something that has given me an edge and countless new clients. About 9months ago I started using this Instagram growth tool called www.socialclimb.co

This service has been growing my social media influence here in Miami and connected me with a ton of new clients. 

I highly recommend using it to grow your personal brand. 

@Jodi G. Gorgeous property, I love the remodel! Hiccups are to be expected and essential to growing! 

I Have spent so much time going through all 20 pages of this thread, I don't think I have stopped smiling at any time. Thank you everyone for sharing, Incredible inspiration! 

@Joel Sherlock phenomenal rehab! It's always important to take professional pictures when putting it online. Better yet, it looks like your photographer was a Real Estate Photographer because how good of a job they did in getting every part of the house on the perfect angle!

It's so important for investors to take the time and spend the money to a photographer that specializes in Real Estate.

Originally posted by @Bobby Nilsen :

First off, as I always get interested with pictures here are a few before and after pictures. I have also put a few links to all our marketing at the bottom.

The Swiss Cheese model is a model used for determining how accidents are caused. I am going to flip that model and use it for real estate and how each layer of cheese lining up with the next makes the deal that much better and when they all line up it's a home run. For this deal all the holes in the Swiss cheese block lined up perfectly and the outcome was not an accident.

The way we found this deal was through the good 'ol MLS. It wasn't listed for more than a few minutes before we saw it, and of course we knew a 4-plex with 2bd 1ba units at $1.2m it was a smoking deal. Many may gasp at that but in the heart of San Jose a few blocks from the university no one would blink twice at paying that. We didn't and immediately contacted the real estate agent and made a full asking offer. By the next afternoon it was in contract. That was the hardest part. Getting this property in contract was lucky but behind that luck was a lot of hard work and energy. Like they say luck favors the prepared and we were through the first layer of cheese.

We now had the property in contract and realized what we were up against. Well we kind of already knew. But we had super low rents and tenants that had lived there for many years. Total rents for the building were about $4,400. Once we closed we quickly worked with the tenants and they gave us notice and all of them were moving out within the next 2 months. That part could not have gone smoother and with any other tenants it may have not worked out the way it did. Another slice of cheese in line.

Once the first tenant left we started getting bids for work. We haven't done too many deals, about 8, so we don't have a solid team. We figured this was going to be the property that we build that team. We interviewed and got quotes from about 10-20 subs to do all the different pieces of work and about 5-10 GC's to do the project as a whole. We ended up choosing one of the GC's and got that next slice of cheese lined up. We got quotes anywhere from $30k-$50k a unit. we ended up paying a total of about $30k per unit and the total work took 1 month for all four units. This team was in and out and every day we stopped by the property looked completely different. I think we can give them two slices as they were exceptional.

During the time we were looking for contractors we were also looking to sell it for a quick $400k profit. We didn't really get any bites, a few tire kickers telling us we were crazy thinking this will sell for close to $2m with rents above $2,600. In addition during this time we started reaching out to multifamily agents that had sold a lot of properties in the Silicon Valley and were getting their opinions on rents and resale value. All said getting over $2m would probably not happen as it would be breaking a lot of records and getting rents at $2,700 or above would be tough. This kind of gave us the kick in the but to see what we could do.

After the rehab was done we started advertising the units for rent. It was quite slow at first but after a week or so we started getting way too many inquiries and had three of the four units rented. Two at $2,700 and one at $2,800. The holes in the cheese just kept lining up for us, we were anticipating when they would stop. We left the best unit vacant and staged for showings. We created a marketing package, link to view is below, and blasted it to our inner network at $1,988,888 with a commission for an off market sale at 3.5%. We had a few people interested at the $1.9m mark but figured with the little exposure we got we weren't going to need to go below our asking off market. We got it listed and the phone started to ring. We got two offers over asking and ended up taking the offer at $2.018m. This was the last and best piece that was right on point, the offer we accepted was cash with a 7 day close and non contingent.

After rehab and holding costs we were into the property for just under $1.4m and walked away with over $600k. All our slices of Swiss cheese lined up ever so perfectly for our first multi family flip. After all was said and done a few of the agents who wanted the listing didn't believe we sold it for over $2m. With this sale set a few records for a 4-plex sale in San Jose.

Any questions ask away.

Marketing Package

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-UqmCuMV9cwZFFY...

Flyer

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-UqmCuMV9cwS2Fu...

Before and After

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-UqmCuMV9cwZmVt...

  Wow!!! When sticking to your gut pays off! Are you back on the hunt for another multi now?

My favorite “flip” to date. Bought a vacant lot for $112k. Used a private investor’s money. Cut the grass once for $25. Sold for $143k three months later. I’m a broker so I only paid BA commission and received a commission when I purchased. Paid my investor $10k for his money. Net about $25k. This was especially good because I was simultaneously building my worst (aka losing) investment to date. One gain covered another loss. 

What a great, positive thread. Thank you all for sharing your pictures and stories with us. Very inspiring. 

Originally posted by @James York :

My favorite “flip” to date. Bought a vacant lot for $112k. Used a private investor’s money. Cut the grass once for $25. Sold for $143k three months later. I’m a broker so I only paid BA commission and received a commission when I purchased. Paid my investor $10k for his money. Net about $25k. This was especially good because I was simultaneously building my worst (aka losing) investment to date. One gain covered another loss. 

I also got that land feeling. Went to a Tax Lien Auction & everyone was HGTV enthused bidding ridiculous prices for trash. So a 3.8 acre piece of land came up & I got it for $22k & then my wife was "Land, Land why do we want to carry land, it has little value". The neighbor we met after the buy offered to maintain it if he could park on the front apron. He subsequently mowed & trimmed the trees.

Sold it 18 months later for $60k & they built a $385k home on it. Then my wife said "I think we sold it too cheap" !!!

Two years ago I moved my business closer to home and smaller deals. No partners, fewer delays, less stress and similar profits. 

Chased this driving for dollars lot for 8 months before I got it. Turns out the first “seller” I was talking to wasn’t even an owner at all...

Lot- $18k

Build- $84k

List price- $165k

Listed Sunday and UC Wednesday

Build time- 3 months 

I’m a broker so only paying a buyers agent. GC and I split profits (good for him when it’s good and good for me when it’s bad). 

Same house as above on a different lot. Driving for dollars find. Seller claimed he never signed the contract (blamed daughter) when a $9k judgement showed up. Negotiated with the lien holder to get it done. 

Lot $14k

Build $83k

Sold $151,500

Split profits with my GC. 

Failing forward!!!

My first small construction project. I over paid for the lot, neglected to notice a storm water issue and didn’t manage costs well enough. Close to 6 months and I made almost $2500! Not my worst fail, but not my greatest success either. I spent a lot of time wanting to blame the seller for not telling me about the water problem, but this was a great reminder that blaming him would accomplish nothing (thanks Jocko). 

Amazing Thread ...Thank you all for sharing.