First Flip - Analysis and questions

[Vivan Bhalla]

Hi BP community,

I got into a flip project last year in September 2024, the numbers were as follows

Zipcode - 19145 (Point Breeze)

Purchase Price - 150000$

Purchase cost - 127500$

ARV - 399k (currently listed for 375k)

There are a few learnings/mistakes that happened during the course of it:

1. Our contractor was supposed to finish the job April 1 2025 but instead he finished late June. There were many reasons (all contractor based) which resulted in this delay and he kept us in dark about them for too long, there were periods where he would just not reply and the contract we signed mentioned the completion date as April 1 2025. Is there anything we can do legally? This delay has cost us a lot in monthly interest as well as loan extension costs. We would like to get the money from the contractor but want to know our legal rights

2. The house initially got a lot of attraction but since the last 2 weeks there has been no showings. This was after we reduced the price by 5k. Is the housing market in general down or is there anything we should do to get this sold quickly? 

This was our first flip and there was a lot of learnings. At this time we would like to move from it and start a new  one with our learnings. Would appreciate some advice from peers here

Thanks

[Doug Smith]

This happens a lot and is one reason lenders are hesitant to do flip deals for newer investors. That being said, it's happened to me...many times. You get into a deal and, for some reason, the property doesn't move. When this happens, we set a date if by which it doesn't sell, we put a tenant in there for a year. You can finance it with a DSCR loan using the value as opposed to your purchase price/cost after you've owned it for 6 months, so you're well past that. You can collect your rent and wait for another, better market. Every time we've done that, we've actually made more money. It's not the end of the world.