House Flipping: 4 Tips to Better Understand Your Buyers

When selling your flip, it is vital to have a strong understanding of the people who will be most likely to buy your house. You need to know who will walk into your open house and what features of the home and neighborhood will matter most to them.

It’s best to do this research before you even begin a flip, way back when you’re researching properties to buy and comparing house flipping loans. But if you’ve waited until you’re ready to sell, good information about your potential buyers can still help you by giving you strong selling points to focus on and letting you tailor any finishing touches to your most likely buyers.

Will your home appeal to a retired couple or a young family? Is it in a prime location for young professionals or people looking for more room to breathe? These websites can help you figure out who you’re selling to and what information they most want to hear.

1. For Demographics, Movoto

Movoto is a great website for gaining an overview of the demographic information in your flipped home’s neighborhood. It should be your starting point for figuring out what types of buyers your home is likely to attract. By simply typing in the zip code, Movoto will provide you with a free overview of an area’s population. You’ll get a breakdown of education level, age, fields of employment, percentage of renters versus owners, means of transportation, and household income. If you need more in depth information, you can go to the US Census Bureau’s Fact Finder to find what you need.

2. For School Information, GreatSchools

GreatSchools is a not-for-profit organization that lets you look up all of the local schools in an area. Find out how well the schools that serve your flipped house score. Check out parent reviews and learn demographic information. If it turns out the local public schools aren’t great, you can also research charter school and private options that might serve the home you’ve flipped.

3. For Amenities, Walk Score

Walk Score provides you with a simple score out of a possible 100 that measures how easy it is to run errands, go out to eat, or visit a park on foot from your flipped house. A high walk score means that your home is right in the middle of a lot of great amenities. It may not mean that the walk is necessarily a pleasant or pretty one, but it’s a useful score nonetheless. Walk Score is also a great place to find amenities near your property that you’d like to point out to buyers, like a nearby dog park or a great local market. You can also turn to Yelp for these sorts of specific recommendations.

4. For Crime Stats, MyLocalCrime

Type in any zip code and get a running list of all the most recent crimes to occur in that area. You can click on each crime to get more details. This should give you a basic overview of the types of crimes that happen in your neighborhood. For more in depth crime statistics, try City-Data.com.