Do you frequently watch the television shows of people flipping houses in different cities, thinking we could do that? We did the same thing. Loved 
seeing the amazing renovations, hearing how they overcame problems in the flip, and watching how the partners worked together.
Have you heard those radio commercials that say, “Little Rock is the perfect market to successful flip houses, and we’re offering a free evening seminar to tell you how to do just that with other people’s money!”? Well, that was how we went from watching the flipping shows to becoming the Flipping Couple in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Want to Flip Houses?
- If you are already in the real estate or construction fields, you may already have the knowledge to flip homes or buy homes to rent.
- Do-It-Yourself Learning: Everything you ever want to know about anything is available on the Internet these days. From blogs to vlogs, you-tube videos and how-to articles, and loads of books and videos, all available for anyone online, in a bookstore, or from your public library. Add to that, there’s lots of meetings, where you can go mix and mingle with people doing the business and learn from them. If you learn well on your own, and you’re self-motivated, you can absolutely make your start this way.
- Pay for the Education! This is what we did. There are lots of coaches and companies in the flipping business who offer a formal education and coaching to get your business started profitably. The cost is equivalent to a college education – tens of thousands of dollars, but if you follow the action steps through your first project, you can recoop that investment from the profits of your first flip.
Lots of Different Ways to Invest
- Wholesale Houses: These are folks who find houses that landlords and flippers would like to buy, and they place the home under contract. They then look for another investor to buy the contract, with them making a wholesale fee for finding the home. This is hard to do, and there’s a whole ‘nother learning curve to learn to wholesale legally and credibly.
- Flip Houses: Flippers buy houses at a lower price than retail, do the repairs and updates, then sell at retail to make a profit. It’s easy to underestimate the repairs and to overestimate the retail price, so it’s important to get these numbers right. Otherwise, lots of flippers lose money instead of make money. That’s why we paid for our education – to take the risk out of flipping by learning how to calculate these numbers right every time.
- Build Houses: Builders live by their numbers, just like flippers. They just need their own money or a good construction loan to keep them in business. This is a career!
- Buy & Hold Houses: These folks are landlords. They try to buy homes with some immediate equity and keep renters continually paying rent. A great way to build passive wealth.
- Private Money Lending: These are people who like to loan their own money to the investors above, just to get a better interest rate on their loan.
Finding Deals to Flip Houses
Marketing, marketing, marketing is just as important to real estate as location, location, location is!
- Buy Lists: Buy a list of potential sellers. Call them. Email them. Send them a card or postcard. This is a great way to generate some leads.
- Bandit Signs: These are those “We Buy Houses” signs you see in your town. Some cities have made these illegal, but still legal lots of places, and you’ll get some calls.
- Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace: These are free places to market your services, and you’ll get some calls.
- Networking: We tell everyone we meet what we do. We talk to lots of Realtors, because they know when a house is coming on the market that needs lots of work. They’d rather sell to you than just list it. Networking works!
Keep marketing continually. If you get a deal, keep marketing while you’re working on that deal. Otherwise you won’t have another deal when that deal gets done.
Check your numbers on leads, so you know what’s working and do more of that while it’s working. But, remember, marketing works in cycles, so keep multiple marketing modes going at the same time. When one stops working, another one will heat up.
That’s our Tips To Get Started Flipping Houses
If you’d like to learn more about our business and the way we are growing, reach out to us. We’re always willing to share our knowledge!