Find A House To Flip - Just A Few Suggestions
You might be wondering, just how do you find a house to flip? After all, the experts say you make your profit when buying the house, not when selling it. So that puts pressure on you to find the right property. It can't be just any old shack, but should be something that needs work while still having lots of potential. While you could take the approach of just telling your realtor that you want to find a good house to flip and sitting back and waiting for their call, that may take time, as you'll be competing with a lot of other buyers. But there are some techniques you can use to get an advantage. A few are listed below.
Make a lowball offer. If you can find a property that's been on the market for a while and meets all your other criteria for flipping, you can try making an offer that's markedly below the asking price and below the going price for other comparable homes in the area. Some people feel that they are insulting the seller with an offer like this, but we have to assume they listed their house because they want to sell it, right? Well, if it hasn't sold after three or four months, just maybe it's priced way too high. You may be doing them a favor. Anyway, if you decide to go this route, make your offer for less than the most you want to pay to allow for negotiation.
Write a letter. Let's say you pass a house every day that obviously needs work and detracts from the other houses in the neighborhood. It's been that way for years. Maybe you should write the owner and tell them how much you like their house and that you're wondering if they'd be willing to sell it. You might find they jump at the chance, and you could get a great deal while doing them a favor, since they obviously can't afford or aren't motivated to maintain the property.
Look for For Sale by Owner (FSBO) properties. These individuals are frequently highly motivated. Sometimes they have no idea what their house is really worth. That can work both ways, as sometimes FSBOs are selling the house themselves because they couldn't find an agent that agreed with their inflated opinion of the value of the house. But the other side of the coin is that the owner bought the house ten years ago and thinks twice what he paid is a great deal when the market really justifies three times. These gems are certainly not the norm, but they are hiding out there - you just have to look. Check into foreclosures. This is a complicated subject, and there have been many entire books written about the ins and outs. We recommend that you get yourself a recent version of one of those books so that you understand what all the terminology means and how the process works. Just keep in mind that if your area has a large number of foreclosures, it may provide a lot of potential flips, but it may also indicate that purchasers are few and far between. There are many different ways to find a house to flip, and we haven't even scratched the surface here. The main risk is that after you succesfully renovate and sell a few properties, you'll get lackadasical when selecting houses. Do your best never to forget that picking the right house is the key to the whole process and you'll do fine.
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