Interested in Flipping?

After doing my first lengthy fixer-upper, I wanted to try flipping.  Our first house had come out well.  I thought I had learned good skills and was ready for a flip. 

And I was.  So we mortgaged the house, i.e., bet everything we had and bought a house in Sunset Village.  It was a well maintained but decorated in a classic 1970 motif.  The carpet screamed lime green and turquoise.  There was log cabin room in the basement, complete with real logs and chinking.  I love the north woods, but this was too much. 

It was a great house underneath, though.  It had great hardwood floors under that shag and the classic cape cod quickly came back to how it was intended.  Seven hard weeks of work, including new kitchen cabinets, a basement gut and lots of paint made that house great.  It sold in three weeks.

We bought another brick Tudor on the near east side.  It had been a single-family home until about twenty years ago.  Then it fell prey to student housing and had been abused since.  When we bought it, the backyard was overgrown and the kitchen was full of mice.  The beautiful woodwork was promising and the unique brick pattern of the mason-owner-builder sold us over.  We bought it and went to work.

It took longer to sell.  We held it from August to March.  The carrying costs ate up a lot of profits.  We priced it too high.  The lot was small.  What do we do if it doesn't sell?  Should we move in?

It did sell.  We were ready to move in but didn't have to.  We ended up making a nice profit, but would have done better if we would have priced it right from the start.  We thought we knew more than our realtor and it cost us $2500 a month through the winter. 

We have flipped one more house since and also sold our first house and have done another renovation.  Both of these have done fine financially but the market has changed some.  It is more important now than ever to buy right and price to sell. 

If you think flipping in Madison is like the TV shows, you couldn't be further from the truth.  Those shows are based on inflated markets that don't exist anymore.  They have showed you the ridiculous profits they made - they have not showed you all the speculators that are getting cleaned out right now. 

The good thing about Madison real estate is that our market is healthy and there are opportunities for someone who wants to work hard and do good work.  Madison is full of investors, both good and bad, and these investors often bid up the market.  Often a house will get bid up higher than is should.  There are enough first-time flippers that will not do a second.  Sometimes they end up living in them.  But if you have a set of skills, can budget, and can afford it, there are flipping opportunities in Madison. 

I have flipped in Madison and will continue to in the future.  I enjoy the hard work and the exhilaration of transforming a house in eight weeks.  It is not for everyone and you should know upfront that these things don't always go well.  If you can handle all this, I can help you find the right house.