The Steps: Your First Five Years as a Solo House Flipper

TLDR

Start with your primary residence. Flip a couple houses. Hold one. Repeat. That’s it. The Bubba Hicks story at the end of this post is why you don’t need to overcomplicate it.

Step One: Primary Residence First

Everybody should flip their personal house first.

Here’s why this is the smartest possible starting point.

You get a conventional mortgage. Three and a half to five percent down to buy a house that’s livable today and needs some updates. You live in it while you renovate it. You MIY (manage it yourself, act as your own GC) and maybe do some DIY work as you’re comfortable.

You can’t sell it until you’ve owned it at least a year on a conventional mortgage. That’s actually a feature, not a bug. You have time. You can make mistakes. Even if you overpay a little, you’re replacing what would have been rent payments with a mortgage on an asset that will appreciate.

All those people online saying “rent and invest the difference”? The discipline assumption embedded in that advice is unrealistic. The difference between your rent and a mortgage doesn’t reliably end up in an index fund. Lock it up in a forced savings account called a house. That’s the primary residence flip.

You can also do a house hack: buy a duplex, live in one unit, rent out the other. Your tenant helps cover the mortgage while you renovate your side. Even better math.

Pro Tip

The primary residence flip is also where you build the skills you’ll use on every deal after it. Construction management, contractors relationships, design decisions, listing strategy. All of it. You’re paying for these lessons one way or another. Paying for them while also building equity is the deal.

Step Two: Flip a Couple Houses

Once you’ve gone through the primary residence, you have skills. Now you do a couple investment flips.

For these you’ll use hard money, cash, a commercial bank loan, or a private money partner. See the Foundation section on funding for the full breakdown of each option.

Do two or three deals. Get through problems. Build your contractor relationships. Learn the market. Each deal you do, you get meaningfully better. The skills compound.

Don’t try to do 10 simultaneously before you know what you’re doing. Base hits. Get the loop down before you scale it.

Step Three: Hold One

After a couple successful flips, hold one instead of selling it.

Here’s the simple version: instead of selling to a retail buyer, you go to a DSCR lender. They give you a long-term fixed-rate mortgage based on the property’s rental income potential, not your personal income. You pull your capital back out (or most of it), put a renter in, and move on.

You now have a rental. The renter pays the mortgage. The property appreciates. Your equity grows while you’re working on the next deal.

That’s the hold strategy. Nothing complicated about it.

The Simple Rule

From there, it’s this:

If I have the money, I hold. If I need the money, I flip.

The goal is to own as many rentals as you can. Rentals produce income. Rentals build wealth. Flipping produces cash flow. Cash flow is the oil in the machine, the fuel you use to keep buying rentals.

You might also wholesale a deal here and there. Ross’s rule on that: only wholesale a house you would have bought yourself. If the deal is good enough to wholesale, it was good enough to flip. Wholesaling it is a valid decision if someone wants to pay you for the assignment before you have to do the work. But don’t wholesale deals you wouldn’t otherwise buy. That’s just moving bad deals downstream.

How many flips versus holds depends on what you need. If you want $200K to $250K per year in income, you’re probably flipping four to six houses and holding a few rentals. If you’re more focused on wealth accumulation, you hold more and flip less. You decide what the model looks like for your life.

The Bubba Hicks Story

Early in my career I went on an appointment to buy a house. I looked up the seller beforehand. His name was something like Bubba Hicks. And the man owned 50 houses with no mortgages on any of them.

I was expecting to meet a sophisticated investor. I showed up and there was an HVAC van in the driveway. I found Bubba, and Bubba was an HVAC technician.

I didn’t get the deal because I sucked. But afterward I asked him how he did it.

“About 30, 40 years ago,” he said, “my neighbor wanted to sell his house. I went to the bank and asked them for the money. They gave it to me. I put a renter in. Used the rent money to pay the mortgage. Another neighbor wanted to sell. Same thing. Did that 48 more times. After 30 years, all my mortgages were paid.”

That’s it. That’s the whole system.

Everyone makes this game complex. Grab assets, put tenants in to pay for them. Learn enough to flip when you need cash. Stay in the game long enough to see around corners.

Bubba Hicks didn’t have a course. He didn’t have a coach. He figured it out with one duplex deal and kept going. You have this course. You have no excuse.

Key Concept

The goal isn’t to flip 50 houses. The goal is to own 50 houses. Flipping is the skill-building machine and the cash engine. Holding is the wealth-building engine. Both are necessary.

FAQ

Why start with a primary residence instead of just jumping into investment flips?

Three reasons. First, conventional financing is the cheapest and easiest to access. Second, living in it gives you time to make mistakes without the pressure of a hard money loan maturity date. Third, you learn construction management in a lower-stakes environment. It’s the safest possible first deal.

How many flips should I do before I hold one?

There’s no magic number. You want enough skill to know that when you hold a property, you know how to evaluate it correctly, manage any needed renovations, and set it up for a profitable refinance. Most people have enough experience after two or three deals. Some are ready after one.

What if I can’t get approved for a conventional mortgage?

Work on your credit score. 680 minimum for most conventional products, higher for better rates. This might mean a few months of focused credit repair before you buy anything. That’s a legitimate step one.

What if I live in a high cost-of-living area where even the primary residence strategy seems out of reach?

Look adjacent. Many investors in expensive markets work in their market but buy in a lower-cost nearby market for their first deals. It’s not ideal, but it’s better than waiting indefinitely for the home market to become accessible.