Concept

House Flipping

What it is

House flipping is the business of buying a property below market, renovating it to sell condition, and selling it at a profit. That’s the whole business in one sentence. The discipline sits underneath it: arv estimation, rehab scope, buy box filtering, deal sourcing channels, execution speed.

I have done 300+ flips across 15 years. Most were not home runs. Most were base hits. That’s the point. Stop chasing 10X. Start with 1X. A flip that makes $20K on a $150K all-in beats a swing-for-the-fences deal that sits and bleeds holding costs for a year.

Why it matters

Flipping is the gateway drug to real estate investing. You learn construction, you learn negotiation, you learn neighborhood dynamics, and you earn cash you can redeploy into rentals. My recommendation: flip three houses, then buy your first rental. By year five you should have 10+ rentals and $1M net worth without ever needing a W2 parachute.

Most new flippers blow up because they skip the fundamentals. They don’t know what comps are. They don’t know what holding costs look like on a 180-day timeline. They get caught by fear tax because they cannot price their own scope of work. A flip isn’t the HGTV montage. It’s comps, a SMART SOW, and a weekly check-in.

How it shows up

The mechanics: find a motivated seller through a deal sourcing channel you can sustain (direct mail, driving for dollars, wholesalers, agent referrals). Underwrite with the 70 percent rule as a ballpark, then prove it with comps. Fund with hard money or private money or cash. Run the rehab with a clear scope. Sell retail, net the margin.

You don’t need employees, a warehouse, or a brand. I flip solo. The whole system is built for the solo house flipper model, one person with a phone, a calendar, and a buy box. Anyone who tells you to scale before you can run three deals in a row is selling you a course, not a business.

arv, buy box, rehab, deal sourcing, hard money, 70 percent rule, fear tax, solo house flipper