Flip my own house

Just finished watching "Flip This House" on A&E and it just reminds me of my own flip earlier this year. 

It was my first flip and it was a great learning experience managing everything from start to finish, from buying to selling.  I learned to expect unforeseen problems and not to expect a smooth flip especially when the history of the home is not really known. 

I was looking through the hot sheet one morning, looking at all the new invetory on the MLS that just came out on the market when I found a new listing that I thought was a really great deal.  The listing was for a 739 square foot one-bedroom condo unit that was right across the street from my building.  It's in an excellent 40 story building with tons of amenites like central AC, roof top BBQ area and pool, fitness room, sauna, on site security and more.  The only negative thing to me was that this unit for sale was leasehold.  All the terms on the lease were good enough with a low monthly lease rent of $44 and a lease that expired in 2049.  That was long enough for a potential buyer to get a 30 year mortgage. 

Other similar units in the building were selling for around $230,000 in an "above average" condition and they were asking $180,000 in "fair" condition.  Well...I quickly called the listing agent and immediately took a look at the unit.  One hour later, I put in a strong offer and got it accepted.

Come to find out, the story behind the owner was that he past away some time back (not in the unit) and left the condo to eight family members.  No one lived there but used it as storage while fighting about who would pay for the monthly $450 maintenace fee.  It was owned free and clear and they just wanted to get rid of it, split the proceeds and get on their way.  That was the reason for the "priced to sale" listing price.

The one-bedroom unit had gold wallpaper that was probably there since 1974.  The kitchen and bathroom were original with eight inch drawers in the cabinets.  Everything was filthy and looked like it hadn't been cleaned in 10 years.  A home flipper's ideal project.

Well...to try to keep cost low, I took down the wall paper myself which seemed to take forever.  I helped demo the kitchen, bath and floors with friends which went ok.  A day later, I realized that the floor condensated by the entrance of the unit.  After doing some detective work, come to find out that the unit right below me was a commercial unit and that they had an A/C ducts bolted to the bottom side of my floor.  They forgot to put in insulation and therefore, the reason why my floor looked like it sweat.  After contacting the right people and going back and forth with thier engineers, they finally fixed the problem which took about a month. 

Meanwhile, I hired some construction friends to do the labor intensive work.  We opened up the kitchen to the living room by tearing down the wall in between and putting in new cabinets, appliances and granite counter tops.   We put in new cabinets, granite counter tops and fixtures in the bathroom as well.  We lay down 18-inch ceramic tiles from the kitchen to the bathroom and carpeted the living and bedroom.  Put on a fresh coat of paint and gave everything else a thorough cleaning.  Finally changed all the lighting and electrical outlets and switches.  I ended up putting in around $17,000 in renovations.

After about a month and a half of renovating and taking care of unforeseen problems, I put it on the market and fianlly got it sold for $250,000.  Not bad for a novice.  It wasn't too hard and it was definitely fun and I learned that much more about renovations.  It was an exciting project that I will enjoy doing again and again.