If you’ve seen one of the many house flipping shows or YouTube channels lately, you may have caught the flipping bug. TV and YouTue make it look easy. They purchase a property, fix what’s broken, turn a dump into a dream home, and walk away with a six-figure profit in minutes.
What does it take to be a successful house flipper? Well, a fat bank account and generous lines of credit certainly don’t hurt.
But what about the personal attributes? There’s more to flipping than just purchasing and renovating homes for big profits. There are personal skills and attitudes that are vitally critical to the process. Let’s take a look at a few of those qualities.
You need to be a risk-taker
No matter what you see on TV, or read in how-to-get-rich books, flipping houses involves a tremendous amount of risk. You need to have the type of temperament that’s comfortable taking on that risk.
There are all kinds of risks connected with house flipping. The first is that you may not be able to sell the property and make a profit. You may even lose money. This can happen either when you pay too much for the property initially, underestimate the repairs required, or run into a major unexpected problem that you haven’t budgeted for.
The second is that you might get caught in a market downdraft, and be unable to sell the property quickly. The problem here is that your money will be tied up in one property, leaving you unable to move on to the next deal.
There’s a workaround for each of those situations, but you have to have the appetite for risk that they require.
Hands-on renovation skills
House flipping is not an armchair venture. If you are going to "sub out" all of the work to professional contractors, you could go broke renovating a property. You’ll have to have the ability to perform at least some of the renovation work yourself.
