Maybe you have been wanting to how to find houses to flip for quite a while now. Perhaps you have tried in the past but lost money or just barely broke even. Maybe you have no clue how to find good houses to flip. Whatever your situation, the New Year brings new opportunity and refreshed sense of potential that 2013 could be your breakthrough year.
At least that is how I look at it!
If you are looking to find your first house to flip in 2013, then I think it is important to get back to the basics. There is a strategy that works when learning how to find houses to flip. Have no worries if you have never flipped a house before-we all have to start somewhere.
In this post I am going to share how to find good houses to flip early in this New Year. Lets make 2013 a year to remember!
Research Houses to Flip Before Stepping Foot in a House
In-depth and exhaustive research is pretty critical when it comes to finding that first house to flip of 2013. You do not want to get hung up forever on the research step, but you do want to make sure you cover all your bases and know what you are getting yourself into.
Detailed research on a geographic area is an absolute must. I am not talking about Googling your town and just spending a bunch of time on the internet. Internet research is a good place to start to find a good house to flip, but you really have to get out there and physically visit your targeted geographic area-or else you could get yourself into some trouble.
For example I flipped a house this past summer that was located in a notoriously "tough" section of a Massachusetts neighborhood. This area of town has many run-down homes and to be completely honest, is not a very economically strong area. There are actually police officers positioned on street corners at all hours of the day in some spots.
So based on internet research and hear-say one might be inclined to write off this area as just a bad place to try to invest in real estate. I mean, who is going to want to buy a house in a neighborhood that is patrolled on foot 24/7 by police officers?
Well I went and visited this particular neighborhood and sure enough I found the police officers, but I also found one street with beautiful water views. I kid you not, the difference of just one street in this neighborhood was immense. Because of the water views and proximity to a small beach, the home values on this one particular street were astoundingly higher than the surrounding real estate.
Finding this one street was like finding a diamond in the rough. I ended locating a good house to flip on this street, rehabbing it and selling it for a nice profit.
I guarantee that I never would have spotted the opportunity had I not physically drove out and visited my targeted geographic location.
Lesson Learned for 2013 - Start with internet research, and then go out and physically comb through your targeted geographic area.