Do you have bills to pay next week? Want to make thousands with only a few hours work, and without ever having to buy a property? Flipping properties is for you!

Flipping properties allows you as an investor to make big money with very little effort and absolutely zero money down. It’s a great way to get started in the real estate investing field, and can be a very satisfying and fun way to make a lot of money.

How does it work? The bread and butter for the flipper are the ugly houses out there - paint is chipping, garbage in the front yard, just generally seedy. The kind of place no one in their right mind would want - except you! The great thing about these places is that the competition should be fairly low simply because they’re so ugly, and the owner is more than happy to have someone interested in buying it.

You approach the owner with an offer that’s low enough that it leaves some room for profit and fix up costs, and sign a purchase agreement with the owner. The closing isn’t for a while, so you use that time to find another person, usually another investor, to flip the property to. The investor sees that you’ve secured a fixer-upper for a low price, pays you a fee of a few thousand bucks for your work, and takes the house off your hands. There you go - thousands of dollars, and you didn’t have to lift a hammer or spend a dime.

That was a very general overview of flipping, and there are quite a few more details involved in successfully flipping properties. To really get an insight into how to make flipping properties work for you, check out the excellent book Flipping Properties, by William Bronchick. It’s filled with great examples and all the forms you’ll ever need. In the meantime let’s demonstrate with an example:

On your way home one day you decide to take a slightly different route. You’re glad you did because you come across a house with a ‘for sale’ sign in the front yard, and it’s a real stinker - there’s garbage all over the front lawn, a car is up on blocks, the grass looks like it hasn’t been mowed in years, and the paint is just falling off the house.

You get out of the car and knock on the door. The owner answers and you mention that you’re interested in buying the house. The owner is eager to hear from you as they’ve had absolutely no traffic, and no wonder considering the state of their house! You do a quick inspection and determine that there’s nothing else major wrong with the house besides cosmetic stuff.
After some talk you come up with some numbers.

You know that 3 bedroom/ 2 bath houses in the area go for at least $100,000, and that’s what this house could go for after it’s all been fixed up. You figure it’s going to cost roughly $15,000 to get this place looking like a palace, and that the investor who spends that $15,000 is going to want to make at least $20,000 profit on it.

You come up with the following numbers:
After Repair Value: $100,000
Costs: $15,000 + $20,000 = $35,000
Your Maximum Offer: $100,000 - $35,000 = $65,000

What this means is that the most you could possibly offer to pay for the house and still find a buyer for it would be $65,000. However, you’d make no money on it doing that!

So, you make a fairly low initial offer of $55,000. At first the owner is a little shocked by your low offer, but you explain that the house is in a very bad state and that it’s going to take a lot of work on your part to get it back to a livable condition. The owner finally settles on $60,000, with a closing in 45 days.

That was a pretty long example, but it gets across the sort of money that can be made in a very short period of time, and with little to no money of yours involved.

As with other methods of real estate investing, there are a great many techniques and details to learn about. The techniques described in books such as William Bronchick’s Flipping Properties make your job so much easier, as he breaks down each step into easy-to-follow instructions. This book also includes sample ads you can use to attract motivated sellers and other investors, as well as every form you’ll ever need as a real estate investor. Buy it today!