Flipping houses

Flipping houses By Theresa Grant - Real Estate Columnist The idea of flipping a house sounds great on the surface. You can purchase a house that has been completely neglected and in need of some serious help, or you can simply purchase a house that hasn’t seen much updating through the years, if any at all. Either type of purchase will work for a flip. The whole idea of a flip is to take a property that you purchased on the cheap, rip out the old and put in the new. Once you have completed your flip, the idea is to be able to put it back on the market for a profit. It sounds much easier than it actually is in most cases. Usually, the type of property you are able to purchase on the cheap may be very old. With very old houses come a whole slew of issues. You may find when you start to rip things apart that there could be asbestos in the house. That calls for immediate remediation, and that can be costly. Another costly item can be having to bring things up to code. When I purchase an old Semi in downtown Oshawa several years back, it had no air conditioning. For me, air conditioning was a must have. I called a company to come and install it and was told I’d have to have my gas meter moved. That cost me a few hundred dollars to have that done before we could even get to the installation of the air conditioning. The point I’m trying to make is that for every intended cost, you may get hit with other unknown costs related to what you are trying to accomplish. We’ve all seen the HGTV programs that show houses being gutted and redone with stunning results. While completely redoing a house can bring immense satisfaction, if you are trying to make a living at it, well, that can be challenging. House flipping became popular kin the mid 2000s during the housing bubble. Since then, flipping has seen several cycles of popularity. The height of the flipping craze came in 2005 with 8.2% of single-family homes sold being flipped. This was due to rising house prices and easier access to mortgages. In 2008 the housing market collapsed, and flippers faced having to sell at lower prices. 2022 saw flipping houses hit its highest rate since 2005 with 8.4% of all home sales being flipped. Just a year later in 2023, flipping saw nearly a 30% drop, however it is on the rise again. There is a house on a street in Central Oshawa that garnered a lot of attention when it was purchased, redone and then unfortunately got caught in the market turndown. It sat on the market for months, went power of sale, and eventually sold for a staggering $300,000 loss. Flipping a house is not easy. If you are thinking of trying your hand at it, set a budget, focus on what sells as opposed to what you like personally. Have a game plan, hire trades people so you can get in and get out. Perhaps most of all, be prepared for the unexpexted. Questions? Column ideas? You can email me at newspaper@ocentral.com