Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Wholesale Property: The Up-side of Property Flipping

By Dario Dingwall

When anything is mentioned on television especially in sitcoms, then it is a common occurrence. There is a practice that is common within the real estate market and which was clearly highlighted in a very popular show. Two main characters in that episode invested in a particular wholesale property (consider it deep discount). The duo later refurbished the property, and offered it for sale and made a substantial profit. At least this was the initial plan.

Unluckily for the two characters, they did not have the right experience to take up the role of real estate property investors. At the end of the episode the pair decided to return the same property they had acquired to the initial owner for a price. In the process the two had lost plenty of their effort and time in addition to incurring an unnecessary cost.

Buying a wholesale property at a reduced cost or just enough to cover what it is currently worth and then reselling it after some repairs and renovations is known as flipping a property and can serve not only as a quick way to make some real estate cash, but to increase your business acumen in the process.

You learn new tricks and make new networking connections with every property you flip. And along the way, you should be making some tidy profits.

Consider this situation, you locate a suitable wholesale property that is in a relatively good neighbourhood but requires a good deal of restoration. The amount being advertised for the property is highly discounted making it lower than the market rate. This is the kind of situation that you expect because you will be required to put in a significant amount of money into the house in order to get it into a sellable condition.

You complete the required work and a new appraisal shows that its value is in line with the others in the neighborhood. If you are careful with both your time and effort and know how to shop well, your cost to repair this home did not put you over this market value at all. You can now take the former wholesale property and sell it for a tidy profit, and move on to the next house you are going to flip.

Flipping a property is not always about the major things, in fact, it should never be about them. Buying a wholesale property that will need a new roof, flooring or other major repair is ridiculous, unless the price is far beyond deeply discounted.

Unless the home is being practically given away, there is no need to look at homes that are structurally unsound. You want to do a couple thousand dollars worth of work to the home at most, not spend tens of thousands of dollars. A smart flipper knows what sort of problems can be taken of quickly and cheaply to make a profit.

Wholesale properties that are being deeply discounted should be approached with caution. You should understand why the wholesale property is going through flipping. Is the bank selling the property since it cannot hold onto it any longer? Is the property being sold by a desperate seller who has tried other avenues of selling it without being successful? Or is there a hidden agenda concerning the property?

You need to do some investigation prior to any involvement in any sort of real estate transaction and more so for wholesale property deals. It is of no advantage to you if you put all your effort into a home and at long last you discover that the title of the property has been retained for overdue taxes and it would be impossible to sell it off at the original cost.

Do not ever get into a doubtful property flipping deal however enticing it may seem. Consider that it would probably be more advantageous to transact with a home that is slightly higher-priced than not to flip any property at all.

Wholesale property can be addictive and for some flippers it is almost like a quest to not only find the next one, but to be able to do it faster and cheaper each time. Make sure that you are not neglecting any of the housing standards in your quest to finish a flip in a certain amount of time and make sure that you are not trying to overextend yourself.

If you happen to be a small scale investor, a single wholesale property deal at a go should be enough.

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