While channel surfing after a long day at work, you come across a show in which people are buying run-down houses, fixing them up and reselling them for huge profits before the first mortgage payment is due. Wow!

What’s more, these people claim they made as much money on this one house as you did all of last year. They don’t look or sound any smarter than you, and they’re raking in the cash! You start crunching numbers and before you know it, you’re thinking about a career change.

Flipping houses can be an exciting, lucrative, and risky all at the same time. Being successful at flipping houses requires skills in project management, negotiations, budgeting, and marketing. You must be able to see an opportunity in a house both cosmetically and financially. Here are some guidelines to flipping houses.

Flipping takes on many forms both in the dollar amount of the flip project as well as the types of flips . Flipping some houses may take you a week and cost less than $5,000. Other property flips can take 6 months and require a contractor to coordinate the work. You may also want to consider a “Flip & Hold”, which is renovating a property and then keeping it as a rental, thereby building instance equity. Here are some items to think about before you starting looking for your first house to flip .

Equally important is financing your flip . You will need to have a qualified mortgage consultant helping you buy the property, finance the renovations, and if you decide to keep it and rent it he can get you the end-financing. We have excellent resources for financing the flipping houses of houses in Minnesota.

Before you quit your day job, call us. We have the experience, contacts and resources, in investment property flips, to help you decide if “flipping” makes sense for you.