RISMEDIA, July 21, 2011—”This business is a people business and I don’t know many people who would want to meet with and sell their house to someone working in their pajamas,” states Danny Johnson, a full-time house flipper in San Antonio, Texas. Danny and his wife, Melissa, are now making their house-flipping business transparent and sharing everything they do to flip houses on their new blog, FlippingJunkie.com.
If you have ever seen the house flipping reality television programs or have done any research on flipping houses, you’ve undoubtedly come away with a feeling that it seems easy enough to do. Many gurus will tell you it’s possible to make millions, working in your pajamas just 5 hours a week. Of course, they are trying to sell their information products to as many people as possible. Who wants to buy a program that tells you there is a lot of work involved?
Danny says there is a lot more to flipping houses than the shows or the gurus would want you to believe. That is why he started blogging about his day-to-day trials as a house flipper. “I wanted to allow people to see how much work is involved in the aspects of the business that the shows tend to ignore,” claims Danny. The areas he referred to were related to how people are finding such great deals with so much equity and buying them with huge discounts and the real costs involved. There seems to be a simplifying of the numbers on many of the reality shows. “Many assumptions are being made that are very far fetched and leave out a lot of the true costs involved in buying and selling a house,” Danny informs us.
Danny and his wife have been flipping houses since 2003 and have learned many hard lessons while flipping over 120 houses. The main thing learned is that the business requires a lot of education and hard work. This should come as no surprise, they said, as most things worth doing require hard work and dedication. This is what bothers them so much, they say, when they see shows and gurus talking about how easy it is to jump in and make a fortune. “It’s just not realistic,” Melissa stated.
As can be seen on their house flipping blog, they filter through dozens of leads to find deals worth pursuing. They then talk about all of the negotiating and patience that is required to get the deal done and closed. Following along with them, you really get a sense of how much of a people business it really is. Their house leads come from people with all sorts of different motivating circumstances which require a fast home sale in exchange for some equity. It appears that a lot of the quality leads come from people that inherit properties and people that want to sell their home, but cannot afford or just don’t desire to fix up the house to a condition suitable for a normal home buyer.
“We are sharing everything that is involved in running a successful house flipping business and we want to help people to get a better idea of what it takes to do this,” Danny continues. “We’ve seen too many people get into this business only to find out that they made some serious mistakes due to lack of education and real direction.”
You can read about Danny and Melissa’s real estate adventures in how to flip houses on their blog, http://www.FlippingJunkie.com.
