Wanting to get into flipping houses or at least try one. Anyone have anything bay area-specific to add to this house flipping infographic
I am mostly buy-and-hold, but I have done a few flips along the way on east bay low-end properties (<$500k). Most recent one was 2 years ago. I am a lousy flipper so don’t think of me as an expert, just a guy with some observation. Because house flipping has been so rampant, there is a lot of competition out there for rundown houses, and prices have been bid up to the point where a deal is only a deal in the eyes of a few flippers, not the majority. Basically when you estimate the future selling price after remodel, if you just look at comps current selling or recently sold and use reasonable ones for your estimation, there usually isn’t any profit left or profit margin is so thin that makes the whole job not worthwhile. In newer neighborhoods where there are lots of similar-age similar-floorplan houses it’s easier to find comps and predict a future selling price, but flips are usually on older houses where you will see a larger spread in the sold prices for loosely-comparable houses. This requires you to have a lot of faith that in order to make money, your remodeled house is going to sell at the high-end or top of the market when the time comes, and there is a lot of unpredictability in that because it depends on how many buyers are going to bid and how eager they want your house. In other words, whether your flip project is going to be successful highly depends on whether you will be lucky enough to land a buyer who will bid “irrationally” for your remodeled house. If it doesn’t pan out that way, your room for profit will be greatly reduced to the point that makes the whole project a failure (not necessarily lose money, but not making enough money is not your goal). So one needs to be mentally ready for that. This is not easy for newbies since they usually have higher expectations, but sometimes no expectation is the best expectation.
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Have always thought is the best approach 
Young Real Estate Flippers Get Their First Taste of Losing
After piling in when the market was hot, investors are facing losses from homes that take too long to sell.