Don't Believe Everything You Watch!

I’m back to one of the topics I’ve talked about in a few areas and that is the house flipping shows.

Like I have said in the past, I love the house flipping shows, but you always must be a little cautious in believing everything you hear!

The reason I’m back this time around is I just saw a show this past week that I had to write about. It was one of those shows where the flipper must yell and complain about everyone and everything.

Plus, they always show up in a $200,000 car to show you just how rich they are!

Let me give you the numbers they gave you in the beginning of the show. 

$87,000     Purchase

$10,000     Renovations

$97,000     Total All In

$119,000     Sales Price

$22,000     Profit

First off, the numbers are ridiculous. Here again they don’t consider Realtors commission or closing costs. So, they need to take probably $10,000 off that number which will give them a profit of $12,000. 

The next number that was absurd was the renovation costs.

For that $10,000 he was going to demo and take debris to fill at least one dumpster and probably two. Gut the one bathroom back to the studs and build a new bath. New vanity and toilet in the master bath and refinish the tub and tile. 

Then, paint the entire interior/exterior which both needing a fair amount of prep. New flooring throughout and then you go with his wife to shop for kitchen floor tile.

What she likes is $22/sf so she cuts back and “saves a lot of money” going with the less expensive $16/sf tile. It looked like they may have had 150 sq. feet. If that was the case, the material alone costs $2,400!

Refinish kitchen cabinets, granite counters with new plumbing fixtures and stainless appliances. Then they put a $2,500 fire-pit on the back patio. I kid you not, they actually put the cost of it across the screen. That would be 25% of their $10,000 budget!

Of course, we need to landscape the exterior now, which includes scraping all the weeds and grass and fill the beds with a nice gravel since this was in a desert climate. Then add some nice plants of course.

They come back after getting a full price offer in 4 hours and state the renovation actually cost $15,000. If they can do all that for $15,000, I’m moving to the west coast! If I was really trying to keep the budget down, I might be able to get in the $25,000 to $30,000 range. 

With all that being said, enjoy the shows and get any ideas you can from them, but don’t, please don’t believe everything you see!