I mentioned in Monday’s post that our flip house fell through. A flip house felt (feels?) like the next step right now. Something we could work on to get our creative juices flowing. Feel unattached to. Improve a home on a tight budget, take you along for the ride and then pass it on. We searched for a couple weeks before landing on one that we really loved. We put an offer on a darling little house with lots of large arches and promises of exposes brick behind a few of the plaster walls. It was 100 years old and we agreed on an offer of $135K–a steal for the area. Because of its age and condition, we were anticipating a few problems to show up in the inspection but unfortunately it came back with more issues than we felt we could mentally take on right now–the crumbling stacked stone foundation ultimately lead us to withdraw our offer.

We got asked a lot, what we look for in a flip house and I think that will be different for everyone and definitely for every level of experience. Since this was our first and we were using it as a kind of pick-me-up project after a big loss, here’s our to-look for list:

• Location, location, location! We’re always on the hunt for a sad house in the midst of cared-for homes, a nice street, or homes that have a higher price tag. We also were looking for a home within 20-25 minutes of our home so we could work on it during the day easily.

•  We also checked on the big ticket items–when was the roof installed? water heater? furnace? foundation? Is the electrical all still knob and tube? These things are manageable and doable (not by us) but will take time and money. We were fine with a home having one or two of these issues but any more than that could add up to less or no profit when you turn around to resell.

• Character. We really wanted to improve a home that was clearly a diamond in its day and restore some of that beauty.

• We were really looking for a house that we could tackle the majority of projects ourselves. DIY is a sort of therapy for us right now and we were looking forward to diving in and solving spacing problems creatively and picking out finishes.

• Lastly, equity potential–which basically sums up all of the above. A good ratio of bedrooms to bathrooms, decent comparables in the area and a list of to-dos that wouldn’t eat up an entire budget.

In this week’s Vlog, we take you behind the scenes of the flip (note: after our inspector finished, he invited us to the house and went through the whole report with him but asked to not be on camera)–also, HAPPY ENDING– a sneak peek into a project that fell into our laps that we’re pretty excited about.