How to Flip Homes with Your Family!

House flipping is at an all-time high, it’s as if it’s 2006 all over again. This is why I decided to get my family involved. As a stay-at-home mother, I wanted to find a fun way to create additional income where my family can learn and participate.

I find it important to teach my children the basic skills of home building and renovation. Even if they only use those skills within their own homes, I believe it will pay off over their lifetime. So, I decided to get into house flipping. Here’s what I do.

Protect Your Investment

The whole point of flipping is to make money. You can make some hefty capital gains on the right property, with the right features, sold at the right time. Yet, you want to help decrease your capital gains taxes. According to Anderson Advisors, there are a number of ways to do so from capital gains deferment to charitable remainder trusts.

Still, with all of the sweat equity we put into flipping homes, we want to make sure we keep as much of our profits as we can. We need it to support our family and for investments in other properties to flip.

Surround Yourself with Experts

If you are new to house flipping, as many of us were at one time, then you need to retain individuals who understand all the issues around legal, accounting and construction. When it comes to flipping, time is not on your side–neither is your budget.

You don’t want your financing costs to eat up your profits. You must work in a timely and efficient manner. So, I started by shadowing a friend who had been flipping houses successfully for the past seven years. I took my kids with me, but made sure they were not in the way–as much as possible.

My friend was patient with us, showing us homes in various stages of renovation. In fact, I shadowed her for eight months before I decided to tackle my first project. Needless to say, she was there with us too.

And, I continue to seek her advice as a mentor even though I’ve been flipping homes for a little over two years now.

You Should Enjoy Home Improvement

I have struggled with finding family-friendly activities that incorporate learning and exercise. Flipping incorporates all of those things and more. Plus, I can teach my kids about sticking to deadlines and a budget.

Yet, you must enjoy home improvement projects, whether they are countertop installations, plumbing work or floor replacements. There is a lot of hard work involved. If you can do the work yourself, you don’t have to pay someone else to do it.

So, I get my kids to help out–safely–as much as possible. It’s amazing to see how much better they have gotten over the years. My spouse would help on the weekends. He also helps in the evenings when there are last-minute jobs needed without warning.

One time we needed to install an attic fan before showing the house the next day. We could not find an electrician on such short notice. So, we had to do it ourselves. These are the types of things you learn to deal with when flipping homes.

There is never a dull moment.

In Conclusion

I have enjoyed house flipping, and my family has too. We consider it our family business, and we learn and bond at the same time too.