How To Start Flipping Houses

The idea of flipping houses has been all over the news for the past few years, and with good reason. House flipping numbers have reached an all-time high, and more investors than ever are looking to this great method of how to start property investment. It was called the best way to invest 100k in the UK in 2021. If you’re interested in how to flip for money, you may have lots of questions about how easy it is to actually invest in one of these homes and then turn it for a profit. Fortunately, there are many bargains to be had out there to help you find your way into this market, and there are plenty of buyers looking to get on the property ladder with a home that has recently been refurbished. For as many advantages as there are to this method of property investment, though, there are several disadvantages, too, as there are lots of costs involved with buying property. From stamp duty to legal fees and capital gains taxes, you may end up not quite making the initial profit you’d planned to. How does this method of property investment work and what should you consider before you decide to start flipping houses? This guide can help.

Just How Many People Are Interested in Flipping Homes?

To say flipping homes has become a fairly popular method of property investment would be an understatement. Statistics suggest that one in 40 homes that were bought in the last two years were sold in the twelve months after they were purchased, indicating a property flip in even the strictest terms. Keep in mind, though, that property flipping can mean different things to different investors. Any time an investor buys a property below market value, renovates it, and then makes a profit when it’s sold, its property flipping. The practice has been around for many years in a few different forms, but these days, it’s become really popular thanks to the number of home flipping shows on tele.

Flip Houses 101 – What To Know About How to Flip Houses in the UK

Flipping houses is known by many different terms, so if you’re not familiar with this one, don’t worry. You may have heard it called other things like a fix to sell, buy to sell, or fix and flip. No matter how you say it, you can make a lot of cash-flipping homes.

As with any method of property investment, there are both advantages and disadvantages to flipping houses in the UK. The first thing to consider is that the goal of this is to buy a house, start an extensive amount of work within the property, and then sell it for a profit. The typical timeline involved is 12 months.

Most experts suggest that the biggest advantage of this method of property investment is the flip finance equation involved. You can enjoy an ROI of more than 20% on this option. That can only be had, though, if you get a great deal on a house and you know how to get the right help to get it done on your timeline. Flipping fast is usually the key to selling refurbished houses.

While an ROI of 20% is a huge advantage, house flipping comes with several disadvantages, too. The first is the extensive amount of research you may have to do on a home that you’re interested in when buying and selling houses for profit in the UK. You may need to invest in an area with which you are unfamiliar to get the right ROI. You may also have trouble getting a loan on this type of investment. Now, more than ever, lenders are looking to increase their loan-to-value ratio, so house flippers will need more money upfront to make this kind of investment. You may need to sink as much as 40% into this kind of investment. Most lenders won’t offer you a 95% mortgage or even a 90% mortgage on a house flip. The other real downside when it comes to lenders is that many won’t let you sell it unless you’ve owned it for a full six months, so be prepared if you end up ahead of schedule. Thanks to a changing property market, you may also have a longer than average wait to sell the home itself as you work to get buyers interested in the property. You will also likely have to pay a tax on flipping houses in the UK.

The other real drawback is the portrayal of the ease of property flipping in the media. Many people who want to learn how to get into property flipping think it’s a fairly simple matter. Most think they can flip fast, too. The reality, though, is that there’s so much more to it than making a purchase, doing a deep clean, adding some fresh cabinets, and a coat of paint. You’ll typically need to put in quite a bit of effort to achieve your maximum possible ROI.

A Closer Look at the Numbers – How to Make Money Flipping Property

House flipping has been around for quite some time, but getting involved may help you to better understand what the numbers look like and how to make money flipping houses in the UK. There’s a fairly simple calculation involved with how much profit you can make off any given property. Start by researching comparable properties in the area. Take the potential value of the property from your research, then subtract the price of the property, the renovation costs, and the other fees from that number.  You’ll be left with the potential amount you can make from the process, and you might be able to use your flip money to invest in another property. You can further calculate your return on the investment with this formula (Profit/Investment) x 100. That will result in an ROI. For example, say you made money flipping a home. Imagine you made £50,000 on a home that you sold for £300,000. The ROI is 16%. While not every property will net you the same ROI, you can typically aim for somewhere between 15 and 20% to help guide you to the right property to meet your needs.

How to Start a Property Business

While there are many different ways to get into the property flipping UK market, most people use a couple of different methods. One of those is working through a property auction service. In this new world, the cheapest house options are often available here. These take place across the UK all of the time, so you need to learn more about those nearest to you if you’re truly interested in making money flipping homes. Once you’ve located a few close to you, you can typically contact them for their sale catalogue to better understand which homes you’re most interested in. There’s typically only about a 30-day window between the publication of the catalogue and the auction itself, so you’ll need to move fairly quickly.

If you see investment houses you like in the catalogue, the best thing you can do is visit the properties and take your team with you, whether that means you’re toting your foreman or a surveyor. You need to understand the key problems facing the properties and what they might cost you to repair.

You may also be able to find an auction house’s listings through an auction flip website. Either way, be sure to check the house out first.

If you know you’ve found the perfect deal for you, when you reach the auction, make sure you have a strict budget in mind. This is a number you must stick to at all costs. It can be fairly tempting to join a bidding war for a property, particularly if this is the first property you’ve flipped, but it will eat into your profits extensively. If you win, you are expected to place a deposit on that property immediately, so be sure you know how it works, what your deadline is to complete the property purchase, and whether you’ll be paying cash or using some type of bridging loan.

There are other ways to find properties to buy too, though, so you can quickly learn how to make a fortunate flipping property. You can use various property portals like Zoopla and Rightmove to keep an eye on certain areas where you’re interested in investing as you learn how to get into flipping houses. You could also advertise that you’re looking to buy houses for cash quickly. Additionally, you could work with an estate agent to identify properties that might make a good investment.

How to Do a Flip

Wondering how to flip houses UK buyers will want? If you’re going to do a good job flipping a property, there are several things you need to do to make it happen.

• Do the Research: To get particularly good at flipping properties, you’ll need to tackle quite a bit of research. You have to learn how to flip a house before you can do it as well as how to make money in property UK sales. You not only need to locate cheap properties, but you also need to buy them in an area where there’s a fair amount of demand for properties in the price range in which you intend to sell. Figure out whether the location of the home or flat will be attractive to lots of different kinds of buyers. Understand where the nearby transport links are and what the local schools are like so you can create an attractive property both for commuters and families. Look closely at local shops and any upcoming property developments that might have a positive or negative effect on the home you’re thinking about buying as you prepare to flip houses UK buyers will love. You’ll also want to work to learn about any potential planning issues that could change the overall price of your house. It may help to start a house renovation costs spreadsheet UK flippers like you can use to keep track of what you’ve learned.
• Build the Right Team: One key to learning how to flip houses is that you need the right help. If you’re not handling all of the refurbishment work yourself, you’ll need to build a solid team of contractors you can rely on again and again to carry out the work when flipping houses. Get in touch with individuals you know can help you out. You’ll want to bring your negotiation skills to the table here, as you need a great deal, but your contractors deserve to be paid too.
• Know Your Financing Options: Flipping property UK buyers will purchase is not the same thing as buying a property to live in, and most lenders know that. Unless you have the cash on hand when flipping property, you’ll want to work with a lender to fund your property flipping project. Keep in mind that it’s unlikely you’ll be able to get a traditional loan on a property that’s in bad shape. Instead, you’re going to need a bridging loan to renovate the property you’re considering. Bridging loans are usually made for between 12 and 24 months, and they can be repaid at any point in time. If your first property is a success, you can easily use those profits to invest in flipping houses, meaning you’ll have more capital on hand. It’s the key to understanding how to make money by flipping houses. The chances are good that your bridging loan provider will want to work with you again, too, so you will have added another member to your team for the next time you flip a house.
• Know the Costs: Remember that the initial cost of the property and the cost of the renovations aren’t all that you’re dealing with when you buy a property flip. You’ll want to factor in all of the possible costs. Think about the legal fees associated both with buying and selling, the estate agent fees you’re likely to pay when you sell the home, the stamp duty you’re going to have to pay, then other costs like survey fees, and other potential tax fees. It’s tough when flipping houses to avoid the capital gains tax the UK charges, so you’ll want to know what to expect in advance.
• Follow the BRR House Strategy for Property Flipping: BRR stands for buying, refurbishing, and refinancing in the world of house flipping in the UK. Essentially, what it means is that you need to find a property that requires the smallest possible investment from you initially when you work to flip houses. You may need to use something like a bridging loan to get started. At that point, you can begin to renovate the property, and that will allow you to either find a buyer or get the right mortgage for a property until you do find a buyer.
• You Must Have Buyers: Many new property flippers believe that just renovating a property will bring potential buyers to their doors. That’s just not true. There are lots of reasons buyers may not show up when you try to flip a house. For example, there’s no point considering a property if the sales in the area where the property is being so depressed, you may spend months waiting on a potential buyer when flipping a house. Similarly, there’s no point in buying a kind of property that despite the amount of work you put in, no one will ever buy. As you look for properties, make certain both the property type and the location itself are in demand. You need to know the best areas to flip houses UK buyers will want. You also need to consider the type of buyers who might be interested in a given home and what you can do to attract them. For example, if it’s a family home, you’ll want everything you do to prove attractive to families. If it’s ideal for a landlord, make sure you add features that would help the landlord be attracted to it as well.
• Know the Steps You’ll Need to Take Before You Are Actually Buying and Selling Houses: Before you actually start flipping houses in the UK, it helps to understand the steps you’ll need to take to make this an attractive property. If you know nothing about the housing market and what distinguishes an attractive property from a problematic one, it’s best to do some research before you start the process of buying and selling property for profit. Think about the garden, the driveway, the external visual appeal, the writing, the plumbing, and each room in the house. Think about overall space, storage, and where you might cut costs if you run into extra problems along the way.
• Get Started as Soon as Possible to Flip a House: To be truly financially successful in this business, you’ll want to get started the moment you can. After all, what are flips but a fast process that you need to finish as soon as possible? Don’t delay when flipping up. Be able to order the projects that need to be undertaken to make this a successful venture, then be able to get your team members to tackle them as quickly as possible. The sooner you begin, the sooner you can sell the home for a profit.
• Don’t Forget to Decorate: You have to decorate the home you’ve bought to some degree to succeed in property sales. Make sure that you paint with neutral colours, use attractive flooring, and spruce up what you can. In most cases, you’ll spend quite a bit of time on these ideas, but stay up with the trends so you know what potential buyers are looking for in a property.
• Learn How to Stage: One of the most important things you’ll do after you’ve done all of the renovations is to stage the home, and if you’re not yet familiar with this concept, you should take some time to learn how it works and how to make money from property UK stagers have worked with. Essentially the idea is that you prepare the property so it looks as appealing as possible to buyers. There are lots of ways to do this including renting furniture from a home staging company and using the help of a designer to make it look great, but do what you can to learn about the idea before you finish your first flipped home, as it can make sure your property price is flipped up as high as possible.

FAQs

What’s a Quick Flip?

Many investors today are working to engage in a quick property flip, and this can be a good strategy. Because so many people ask themselves “Is it worth renovating a house before selling in the UK,” some are looking at a new method of flipping. The way this works is that you bid on a property at auction that is quite run down and cheap. The goal here is to buy run-down houses. It will be cheaper than most of the other properties, and very few bidders are likely to want this property. As with any other property, though, you’ll need to do some research to understand what your renovation costs will be with that property.

Once you get that property, you do just enough work to sell it to another investor and make a small profit on it. That’s the quick flip, and it means that you have fast cash in hand without a lot of extra renovation.

What Skills do you Need to Flip a Property?

If you’re interested in flipping properties, there are a few key skills you’ll need to be successful. The first is confidence. You need to be confident that you can find the perfect property that has real potential for buyers. You should also be good at maths, as you’ll need to be able to understand what the potential value of a property might be, how much it’s going to end up costing you and understand the possible ROI as fast as possible. Additionally, you need to be a strong negotiator when flipping properties. You’ll need to get the property for as little as possible and then sell it as high as possible, and that could take some negotiation skills on your part. Finally, you need to be a great project manager if you’re working to learn how to flip properties. You will need the help of many people to make that happen, and that can mean working on a fairly tight timeline. It’s an all-consuming process, so be ready to manage every aspect of the project.

What are Flipping Houses?

What is flipping property, you may ask? It essentially means you buy a home that needs quite a bit of work, do that work, and then sell it for a higher price than you bought it for. It can take a lot of work, but it’s often worth it in the end.

Can You Flip Houses Without An Initial Investment?

Learning how to flip houses with no money in the UK isn’t easy. You’ll have to have something to invest, and most lenders won’t lend to you if you don’t have a down payment. The key is to learn how to make money from a property. In 2021, UK sellers made millions on property sales, so if you can come up with a bit of a deposit, you’ll quickly figure out how to make money in this market.

What are the best areas to flip houses in the UK?

Any area where you can find lots of property movement is ripe for a good flip. Just look for a property that hasn’t moved in some time, and you may have the ideal starting place.

How Much Can You Make on a Property Flip?

It varies from home to home, and it may take a few flips to help you make the most money possible. You could learn how much you might make if you use a property flip calculator UK lenders often post on-site.

Do You Have to Pay Capital Gains Tax When Flipping Houses UK Buyers Want?

Yes, you will have to pay capital gains tax on a property flip in most cases. It’s best to consult your solicitor to see exactly how much you might owe.