Successful house flipping is an art and a science. Some house flippers perfect it and go on to flip dozens of houses a year. Others have more modest goals but make a profit on each house they sell.
A major benefit of running your own house flipping business is that you get to change distressed properties into habitable homes. This can provide a high level of satisfaction.
Of course, one of the most important reasons to choose to buy and sell an investment property is as a means of obtaining passive income. This is why even if you are a complete newbie you want to optimize your chances of success.
This means that, whatever your ambitions, it’s important to make that first investment profitable. If your first flip is a flop, your career as a real estate investor will be over quick. In order to give yourself as much chance of succeeding as possible, you need to be aware of what flipping property is really like. For instance, as Hillary Hoffower writes for Business Insider, house flipping;
“… can be rewarding and a good investment, but you should be prepared for unexpected problems, budget increases, time-inducing mistakes, a longer renovation timeline, and issues selling on the market.”
Luckily, the house flipping community is a generous crowd, and many investors have shared their true stories about real estate investing experiences (and their financial details) for the next wave of flippers. I’ve picked out the 5 most helpful books on the subject, ones that have saved me a lot of mistakes during my own first flip.
Reading them can help you to learn more about how to flip houses without having to spend large amounts of money on attending seminars or joining real estate investment groups. You can build up your knowledge about flipping homes by reading about how the experts deal with flipping houses and making a profit in today’s real estate market.
Feel free to check these five titles out and learn more about subjects such as looking at the scope of work included in rehabbing, working with the best contractors and taking account of all expenditure such as closing costs. Take a look at these books and use them to help you work out your own flipping blueprint.
The Book on Flipping Houses: How to Buy, Rehab, and Resell Residential Properties by J. Scott
If you peruse the real estate section of a good bookstore, you’ll see a lot of top celebrity real estate barons boasting of their prolific success flipping houses. These tend to be stuffed with fluff and braggadocio. In contrast, it’s hard to get more down to earth than Mr. J. Scott and his simply titled Book on Flipping Houses. I love this book, because Scott guides you through the early successes he and his wife shared in their first investments. Their finances are laid bare in many situations. You see what went right, what went wrong, and what enabled them to grow their business to a size neither of them would have dreamed of just a few years before.
As a professional flipper J Scott provides clear, actionable steps to make sure your first home investment is a home run. I would recommend that you read this twice before making a purchase. If you like it, check out his companion piece, the equally Google-search-sounding The Book on Estimating Rehab Costs: The Investor’s Guide. These books will save you lots of headaches and a tremendous amount of money and help you profit from the housing market.
Amazon Rating: 4.7 / 5
Recommended House Flipping Posts:
FLIP: How to Find, Fix, and Sell Houses for Profit by Rick Villani
In the few years since its publication, Flip has become something of a classic in the field, when it comes to providing information about renovating and reselling property. Villani offers something new investors desperately need before jumping into renovation projects a reality check! First timers can hardly appreciate the extent to which things can go wrong. There are lots of ways to underestimate costs, so many surprises that will make you lose money. But Villani doesn’t just rain on your parade. He can also tell you how to make it work. He’s a real investor with years and many houses under his belt.
All of the authors I recommend are investors first and flippers second. They communicate the reality of real estate investment, and FLIP is a beautiful example of this. It’s a favorite of many investors who have gotten their start in the past 5-7 years and it can help you when you are defining your renovation plan in order to complete efficient house rehab projects.
Amazon Rating: 4.5 / 5
FLIP: How to Find, Fix, and Sell Houses for Profit by Rick Villani
“Post-Boom” is an important detail. In many markets, house flipping has gotten a lot tougher than it was a decade ago. However, just because margins are tighter, doesn’t mean you can’t make a tidy profit if you choose the right types of properties for your situation and have the right strategy in place. Boardman’s goal is to make you a meticulous real estate investor. You’ll learn how to select the right city/market, how to be patient for the right opportunity, and how to get repairs done affordably. For first-time investors, Boardman helps you walk the line between speed and quality, to get a great home finished and on the market as soon as possible.
Boardman’s approach is realistic and up to date. It is the least known of the books listed here, but it’s a perspective I have found quite helpful.
Amazon Rating: 4.5 / 5
The Book on Investing in Real Estate with No (and Low) Money Down: Real Life Strategies for Investing in Real Estate Using Other People’s Money by Brandon Turner
The main strength I found in this book is that it helps new investors to understand how they can enhance their cash flow in order to be able to afford to invest in potentially profitable properties. If you are building your budget for your property investment, this is a book that could be very useful to you.
You can learn more about using funding sources such as mortgages and other loans that can cover a large portion of the purchase price for properties that you are looking to invest in. This is one of the most useful books I have read that deal with how to fund the purchase of real estate whether to flip it or develop it as a rental property.
Amazon Rating: 4.5 / 5
Real Estate Investing Gone Bad: 21 True Stories of What NOT to Do When Investing in Real Estate and Flipping Houses by Phil Pustejovsky
One of the best ways to learn about flipping houses is to pay attention to the mistakes that others have made and do all that you can to avoid making the same errors.
This book by Phil Pustejovsky concentrates on what you should not do when flipping property. It’s a good idea to read it in addition to one or more of the books covering broader topics that I mentioned earlier.
Amazon Rating: 4.5 / 5
In summary
It’s not difficult to learn how to flip houses successfully, but it does require an investment of both time and effort. If you are thinking of investing in property to flip, you should never be tempted to rush headlong into your first project. You should always take your time and make every effort to learn as much as you can before you start.
This learning should always include reading as much as you can about the subject. Books that have been written by people who have experience in the field can provide you with valuable insight and help you to develop your own successful strategy. This means that you are more likely to make a significant profit on your investments. The books that I have mentioned in this article are all worth searching out for the valuable information that they contain.
I wish you the best in your house flipping adventures. It can be done, and there’s plenty of money to be made. Take care in your early investments to make sure you don’t shoot yourself in the foot. Read up and take your time. Before long, you’ll know more than most, and you’ll be ready to flip your first house for serious profit. Again, investing time and money to gather knowledge is better than paying the price for your ignorance.
10 Best House Flipping Books on Amazon
- The Flipping Blueprint: The Complete Plan for Flipping Houses 4.9 stars from 115 reviews
- Real Estate Flipping: Flipping Houses for passive income 4.8 stars from 14 reviews
- The Book on Flipping Houses: How to Buy, Rehab & Resell Residential Properties 4.7 stars from 247 reviews
- Real Estate Investing – Flipping Houses 4.7 stars from 33 reviews
- Flip: An Unconventional Guide to Becoming a Real Estate Entrepreneur 4.6 stars from 206 reviews
- Fix and Flip Your Way To Financial Freedom 4.6 stars from 100 reviews
- The Real Estate Rehab Investing Bible 4.6 stars from 53 reviews
- Real Estate Flipping: Flipping Houses for passive income 4.8 stars from 14 reviews
- The Business of Flipping Homes 4.6 stars from 20 reviews
- Fixing and Flipping Real Estate: Strategies for the Post-Boom Era 4.5 stars from 33 reviews
- Flipping Houses For Dummies 4.5 stars from 15 reviews
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Thank you for the list, I’ll make sure to check the books myself, even if we’re not gonna do any house flipping anytime soon. Love the pic you chose, clearly Romanian from the style (and looking at the attribution link I found out I was right :))
I’m currently looking for opportunities at “flipping” homes here in Australia, so I’ve been reading as much as I can. Unfortunately, the holding and closing costs in Australia make the opportunity very restrictive.
This has been very much helpful and I would urge anyone looking into investing in this kind of business to read the above article. I hope the books will help me learn a thing or 2 along the way.
Thank you so much
Thanks for the helpful post. My neighbor is looking to move out fairly quickly and selling their house below market value. I am an architect and understand construction and design, but am not used to fixing up houses for a business venture.