I've had a recent growing interest in real estate. Where do I start? I've heard that you can make considerable profit from flipping houses and such. Any suggestions? I really don't have much exposure or experience w/ this stuff at all. I was thinking about taking a real estate class at a community college in my area...
Flipping isn't such a great deal these days. You can certainly pick up properties cheaply, but you don't have the buyers that used to be there (marginal credit people obtaining creative financing). Further, there is a huge amount of inventory on the market (foreclosures, short sales, builder's inventory) that you will be competing with. Not trying to discourage, just something to think about.
Ditto. I agree with Glenn. Flipping is very hands on best learned from someone actively doing it in today's market SUCCESSFULLY. Let them mentor you through the process as there are many facets to working the full scope of this type of business. While it is not required to have a license in real estate to flip houses, the benefit of a license is the info access you have in pricing and marketing the finished product. For that, you could affiliate yourself with a Realtor as many investors and flippers do.
if you take real estate classes at your community college you can learn a lot, but there are also a lot of books out there about making money in real estate you could start by reading a couple keep in mind that national advice and national trends are not necessarily descriptive of local places where you are looking to buy, sell or invest real estate prices can vary tremendously by location even down to which end of a particular street, so you have to look at the local factors that are affecting prices and sales I am not a real estate professional, I just own a couple of houses.
real estate classes mostly just help you pass a real estate license exam. It does not sound like that is the way you want to go. Based on what you say you want to do I would strongly suggest you find someone that does exactly that and go to work for them. Don't worry about how much salary you make- consider it an education. You will either learn how to do this or learn you don't want to do this.
