I was thinking of becoming an interior designer and working hard enough at a business to buy my own first small home, and then flip it while living in it, repeating that process until I had enough money to start my own business.What are other tips?
Flipping fell apart 2 years ago, due to long DOM and the lagging housing market, make flipping a sketchy proposition at best.
Kendall; with no exception that I am aware of, the day of reasonable expectations of profits in flipping died about 6 mo ago. And I have NEVER ever been a proponent of flipping. I always suggest, have access to lots of cash flow and buy, fix up and keep. YOUR equity will, less drastically than a spec buyer for inflation, rise and fall a bit but it will absolutely rise again. I suggest having a backup plan to pay for the mortgages and buy 2 houses a mo and when you have 24 or more, put those LLCs into a REIT and back into a public shell.
Sorry, you missed the boat. Real estate is cyclical and we are in the absolute worst part of the cycle right now. The only sales that are being done right now are: foreclosures, short sales or new home sales where the builder has drastically slashed prices. Trying to flip now would be a big mistake. You don't have to wait until the market is hot again, you just have to wait until it stabilizes. If you were to buy a home now for 187,000 it would be very likely in a month it's only worth 170,000 or less. No matter what improvements you made to this house, it would be unlikely you'd get your money back, let alone make a profit.
Become a contractor , which is a fancy way of saying , excavator, mason, rough and finish carpenter taper/plasterer painter , plumber , and electrician, and otherwise aquire all the necessary building skills. We may never (hopefully) go through another real estate market of the past decade. It was a bubble and I have been through a bunch of them ( mostly under republican administrations, I'm just sayin' ) However the concept of fixing up old houses is a proven economic engine, it just needs to be real substantial changes, not changing out perfectly good functional fittings and finishes, just for the sake of changes. I hate to break it to you but esthetic taste is the least difficult talent, to aquire, and after you work on your first couple hundred homes everyone develops the sense of what works, and what doesn't.
