Jeff Leighton - How To Flip Your First House: The Beginners Guide To House Flipping

Copyright 2019 Jeff Leighton

All rights reserved.

The information contained within this book is strictly for educational purposes. If you wish to apply ideas contained in this book, you are taking full responsibility for your actions. The author has made every effort to ensure the accuracy of the information within this book was correct at time of publication. The author does not assume and hereby disclaims any liability to any party for any loss, damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from accident, negligence, or any other cause. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

If you purchase anything through a link anywhere in this book, you should assume that we have an affiliate relationship with the company providing the product or service that you purchase, and that we may be paid in some way. We recommend that you do your own independent research before purchasing anything.

This book contains additional resources that I use on a daily basis as a real estate investor. Since I could not physically include these in the book, they are all available to download for free on my website www.jeff-leighton.com. That includes my deal analyzer, repair estimator, example contracts, marketing pieces that I use, recommended resources, helpful videos, and much more.

This book will help you flip your first house fast. Whether youve looked at a few properties already or not, this book is a recipe for your first successful flip. Believe it or not there is a process and a formula to flipping houses that can be followed by anyone. There is a system behind this business and a system behind doing your first deal.

Over the last several years I have flipped numerous houses and worked with some of the top real estate investors in the world. I have implemented the secrets they shared with me into my own business.

This is not a theory book. Everything in here has been tested by myself or an investor friend whom I know, like, and trust. I have seen numerous part-time investors make the transition to full-time after learning these strategies. In this book we will go over real-life examples and a step-by-step process to make sure your first flip is a success. That will then open the doors to more flips and even to quitting your job and doing this full-time.

Flipping is one of the oldest businesses in the world: buying an asset at a low price, fixing it up, and then selling it at a higher price. You can see this business model in nearly any industry since the beginning of time.

The business will always be around because there will always be motivated sellers, no matter what the economy is doing or what a CNN or Fox News headline says. At any given point you go to any city in America and find renovated properties by investors, many of whom are just regular people who have learned how to find deals, fix houses, and make large profits doing so.

The great thing about getting into this business and doing your first flip is that you can start part-time and eventually, after you have done a couple of successful flips, then transition into a full-time real estate investor. In this book we just focus on your first flip, although the income potential in this business is unlimited. I know some people that flip a couple of houses a year, and some that do several a month and then move up to larger-scale projects and luxury flips. Its completely up to you.

Each chapter contains action steps that you can implement in your own business. The more action you take, the faster you will see results and the sooner you can complete your first successful flip. In the next chapter Ill start by telling you the very first thing you need to do to ensure a successful flip.

The most important thing you need to do before getting into real estate investing and flipping your first house is becoming educated. Now, the great thing about flipping houses is that you do not need any type of formal degree like a college or masters degree. In fact, looking back on what I know now, I would have spent my college years learning the specialized information about house flipping and not the general info you learn in college. There are several ways to learn this specialized info, all of which I have done and listed below.

First of all, you should familiarize yourself and listen to as many real estate investing podcasts as possible. For starters, they are free and easy to listen to when you are driving around. Even if you just get one thing from each interview, you will learn a ton about real estate investing.

On these podcasts, full-time real estate investors are interviewed and go over everything from their favorite marketing strategies, to what kinds of deals they are doing, to their own stories of getting started in real estate investing. These days there are so many good real estate investing podcasts out there. I would say, check out the BiggerPockets podcast, Best Ever Show, Real Estate Investing Mastery, and so many others.

The next great place to start learning are books on house flipping on Amazon, such as the one you are reading now. Go through several books, since each house flipper is in a different area and may have a slightly different strategy. Look for the commonalities that the different house flippers may have so that you can develop your own strategy.

For instance, some investors may be in very high-end areas and some may be in very low-end areas, but maybe they both do a lot of direct mailing. That is probably something you would want to incorporate into your business.

Another place to get started with real estate investing is working with local real estate investors and house flippers. There are several ways to set this up. Number one, if you are going to REIA (Real Estate Investor Association) meetings or Meetup groups for real estate investors which you should be doing , there are tons of networking opportunities that can open up doors to part-time or full-time positions.

All you have to do is ask. Additionally, if you go to the Craigslist jobs section in your area, there are always part-time and full-time positions that local real estate developers and house flippers will post on there, since we are always looking for good people to work with.

Social media is another way. If you follow some of the top real estate investors on their social media profiles, they will often say, Were hiring an acquisitions person, a lead manager, a project manager, a marketing specialist, etc.

Another great way of working with local house flippers is to just start doing marketing and bringing them your best leads. When I first got started doing my own marketing, I would bring the best leads to a local investor who very much appreciated me doing this and would then help me put the deals together. He got free leads from me and was able to do more deals, and I was able to see how he closed the deals and how he worked, so it was a win-win situation.

We will go in depth later on in this book on how to generate off market leads but keep in mind that most of the top investors in your area will have joint venture programs for newer investors where you just have to bring them the good leads and they will do the rest of the work for you.