I asked you to be flipper-spotters, and you sent me a great first round of responses. I’ve not been able to track down verification for all of these prices or dates, but here are the flip tips you’ve passed along:
Reader JK wrote in with a tip on a house in San Carlos, ZIP 92120:
There is a house at the corner of High Winds Way and Lazy Clouds Point that is in the process of being flipped. The previous owner left it in shambles and the new owner is putting a lot of time and effort into cleaning it up for resale or renting.
Reader MM said she’s a junkie of the online real estate listing sites like Redfin and Realtor.com while she contemplates buying a home, and she spotted a potential flip in Vista.
A house at 1547 Summer Creek Court in Vista was apparently repossessed by the bank for about $314,000 in March:
… then came back on the market a month or two later at around $425K. It was listed at that higher price for several weeks and then disappeared from Redfin, so I don’t know whether it sold or whether the owner took it off the market.
Reader AS found a couple of potential flips in Point Loma in her search for a home:
3336 Talbot — I think it was purchased for $499,000 and put on the market for around $699,000 but with no takers. It is currently rented out I think.
639 Silvergate – They did two remodels on this property since it failed to sell after the first one. It recently went pending.
Commenter chris brewster left some thoughts under that first post about the sociological impacts of the fights between investors who can pay cash and regular homebuyers using mortgages:
A potential boon to community health has been missed again due to capitalists who simply shuffle the deck of their assets during hard times, toward other profitable ventures, regardless of its [effects on] communities and people.
Leonard Baron, the real estate professor from SDSU who hosted our first round of Savvy & Sage questions, chimed in with some caution. Baron invests in properties to rent out himself, so these are things he’s learned the hard way:
As you know, flipping property is very, very hard to do. One not only needs to cover all their costs of acquisition and rehab (which usually costs a lot more than one thinks) but they have to cover [payments, interest, tax and insurance] and probably 6-8% costs of sale, escrow, title insurance, etc.
And even if one counts their time at $1.50 per hour (which is about what I earn) it ends up being a LOT of time (time = money). …
Some folks definitely will succeed at doing this with a LOT of HARD WORK – but I bet 3 out of 4 (maybe 9 or 10) break even or lose money.
Buying on courthouse steps is a risky game …
Any more flips you’ve found? Drop me a line at kelly.bennett@voiceofsandiego.org.