Once your property has sold, it’s time to run through the mental checklist for after selling your house. When all the bills are paid and your sale transaction closed, how do you evaluate your performance?
Ask yourself:
- Did you make a profit?
- Was the profit enough to compensate you for your time and energy? If you did not make a profit, why not?
- Be honest with yourself about what you did right, and what you did wrong. Do you want to do another flip?
If you decide that you want to do another flip, create a guide book for yourself for future flips.
Write down what decisions you thought were good ones, as well as the name and phone numbers of third parties that did a good job for you. This should include your real estate broker, lender, contractor, local inspectors, insurance agents, merchants and anybody else. Understanding how these parties performed will make putting together your house flipping team in the future much easier.
Do the same with the people you think let you down. Make sure that everyone who had a piece of the project is on either the good or bad list. You won’t remember all the details for future jobs and you do not want to make the same mistake twice!
There are very few people who flip houses for fun – while they may enjoy certain aspects of it, at the end of the day, it is done for profit.
If you made money, reflect about how you could have made more while consulting your original business plan. If you lost money, but understand why, try it again, being very careful not to make the same mistake twice.
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