One of the fastest ways to make money in real estate is through flipping houses, which is also referred to as wholesaling houses.

It is also the real estate investing model that probably requires the least amount of work and cash invested into each deal.

Flipping houses involves locating houses at below market prices, then “flipping” them to other real estate investors at a discount.

Most of these properties come from distressed home owners (motivated sellers), such as home owners facing foreclosure, going through divorce, job loss, job relocation, illness, or simply cannot afford to keep making mortgage payments.

Sometimes they just need to get rid of the house, but cannot afford to do the repairs needed, or simply don’t want to do it. They therefore accept to sell the houses at a discount for a quick and easy closing.

When you flip a house, the profit may not be very big (such as when you sell at retail), but you make your money fast, typically within two weeks.

The process goes something like this:

1) Real estate investor locates discounted property from a motivated seller and puts it under contract

2) He then takes this contract to the title company to get the title work done to ensure the property will be delivered free and clear

3) Another real estate investor (wholesale buyer) acquires the house through one of two methods:

a) He takes over their contract for an assignment fee and closes on the property himself or

b) He buys the property from the investor in a double closing (simultaneous closing). In this case you buy the property and sell it to the wholesale buyer on the same closing table.

The wholesale buyer ends up doing most of the work (such as repair) and makes more money eventually after they fix and sell.

You as the real estate investor flipping the house have to leave more money on the table for the wholesale buyer.

Typically, you must locate properties for sale at 65% of market price minus repairs or less if you are to wholesale a deal successfully. Most wholesale buyers will express less interest when the profits go below this figure.

You must then quickly find wholesale buyers with cash in order to flip your property quickly.

Finding buyers often involves a combination of methods, both online and offline. The more methods you can employ, the more likely you are to find a cash buyer.

Offline methods include advertising the property to local real estate investors in local newspapers. I always make sure to give them my web site, rather than my phone number. Using a well designed landing page (squeeze page), they have to give me their name email and phone number before they can access my deals – building a very powerful buyers list.

The first thing I do is to email my deals to my buyers list, a list of active real estate investors I have accumulated both from local REI meetings and my website.

Each person inevitably ends up on my web site to view the full details of the property such as comps, live video vitual tours and pictures. In the process, they can email this deal to their friends exposing the deal to more potential buyers.

Flipping a house can be a great real estate investment. But in order for you to begin any serious house flipping you need to have a great credit score. Many people are addicted to the house flipping shows on television and are really interested in learning how to flip a house. If you really want to learn how to flip a house there are many places you can go for information. There are websites and you can even find seminars at your local community college or hotel conference room to learn the art of house flipping. But the best way is to find someone who has been doing it for a while and see if you can work for them.

Flipping properties is when an investor purchases a house, fixes it up and/or brings it to code and then sell it for a reasonable profit. The process of flipping properties has created a huge rush in the real estate market. Both the United States and Canada have a number of cities that would be great for flipping a house.
In the United States there are ten cities that are great for flipping homes. These cities are: Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Raleigh NC, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, Boston, NY City, and last but not least Portland. Now we move on to Canada. The best cities in Canada for flipping homes are: Calgary & Saskatewan.

All of these cities have great potential when it comes to flipping homes. But as with any investment you need to do your research and be careful. With the low cost of homes now it could be better than ever to buy homes to flip. You may need to wait a little while until the market kicks back up again to sell the homes. But if you have the money and can afford to wait longer than thirty days to sell you may find yourself with a great investment and a nice fat bank account.