All good points. Here’s my rough, no-research-complete idea:
-Buy a house with cash or close to cash to keep the mortgage at a minimum. In a small town in iowa, I’d think you could get a fixer upper from that era for $50-60k or less.
-contract out major work, but do finish work myself since that’s where the important details are that I’ve mentioned
-this assumes not buying a house with any major repairs needed. The first one would be small, maybe 1000sf home or less.
- So maybe you put $10-20k into it to repair and renovate. You’d need to sell that house for $100k or more to make it worth it, financially.
Of course, before even starting, I would need to talk to some realtors in the area to know what renovated houses of the type I’m discussing would go for. Then get an idea of what you could spend and still turn a profit. From what I’ve read, even the fast flippers only make 15% on their homes. So this might be more like 8-10% since I don’t want to rush and do it cheaply.
In an ideal world, I’d do this to learn the ropes, and also find myself a good right hand man/woman who can start running the day to day and I’m just financing and making the big decisions. Then it really becomes a business when you can do 5-10 houses a year making a modest profit.
Thoughts?
Before you make ANY plans about buying any house, Do. Your. Research.
Understand how much houses are going for in the area, who's moving in, and what those people were looking for. The first two are easy to find, just talk to realtors. You'll need to talk to recent homebuyers in the area for the last point (Budget, living conditions, blah blah blah remember, no surveys. conversations.)
This will give you a sense of the price range houses are selling at and what people are looking for. Old beautiful houses are AWESOME and you'll have buyers, but the price has to be right and the market has the right fit, too.
After I bought my first house, I realized something. I had no furniture and my house was bare. I have no clue how to decorate either. I had a "great idea". I was going to create a company that first time homebuyers could send pictures of their house to my company and we would came and bring furniture and artwork the day they moved in to make the house a home. I thought it was ingenious.
HOWEVER, I did my research and learned two things. First thing, Most first time home buyers are gifted hand-me-downs from a bunch of relatives when they move in. Second thing, almost all over them had no budget left to spend on something like this.
After a month of research, I scrapped the idea. I saved myself years of work and TONS of money by doing my research FIRST. Feel free to make it work anyone.
