Learning to "Flip" Houses

[jeffrey]

It's one thing to buy a house to call home. It's quite another to buy property with the sole purpose of turning around and reselling for a profit.

It's called flipping, and in the coming months, a dozen aspiring real estate investors experience this firsthand -- on camera, no less -- as they attempt to buy, remodel and sell property within a period of six months.

Flipping is the subject of an upcoming reality television series with the working title "Property Ladder," scheduled to appear on The Learning Channel in May 2005.

"Everyone you talk to seems to know someone who has tried to flip property," said Char Serwa, the show's executive producer. In California, where most of show's subjects are buying, 2.6 percent of all houses sold during the month of May were owned for less than six months, according to DataQuick Information Systems, up from 1.9 percent the previous year.

There are several varieties of flipping, said William Bronchick, author of "Flipping Properties." One is rehabbing, which is the focus of the show. Other flippers buy property that's in foreclosure or under construction and try to resell the property to other investors.

"We're not advocating that people do this," added Serwa, explaining that each homeowner's story will be told in an individual episode, detailing the experience from purchase to sale... [read more at money.cnn.com]