Yes you read that right, we almost bought a flip house.

Let me tell you a little bit about this house we almost bought

Think of a beautiful 100 year old brick farmhouse with a strong foundation, tall ceilings, original trim and doors, four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a large mudroom, white shaker style kitchen, original floors and wood staircase, beautiful secluded lot within a short commute of Ottawa…

…Okay, that was my dream of how it was going to look after six months

What it actually looked like…

Clutter everywhere, a leaky roof, asbestos, knob and tube wiring, a cesspool for a septic tank, a shed that was falling apart, trees blocking the entire house, lime green trim, forest wallpaper, orange and yellow kitchen, carpet in the bathroom, mold on the ceiling… you name it, everything was wrong about this house. But the house had good bones and lots of character and I could picture how beautiful it would be once it was fixed up.

So why did we try to buy it?

Well, Tony and I have talked for a long time about flipping houses. I have been listening to house flipping and real estate investing podcasts for years. In my spare time I like to prowl around realtor.ca to see what new houses come up. Tony had been on the fence, but then he started watching HGTV again and got a little bit of the itch. He mentioned that we should do it, and I hopped on board!

Fixing houses is something that Tony and I are both good at and love doing. We have lived in three different houses and fixed them up, and built a house (and our marriage is still in tact after all that). I’m pretty confident that we can tackle a large house flip project.

How come the deal didn’t go through?

So we put an offer on this house, and we got as far as the inspections. There were a few extra things that we didn’t know about before the inspection, like the roof replacement and septic system replacement. That is a very large extra cost that we weren’t considering in our budget, so we renegotiated. However, they did not accept our offer and we had to walk away. If we were more experience flippers we might have known our numbers better and could have made a deal, but we just felt like it was too  big of a risk.

What we learned

Through all of this we did learn that we really do want to do this real estate investing thing. It’s scary to think about spending all kinds of money and taking such a big risk, but I think we’re ready to take the leap. I do feel disappointed that we didn’t get this exact house, because I know that we could have made it beautiful, but there will be more houses.

What can you expect from this blog?

My hope is that this blog will turn into our house flipping adventures sometime within the next year or two. But in the mean time I’m going to keep working on our house,  sharing craft projects, doing furniture flips, keeping up with my Etsy shop, and looking for another flip house deal. I thank all of you for following along with our adventures!