The truth is actually far from that, especially in today’s market. The biggest mistake new flippers make is thinking that adding value = massive remodel, when the real math behind that equation usually looks more like massive remodel = huge expensive learning lesson.

If you’re just getting into flipping or home renovation, you’re almost always better off by starting with a much simpler project, as it’s maybe 1 in 100 flippers that can pull off a major renovation successfully. Once you have a core group of contractors and sub-contractors lined up, sure, knock yourself out, but when you’re just starting out you’re learning by trial and error, and it can be some very, very expensive lessons if you tackle a major project right out of the gate.

Even in today’s tougher housing market it’s still possible to find deals that make sense as a cosmetic fix and flip, especially if you stick to the basics such as paint, flooring, trim, and landscaping. You’re not going to make millions tackling projects such as that, but it’s always better to get some easy wins under your belt and make $3,000 here, or $5,000 over there before you move on to more challenging projects that have a much larger potential profit margin.

House flipping today really is a marathon, not a sprint, and you need to adjust your expectations and the types of deals you’re looking for accordingly.

Replacing an old, weathered fence is much the same principle, as families with pets and small children will enjoy and appreciate them just as much when it’s time to sell your home.

As far as the project itself, you’ll need to check with your local city department as far as building codes, since many cities require a permit and/or building plan for any fence you erect.

With that in hand, you’ll need to select a design, as fences range from a simple traditional one with posts set in the ground and two by fours used as the horizontal rails that you’ll nail or screw the vertical fence boards to to much more complex designs.

Always use treated lumber and posts, even if it’s more expensive. If you’re building a big fence and have rocky ground to dig in, consider renting an auger from an equipment rental shop, as the $50 you might spend for a rental that’ll dig out all your fence post holes in an hour or two is money well spent as opposed to spending a few back-breaking days digging them out by hand with post hole diggers.

Most people use pine or cedar for their fence boards, and it largely boils down to your own taste and budget (with cedar being the more expensive option) as far as what material you choose. A nail gun will speed the job up considerably but some swear by using deck screws for a longer lasting more durable project.

While the highest bidder now owns the deed and controls the propety, the former owner is given a window of time to pay the back taxes (plus interest and reimbursement for other costs) if they want to re-claim the deed to their property. This window of time begins when the deed is auctioned off at the tax deed sale and can be anywhere from 6 months to 24 months in length.

If you purchase a deed at a tax sale, it’s important to keep in mind that you’re immediately responsible for the property in regards to having insurance, being faced with whether or not you will evict anyone living in the home, and a variety of other issues.

Even more importantly, though, the buyer at the tax deed sale is responsible for any liens on the property, as not all liens are extinguished by the auction process, so it’s vitally important that you conduct due diligence and research before buying a property at a tax deed sale to ensure that you’re fully aware of any liens that may be attached to the property.

Why would a lender ever agree to accept less than the amount legally owed to them? With a foreclosure, the lender can lose up to 40% of the mortgage amount because of the extra costs involved with foreclosing on a property, including legal fees, court costs, interest payments that they’re not collecting, property maintenance, and commission and other selling costs. If that weren’t bad enough, foreclosing on a property can also take up to two years in some states, so it’s both a costly and time-consuming process. And, in areas where property values continue to plummet, they lose additional money for every month the property sits on their books.

So should every investor pursue short sales? Not necessarily, as they can be a headache, depending on whether the lender is willing to be flexible and truly consider short sales. Lenders tend to require a lot of information from borrowers who are trying to unload their house and avoid foreclosure via a short sale, including (but not limited to):

• Income documentation
• Bank statements to verify assets
• Hardship letter
• Fair market value for the property
• Listing agreement and purchase agreement when they are available

Like any aspect of real estate, short sales can be very profitable for investors but they carry the same risks that buying any property does, as just because you’re getting a property for less than what’s owed on it doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily great deal, especially if someone bought at the very top of the recent speculative bubble.

There are no minimum income or credit requirements for reverse mortgages and the money can be used for any purpose. The borrower must pay off any existing mortgage with the proceeds from the reverse mortgage. Before borrowing, applicants must seek free financial counseling from a source which is approved by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

The reverse mortgage loan ends when the homeowner dies, sells the house, or moves out of the house for 12 consecutive months.  A significant drawback to reverse mortgages are the high upfront costs, which causes some seniors choose other options to draw on their home equity.

Unlike a fixed mortgage (in which you agree to pay a set amount of interest for the term of the loan), adjustable rate mortgages are tied to other indexes, so the amount of interest that is paid each year on an ARM can change from year to year (and even from month to month).

ARMs can also be a hybrid combination of an adjustable rate mortgage and a fixed mortgage, with the first 2-3 years of the mortgage being a fixed mortgage at a set rate, after which point the mortgage is an adjustable rate mortgage.

ARMs have had an interesting few years, as at the height of the property boom (and subsequent fall) in the US many people pointed to ARMs as being responsible for some homeowners who lost their homes to foreclosure when they found they couldn’t afford the payments when rates ratcheted upwards.

As mortgage rates fell to historic lows, however, many ARMs moved in the other direction, so homeownrs with ARMs who rode out the crisis actually now have a very affordable mortgage.

If you’re dealing with an older house, odds are great that the attic insulation is lacking, and that your heating and cooling costs are higher than they should be. Older attic insulation deteriorates and settles over time (and can be eaten or scattered around by critters such as rats, squirrels, or raccoons) and typically doesn’t have the same insulating capacity as today’s insulation products.

As far as a general rule of thumb as to whether you need to add more insulation in your attic, if you poker your head in the attic and can see any rafters peeking up out of the existing insulation, it’s time to add more. As far as the technical lingo, recommended attic insulation is usually R-38 to R-44, which equates to about 12 inches of actual insulation.

You’ve got various options these days as far as the actual insulation product you use, including the familiar pink fiberglass insulation as well as cellulose and newer insulating foam products. There are pros and cons to all the various insulation products, so you’ll want to poke around and do some research as to what you feel is best for your particular home. You’ll also have to decide whether to go with traditional insulation batts (that comes in the big rolls) or a blown in insulation product. Both essentially work the same and again, both have pros and cons.

There’s nothing technically difficult or tricky about installing new insulation, so it’s definitely a DIY project that any homeowner can tackle. That is, if you don’t mind working in hot, dirty attics, often in cramped quarters, carefully avoiding falling through your ceiling, likely covered in itchy fiberglass fibers. It’s not a project for everyone but, as mentioned, it’s not particularly hard, just not much fun. Installing batts yourself is pretty self-explanatory, but most home improvement centers rent machines for installing blown-in insulation yourself (often basically renting the machine to you for free if you buy the insulation there).

If you do decide to hire the job out, expect to pay anywhere from $750-$1,500 for an average sized house of about 1,500-2,000 sq. ft. Like anything home renovation related, that cost can vary depending on where you live, how accessible your attic is, the amount and type of insulation to be added, how much space there is to work in it, etc.

While adding attic insulation isn’t a sexy home upgrade, it can definitely save you money in the long run, and can also help to set a flip orject apart from other houses on the market, if you can point to various energy efficient upgrades you’ve made such as new windows, insulation, and appliances, as more and more buyers are looking for such things when looking for a home.

Hard money loans usually have very high interest rates (15%-20%+) and are secured by the value of the property as collateral. This means that credit scores are often unimportant and ignored by many hard money lenders, as the loan is backed by the property itself if a borrower defaults on the loan.

Hard money lenders get away with charging very high interest rates because they’re often the lender of last resort for people looking for financing to purchase a home due to poor credit scores and/or recent bankruptcies and foreclosures. Hard money loans are also used by investors and flippers in many cases as the rehab costs can often be rolled into the hard money loan so that rehabbers don’t have to pay repair costs out of pocket. Hard money loans also typically aren’t regulated oto the same extent as conventional loans so they can be closed much more quickly.

Above is an exmaple of a very common type of asbestos siding.

Asbestos siding is a very durable, fire-resistant siding that can be manufactured in a variety of sizes, profiles, and textures, thus its popularity as a siding material for decades. The only problem with asbestos siding? Well, asbestos fibers can cause cancer if inhaled, which isn’t the beat feature to have in a building material that’s regularly cut, handled, nailed, etc.

So asbestos siding obviously isn’t used anymore, and it’s presence is definitely something to consider when buying a house, if it has asbestos siding. One thing to note, though, is that there are a lot of misconceptions about asbestos siding in general, especially in relation to asbestos siding removal.

One common misconception is that asbestos must be removed, and that removing it is very expensive and dangerous. Tackling the first piece of that, asbestos siding poses absolutely no health risk of the siding is intact and in place. Touching intact asbestos siding poses no health risk. Handling intact asbestos siding poses no health risk.

Asbestos siding only poses a health risk when it’s broken up and the fibers become airborne. If that doesn’t happen, it poses no risk. If you have asbestos siding on the exterior of your house and it’s not broken, chipped, and falling off the wall (and often it’s not, as it’s not uncommon to find asbestos siding that’s 50+ years old but still in perfect condition), you don’t necessarily have to remove it.

Some buyers might be scared off by asbestos siding, while others aren’t bothered a bit. Yes, in a perfect world you’d prefer not to have to deal with the issue, but it’s not necessarily an imminent health risk that you must address.

The second part of the common misconception mentioned above is that asbestos siding removal is very expensive and/or dangerous, if you attempt it yourself. If you hire a professional asbestos abatement company to remove exterior asbestos siding, yes, it can be very expensive, as contractors must have special licensing to handle asbestos removal of any sort

But for exterior siding removal, it’s not essential that you hire an asbestos abatement company. In most states, home owners are allowed by law to remove asbestos siding from their own residence without any licensing. As far as disposal, again, it depends state by state, but in many states you can legally dispose of asbestos siding in landfills.

The removal of the siding itself is a simple task, and can definitely be done safely by a homeowner. The process is exactly the same as what an asbestos abatement company would do when removing siding, so doing it yourself is absolutely not cutting corners or risky to your health, as long as you take some straightforward precautions.

This isn’t meant to be a complete guide to the asbestos siding removal itself, but the process is straightforward. Buy a Tyvek suit and gloves and clothing that you’ll dispose of later when done. Use a good respirator when actually removing the siding. Wet all siding down thoroughly before removing it, and be careful not to break pieces when removing them from the wall. Carefully place each piece of siding in a heavy-duty contractor bag. When the bag is full (the siding is heavy, so don’t overfill the bag), seal it, then place that big into another contractor bag, so that all siding is double-bagged and each bag is sealed properly.

That’s really all there is to it, and that’s essentially what a professional company will do. Please note that this only applies to exterior asbestos siding, and not removing any asbestos materials from the interior of a house. That is a job for the professionals, if you have asbestos tile inside to remove, asbestos in drywall joint compound, etc., as it’s very important in that case to have equipment that captures all of the particles in the air that are inevitably released.

With exterior asbestos siding, though, you can carefully remove it so that no particles are ever released, which simplifies the process greatly and removes the need for tenting and equipment to capture all particles in the air.

All in all, if you’re considering removing asbestos siding from your home, do some research first, as far as whether to not you actually need to remove it, and whether or not you’re comfortable tackling the job yourself.

Because of the risk involved in hard money loans (they tend to default at a much higher rate than conventional loans due to the fact that they’re a loan of last resort when borrowers can’t get conventional financing), the interest rates charged by hard money lenders is very, very high, often in the range of 15%-20%. The typical customer for a hard money loan is an individual who has income and some savings but bad credit and/or bankruptcies and foreclosures in their past.

Some investors and house flippers use hard money loans to purchase real estate, as hard money loans can include the repair and rehab costs a property needs (something conventional financing won’t allow), and hard money loans can also be approved and funded very quickly when time is of an essence, avoiding the delays that conventional financing often involves.