Have a Plan for Renovating/Rehab!
The biggest mistake you can make when it comes to real estate investing is not having a plan. The rehabber I met in Jacksonville has a very good plan and he sticks to it on every transaction. Your goal is to sell your house for a profit. You can do the best renovation job ever seen but if you don’t sell the home for a maximized profit, you wasted your time.
The first thing he does is understand what the other real estate is like in the area of Jacksonville, Fl he is buying the home. You have to renovate the house in a manner consistent with the other homes in the area that are selling to maximize your profit. One good way to do this is to visit homes that are for sale in an area and ask a real estate agent for a list of recently sold homes. Again this research must be done in a small geographic area, he picks one small section of Jacksonville, sometimes a single neighborhood.
What makes homes sell in Jacksonville can vary greatly from area to area, so its important to make sure you are looking at the closest most similar homes that will attract the same types of buyers as your homes.
All too often we make the mistake of renovating a home the way we would want it, when it most cases we are not a potential buyer for the home. Take a lesson from my friend in Jacksonville and make sure you understand the potential buyer for your the home you are working on and tailor your renovation/rehab plans accordingly.