Thoughts on a fix-n-flip: Creating a plan before you invest.

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Recently, a friend and I were considering purchasing a fix-n-flip. The home was built in 1950's but still had good bones. The sellers had lived in the home, located on 5 acres just south of Denver, for nearly 40 years. Like most people when you live in a home that long you accumulate a lot of stuff. Well this place had 2 large garages, a barn and a separate living area full of stuff. In addition, the home hadn’t been remodeled on any level since the 70’s.

That makes my head spin with the possibilities to bring the old bones back to life. I find great joy in taking something that is in taters and breathing new life into it.

We did our due diligence using the tools on Home Renovation Hub. The home has a small footprint given today’s standards. Coming in at just under 1400 sq. ft. the old home needed to grow a little. Using the design tools on Home Renovation Hub I created a plan for how we could gain space without growing the footprint of the home. Initially I thought let’s take the garage and build a new garage to the west side of the home. That will give us another 500 sq. ft. Problem is the garage was on a different level from the rest of the house meaning we would need to either pour a new slab on the same level as the home or build the floor up with treated lumber to match the flooring. Neither one was a solid option after reviewing where gas lines ran, location in the fireplace and cost associated with bringing the garage floor up and adding a new garage.

A whole new level – Building up not out

Then I thought, what if we go up? Can we add another level cost effectively? Here’s where the tools of Home Renovation Hub come in handy. Using the design tools, I created a hypothetical layout of the home with a new open floorplan and 3 new bedrooms above the existing bedrooms. This left room for a large master suite on the main level and a large office.

Note: This drawing is not to scale. Initial quick sketch of floor plan, took less than half hour to create.

Although this rendering isn't complete you can already see how much the open floor plan creates great living space.

From this I built a tentative, high budget, for the renovation leaving roughly 30% for fudge factors. I also added room in the budget for new well and septic. Given the age of the home I figure these would need to be replaced. The tools available on Home Renovation Hub can help plan any sized renovation.

In the end, the renovation wasn't meant to be

Long story short, we didn’t end up getting the home. Timing was a little off and given the amount of cleanup that needed to be done along with renovation work we didn’t feel comfortable that we could dedicate the time required to bring this old beauty back to life.

Using the tools on Home Renovation Hub I could throw together a budget, design, timeline and even a few inspirations of what we could do with the property. She would have been a beautiful home for another 50+ years had we decided to move forward. Hopefully the new owners have as good of plan for the place as we had.

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Why we created Home Renovation Hub

The goal of creating HomeRenovationHub.com is to give homeowners tools they can use in real world renovations to help manage their project budgets, keep home improvements on course, and to track investments that build equity in your home. Since we use the tool extensively for our own personal remodels we are constantly tweaking and updating features to make it the most useful tool available to the DIY homeowner. If you are going through a remodel we would love for you to give us a try. In addition, we want your feedback as we build a collection of tools to help home renovators.