How to Make $30,000 a Month Flipping Houses

Last Updated on February 17, 2022 by Mark Ferguson

I have flipped more than 200 houses in my career and while I love flipping, it is not easy! We have flipped 26 houses per year multiple times, and I can truly say that the more houses you flip, the more problems you have. Now, when I say house flipping, I am talking about buying houses, remodeling them, and selling them. Some people say they “flip houses” when they are wholesaling, which is buying and selling houses very quickly without remodeling them. Over the years, I have made $30,000 a month flipping houses and even more. It takes money, a team, and thick skin to make that kind of money, but it is not impossible by any means.

How much can you make on a single house flip?

I have written articles like this before and I love to break down the numbers to see how to actually do this, not just live in a fantasy world where good thoughts allow money to fall into your lap. I am also a fan of good thoughts, but that is not all it takes! The last article I wrote in this format was how to make $10,000 a month with rental properties. I love rentals and to be honest, I prefer rentals over flips, but flips allow me to buy more rentals.

I buy flips from $100,000 to $300,000 and they tend to make me from $20,000 to $50,000 per flip. I have made $100,000 or more on a flip before and I have also lost money on flips before. For the most part, I want to make at least $30,000 on every flip I do. That also makes this article really easy to write. If you want to make $30,000 a month flipping houses, flip one house a month. There the article is done!

While that math is simple, the task of flipping one house a month is not simple. Flipping one house can be tough let alone 12 ina year. We have done more and will continue to do more but it was not easy to get to this point. You can see a video of one of my best and most interesting flips below:

Why is flipping houses hard?

A lot of people watch the house flipping television shows and think flipping is like what they see on TV. You buy a house, change the floorplan, decide what are the best design choices, and boom you make $50,000 or $100,000. The reality of flipping is much different from the television shows. Here is a break down of how it actually works:

• Line up financing: Most people do not have the cash to flip houses so they borrow money from hard money lenders, friends, or the bank.
• Find the deals: There are a lot of people who want to flip houses. The deals are not just sitting there for anyone to buy who wants to make $50,000. It takes a lot of work and patience to find the deals from the MLS, wholesalers, auctions, direct marketing, etc.
• Find contractors: I do not do any of the work on house flips myself. I use contractors and subcontractors to handle it all. If you want to make $30,000 a month flipping houses you will need to hire contractors as well. Finding decent people to work on the houses is one of the toughest parts of the business.
• Decide on what to repair: On TV, they usually go all out making tons of repairs to properties because that is what gets attention. In reality, the goal is to make only the repairs that are needed to sell the house. The bigger the remodel, the longer it takes and usually the less money you make.
• Manage the repair process: Things rarely go as planned so someone has to manage the repair process and make sure the work is being done on time and the right way. Some of the biggest disasters come when a flipper trusts their contractor without oversite and huge mistakes are made or no work is being done.
• Sell the house: It is not always easy to sell flips either. I am a real estate broker and list my flips for sale on the MLS. It is in almost everyone’s best interest to use an agent to sell their houses which cost money. You also need to make sure the home is clean, the work is completely done, and possibly stage the home.

Many things can go wrong during a flip and even experienced flippers like myself sometimes lose money. You have to stay on top of things and constantly tweak the business model. Materials are always getting more expensive as is labor and other costs. We are always finding new ways to get better deals in order to keep that same amount of profit.

To get that $30,000 average profit on a house everything needs to run smoothly and you need to assume there will be extra costs along they want that you are not accounting for.

My book Fix and Flip Your Way to Financial Freedom (197 reviews) goes over the ins and outs of flipping and how to actually do what I talk about in this article. It is on Amazon as an ebook, paperback, and audiobook. 

How much money do you need to flip houses?

Another roadblock for many investors is finding enough money to flip houses, especially if they have a lot of deals at once. There are lenders who will finance flips but the investors almost always need some of their money as well. You may be able to finance 90% of the deal but it is tough to finance all of it. There are also carrying costs, and financing costs while you own the property. The more money you borrow the more that money will cost you. We tend to need $50,000 or more per flip we do. If we have 10 flips going at once, that means we have at least $500,000 of our own cash tied up in those deals when we use loans. If we used all cash we would have $3,000,000 tied up in those ten deals!

It takes a lot of flips going at once to make $30,000 a month because it takes a while to flip a house.

How long does it take to flip a house?

I would love to say it takes three months to flip a house but in reality it takes much longer. We have a lot going at once so we cannot always start working on them right away. It may be a month or two before we can start the work, then it takes time to complete the work, and it takes time to sell the house once it is done as well.

Our fast flips take from 3 to 6 months to complete but may take from 6 to 10 months and a few take over a year from the time we buy them to the time we sell them. I would say our average has been around 8 months from beginning to end.

Because it takes so long to flip houses we need to have a lot of flips going at once to flip 10, 20 or even 26 houses a year which we have done a few times.

How do you make $30,000 a month flipping houses?

If you want to make $30,000 a month flipping houses and you make $30,000 per flip that is pretty easy math. You need to flip 1 house a month or 12 houses a year. If it takes us from 6 to 10 months to flip a house that means you would need to have from 6 to 12 house flips going at once.

It took me many years to get the point where I could do that many flips, but we usually have from 15 to 20 flips going at one time and that equates to 20 to 26 flips a year selling.

Just remember this is all theory and reality can be much different! You might have some flips that lose money or take way longer than you think that drag down all of your averages. It may take more flips to make that goal or less if you manage to increase your profit margins.

If you decide to build a business like I have where you hire people to help you must factor in those costs as well. I have a project manager, bookkeeper, and other people who help with the flips as well. I also have many other things going on like this blog, my real estate brokerage, my rentals, and more!

If you want to see all of our flips in action be sure to subscribe to the InvestFourMore YouTube channel!