Believe it or not, house flipping is back with the housing recovery. And while there’s money to be made from flipping houses, there’s also money to be made from selling things to would-be flippers. Flipping workshops are crowded again.
House Flipping Workshops
At a recent workshop just outside Baltimore on a recent Saturday, Terry Royce, who’s been flipping houses for many years, was sharing some of his secrets. He covered everything from finding a seller or a buyer to providing time management tips.
“I always like to say, this workshop stuff is gonna go wrong.” It is. And that’s the reality.
It was Royce’s first workshop. He charged $97 for a morning seminar and an afternoon bus tour of some homes that were being flipped.
Zane Watkins was among those on the bus. He said he’d been to four or five other workshops, one that cost him and his wife $300 and ended with a hard sell for another series of seminars.
“They had three different versions of the package,” he recalled. “One was $10,000, the next was $15,000 and finally $22,000.”
BBB Rating Workshops “D”
The Better Business Bureau rates these types of workshops. They are now tracking 130 of them. “Of that, only one is a BBB accredited business with an A,” said spokesperson Katherine Hutt. “We have one that has a B+, 13 that have Cs, and all the rest have Ds or Fs.”
Hutt said the BBB gets several hundred complaints a year from consumers saying they didn’t get what they paid for by flipping workshops. And when they tried to get their money back, they ran into a brick wall. Hutt said, “just like buying a home, when it comes to flipping workshops, it’s buyer beware.”
Featured in: Marketplace Morning Report for Thursday, May, 2014, by Nancy Marshall-Genzer.
About David Soble: David is a seasoned real estate and finance attorney with more than 35 years of experience, combining his background as a “big bank insider” with a commitment to demystifying complex legal issues for his clients. As the founding attorney of Soble Law (also known as Soble PLC / Proven Resource), he leads a specialized team in Michigan and Ohio that handles real estate transactions, contract disputes, probate, and financial litigation. Known for a practical, no-nonsense approach and peer-rated excellence (Martindale-Hubbell AV Preeminent), Soble and his team strive to protect clients’ property and financial interests with clarity, integrity, and experience.
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