Latest news with #homeflipping
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
I flip homes in the Hamptons. I made $360,000 on Airbnb last year, and I use brand partnerships on Instagram to save money on renovations.
Blythe Graham-Jones left a career in advertising to renovate and sell homes in the Hamptons full-time. Her first project was a home she purchased for $635,000 that Zillow now values at $1.8 million. She partners with brands, promoting their products to her Instagram followers, to help defray renovation costs. This is an as-told-to essay based on a conversation with Blythe Graham-Jones, 39, a former advertising executive who now flips and rents out homes in the Hamptons, documenting her projects for 10,200 Instagram followers @Via_Norfolk. Graham-Jones makes money from renovating Hamptons homes, renting them out on Airbnb, consulting on design projects, and various social media revenue streams, including brand partnerships. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity. I used to work in advertising. I worked with some of the most amazing creative minds, but didn't really consider myself a creative. I was the organized, left-brained person for these amazing talents. My husband Cody was a real estate agent when we started dating back in 2008. Now, he works in tech sales, but we have both always loved real estate. We used to be the ones who'd organize a Montauk share house for our friends. We loved driving around looking at rentals together. We never believed that your first purchase had to be your primary home. In 2017, we were still renting in Brooklyn and expecting our first child when we bought a three-bedroom home in East Hampton for $635,000. It wasn't a hot property. The previous owners were in the middle of a divorce, and it was a bit neglected. People just didn't want to deal with the hassle. There were boxes everywhere. They hadn't even cleaned out the medicine cabinets. It was a weird layout, too: The refrigerator was in the hallway, the living room was in the back of the house, and there was no primary bedroom. We had renters that first summer. By September, I was on a mission to fix up the house for cheap. I got white paint and Ikea rattan furniture. For two years, we continued to rent it out on Airbnb and reinvested every penny back into the house. We started out charging $1,000 per night during peak season. In 2019, we refinanced and pulled out a home equity line of credit, or HELOC, for $250,000. With that money, I finally got to do a big renovation. I ended up opening up one bedroom to make a living room and an open kitchen. I added a bathroom to make a primary bedroom. Now, the home is valued at $1.8 million, according to Zillow. I realized that doing this was my thing. I could see the potential in homes. Managing through the chaos was natural for me from my previous role. At the time, I also wanted to spend more time with my kids, who were 1 and 3. I left my corporate role in 2021 to pursue renovations full-time. One of the first steps I took was hiring a freelance designer on UpWork to build a brand identity. For $2,000, she created my website, brand identity, logos, colors, and official fonts. I think it really helped me land deals with brands. For instance, I work with home and kitchen fixtures company Kingston Brass. For three properties, they've gifted me an entire house's worth of products — probably $20,000 worth — for showing them off during my renovation videos on Instagram. It definitely helps for the ROI of the eventual sale. Now, the goal is to sell one house each year while renting out the other two on Airbnb. Last year, our two properties in the Hamptons brought in $360,000 in Airbnb revenue. Both have five bedrooms and pools. I only invest in homes in East Hampton because I like its rules regarding short-term rentals. There are minimum two-week stays, but with four exceptions you can use them throughout the year, which I usually time around holidays like Thanksgiving. There's the profit from flipping, our Airbnb rental income, and the brand partnerships I bring in through Instagram. I also offer design consulting that starts around $1,000 or $5,000 a month to work on retainer. I also generate income from my LTK page, where people can shop the products I use in my renovations. Instead of one job, I have multiple streams of income now. Read the original article on Business Insider
News.com.au
20-05-2025
- Business
- News.com.au
High-end flip adds more than $350,000 to Geelong character home
Owners who flipped an inner-Geelong character home will walk away having added more than $350,000 to its value in less than three years. The owners upgraded the kitchen and bathrooms and did plenty of cosmetic work to update the three-bedroom Californian bungalow at 3 Lascelles Ave, Manifold Heights, for which they paid $835,000 in late 2022. Now the 483sq m property near a Shannon Ave shopping strip is worth $1.2m, selling in a post-auction deal. Oslo Property agent Curtis Hoare said the buyer snapped up the property after it had passed in at auction. But Mr Hoare said there were other potential purchasers floating around to raise their interest following Saturday's auction. 'Post auction we had a bit of interest, it was pretty popular,' Mr Hoare said. 'We had about 30 buyers throughout the campaign. It was a beautiful, stunning period home.' Mr Hoare said the owner had purchased it with the intention of flipping the property. 'They're a builder by trade and did an absolutely beautiful, contemporary renovation. The build added $365,000 to the home's value, a 43 per cent increase in three years. In that same time, Manifold Heights median house price of $1.26m has increased 29 per cent, according to PropTrack data. The home had already been extended by a previous owner, but the new renovations took that work to a new level. Removing an original fireplace that was floating in the rear, open-plan living area added to the sense of space for a family. The new kitchen showcased stone waterfall benches with an integrated breakfast bar, custom cabinetry and a freestanding Smeg dual fuel cooker. Tiling and VJ panelling added to the style, complementing other features such as full height custom window furnishings. Feature VJ panelling was also used in the main bedroom, which also benefited from an upgrade to the ensuite including a walk-in shower with dual heads. The main bathroom has a floating dual vanity with underbench storage, dual mirrors with concealed storage, a tub and walk-in shower with a wall niche. New electrical and plumbing work was also done inside the walls, along with diamond leaded windows and ducted heating and cooling. Mr Hoare said the next level the renovations took the home to were an attraction for the buyers. 'Just the quality of the build itself – extremely high quality care and very thoughtful done as well.'
