Rob and Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk about whether a recent flip was worth the price.
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Is This Flip Worth It? Let's Run The Numbers
Rob: What's up, pro Flippers? On today's episode, it is time for another edition of Is This Flip Worth It?
Melissa: We're gonna dive into the numbers on a flip and see if it's worth it to purchase at the price that we are talking about and will we actually get the profit that we need out of it.
Rob: Alright. On today's episode, talking about a purchase that we just did.
Melissa: We have to see if it's worth it first.
Rob: Oh, sorry. We're not, we didn't do it. We're looking to do it. No, just kidding. So, at the flea market this last weekend, [00:01:00] we actually found a couple items, not really looking for them. But we found a couple items and we figured we would,
Melissa: so we wanna dive into the numbers to see if absolutely it's actually worth it, what we purchase to make enough profit on the item.
Rob: Absolutely. So this is kind of cool. This is not a normal item that I would've bought other than we recently, you guys know we recently moved into a new house. We Airbnb'd, our old house. The old house is we had somebody in there that we needed to use a carpet cleaner, and so I know.
Melissa: They left it disgusting.
We've had a great experience until this one last one was not a great experience. But anyways,
Rob: couch and couch and, some of the carpet got, yeah,
Melissa: peed on. It got peed on.
Rob: Okay. I wasn't going that far.
Melissa: Not by a dog, by a kid.
Rob: I wasn't going that far. But anyways, we need to clean it. We need to have it cleaned.
And we had a small carpet cleaner, one of the residential models. And we had it in the house even. So
we use that. But.
Yeah. But I'm always looking for, and I have another commercial carpet cleaner that's a rug doctor, one of the ones that you'd go to Ace Hardware, you'd go to Lowe's, home Depot.
They rent you one of those units, I don't know how much they rent it for, but by the day they rent it out. And that's what we found at the flea market, one of the commercial ones. So I have, I
Melissa: you found two at first.
Rob: Yeah, two. One lady had two of them. I had one. And the pump went out on it and it just started causing problems.
And once that happened, I was like, I have it. I actually have that one apart down in the garage right now, that I was working on fixing it. I broke another part once I pulled it apart. So I was like, man, this is ridiculous. It was gonna cost me some money to just be able to fix it, but it was commercial so I was willing to do the work, order the parts that I needed to to get it done.
But then we were at the flea market last weekend and I ran across. Two of them with the first vendor that I came up to. And I was curious, I mean, I expected, you know, a hundred, $150 in the local market roughly, you're gonna look to spend roughly a $150, $250, $350 anywhere in that price range for these commercial ones that they rent at the local, the hardware stores.
So I asked the lady how much she told me, did she tell me $35 or $40? I think she said $40.
Melissa: You got her, I know you offered her less, but
Rob: I did. I got her, it was $35.
Melissa: You got her $35 a piece. So $70.
Rob: I think she told me $40, I think she told me $40 a piece or $40 for one. I looked at the one up front. I, she said $40 and then she had one in the back.
So that's a pro tip. I want to package stuff together to get a better deal. So she told me $35. I offered her
Melissa: No, she told you $40.
Rob: She told me $40 a piece, but then I told her I would do. Yeah, you're right. Sorry if I took them both, she said $35 is what she would do and I offered her $30. I tried to get them for $60 and then I said, do they work?
And she actually let me roll it over to a extension. We plug them both in. They both worked just like they're supposed to. So I was like, ah, I don't have a lot of, that's the only bad thing at the flea market. You have bargaining chips. In your favor if I'm taking your chance
Melissa: something. But you're glad they turned on, you wouldn't want 'em to not turn
on.
Rob: I am, but sometimes I, I think I knew there was nothing wrong with these. They, they look like they're in decent conditions, so chances are there was nothing wrong with them. But I took them over, plugged them in, and I lost all negotiating power after that.
Power after I plugged them in and they both came on, she was standing there watching me.
She was asking another one of the vendors, what should she sell them for? And he told her $50 a piece. So I said 30 bucks a piece after I plugged them in and she goes, no, $35 is the best I can do. So I ended up buying them. We got them both for $70, $70. Now remember, this is not something, I mean, normally back in the day when I started flipping, I would've done this 'cause there's not a ton of profit on it, but there is enough profit, to make some good money.
So, but I bundled them together. I figured if I do keep one for us to be able to use for carpet cleaning at the Airbnb at our house, being able to do that, that, that's nice. But then I thought, if I can pay for the one that I'm keeping with this other one, that I lump into it, that was my mindset. So I was like, all right, this is perfect.
I'll sell one of them and keep the other. And that's kind of what I rolled into it doing. But I knew, and I didn't do a lot of research on these because I've, I've seen them in the past and I've known, that they were, they were selling anywhere from $350-$500 is typically what this commercial one would sell for on eBay.
So, negotiated the deal, we did the deal, got that. And after that, I mean, Melissa had me go in and do all the, the numbers of exactly what's selling right now. 'cause sometimes that stuff changes. So we did actually figure out the numbers, but then we walked those back to the truck and I'm walking around, we [00:05:00] got to two or three more aisles over and they have another one.
Melissa: They had another one.
Rob: The same one. The run rug doctor, except it's a little bit different model. But this is,
Melissa: you thought this was a little more expensive model.
Rob: I do, and I originally thought probably more towards $800 was what this one would sell for. But I, yeah. Anyways. So negotiated the deal on that one.
She told me she was asking, yeah, she asked, she, I think she was asking a hundred. And then she said she would go to $60 or $70 or something like that. Anyways, we settled on 60 bucks. So I paid $60 for this one and $70 for the other two. So $35 a piece, and then we got $60 for this one. I thought this one would sell for a little bit more, and I still think it will.
I think it'll sell for a little bit more, but then we got two items to sell now, and we're keeping one of them. So we'll keep the best one and then sell the other two.
Melissa: What's the best one?
Rob: I don't know. I have the, the cool thing was one of them. From the two that we bought, the, vendor had a upholstery attachment.
Oh yeah. Which those in a then those in themselves will sell for more than I spent on all three of these. The upholstery attachment that you just plug in the back and then you can clean chairs, you can clean couches, and that was what I really, really wanted. But she only had one of those.
Melissa: We are, you gonna keep that or sell it?
Rob: Well, we'll probably keep that one. But we have the, the third one that we bought is the same exact model that I have downstairs in the garage, that I had the problems with, and I had the upholstery,
oh, you
attach it to that one. So now we have two that have the upholstery attachment and then one that does not.
So we'll keep one with the upholstery attachment and sell the other two. So, but still, we'll make more money. Yeah. Then what we spent on these will make a pretty good profit.
Melissa: Well, let me show, let go through numbers.
Rob: Alright. Let's talk about the numbers. Let's do that.
Melissa: because that's where that you have to know the numbers.
Absolutely. If you could be, worth it. So you figured that you can get $350 to $500 on the two that you spent $35 on.
Yes.
So that's the one I ran the numbers for. So if say we get $350 for one.
Rob: That's
on the lower end.
I feel like you can definitely get that.
Melissa: You're gonna get charged $65 about for shipping, which would be roughly what it costs.
Yep. You said they fold up and can go in a box.
Rob: Yep.
Melissa: Fees would be around 13%, so $54, which brings your total to three? I said $361, but then you gotta minus $35. I forgot to do the cog. So it'd be three, like 27? I think so.
Rob: $365 minus $35.
Melissa: $361 minus $35.
Rob: Oh, shoot. Just go $360. Yeah.
Melissa: $326. So perfect. $326
So $326 would be roughly your, the profit, profit on that. So, and that's on the low end. So.
Rob: These will, the cool thing about these is they will not, they don't have to be on a pallet. They fold down and they will fit into a box. So I'll have no problem throwing these in a box and shipping them in a box, which that's why I estimated shipping at, what did I say, $50, $45 to $65? Roughly, that's what I estimated shipping at. I'm pretty spot on with that. It shouldn't be that much more, or less than that, that estimate. So we're pretty, pretty close to what it's gonna cost for shipping on that. Like I said, that was the other plus on this.
It's not a huge high end. I mean 350 bucks on the low end, making that on profit. Is that what we said? $360?
Melissa: $320.
Rob: So, so $300 profit. Call it $300 profit if we're a little bit off on our numbers. $300 profit, it's not huge, huge profit, but it's still decent for an item that won't take me for
Melissa: not a lot of work,
Rob: no, and I'm not gonna do that much to it other than plug it in, maybe try and get a video.
I have some old remnants of carpet that are down in the garage as well, so I might even do a video. I might stain a piece of carpet and then show it cleaning it. Nobody else on eBay I guarantee has any videos of somebody selling a carpet cleaner that it is actually cleaning carpet. So I could show that, show that it was working, to make that money so that'd be a little bit more time and effort on my part to do it.
But I might just do it because it's fun. I enjoy doing stuff like that. So we might do that, but all, all in, if we sell two of them, the two that we bought for $35 and we sell them for, in the low end, 350 bucks, I still think I can get more money. Especially with the attachment, if I sell one with the attachment
Melissa: for like $150.
Rob: Like I could be in the range of, yeah. So we're let, let's call it, $750 to a thousand dollars for these two items.
For two.
That's not bad for a $70 investment. Our goal is a 10 x and we would definitely 10 x on this. It's just more of the lower, I'm more picky with the flips that we're doing now that I wanna make more money than just $300 a pop on them.
I wanna make more towards a thousand dollars a pop. But,
Melissa: but at the end of the day,
Rob: it is.
Melissa: It's totally worth it.
Rob: It is. And I wouldn't have normally done all this stuff if. That's one of the cool things about flipping as well. We've talked in the past about, the stages of life that you're in. We've talked about how we got enough baby flipping baby strollers,
Melissa: not baby flipping,
Rob: sorry,
Melissa: baby items.
Rob: Scratch that. not babies. We're not selling babies, we're not reselling babies, but selling baby items, like strollers. And it's because we got into the strollers
because we had babies and we were in that stage of life. So that's pretty cool. That we're able to be in different stages and that was why these caught my attention.
Melissa: They might not have caught your attention. No. At another day.
Rob: I probably wouldn't have bought them.
Melissa: They probably were there last week and you didn't see them, so I don't know.
Rob: Yeah, I probably wouldn't have bought them just because of where it is. But this stage of life I knew I wanted one. And that's what else think about when you're out there sourcing as well.
If you can bundle stuff together to pay for something that you need for free, and then after that for free. Then after that you have the one that you got for free and you made money because we'll easily make money on this deal, even if we just sell one of them. We'll make money and get, keep the one that we have for free.
So, which is pretty cool. Just be thinking about that when you're out there for sourcing, that you can bundle some stuff together and, if you do want something personally, you can figure out how to get it paid for by buying some other stuff and selling that as well.
Melissa: So I've, I've liked going through some of these things like, you know, talking about is this flip worth it?
I think so far all of them that we've done has been, it has been worth it, but just because, like that's what, what we've bought. But I think this is a good practice to get into for it. If you're going to look for some items, run the numbers, like hypothetical numbers of, you can get the comps, like we talked about that in the last episode.
You're not taking a risk. You know what it should sell for closely. So, and maybe run the lowest number of that and then go through the fee. And is that worth it to you? I think that's a good practice to get into. Not for everything that you do, but for a couple of them. And then you kind of like, you know now, like when you spot something.
Is it gonna be worth my time to do that? Like when you're first starting out, you might not know. So running those numbers, hypothetical I think is a really good practice to do. Absolutely. Especially as you're starting to get into the higher value flips. So.
Rob: Absolutely. So this is a great time, guys. If you do wanna know more about this and actually see this in real time, we have a workshop that we put together.
You can jump in and register. Grab your seat. I actually will do some sourcing on that [00:11:00] workshop where I'm actually looking at items, comparing the prices of what they are on eBay, and seeing if it is worth it for us to do it. So it's a great opportunity for you to jump in and grab that seat. I think it's 90 minutes.
Yep. It's roughly 90 minutes. It'll be a lot of fun. You'll learn a lot of cool stuff and we can't wait to see you on that if you end up joining us. So you guys,
Melissa: We'll link in the show notes below.
Rob: That's it. You guys are amazing. Have an amazing day and we'll see you on the next episode.