After all, the process looks easy enough, just buy a very cheap fixer-upper house, put a little time and money into it and then resell for thousand more than you paid... right?

But as the old saying goes, nothing is ever as easy as it looks and if you now own a house you are trying to flip, you may have already found that old saying to be absolutely true. Before you panic, read the following tips designed to help avoid rookie mistakes and increase your chances of actually flipping your house for real profits at the closing table.

1. Take Time to Learn About Your Local Market

Successful house flippers study their local market constantly, watching for trends, niches and upcoming changes that will influence prices and create or dampen buyer interest. This includes knowing what factors are attracting buyers to the area, such as new employment opportunities, great schools or cultural advantages.

They also track sold home information, new listings and the amount of time it takes for homes to go under contract and close in the neighborhoods where they own homes they intend to flip. Knowing this information will help give you parameters for better managing your budget and renovation time frame for each home you expect to flip.

2. Seek Out Qualified Professional Services

While house flipping shows might appear to be all about the flipper, the truth is that successful house flippers know the value and importance of assembling a top-notch team. Having a reliable, trustworthy team helps to insulate them from excessive risk, while offering a better chance of meeting maximum profit margins on each home they flip.

Assembling this type of team starts with seeking out a real estate professional in your area who understands what it takes to successfully flip a home and has a track record to prove it. This type of sales agent will be able to help you understand the market, determine how to make the best possible use of your renovation budget and what needs to be done to attract the most qualified buyers when the home is ready for the market. In addition, building a relationship with an agent of this caliber will provide you with referrals to high quality contractors for your team who will take pride in completing their work on budget and on time.

3. Renovate With Likely Buyers in Mind

A mistake often made by new house flippers is to renovate the home to their personal tastes or with the wrong buyer in mine. To flip successfully, it is imperative that you understand who your buyer is most likely to be and what housing features and amenities are most valuable to their lifestyles.

For example, if the home is likely to be sold to a household of one or two people, a larger master bedroom and bath and a second bedroom that can be used for guests or an office may sell better than a home with three smaller bedrooms. However, if the neighborhood is predominantly made up of larger households of four or five people, having the third bedroom becomes a major selling point.

To get a good understanding of who your most likely buyer prospects will be, based on the location of the home, ask your real estate professional to help you analyze the local market and decide what type of features and improvements to include and which ones to avoid.

4. Stay On Budget, On Time and On the Plan, Always

The fourth key to successful flipping is a very important one - the need to stay on budget and stick closely to both the time frame and plan for renovations and marketing. Failing to do any of the these will end up reducing your opportunity to earn expected profits on the sale of the home.

If something unknown arises that must be dealt with, such as finding a latent defect that must be corrected during the renovation but was not in the plan or budget, look for ways to reduce other costs in order to pay for the repair without exceeding your initial budget. Since delays could mean missing your expected completion date and losing prime marketing time, you may need to also look for ways to fit unexpected repairs into the planned time frame in order to minimize lost profits, such as scheduling some work to be done after normal business hours or on the weekend.

5. Price to the Market, Not to Your Needs or Expectations

Successful house flippers do not want to build an inventory of completed homes waiting to be sold. Unsold homes are subject to the market fluctuations that can erase potential profit margins overnight. To become successful as a house flipper you will want and need the homes you renovate to sell as quickly as possible. Doing this means pricing them accurately based on the most current local market information, which is not always the same as the flippers needs or expectations.

To correctly price a home that will be flipped, sellers need to create a detailed budget and time frame for the entire project before beginning any work. Their real estate professional can use this information along with an in-depth comparative market analysis and sales projections based on historical trends for the area to help the seller price the home as accurately as possible to attract maximum interest from qualified buyers and sell the home as quickly as possible.

Even if you follow every rule out there, flipping a home can still be fraught with challenges and unexpected pitfalls. Carefully examine the risks involved and find a real estate professional that you can trust along the way if you believe this kind of investing is for you.