When you are just getting into the business of flipping real estate, there will certain area where you will gain knowledge about saving money when demolishing and remodeling a house to resell at a profit. The one area where you can save a lot is the flooring, and by using carpet remnants you can save hundreds if not over a thousand dollars at times. When some people think of remnants it conjures up small odd shaped pieces of carpet that might only work well as a welcome mat or small area rug. This is just not true, as there are dozens of large carpet mills in northern Georgia that have huge inventories of this flooring and usually at deeply discounted prices.
A carpet remnant varies so much in size, that you can actually buy a roll of it, which will carpet an entire home, as remnant means anything less than a complete roll of carpet. So if you are renovating a small condo to sell, then this could work into your plans quite well. Generally you can call or email flooring distributors, and find enough to cover your project with the same carpet. There are also great deals to be made with custom orders that were never picked up from their store, as they will let those go quite inexpensively.
You may run across a phrase when looking for floor covering called “Bound Carpet Remnants”, this is highly misconstrued title, as most people think this is where someone takes a small, say 5×7 area of remnant and sews a border on to the edges to make an area floor covering. The real meaning is that this is a short ordered or custom order from the mill that was either canceled or was stopped before running a complete standard roll of carpeting. The term bound means that it is ready to be shipped. This is a great term to know as when calling around to carpet suppliers you can ask if they have any bound remnants on clearance.
Their is an entire industry dedicated to inexpensive carpet remnants, and they can not only be found locally, but they abound online in the form of sellers on classified ad web sites, and online auctions. They will normally have a buy now price on the auctions that are deeply discounted, and will negotiate further sometimes. This is a numbers game for them and they on make a small profit off each sale so making dozens of transactions a day is not uncommon so they can carve out a living wage for themselves. Also buy from local remnant sellers, as you are taking a big of risk having it shipped in and not be the carpet you thought you were getting in the first place. Plus, the extra cost of shipping it back will only pile on top of lost profits.
When you buy carpet remnants for the home that you are flipping, make sure and have your installer meet you at the purchase location for the first few transactions, so there will not be any surprises for him when it is delivered. He will be aware of caveats that will be unknown to you, and save you time and profit dollars for your ongoing real estate ventures. Some carpet retailers will have a email list that they will broadcast their daily deals on, so ask your sales clerk at each store you shop at if they have such a list and have you put on it. This will give you the advantage of picking up a quick deal that can be used on a project down the road. Oh, and don’t forget the carpet padding, they will have deals on that too.
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