How much money do you need to start flipping vans? To get started flipping vans all you need is the money to buy you first van. You can then reinvest the same money once that van is sold. You then repeat the same process as many times as you like whilst taking a profit on each deal, with the initial money from the first van being reinvested again and again.
It really can be that simple!
Most van flippers start this way. It’s a great way to get started and you can learn as you go without risking much capital or borrowing any money. You can use this strategy and make a good additional income selling cars on the weekends whilst holding down a full-time job. By flipping the occasional van you can make an additional income to help you pay down debt, fund a holiday, or buy a better or new van for yourself. If that’s your plan then this is all the money you will ever need to start flipping vans.
If you want to learn about which vans you should be flipping check out our guide to Which vans should you buy to flip.
Flipping vans in this way is the most common strategy and makes the most sense for most people. But you obviously don’t have to stick with flipping just the one van. After you have flipped you first few vans you should hopefully have made a good profit, ideally around a $1000 or £1000 per car if you’re doing it right. You could then reinvest this money into more than one van.
You should then be able to sell more vans and make more money, this is when van flipping can become interesting and highly profitable.
If your full-time employment covers all your monthly financial needs you could alway reinvest all you profits from van flipping. Reinvesting the returns on an investment is what wealth experts and financial advisors call compound growth when talking about stocks and shares. But it generally applies to any investment or appreciating asset when you reinvest at the profits instead of withdrawing them. Compound growth is a powerful wealth building tool and can make a great deal of money over time.
This is the basic strategy that very successful van dealers and investors use to make huge profits, and is also the strategy used by most established classic van dealers. If you can afford to reinvest this money, you can then either invest in multiple vans or move upmarket to more expensive models or classics.It is totally possible that over a few years for you to start out flipping Japanese hatchbacks on the weekend and trade up to owning and selling vans at international auctions if you put in the time and effort.
This strategy is also how van flippers end up becoming van dealers. A successful flipper can soon find that their weekend side hustle makes them more money than their day job. This success often leads to them becoming a full time van flipper or investor. This in turn leads to them to becoming van dealers after the money they have made flipping becomes too much to reinvest back into a small van flipping operation.
But in truth there is very little difference between a van flipper and dealer by this point. The strategy is the same, with often the only difference being the size and scale of the business.
If you don’t want to grow the business and and many flippers choose not to, you can simply invest in a more upmarket van or vans. If you buy wisely you can trade in vans in the $10,000 – $20,000 ( £10,000 -£20,000) price range and make much bigger returns than when you are investing in small vans. Profits at this price point typically range from $3000 – $6,000 or the equivalent in pounds. The risk to your capital is obviously higher but the experience you will have gained buy this point should help negate this risk.
You can still hold down a full time job at this point, but other sales options become feasible once you have moved upmarket. Instead of flipping vans yourself using social media of classified adverts (we’ve written an article covering How to use social media to sell vans and commercial vehicles.) you can sell vehicles at auction or give vans to specialist dealers who sell cars on consignment.You can still compound the profits, the only change here is you outsource the actual sales process to a third party. Both options work well and in most cases there is no upfront cost and it will cost you nothing until the vehicles have been sold.
Conclusion
Vans flipping can be a great side hustle that lets you make a great additional income whist holding down a full time job. Vans flipping has very few downsides and the upsides greatly outlay any risk. If you are successful you can also scale flipping into a full-time business or simply move upmarket and make even greater profits.
We have written a foolproof van flipping business plan to help you get started find it here – van flipping business plan.
