No, but I have watched a lot of HGTV. Looks easy.

Kidding. I bought a foreclosure back in 2011. It needed a lot of work. I sunk about $30k into it, plus a bunch of sweat equity. I have no idea how much I saved on labor doing it myself, but probably about half, by my best estimate. The result was good, as I made a lot of money when I sold. It wasn't a flip, however, because I had the condo for 3 years. Remember that if you flip a house, you're on the hook for what could be some pretty steep taxes, as you get taxed at the short term capital gains rate (which is taxed like normal income for most investments; I don't know if houses are put into that category, but I do know that they're not exempt completely like they are if you live there for two years), so it could be pretty steep.

Also, I think you have to make damn sure you know the market pretty well. Would you buy, for example, $100k of stock in a company planning to learn their fundamentals on the fly? There are a lot of people out there doing this kind of thing, so it would be foolhardy to think that it's as easy as phase one: buy a house; phase two; phase three: profit. I lucked out in my situation, because I was pretty aware of the goings on in the 'hood, I had a good sense that it was going in a positive direction, and I happened to be in the right place at the right time (that and I was fortunate to have learned a lot about fixing and building from my dad over the years).

Lastly, home prices are up right now, in some places to pre-recession levels. If I were going to get into the real estate game, I'd wait another couple of years. Home prices can be volatile, so if you have the money when prices are pushed down, I think that's when you're best positioned to grab some loot.