House Flipper Starter Guide

This House Flipper Starter Guide will teach you the basics of the game, help you finish your first job, and help you get your real estate empire started!

Quicklinks: House Flipper Starter Guide | How the Laptop Works
How the Tablet Works | HUD Explanation | Your First Job
How to Flip Houses | F.A.Q.

House Flipper is a game that’s all about buying rundown houses, improving them to a customer’s specifications, and selling them for a big profit. There’s a lot to explore here — you’ll need to know how to use your Tools and how to make the Rooms your buyers want. Read on for our Starter Guide!

House Flipper Starter Guide

Our House Flipper Starter Guide (and your real estate adventures) begin outside of a tiny property that you’ve purchased for your office. To say that things are a mess would be a bit of an understatement.

Clear the Trash from the front door. You can elect to fix up the interior of your house if you want, but there’s no real need to do so. Walk to the Laptop; this is where you’ll be able to take on Jobs. But first, let’s explain how the Laptop works!

How the Laptop Works in House Flipper

The House Flipper Laptop can be used to purchase properties, take on new jobs, manage your Pets, and more. The Laptop menu has five options available.

Mail – This is where you accept Jobs for renovating or cleaning other people’s properties. You can also view details on completed orders.
Map of Jobs – This allows you to access Jobs in other DLCs if you’ve purchased them. You’ll have to complete a certain number of Jobs before you can access these maps.
- HGTV House Flipper – Complete 5 standard Jobs
- Luxury Flipper – Complete 7 standard Jobs.
- House Flipper Pets – Complete 5 standard Jobs.
Morgan’s Pet Care – This is where you can get Pets if you have the House Flipper Pets DLC. You can also house your Pets in the Pet Hotel and either bring them back to you later or find them a new home.
Portfolio – This is where you can find the Before & After Photos for all of the Jobs you’ve completed, along with photos for every House you’ve sold.

In addition to these gameplay functions, the Laptop also shows you your Account Balance (how much money you have) and the current real-world date and time.

How the Tablet Works in House Flipper

You can bring up your Tablet by pressing Tab on PC or the View Button on Xbox. The Tablet has five menus.

Store – The Store is where you can purchase Building pieces, Furniture, and Garden items (if you have the Garden DLC).
Tasks – This shows what you have to do to complete the current Job. The left side of this screen shows the Rooms where you have to complete Tasks and lists them. The right side of the screen shows the Tasks for the highlighted Room. Importantly, the right side will have clickable icons for the specific Furniture you need to purchase (where necessary).
Perks – The Perks screen shows the Perks you can unlock. Perks are skills that improve your ability to clean, Build, demolish, and make money.
Camera – This allows you to take a picture of whatever you’re looking at it and store it in the in-game Gallery.
Gallery – This lets you view your stored pictures.

The House Flipper HUD, Explained

As always, let’s take a few moments to go over the House Flipper HUD.

Minimap – This shows you information about the general area, including the layout of the House and other important information:
- Black Box – Garbage that needs to be picked up.
- Black Splotches – Dirt that needs to be Cleaned with the Mop (or Garden Hose, in some situations, if you have the Garden DLC).
- Red Icons – Missing “Installations” that need to be installed, such as Radiators, Toilets, Sinks, etc.
- Solid White Lines – Walls of the house. Exterior walls cannot be demolished in most cases and are represented by thicker lines.
- Green Lines – Walls that your customer has requested you to Build.
- Red Lines – Walls that your customer has requested you to demolish.
- Black Plants (Outdoors, Garden DLC) – Weeds.
- Red Circles (Outdoors, Garden DLC) – Molehills that need to be removed with the Shovel.
Room – This shows you the Room you are currently in.
Room Tasks – This shows you the Tasks you have to complete in the Room you’re currently in.
Progress – Shows how much of the Job you’ve completed. Doing portions of a Task (Cleaning Dirt, removing Trash, etc.) will increase this bar. Reaching the white line will let you end the Job and get paid. Fully completing the Tasks will fill up the bar and get you more money.
Account Balance – How much money you have. You have to spend your own money to purchase items upfront.
Income – How much money you’ll make if you complete the Job right now.

Now, let’s move on to your first actual Job!

Your First Job

Go into the “Mail” screen of the Laptop. You’ll see that you have one e-mail from Sara Lewis requesting the replacement of a Radiator, the removal of Trash, and some general cleaning. Starting this Job will also unlock the Mop, your very first Tool.

This first Job has Tasks in the Bedroom, Living Room with Kitchenette, and Bathroom. Let’s get started with the Living Room with Kitchenette since it’s the first room you encounter.

Removing Trash

First, bring up the Choose Tool menu (Right-click on PC, LT on Xbox) and select the “Move Objects” Tool. Look around the Living Room with Kitchenette and left-click on any Trash that is highlighted with a white outline.

If you have the “Penetrating Vision” Perk, you’ll be able to see Trash on the map. In future Jobs, paying attention to the Minimap will help you find those last one or two pieces of Trash if you’re stuck.

Remove all of the Trash in the Living Room with Kitchenette and the Bedroom. The Bathroom has no Trash, so let’s not worry about that for now.

Cleaning Up Dirt

Now it’s time to clean some Dirt. Bring up the Choose Tool Menu again and select the “Cleaning” Tool. This will bring up your raggedy Mop.

After a short time, you’ll be able to buy a Perk in the Cleaning Perk Tree. Again, I strongly recommend you buy “Penetrating Vision” (and focus on getting all three of these upgrades) first — being able to see Dirt on the Minimap will help you complete future Jobs with less difficulty.

Continue looking for Dirt and using the Mop until the “Clean dirt” Task hits 100% and disappears from the list for the Living Room with Kitchenette.

Move into the Bedroom and use the Mop here. This Room is much smaller and there isn’t as much Dirt, so you should be finished with it pretty quickly.

Your last stop for Cleaning is the Bathroom. If you have a difficult time seeing Dirt, turn on the lights by interacting with the light switch behind the door.

Installing a New Radiator

Our final Task is to install a new Radiator. Go back into the Living Room with Kitchenette. Then, bring up your Tablet and go to the Tasks menu.

Note that there is an icon on the “Mount devices” Task. Click on it and it will automatically take you to the Radiator page in the Store.

Buy a Radiator, then place it on the wall underneath the window with some pipes. Move the Radiator left and right while watching the Minimap — note how the red icon indicating an uninstalled device moves, too.

Place the Radiator underneath the Window. Interact with it to begin the assembly process.

Assembling an installed device is typically a multi-step process where you have to hold down left-click on PC (RT on Xbox) to attach each piece of the device.

You can exit the process while it’s in progress, but be careful. Installing pieces out of order or leaving an installation half-finished can cause a mess, especially with devices that require plumbing:

If you accidentally leave the task halfway through, focus on finishing it. Your Cleaning Task will revert, requiring you to use your Mop in order to get it back to 100% completed. Take out your Mop and wipe up the water.

Optional: Removing Weeds (Garden DLC Only)

If you have the House Flipper Garden DLC, you’ll have the opportunity to remove Weeds in the Garden outside of the House.

Removing Weeds is not required for this first Job (and many other Jobs). You won’t earn any additional money for doing it. You will, however, earn progress toward a Perk Point in the Gardener Perk Tree.

There are enough Weeds in the first Job that you can get 2 Skill Points. I recommend spending both Skill Points on “Gardener’s Sense” — being able to see the things you need to clean up in Gardens will make future work much easier.

As an added bonus, investing in Gardener’s Sense will allow you to see any Weeds you may have missed right away. You can then remove the last few to get every last drop of experience for the Gardener Perk from this Job.

Completing Your First Job

As you clean and remove Trash and Dirt, you’ll notice that the meter on the top-right of the screen is gradually filling up. Pay special attention to the vertical white line.

You can complete a job once you’ve reached the white line — you don’t have to perfectly complete all of the objectives. That said, it’s usually a good idea to try to get everything finished so that you can make the maximum amount of money.

Whichever you decide, complete your Job and you’ll get paid and return home.

Expanding Your Empire

Now that you’re back at the office, you can go back to your Laptop and choose your next Job. Your first Job was easy enough, but subsequent Jobs will gradually get more complex — and that complexity will come with greater rewards, too.

You can choose whatever Job you like next. Many of the early Jobs will help you unlock new Tools. Eventually, you can use those Tools to purchase a new home outright and Build it to suit your client’s needs.

How to Flip Houses

There’s one last thing we need to address — how to flip houses in House Flipper! The concept is pretty simple: once you have enough money, you can buy a house from the Laptop, repair it, furnish it, and sell it on the open market.

Every customer has different requirements which will be shown on the left side of the screen. At the minimum, a house will need a bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen, but many customers will have greater requirements. Larger families, for example, will want multiple bedrooms. Some customers may want other specialized rooms or specific pieces of furniture.

Don’t worry too much about meeting all of a customer’s requirements in the early game. Your house will always sell. Meeting a customer’s needs will simply increase the amount of money you make from a job. It’s worth it to try to make a house appealing to them, but you don’t need to run yourself ragged making that happen.

You’re now equipped with the basic knowledge you need to play House Flipper! There’s a lot more to learn about this game — make sure to check out our other guides below!

House Flipper F.A.Q.

What is House Flipper?

House Flipper is a job simulation game where you clean up and repair houses for customers or purchase houses outright and sell them for a profit after fixing them up.

Is House Flipper Multiplayer?

No, House Flipper is not multiplayer.

Where is the House Flipper Save File?

The House Flipper save file is located in:

C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\LocalLow\Empyrean\House Flipper Game\Saves

Where “USERNAME” is your Windows username.

We’re all done with the House Flipper Starter Guide. Make sure to check out our other guides below!

More House Flipper Guides

Source: MakeUseOf