Flipping Furniture for Profit: 5 Easy Steps to Making Money!

From dressers to dining chairs, you can take any piece of furniture and make it look new again! Then, you can sell it for a profit!

In today’s post, I’ll give you a quick and easy step-by-step guide on flipping furniture.

So, let’s get started…

How to Flip Furniture for Profit

Selling furniture can be a good way to make money. Now, don’t worry, it’s not too complicated to flip furniture. It can be as easy as thrift store flipping. Get items for free or very cheap, fix them up if they need them, then resale for a profit.

I’ve made this guide quick and easy so that everyone can follow it.

Here’s a quick and to the point repurposed furniture business plan.

Step 1: Find pieces of furniture to flip

Your first step is an obvious one, you need to find furniture to flip. What you are looking for are pieces that are in good enough condition to sell. If a piece is too damaged, then it’s going to need a lot of work to make it sellable. And not just a lot of work from you, but also more cash in some cases.

Here’s where you can source furniture:

• Yard sales
• Craigslist
• OfferUp
• Facebook marketplace
• Thrift stores
• eBay

Yard sales and thrift stores are great for finding old items that have at lot of character at low prices. Sites like Craigslist and OfferUp are great because you can get some great finds, like antiques and unique pieces. That’s not all though, I’ve actually seen people giving away furniture for free on these sites, which gives you the potential to make a huge profit.

You could also keep an eye on discount furniture stores near you. You can often buy slightly damaged furniture for up to 75% off. Sometimes all you need to do to fix an item is maybe repaint a small section or fix a small scratch.

Step 2: Decide what you’re willing to pay for furniture

What do you pay for furniture pieces to flip?

That’s an important question.

You should look at the level of wear and tear on a piece of furniture before you buy it. Obviously, if it’s going to take a decent amount of money to restore an item, then you don’t want to be paying too much money for it.

So, can I give you an exact figure on what to spend?

When you’re just starting out, I’d suggest you spend $100 or less for most of your pieces, just so that you’re not spending too much money from the outset. You’ll want to gain some experience and then you can start purchasing more expensive items.

Once you’ve flipped your first few pieces for a profit, you’ll want to purchase a mix of lower priced and higher priced items. This is because you want your inventory to be diverse as people are looking for all kinds of furniture pieces.

Step 3: Refurbish your items

Now that you’ve bought the stuff, you’ll need to refurbish it so that you can sell it for a profit.

Exactly what needs to be done to the furniture to refurbish it depends on what type of item it is and what condition it’s in. For example, things like chairs will need to be reupholstered, and things like furniture may need to be sanded to remove scuff marks and painted to refresh the item.

I have some great resources that you can check out that will help you to breathe new life back into old furniture:

• How to re-cover a dining room chair
• A beginner’s guide to reupholstering a couch
• How to refurbish a wood dresser
• How to refinish a dining room table
• How to refinish an antique
• Antique restoration – How to restore antiques
• How to refinish old damaged leather furniture
• How to refinish wood furniture

Step 4: Decide on how much you’re going to sell your furniture for

Once you’ve refurbished an item, it’s time to flip it for a profit. But how do you decide what to sell it for?

Ideally, when flipping furniture for a profit you want to buy as low as you can and sell as high as you can. But, this is within reason of course.

You should look on sites like eBay to see what other people are pricing a similar item for. This can give you a good idea of an item’s market value.

Also, you want to make sure that the profit you make is worth your time invested. So this can include the time you spent looking for the piece, purchasing the stuff needed to repair it and the time you took to restore the item.

There’s a lot involved to don’t short-change yourself. Your time and effort are worth money, so ensure you make a profit in the end that also reflects the time and effort you put in.

For a few more tips, read my post on how to price used furniture.

Step 5: List your stuff for sale

Okay, now that you have a piece to sell, it’s time to list it for sale.

Here are some great places to flip furniture for a profit:

• Etsy
• Facebook Marketplace
• Chairish
• eBay
• Craigslist
• OfferUp

Best Furniture to Flip for Profit

When you read furniture flipping success stories, the number one tip seems to be that beginners should avoid pieces that are in greater disrepair.

While you don’t want to have to put in too much effort, some of the best pieces of furniture to flip are those that are older, since people love vintage items, and that comes with a lot of character and a few imperfections.

Look out for high-quality pieces that show signs of normal wear and tear. These types of items can be furbished and sold for a lot more than your initial investment.

As you become more experienced, and therefore more skilled, at flipping furniture, you can consider purchasing pieces that are in greater disrepair.

Now, in terms of which pieces to purchase, there are tons of options out there.

Some of the best ones to consider are:

• Vanities
• Desks
• Anything antique
• Chairs
• Sofas
• Leather furniture
• Dining tables
• Side tables
• Dressers

Happy Furniture Flipping!

You could easily make an extra $100 to $1000 a month just by flipping furniture.

The best part is that this can be done in your spare time like after work in the week or during the weekends. So, it’s a great side hustle!

Do you have any tips on flipping furniture for a profit? If so, let us know about it in the comments section below.