Blog

Working notes for used-car flippers. No listicles, no fake case studies, no invented user counts. Every number cited comes from a named source.

• How to price a flip with a cash floor, not a hunch
  2026-09-11 — ~1,100 words — pricing, unit economics

  The three-number method: ask price, ceiling (what a retail buyer will actually pay), floor (what an instant-offer buyer will pay you tomorrow). The floor is the number that decides whether the deal is arithmetically safe.

• Red flags in by-owner listings: a working ladder
  2026-09-11 — ~1,000 words — sourcing, mechanical risk

  A three-tier ladder — fatal, major, minor — built from the exact regex list FlipScout ships in src/score.js. Which phrases are non-recoverable, which are negotiating leverage, and which are noise.

• State limits on selling cars without a dealer license — the real numbers
  2026-09-11 — ~1,050 words — regulation, penalties

  Florida 2, Washington 3, Texas 4 (rolling 12 months), New York and California 5, and everything in between. The moment a hobbyist becomes a "curbstoner" in the eyes of the DMV, plus the penalty ranges.