Contingent offers are back for the first time in five years and showings have slowed. Rebecca Sequeira, who has made money on every flip since 2016, on what she still buys, what she puts in every house, and when she cuts the price.
Rebecca Sequeira has flipped houses full-time in Greater Cincinnati since 2016. She now runs six to seven remodels a year, with active projects in Amelia, Batavia, Milford, Morrow, Kennedy Heights, Colerain and Deer Park. She is also a Coldwell Banker agent who closes 6 to 15 transactions a year for other clients, so she sees the resale market from both sides as it softens in 2026. Over half of her deals come from other realtors. She has made money on every flip since her second house nine years ago.
About This Post
This analysis draws from a conversation with
Rebecca Sequeira, a full-time house flipper and Coldwell Banker realtor based in West Chester. She has a background in industrial engineering and construction project management. She writes every scope herself and has spent nine years building a bench of 30 to 35 subcontractors. That gives her a builder's read on what Cincinnati buyers will pay for.
Listen to the full conversation on
Spotify,
Apple Podcasts, and
YouTube. The full episode also covers her creative deal structures, including a reverse-mortgage rent-back, a subject-to purchase and a land contract sale, plus live audience Q&A from the August mastermind.
The Cincy REI Show publishes every Monday. New episodes cover neighborhood-level analysis, local investor strategies, and real deal stories from operators active in Greater Cincinnati.
Where a Full-Time Flipper Is Buying in Greater Cincinnati Right Now
Sequeira's target ARV runs from $250,000 to $600,000, and her sweet spot is $300,000 to $500,000. She has sold as low as $120,000 and as high as $840,000. She prefers the suburbs and stays away from the West Side and downtown Cincinnati, though she has flipped in Clifton.
- Milford holds her heaviest structural job right now. Termite damage had collapsed the floor into the crawl space. The crew ended up replacing 100% of the floor joists, the center beam, all of the subfloor and about three-fourths of the walls.
- Morrow has a 1960s ranch under renovation, her favorite age of house to remodel. This one came with all-copper plumbing, and her plumber still replaces much of it because old copper thins over time.
- Batavia is a teardown. She bought it from a wholesaler and found it in worse shape than expected. She demolished it, and her architect designed a two-story to build in its place.
- Kennedy Heights is where her current listing sits. Comps supported $410,000. She listed at $389,000 and is still working to sell it (the full story is below).
- Amelia, Colerain and Deer Park round out her active projects.
- Loveland is the strongest resale signal in her book. A listing she took for friends went up at $735,000. It drew eight offers in the first day and a half and sits almost $50,000 over asking. She also holds a Loveland rental she bought subject-to the existing mortgage. It is 2,000 square feet, worth roughly $400,000 to $425,000, and rents for $3,300 a month.
Why Cincinnati Real Estate Now Rewards Pricing Discipline
Sequeira has more deals than she can take on. Her pressure points are rising costs and a resale market that has turned soft over the last six months.
- Days on market are stretching. Until about two years ago, her listings went under contract in one or two days. Over the last 9 to 12 months that window has widened, and a non-flip listing of hers has now been on the market about three weeks.
- Showings are slower. Her newest flip listing got one showing on day one, two on day two and one on day three. A year earlier, every interested buyer would have come through on the first day.
- Contingent offers are back. This is the first time in five to six years she has seen buyers write offers that depend on selling their current home.
- Price drops cut across all price points. In the realtor-only Facebook groups she follows, agents with well-priced listings are reporting zero showings.
- Location and school district decide who sells. The Loveland multiple-offer listing and the stalled Kennedy Heights flip hit the market at the same time.
Her rule: if a listing gets no offers and no significant traffic in the first week, she adjusts the price. She never waits longer than two weeks.
Reed sees a related pattern on the multifamily side. For fully occupied duplex-to-sixplex listings, his team requires a verifiable preapproval and advance notice before any showing. Only about 5% of requested showings happen, since 80% to 90% of inquiries are agents chasing a fresh Zillow lead. The buyers who do show up are writing offers at the expected price.
What's Working in Cincinnati
5 scope standards Sequeira applies at every price point:
- She replaces aging mechanicals. Water heaters and furnaces 12 to 15 years old come out even if they still work. The goal is to give a buyer no reason to pass.
- Every house gets granite countertops. She has never installed a laminate countertop or a plastic tub surround, on houses from $120,000 up.
- Fixtures are name-brand, and tile is cheap. Her plumber installs only Delta, Moen or Kohler, and nothing comes off Amazon. Most of her tile costs $2 to $3 a square foot. Shower niches and accent tile carry the higher-end look.
- She redesigns for how people live now. Any one-bath house gets a second bathroom. Kitchens are almost always reconfigured. Closet pantries come out and are replaced with stacked one-foot-deep cabinets. In the Morrow house, she moved the refrigerator next to the rest of the kitchen, turned its old spot into a coffee bar, and sank a pantry cabinet into the dead space above the basement stairs.
- Every house is move-in ready. She installs all new stainless appliances, including a French-door refrigerator. She stages most listings for $2,000 to $3,000, which is a couple of percentage points on a rehab of about $100,000. Buyers putting 3% down often cannot find another $3,000 for appliances, and many will walk out of a house without them.
She holds back where buyers will not pay more. She does not swap every interior door. Higher-priced houses get hardwood running through the kitchen, while lower-priced ones get LVP. Every change is judged by one question: will somebody pay more for the house because of it?
Her pitch at sales meetings is that she wants the houses other agents won't touch: cigarette smoke, cat urine, deferred everything. The agent earns two commissions and never has to market the ugly version.
Returns and capital. She and her husband target a minimum 15% return on the total cash in each deal, and they do not annualize it. They have bought with cash for the last several years. Her current volume just pushed her into her first hard money loan in seven years.
The contractor bench. All of her contractors are 1099 subs, and most bill $75 to $85 an hour, with electricians and plumbers charging more. She keeps 30 to 35 of them on her list, and at least 20 touch any one house. She hires on three criteria, in this order: work ethic, quality, then price. She pays deposits only for material-heavy trades like siding and roofing. Carpenters and full-rewire electricians bill in phases, and everyone else invoices at completion. Most of her subs came by referral from other subs, and Cincinnati REIA members can download a contractor spreadsheet that includes her crew.
What does not work: gutting a house to the studs when it doesn't need it, and using cheap finishes to make up for paying too much at purchase. You make your money when you buy.
Lessons From the Field: When a Well-Priced Flip Sits in Kennedy Heights
Sequeira finished a flip in Kennedy Heights that buyers consistently called gorgeous. The location was the problem. It sits next to a four-family with a backyard full of trash, across from more four-families and a vacant lot.
Comps supported $410,000. She listed at $389,000 to account for the location.
A full-price offer came in on the first day. It was contingent on the buyers selling their own Loveland home, which was worth $150,000 more. She accepted it on a form that kept her listing active, so the market never saw it as pending.
The buyers' home had solar panels, which turned out to be a drag on its sale, and it was priced too high. It did not sell. After three weeks, the buyers canceled over the weekend.
The contract had frozen her price for those three weeks. She also skipped open houses because she already had an offer. Showing feedback kept repeating one line: could you pick it up and move it three houses down?
On the day of the recording, she cut the price and lined up other agents to host open houses that weekend. She is also pricing a privacy fence against the neighboring lot. The house was still unsold at the time of the recording.
- A location discount can exceed what the comps imply. Pricing $21,000 under comps did not offset what sat next door.
- A contingent offer is only as strong as the buyer's own house. Check how that house is priced and what could slow its sale before accepting.
- Keep marketing while a contingent contract is open. Stay active and keep holding open houses.
- Put the listing on a clock. One week without offers or real traffic triggers a price review. Two weeks is the limit.
- Fix what you can control. A privacy fence is a cheap test against a location objection that price alone has not solved.
