Sometimes necessity is the mother of reinvention. That’s certainly true for Tyler and Lindsey Dobson, who’ve grossed over $1.1 million in the past five years by upcycling furniture and flipping homes.
As the Dobsons shared with CNBC Make It, it all started when they started refinishing furniture they found on the street to save money furnishing their first home.
They had a knack for seeing diamonds in the rough, and soon started selling their upcycled pieces, pulling in $500 a month. Then they started flipping homes.
“Every time we finish a house, especially one we live in, once there’s no projects left, we just get the itch to do it again and we leave our beautifully renovated home for a bigger fixer upper,” Lindsey told CNBC Make It (1).
Most recently, they sold their renovated home in St. Petersburg, Florida, to buy an historic home in Springfield, Missouri — for cash, no mortgage — and start fixing it up.
They’ve made enough to quit their former day jobs. But it’s clearly also a passion project for the pair. They document their house-flipping journeys on social media, earning several thousand dollars more a month.
That’s not to say they live like millionaires. They made $95,000 in 2024 from a combination of social media content, brand deals and the sale of their St. Petersburg home. They support themselves and their daughter by being frugal and living on the profits of their last home sale.
House-flipping isn’t as lucrative as it used to be. According to the property data firm ATTOM (2), gross profits on flips decreased across the U.S. in 2024, averaging $70,000 — hardly enough for a typical family to live on.
And it’s important to know that side hustles aren’t a get-rich-quick scheme. An estimated 45% of Americans have a side hustle, according to a Self.inc survey, but only 10.5% of them make more than $1,000 a month from that work (3).
Here’s what you need to know to turn your hobby into a lucrative and fulfilling side hustle like the Dobsons.
Let’s say you’re interested in following the Dobsons’ example and want to get into house-flipping. Here’s how they’ve reduced their risks.
They live in each home they’re working on for at least two of the five years prior to the sale date. That means they can keep more of what they earn through IRS capital gains tax exclusions.
