Still flipping houses despite the downturn

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Elizabeth Keller loves houses, but doesn't have a home.

She and her husband are living in a spectacular house she built on Sterling Road in the Charlotte, N.C., neighborhood of Myers Park.

With five bedrooms, six baths, 5,700 square feet and a carriage-house apartment over the garage, it's a place many homebuyers would covet.

Not Keller.

She's hoping to sell it for $1.95 million and move on to temporary quarters — perhaps a house in dire need of repair, a no-frills apartment or a spare bedroom in her daughter's home.

Keller is a house flipper, and she delights in the work, not the finished product.

Like most artists, she's eager to start over with an empty palette, imagining the possibilities.

House flipping — buying, fixing up and selling a house for a profit — became popular fodder for TV shows in the last few years.

However, falling home prices have discouraged this practice in most places.

But generally, the up-and-coming entrepreneur buys an inexpensive property — regardless of the state of the real-estate market — repairs it as cheaply as possible and tries to turn it quickly.

Keller, 59, is the antithesis of the TV flipper.

Over the past 20 years, she's flipped eight houses — buying them, living in them and rebuilding or renovating to exacting standards in her own time frame.

She's not discouraged by the real-estate downturn. She picks her projects carefully and knows they'll sell.

"It's more of a hobby and a pleasure than support of a family," she says.

Her husband, Jesse Pike, is a longtime pharmacist who doesn't mind their frequent moves as long as Keller does the packing, she says.

"We just kind of live where we are," she says.

Often, many of their belongings are in storage while they're housed in close quarters.

The advantage of not having a permanent home, she says, is not having a mortgage.

She plows the proceeds of one house into the next, and tries not to "overreach" financially in her projects.

Keller learns new skills with each flip. When she started in the 1980s, she mostly spruced up existing houses. But in recent years, she has built several houses on choice lots in existing neighborhoods.

She was the contractor on the latest house at 1521 Sterling Road, using a cadre of subcontractors who have worked for her over the years.

Keller bought the property in 2005 for $575,000, renting it out while she finished another project.

It was a Cape Cod with a low-pitched roof and two bedrooms, two baths in an awkward floor plan. She decided to tear it down to the foundation.

In its place, she worked with an architect to design a spacious floor plan that included formal areas, a large kitchen and great room and master suite on the first floor, with four bedrooms and a rec room on the second.

The light-filled great room opens onto a covered porch and patio with an outdoor fireplace and terraced landscape.

The two-car garage includes a well-appointed guesthouse on top.

From the street, the house is a graceful Cape Cod with white-painted brick and blue shutters. It doesn't look like a "McMansion," an overly large house plopped down on a street of modest residences. Keller says she was determined to avoid that look and wanted neighbors to be happy.

She's gotten compliments from them, she says.

She planned the house in 2006 and built it mostly in 2007.

Earlier this year, she began to decorate and furnish it, and it went on the market in September. It's gotten lots of attention so far, but no offers.

Keller knows that in this economy, it's not the optimum time to sell a $1.95 million house. She accepts that it may take a while.

"If it doesn't [sell], we're here and we're comfortable," she says. "This is what I love to do."