How many of you would purchase a former foreclosure fixed up by a 1990s hip-hop star? Dubious-quality songs, however, don’t become questionable real estate practices. Vanilla Ice, the rapper born Rob van Winkle, has transformed himself from a washed-up performer, one that appeared just a few years ago on Hit Me, Baby, One More Time, into a successful house-flipper with a reality television show on the DIY Network. A renovation show in the same vein as Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, The Vanilla Ice Project features Van Winkle and his team transforming a poor-quality foreclosure into a luxury home and then flipping it for a profit.

As one example of his show’s approach, Van Winkle described the new features added to a foreclosure in a Vulture interview:

“I built a lazy river in the backyard and put this tiki hut in the middle of it like an island. On the inside, I put in a pneumatic elevator; a panoramic, 200-inch 3-D gaming system room with vibrating chairs; and a cinema that looked like an auditorium out of a castle. Flush-mount iPads throughout the entire house in every room, because the house is a smart house, which means that with your smartphone anywhere in the world […].”

Like any reputable real estate professional, Van Winkle offers an investing course, albeit one that’s online. House-flipping, however, adjusts with the market conditions, and those taking his course – or any course on it, for that matter – must have reasonable expectations. A property likely cannot be fixed up to the level of a Vanilla Ice Project foreclosure, and it won’t reap in as large of profits as pre-crash flipped homes did. In fact, excessive house-flipping influenced the crash in some markets.

Rather, sales from house-flipping for the ordinary individual – and not a former rap star in his second career stage – may take months, and while a profit is earned, the amount isn’t a huge payday.

Tags: house flipping, the vanilla ice project, vanilla ice foreclosures, vanilla ice house flippipng