The chill in real-estate sales hit Larry Dickson in June when he tried to sell a North Side home. After running into “the coldest market,”" he waited only 30 days before pulling the house that he had renovated. Dickson doesn't renovate and sell houses for a living but has tackled a half dozen houses in Clintonville in recent years. “I've always turned a profit and been satisfied,” he said. The practice of buying homes for renovation and sale, usually within a year, is sometimes called “flipping.” The speculative pursuit has declined as the overall real-estate market has slowed, experts said. But prudent and patient investors can still prosper.

“Seeking a good opportunity has never gone out of style,” said Pat O'Neil, of Century 21 C.R. O’N eil and Co. on the North Side and president of the Ohio Association of Realtors. “It's still out there. It's not being done nearly as much.

“You've got to know what you're doing.”

Dickson, who runs transportation services for Battelle, invested about $25,000 in materials and long hours of work in his house on Walhalla Road.

He bought the house in September 2005 for $190,000. The renovation was accomplished with several skilled friends who help each other on projects.

The crew removed a centerhall closet and built a stairway to the attic, which was converted into two bedrooms. Remodeling included the kitchen, bathrooms and basement. Dickson built a stone-terrace wall outdoors and improved the landscaping.

The house went on the market for $334,000, but Dickson came up empty and withdrew the house. He figures he missed the boom market by about four months.

He was contacted later in the summer by real-estate agent Kevin Sullivan, of RE/MAX Premier Choice in Worthington, and put the house on the market again, asking $319,000. The current asking price is $269,900, and the house is in contract.

Dickson moved out of the Walhalla Road house after buying another Clintonville home in November. He has begun work on that house.

“I usually buy them to occupy them, . . . not for the sheer flipping side of it,” he said. “I've been in the house and worked on it while I resided in it.

“If you can do (the renovation) yourself, it's well worth it.”

While some flippers live in the home during the renovation, others, including some real-estate agents, treat the property strictly as an investment.

“There's nothing wrong with doing that,” said real-estate agent Pat Kearns-Davis, of RE/MAX Capital Centre on the North Side. “You're improving the whole market.”

Improvements to Dickson's Walhalla Road house are of high quality, Sullivan said.

“He put a ton of money into it.

“Even though Clintonville is a nice area and it's holding up, people are just not getting the money they thought they'd get,” Sullivan said.

Dickson is philosophical. “That's part of real estate,” he said. “It's going to be hot and cold, and you better be ready.”

He always keeps an eye out for a good deal, watching market trends and scouting open houses. He looks for structurally sound houses in slight disrepair.

Investors typically look for distressed properties. To succeed, they must have a good feel for the neighborhood, understand how much to pour into renovation and — in a slow market — exhibit patience.

And thou shalt not be greedy.

“Pigs get fat; hogs get slaughtered,” said Shaun Ford, a mortgage consultant for Priority Mortgage who has renovated and sold properties.

Investors in today's market must be prepared to hold properties longer and must be able to absorb the extra costs of holding a house, Ford said.

Holding costs are typically about $100 a day, said Ralph Roberts, a Michigan real-estate agent and author of Flipping Houses for Dummies (Wiley, $21.99).

“When flipping houses in a down market, you want to stay in the business,” Roberts said.

The market will improve, he said.

“It's still the best investment anybody can make.”

But slow the pace, he advised. “If you flipped six houses last year, maybe you flip four houses this year.

“Don't let the inventory grow on you,” he said. “You've got to have a plan B. Rent it if you have to.”

Lease-to-buy contracts are another option mentioned by local investors. Ford said some people who lose a house to foreclosure hope to return to homeownership by arranging to lease a property with the object of eventually buying it.

Good deals for flippers are out there, Sullivan said, partly because of foreclosures.

The inventory of houses has been swelled by the increase in foreclosures, which creates an opportunity for flippers to buy properties at below-market prices.

There were 15,613 homes for sale in December, compared with 13,995 the previous December, according to the Columbus Board of Realtors. Homes are also taking longer to sell: They stayed on the market an average of 111 days in December, up from 93 days the previous year.

National foreclosure filings topped 1.2 million last year, an increase of 42 percent from 2005, according to the January RealtyTrac Foreclosure Market Report.

Ohio ranked eighth among states in the rate of foreclosures (1.7 percent of households), and Columbus ranked 19th among metro areas (2.2 percent of households).

But many investors are cautious.

“Everyone and their brother thought they could make a million dollars on rehabs and sales, but they couldn't sell them,” Sullivan said. “We had an adjustment.”

Flippers helped fuel the hot market of years past, O'Neil said, but, “The party's over.”

Some investors like to turn a house over in 30 days, O'Neil said.

"The investor today will make most of his money in the buy,” O'Neil said. “You buy something at a good price and add on value that will vary according to the area you're in.”

The key to success, he said, is to bring a renovated house back to the market at the right price and be satisfied with a reasonable profit.

Ford gives seminars on investing in properties whose owners have defaulted on Federal Housing Administration loans. Those houses are sold by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Ford has bought, rehabbed and sold seven properties in 2½ years, he said, with six of those purchased from HUD.

“The last one I sold about a year ago, and I held it for less than 40 days,” he said.

His “golden rule” is to spend no more than $15,000 in repairs. Ford wants 20 percent to 30 percent equity in a house, which means that if a home is worth $100,000 he will not spend more than $80,000 in purchase and repairs.

“It really means understanding . . . your target audience. Who do you have in mind? You make the property appeal to that target audience.”

Kearns-Davis has renovated and sold more than 60 houses in about 30 years and shrugs off ups and downs in the market.

“You buy at the right price in that market at that time,” she said. “Don't be silly. Don't overpay. An extra $1,000 can just be too much.”

She hunts houses under market value, including those available through an estate, sold because of a divorce or in disrepair.

Legitimate flipping, she said, requires legitimate renovation.

“Everybody wanted on this gravy train without doing anything to the house,” she said. “You get what you put out there and what it's worth.”