this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2023
749 points (98.6% liked)
Personal Finance
3660 readers
12 users here now
Learn about budgeting, saving, getting out of debt, credit, investing, and retirement planning. Join our community, read the PF Wiki, and get on top of your finances!
Note: This community is not region centric, so if you are posting anything specific to a certain region, kindly specify that in the title (something like [USA], [EU], [AUS] etc.)
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
House flippers are incentivized not to make good, long term, sustainable, or efficient home improvements. Their only incentive is to make a house more sellable upon initial inspection, house flipping is a bad practice I would argue far more often than not.
The problem is housing as an investment like a stock. They should be commodities.
I spent the last year looking for a house to buy, and since it took me a year I got to see many of the shit-bucket houses I was looking at (since they were in my price range) get bought up and "flipped" - which usually amounted to just some paint slapped on everything and those fucking grey fake wood vinyl planks that everybody loves these days put down everywhere - and then resold for absurd prices. I respect people that do a good job of renovating houses, but most of these flippers aren't doing that.
I'm in no position to buy a house, but I like to browse and dream, and my mindset at this point is basically--give me an honest old house that hasn't been renovated since 1970...at least I can SEE the problem-spots (cracked this or that, stains, etc.) and make a plan on how to tackle them.
Like, my gut feeling when I see that horrible silver-blue color scheme anything flipped/"renovated" in the past few years is to run as fast as I can. You can't plan, you don't know what you'll have to tackle, it's all hidden under fresh paint or flooring. Is there mold? Who knows. Water damage? Who knows. Old pipes/electrical/etc. that need fixing? Who knows, the signs that might have given you a clue were hidden or pulled out. It's all a big mystery.
Hey I like the grey wood floor look lol