Many people cited disliking improvements in the house filp upgrades thread because they made the house look like it had been flipped.
When I sold my last house, one of the comments we got from a potential buyer was, “Looks like someone has been playing ‘flip this house.’” This ticked me off because it was clearly meant to be derogatory, and because I had lived in the house for seven years. If I’m a flipper, I’m a stupid flipper.
I can understand being wary of improvements that were done as quickly and inexpensively as possible. However, many buyers I’ve heard want a house in “move in” condition. They want things to have been recently updated. Not everyone is a home handyman. So if the house has been flipped, so what? The work is done for you. If you like the house and it was in your price range, would knowing it was flipped turn you away?
A flipped house? No, it would definitely have to be the right way up, or I’m just not interested.
Seriously. Yes. If the price was what I considered reasonable and I wanted it, why not?
Nearly everything else I buy has made profit for a bunch of people on its way to me.
It may well be the case that the kind of upgrades people do on flipped houses would make them less desirable to me aesthetically, but otherwise, I have no problem with it.
Huh. I was planning to replace the carpet, which has been brutally beaten by my cats’ digestive tracts over the past few years, just before selling the house. But if some buyers actually want that lived-in look, I think I can manage.
It would make me a bit suspicious, but it wouldn’t necessarily be a deal-breaker. My worry would be that that any upgrades were done on the cheap. In general, I don’t care for a lot of stuff that’s trendy right now–slate tile, granite countertops, stainless steel appliances–so I wouldn’t be too interested in a house that had a lot of that stuff.
The fear in case of a ‘flipped’ house is that all the stuff done is cosmetic and done on the cheap, and serious (& expensive) problems have been papered over in favour of giving the place a sellable look.
When I was looking for a house 3 years ago, I saw plenty of places that fit this description - granite countertops installed, but an obviously leaky basement neglected; in one extreme case, a whole high-end-looking kitchen put in, right next to a mudroom addition quite obviously falling apart.
The result is that, as a buyer, I got suspicious of recent improvements; I was always thinking “what are they covering up or attempting to distract attention away from?”. Must say though that the tactics did work for a lot of people, in that many buyers will be attracted to those cosmetic fixes.
[The place we eventually bought had no cosmetic work done and was something of a fixer-upper; an old house with lots of nice original features).
We saw several flipped homes during our house-hunting adventures last year, and actually ended up buying one of those because the price was right and were pleased with the quality of the work done.
There are good flips and bad flips, just like there are good houses that have been primped to show better and bad houses that have been staged to the gills to hide some serious problems that will cost $$$ to rectify. You just need to learn to look past a nice painting on the mantel and pretty bedding, and to focus on the stuff that matters like a solid foundation, a dry basement and proper up-to-code electrical and plumbing.
Overall, we’re quite happy. Like any 80-yr old house, we have had to deal with a few issues in the past year (tree roots in the drainpipe, older roof, etc), but on the bright side, someone else took care of putting in new floors, updating the kitchens and bathrooms, finishing the basement, etc etc.
I wouldn’t care whether it was “flipped” or not. Those are just cosmetic details. The things I want to know I will learn from having a home inspector examine the house top to bottom.
That’s worry number one. Did the flippers just slap all of this stuff in there?
For me there was also the “ugly flip” problem. One place I looked at had just redone the kitchen. And I hated it. The quality was good, I just really didn’t like the way it looked. At least with an un-redone kitchen (or bathroom, or bedroom), if I hate it, I won’t feel like it’s wasteful to rip it out and put in new everything. There’s no way to justify putting in new everything when the everything you bought was under one year old.
And finally, in both situations, am I paying a price based on work that I’ll have to redo, anyway? I’d prefer not.
If a house needs work, I’d rather negotiate the price and do the work myself. Or what Amarinth said. I’d probably live for awhile with something newly done, even if I didn’t like it.
What I don’t understand about the TV show flippers is how they choose their flips. They’ll pay half a million for a house, add a couple hundred thousand in upgrades and wonder why nobody’s buying it. The house was already in good shape – they’re just tweaking.
Or they’ll upgrade a house in a low-income neighborhood and then price it way too high for that neighborhood.
My feeling, too. Along with the don’t-want-trendy-granite-and-stainless.
We bought a fixer-upper. It wasn’t in bad shape - just very *very * outdated and ugly. We made it our own, and saved a bunch in the bargain. If the house had looked nicer, we’d have faced a bidding war.
I have to say, some of the flip shows I’ve seen do really half-assed work. I feel sorry for their buyers.
Flipping is buying a house and renovating it as fast as possible with intent to sell it right away. Some sellers might do a good job or they might cut corners but they never intended to live there in the first place. That is what makes house flipping a little shady.
I would personally prefer that they leave the place alone and sell for a price that reflects that. I would greatly prefer to do my own renovations.
Everything new and high quality. What is not to love. Of course if you don’t like it ,then you have to rip out new stuff to fix it the way you want. Then it woulds be a bad idea.
When I was looking at houses, there were two that were flipped. In both of them, some of the work that was done was good, but other stuff was simply terrible.
For example, in one house, they’d redone the bathrooms and the kitchen. The kitchen was fine – that sort of generic new modern look with granite countertops, etc. – which I hate but whatever. The bathroom, they’d installed all new fixtures, including new double sinks that were those cool bowl ones. But clearly the house flippers were men, because there was no storage in the bathroom. Nowhere to hide the seventeen kinds of goop you like for your hair, no makeup drawer, no nothing. So in that case, that bathroom (in my opinion) would have to be rethought and redone so that a human being could use it.
The other house had some of the same issues – same generic modern kitchen for one. But they’d also installed bookcases in the living room, but they were the cheap looking kind that in my opinion detracted from the room’s look as a whole.
So I wouldn’t reject a house just because it was flipped, but I wouldn’t pay a premium for a flipped house when it wasn’t done to my taste.
A lot of the flipped houses I’ve seen have been just terrible. The most egregious crime was a “5-bedroom remodel”. Actually, it was a three bed house, plus a garage with a plywood division down the middle to make two extra “bedrooms”. For the love of Og, why?
I recently saw a flipped house-the reworking was done on the cheap (kitchen by IKEA), low quality laminate flooring, cheap bathroom fixtures, and lousy tile job. You know tha 2-3 years down the road, the hadles will pull out of the cabinets, te bathroom fixstures will all be broken, and the house will need to be rehabbed -again!
We’re in the middle of redoing our kitchen, and I believe that Consumer Reports actually rated Ikea cabinets **very **highly… I always assumed they were junk, but when we went and looked at the local Ikea, they’re actually great quality nowadays…
