Does the concept of "house flipping" have a negative connotation to you?

[EthansMom]

I think there are a lot of flippers who are good folks... and a lot who are trying to make a quick buck for little effort.

DH and I have "flipped" two houses (we lived in each for less than 3 years and did lots of remodeling/upgrading while we lived in them). Also, my FIL and BIL have done a lot of flipping. For all of us, we buy a house that needs some work (usually a dog in a good neighborhood) and then we do the work on the house (FIL & BIL usually live elsewhere while doing the work, DH and I live in the house). Then we live in the house for at least two years, so we don't have to pay taxes on our profit. We do pretty good work on our house, but DH and I are careful to not put lots of money on extras that we might want, but that won't necessarily increase the price a buyer would be willing to pay for the house.

I would say that DH and I have "flipped" every house that we've owned. It's truly surprising to me how many people treat their house as a depreciating asset and don't do anything other than basic maintenance on it. It's remarkably easy to find a 20 year old house that needs new paint, new carpet, updated bathrooms & kitchen, etc... to be a beautiful place to live.

IMO, there are a lot of "flippers" out there who were capitalizing on the house prices running amock; people buying a house one month, waiting a few months for prices to inflate, and then selling the house at a profit after having done little or no work on it. IMO, these carpet-baggers aren't true flippers, but opportunists hoping to make a quick dollar. With the rapid drops in home values, such folks are losing their shirts right now.

 

[daisax]

To me, a "flipper" is merely somebody who bought the property with the express purpose of turning it around and selling it, as opposed to buying it as a primary (or long-term) residence.

As for the horror stories... how do cheap appliances and bad paint jobs cheat the prospective buyer? Buyers should have an appraisal done, and the quality of the paint job and appliances should be fairly clear. Is it any different from buying direct from the person who lived there 30 years and bought some second hand appliances from Craig's list and threw up a single coat of paint to entice buyers? You like what you see and think it's worth your while to buy or not.

Having seen some local properties that were flipped, cheap appliances, linoleum and paint still made them more habitable than what they had been, and the new owners could take a little time and replace those things as needed with the quality they desired.

If somebody wants to buy a place with 25 year old carpet and 20 year old appliances and shiny smoke stained wall paper and change those superficial things and bump the price up 50K and somebody's willing to pay it, good for them. It's done to offset the dozens of people who would have passed the property by the moment they saw the carpet/appliances/wallpaper and just didn't want to deal with it all at once.

 

[Barbossa]

Flipping a house could be bad, especially if it lands on its roof!

 

[Disney Doll]

I tihnk, like everything else, there are good and bad in everything.

DH is in real estate, so he encounters house flippers all the time. It's not necessarily a bad thing. As a PP said, sometimes putting moderate quality fixtures into a reasonably good home so that the next buyer has a bit of time to decide what they want to do to upgrade, but in the meantime they have a halfway decent looking home. That's not a bad thing necessarily.

And truthfully, anyone buying a home should have a good inspection done. A good inspector will be able to see past the cosmetic and look at the "bones" of the house.

 

[Am_I_There_Yet]

And truthfully, anyone buying a home should have a good inspection done. A good inspector will be able to see past the cosmetic and look at the "bones" of the house.

Absolutely! My husband is a licensed real estate inspector, and not only should people get older homes inspected - whether they be occupied by the sellers, or sold by an investor, but they should also have new construction inspected too.

I could tell some stories about the things he's found wrong in brand new homes, that would curl your toes.

 

[Imzadi]

I think it's the term "flipping" that is the problem here. If you look at the concept, it is applied to almost everything:

People like Jay Leno, by old, vintage cars & "restore" them and then show them off or sell them at a higher price.

Antique dealers & garage sale-rs & carpenters find old dilapidated furniture, strip it down, add a new coat of varnish & new knobs & resell it for 2-3 times the buying price. They say they are "restoring" antiques, or are craftsmen.

Ebayers find items cheap & resale them on eBay for a profit.

Real estate investors buy foreclosed property all the time & make profits.

Used car dealers buy cars, do minimal repairs then resell.

People buy low in the stock market & hope to sell high.

I think as with everything, it is Caveat Emptor, "Let the buyer beware."

You should do your own research & have your own appraiser to figure out what the actual price of anything is, whether stocks, houses, cars, antiques, eBay items.

Yes, there will be many flippers who do shoddy jobs. There are many homeowners who do shoddy jobs on houses they actually live in, then sell years later. Isn't it the potential new owners responsibility to check out the soundness of the house whether flipped or not?

The concept of buying something to make a profit isn't the problem. It is the integrity of how much work and the quality of work that is at heart here.

Donald Trump buys a piece of property & bulldozes the land down to a hole in the ground, the builds. He doesn't call himself a flipper. He calls himself a land developer.

OP, maybe you need a more neutral or positive term than Flipper. Maybe: contractor, home restoration, developer?

 

[Becky2005]

With what you are describing, I would just think of it as a smart business person. I wouldn't read it as a crook.

In a way, my dad did the same thing but wasn't in it to make huge profits.

He would find some small houses he liked, fix them up, rent them out & then sell them.

That's how they paid off the house they now lived in. He always liked it, told my mom when it went on sale, he was going to buy it & he did. The house was literally a 1 bedroom shell -- I'm surprised it was legal to live in it. He did lots of fixing it up. He rented it out several times (including once to my brother & once to me and YES, we had to pay rent!). Then when he sold the big house we all grew up in once we all were out on our own, he moved into it & basically throughout the years the renters had paid for it. It was never the short term loan thing & sell before the loan comes due.
IF he hadn't liked it, he would have sold it at a profit I'm sure and gotten a different one. I know at one point he owned 3 houses.

I could easily see where it fits into your story that they found the house, were going to flip it but the dad decided to keep it instead.

Of course, maybe just how I've grown up with people. DH's dad was an appraiser and he did the same type of thing as my dad did. His dad would fix it up too, then rent, THEN sell. Although, seems we all had the renting it out part before selling. I'm not sure why the always ended up renting (maybe they decided it was not a good market to sell in, so my as well have someone else paying the mortgage at that point?).

 

[Imzadi]

With what you are describing, I would just think of it as a smart business person. I wouldn't read it as a crook.

In a way, my dad did the same thing but wasn't in it to make huge profits.

He would find some small houses he liked, fix them up, rent them out & then sell them.

That's how they paid off the house they now lived in. He always liked it, told my mom when it went on sale, he was going to buy it & he did. The house was literally a 1 bedroom shell -- I'm surprised it was legal to live in it. He did lots of fixing it up. He rented it out several times (including once to my brother & once to me and YES, we had to pay rent!). Then when he sold the big house we all grew up in once we all were out on our own, he moved into it & basically throughout the years the renters had paid for it. It was never the short term loan thing & sell before the loan comes due.
IF he hadn't liked it, he would have sold it at a profit I'm sure and gotten a different one. I know at one point he owned 3 houses.

For years there have been huge lines out the door for real estate workshops such as these. I believe they call these buying investment real estate properties.

I think house flipping is only a recent term since all those tv shows on A&E & HGTV.

 

[disneymac]

Oh I totally agree.I love watching Richard Davis.They don't skimp on anything.
They make sure everything is the way they would want it if they were going to live in that house.
I cannot stand Armondo Montolongo.What a cheap,cheezy swindler that guy is..I would not take one of his houses if he was giving them away.He hires contractors that he can negotiate the price down to next to nothing to do all the work he wants done.I cannot stand the man! He takes advantage of people and cuts corners to save a buck whereever he can.I watched that family a few times and after I got the jist of what him and his family were about I refuse to watch it anymore.
Debbie

Is this on the show on TLC? I don't usually remember their names, but Armondo sounds familiar - and the description fits, too - yuck!

 

[maelstrom]

My father occasionally flips houses. He does *not* work with an appraiser or any of that nonsense. He buys a dilapidated house, fixes it up, and sells it for profit. He also flips land.