I really don’t care if people want to scalp non-essential goods tbh. It sucks but my life intersects with those items so seldom that it doesn’t impact me. I make a slight exception for things like electronics (i.e. GPUs a few years ago) because some peoples’ livelihoods are directly tied to being able to access those goods.
If you try to flip houses for profit, you’re neither a scalper nor an investor. You’re a sociopath at best and a murderer at worst
Perhaps we have a different definition of “flip” but the one familiar with is taking a home in bad shape then fixing it (usually yourself, because hiring a contractor would cost more than the profit). I don’t flip myself, but I don’t see this as a negative. Someone put effort to improve the house and gets profit from it (yes, there’s an issue that they might use the cheapest materials, because they won’t live there and just want to make it look good, but that’s a different issue).
The biggest issue in driving prices up is low supply and high demand.
We should change zoning laws to allow building more houses and also place restrictions on houses purchased by corporations and international investors. Oh yeah, Airbnb is another one that drives prices up.
The issue with flipping is that they draw from the same pool of housing as the rest of the people. If a party is interested in purchasing a house to live in and along comes a flipper and purchases it instead, the flipper will add on a profit for his service, that nobody asked for.
Presumably, the party that wanted to live in had already seen the state of the house and was prepared to pay for fixes. Let’s say both them and the flipper would use the cheapest materials and labour possible, levelling out the equation. The profit for the flipper has to come from somewhere then - something extra added beyond the labour and material cost - something somebody who would live there would not have to pay in normal circumstances. They do DIY to save on labour? Great - they can be contractors then, not flippers.
This means to me that flipper not only does not add any value to the house, but inflicts extra costs upon any good faith buyers. Add to that the fact that tastes vary greatly between people and they might actually do some damage by decorating or remodelling in a style thay may not appeal to everyone, or in a bland style. All of it could have been avoided if the flipper just fecked off. House flippers are like the people rushing to pump your gas for you before you get out of the car and then expecting a tip.
See my other comment about positive-feedback loops. The House Flipping trend of the late 2000s was never sustainable.
On the matter of more presentable, I disagree strongly. Late-Stage Professional House Flippers are concerned with nothing but profit. The quality, fit, and finish of their renovations are tastelessly bad. In almost every case, I refuse to believe that House flippers do a better job cosmetically than if the home had sold to people who would be living there who would then be able to work with a contractor to fix up the house into exactly what they want.
Source: I’ve spent more hundreds of hours than I can count doing sub work for house flippers. There’s nothing defensible about what they do.
Source: I’ve spent more hundreds of hours than I can count doing sub work for house flippers. There’s nothing defensible about what they do.
Clearly there is something defensible… You did the hundreds of hours of work. And you can’t complain about fit and finish if you were the one doing the work.
My opinions nobody asked for:
I really don’t care if people want to scalp non-essential goods tbh. It sucks but my life intersects with those items so seldom that it doesn’t impact me. I make a slight exception for things like electronics (i.e. GPUs a few years ago) because some peoples’ livelihoods are directly tied to being able to access those goods.
If you try to flip houses for profit, you’re neither a scalper nor an investor. You’re a sociopath at best and a murderer at worst
Perhaps we have a different definition of “flip” but the one familiar with is taking a home in bad shape then fixing it (usually yourself, because hiring a contractor would cost more than the profit). I don’t flip myself, but I don’t see this as a negative. Someone put effort to improve the house and gets profit from it (yes, there’s an issue that they might use the cheapest materials, because they won’t live there and just want to make it look good, but that’s a different issue).
The biggest issue in driving prices up is low supply and high demand.
We should change zoning laws to allow building more houses and also place restrictions on houses purchased by corporations and international investors. Oh yeah, Airbnb is another one that drives prices up.
The issue with flipping is that they draw from the same pool of housing as the rest of the people. If a party is interested in purchasing a house to live in and along comes a flipper and purchases it instead, the flipper will add on a profit for his service, that nobody asked for.
Presumably, the party that wanted to live in had already seen the state of the house and was prepared to pay for fixes. Let’s say both them and the flipper would use the cheapest materials and labour possible, levelling out the equation. The profit for the flipper has to come from somewhere then - something extra added beyond the labour and material cost - something somebody who would live there would not have to pay in normal circumstances. They do DIY to save on labour? Great - they can be contractors then, not flippers.
This means to me that flipper not only does not add any value to the house, but inflicts extra costs upon any good faith buyers. Add to that the fact that tastes vary greatly between people and they might actually do some damage by decorating or remodelling in a style thay may not appeal to everyone, or in a bland style. All of it could have been avoided if the flipper just fecked off. House flippers are like the people rushing to pump your gas for you before you get out of the car and then expecting a tip.
That’s today’s Lemmy Moment of the day.
Besides, don’t house flippers generally renovate the house, and generally make it more presentable?
See my other comment about positive-feedback loops. The House Flipping trend of the late 2000s was never sustainable.
On the matter of more presentable, I disagree strongly. Late-Stage Professional House Flippers are concerned with nothing but profit. The quality, fit, and finish of their renovations are tastelessly bad. In almost every case, I refuse to believe that House flippers do a better job cosmetically than if the home had sold to people who would be living there who would then be able to work with a contractor to fix up the house into exactly what they want.
Source: I’ve spent more hundreds of hours than I can count doing sub work for house flippers. There’s nothing defensible about what they do.
Clearly there is something defensible… You did the hundreds of hours of work. And you can’t complain about fit and finish if you were the one doing the work.
I mean if you manage to make money flipping houses, go for it. But I don’t know how in the hell that’s possible in this market.
I have to disagree with the first part, the principal applies unilaterally. Second part, you’re bang on.