Reply to what do we think of gut rehab flips?

Forum Index » Real Estate

Reply to "what do we think of gut rehab flips?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]What difference does it make if it was gross and disgusting inside?  It's been gutted!  Probably just old with old cloth wiring, old plumbing, etc,  All the walls, ceilings, windows, etc taken out and old wiring, plumbing replaced and new outlets/wiring put in.  Electrical box upgraded so you fon't blow a fuse everytime you run the hair dryer and microwave at the same time.  Some of these old houses have 1 outlet per room.

Better to get a gutted basically new house than some retrofitted DIY homeowners idea of a renovation.[/quote]

When we bought a year ago, we looked at a bunch of flips.  The problem is, I doubt they were actually "gutted."  The kitchens and bathrooms were new, new appliances, but the electric panels weren't updated, so I highly doubt the wiring was replaced.  In fact, in one flip, my spouse checked the outlets and *none* of them were grounded (there's a very simple tool to detect this).

While they usually upgraded the normal windows, bay windows were usually *not* upgraded (too expensive).

Those red flags made me highly suspicious.  I doubt plumbing was fully replaced, but my guess is that they did only what they needed to do to get the new fixtures in place.  Who knows what lurks beneath bath tubs and showers.

However, the houses that were renovated by homeowners who owned them for a decade or more were in better shape.  Why?  Because if they renovated something 10 years ago, they probably cared a lot more about the renovation than a flipper because they knew they were going to actually *live* there.  Yes, you have to be careful with DIY stuff.  But in general, there were far fewer red flags with properties retrofitted by the actual homeowners than with flipped properties.

[/quote]

Almost all home renovation is crap. It's either done by the homeowner (most people expect to upgrade from their 'starter' home etc), so they hired someone to spruce up their place, piecemeal and only repaired things when they replaced. So deferred maintenance and outdated systems stick around.  No true top to bottom comprehensive repairs or upgrades are done, they just saving up to buy their 'forever' home and hiring cutrate unpermitted contractor.

Or it's a flipper, who just replaces all the finishes, and doubles the price. Oh god, that will be tale of woe. The backed up plumbing, low-water pressure, ungrounded outlets (which you can fool some tools with by shorting the ground to the positive terminal).

Way way better to buy a house and renovate with a reliable contractor and integrated home inspector under your watch.  But for most housing stock in DC (all the 40s tract housing colonials), the real best option is to save up your pennies and do a tear-down.[/quote]

Very few people have the resources to do a tear-down, especially given that even just purchasing the rundown house and land is out of most buyers' budgets.

It's also very difficult for buyers in this market to actually get a good price on a house that needs a total renovation, because there are entirely too many cash investors intending on either flipping or tearing down.

When we bought, we looked to buy a foreclosure and do our own renovation, but the foreclosures were priced high for "regular" buyers.  Cash buyers were able to get deals.   So we gave up on that plan because the foreclosures were expensive for the amount of work they needed just to be livable.

We looked and looked.  We looked at short sales, estate sales, regular sales.  We even looked at one new property, but it was way out of our budget (and that was without any of the upgrades).

We ended up buying a house from a homeowner that has been updated over the years.   It's always a risk.  Even new construction is a risk, as we have friends who bought a brand new house and had basement problems from day 1 and had to fight with the builder to get things supposedly covered by warranty repaired.

I don't know what the solution is.  There has to be a better way.  Every one talks about the middle class and making things better for the middle class, but in this region especially, buying a modest house is very difficult for those truly in the middle class.  They're priced out of the good school districts, and even in the lesser districts, they have to spend top dollar and still take on a lot of risk and uncertainty.

And while renting is always an option, it's equally difficult to find affordable rentals in this region for a middle class family.

But all of that said, I think ultimately flips generally are riskier than homes where the seller has lived there for at least a decade.  Of course, that's a generalization. Not all flips are necessarily bad, and of course, there are homeowners who haven't properly maintained their house.  [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics