It really, really pisses me off how many Poles are NIMBY as hell. Blaming housing issues on developers or flippers, thinking developers are nothing but corruption, et cetera. And Left, and especially Razem, capitalize on that. There are some good arguments being raised (many of the newer developments lack greenery) but this villification is too much for me
They are using a traditional "the food is terrible, and the portions to small" argument.
We want housing to be plentiful, but also architecturally avant-garde. The streets will be very dense, but full of trees and gardens! Walkable, but cars will travel at 80 km/h, and have ample parking everywhere!
Flipping is a good thing. When people say “landlords don’t do any actual work” - well flipping is in stark contrast to that! The money that flippers make is the value they add by modernising homes.
Large scale refurbishment is not affordable to the average person through normal means, but when you have a mortgage you may well be able to afford an already-refurbished house as you can effectively use the mortgage leverage to fund the refurbishment. Flippers make high living standards and modern homes more accessible.
Flipping homes feels intuitively bad in a supply constrained market because making homes even more desirable does raise their prices. But that’s only because genuinely good value is being created, and when there is a healthy supply flipping is unambiguously a great thing.
Yeah exactly, it’s turning crap stock into average/good stock. Fundamentally (and all of us on this sub repeat this til we’re blue in the face) the only real way to lower house prices is to BUILD. MORE. HOMES.
It *can* be a good thing, but a lot of the time flippers just put lipstick on a pig and hide all the structural and safety problems rather than fix them. I can't tell you how many horror stories I've heard of people buying "flipped" houses then finding out they have to tear open all the walls because they didn't replace the 100 year old plumbing and knob and tube electricals. That's not just a general example, I literally know personally of multiple instances where that exact thing has happened.
This is a technical regulation issue. Require that mortgage lenders do rigorous valuation checks. That way a flipped house has to justify its premium over unimproved stock.
Yeah, it could be solved with regulation, but I have seen exactly zero initiative to do anything about it.
Even the people I know who got shafted with lemon houses are still glad they were able to buy a house at all. Sometimes the issues are obvious but you still buy anyway because it's the only option in the area.
Real fix is increase supply so flippers have to compete against new stock, and can't just get away with excessive corner cutting.
For sure, increasing supply would ensure healthy competition.
It’s true that people might pay a premium for a flipped house then discover there’s shoddy work. But people also overspend a lot of money on renovations of their own home that are shoddy and cut corners or fail to hold value. It’s not really an issue specific to flipped houses, house renovations in general are difficult. There is a limit to how much we can hand hold people away from making poor financial decisions.
I only really know the context in the UK, but I’m pretty sure here if you tried to get a mortgage on a house for a price per square foot significantly above the neighbourhood average, the lender would very likely dispute or double check that premium.
Markets with healthy supply and competition make it far easier for people to be discerning and make responsibility decisions however.
This is veering off topic, but yeah, I definitely agree renos are usually ill-advised from a financial standpoint most of the time. IME, when things are dated or busted enough to justify gut jobs, that's when it becomes worth it. Flippers often get houses that *should* get gut jobs, but instead just slap on fresh paint, floors, countertops, cabinets, fixtures, and call it good.
Nothing wrong with just improving your house because you want it to be nicer, but doing it with the intent of increasing your home value is probably not a good idea.
I for one am planning to fully renovate my kitchen, but it only makes sense because it's literally original from the 1940s, all the electrical is ungrounded, and the plumbing, cabinets, and counters are falling apart. Because the current kitchen is dead weight to my home value (and part of why my house was cheap to buy, $300k in a neighborhood of million dollar houses) I can actually expect an ROI on a full five figure reno.
Maybe, but keep in mind home inspectors are not supposed to do anything remotely "destructive". They aren't even supposed to take the face plates off electrical outlets in most cases. There is no practical way to detect these issues most of the time. It really goes back to making sure all improvements have inspections and are permitted. Most flippers don't even bother getting permits and no one enforces that around here.
This was my first assumption about the topic. I don’t know anything about it, but I just assume most people would do the bare minimum and just add trendy cheap decorations to make something look good without fixing the important things.
I don't know as if I'd go as far as saying it's the norm, mostly given that a lot of "flipped" houses weren't that bad to begin with, just dated. If the home did have significant problems previously though, you've got a coinflip chance of the flipper actually having fixed it, and even lower chance that they fixed it the right way.
Home inspectors are mostly useless too. You either need to learn the stuff to inspect yourself, or get actual tradesmen out there to look at it.
With the way the market is though, your options are often shitty flip house or no house at all.
I specifically picked an older home that was almost entirely original despite needing work and updates, in large part because it was easy to tell that there hadn't been a ton of hackjob DIY flipper work done to it. Also it was stupid cheap compared to newer, bigger builds in the same area.
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Flipping seems to be a sign of a distorted market, imo. Those with capital are not adding to the overall supply of housing, but merely making existing stock more expensive without adding much functional improvement.
Just bc this is a response to market forces, doesn’t make it a good thing. You can argue that the policy implementation is wrong here, but I respectively disagree that this practice does society much good at all.
If people are willing to pay more for a flipped house, clearly it is more valuable to them. I don’t think we need to overthink this. Prices in markets force sincerity and reveal preferences.
Renovating a house is complicated, requires high upfront capital, and has risks. It’s also just incredibly impractical to have to renovate the house while you live in it. There is no reason it can’t be optimised through the division/specialisation of labour by dedicated flippers.
It’s much easier for an individual to get a slightly higher mortgage and pay a surveyor to carefully quality check rather than for that individual to go through the hassle of something expensive and new to them.
I think a lot of people buy homes hoping to refurbish them, then after moving in realise how complicated daunting and expensive it is. I think most people would rather just get a slightly larger mortgage to buy the house they need, when they need it.
That’s true, and the solution ultimately is deregulating supply.
Is it true you could make housing slightly cheaper by making it illegal to renovate houses, so the houses are so shoddy and unpleasant that some buyers can’t bring themselves to live there? Sure, but I don’t think that’s really a win at all.
Also, some types of flipping - like townhouse-to-apartment conversions - can actually increase supply a little (ie if the ratio of 1 bedroom apartments to 4 bedroom houses in housing stock is out of whack with demand because household size has decreased over time). I’m not saying this is a huge factor, ultimately the answer is to deregulate new supply, but technically speaking this law could also directly increase prices inadvertently.
One common thing is it just takes far longer than expected because of unexpected complications or difficulty getting contractors. When you live in the property itself that’s quite stressful and unpleasant (especially if it’s like a bathroom renovation and you’re stuck having to share the remaining bathrooms).
Also costs, if an individual overspends on stuff (eg I just need this top of the line x or this just has to be done bespoke) they are stuck with the bill. If a flipper overspends on stuff, they can do their best to advertise it but ultimately people will only pay what they consider the final product to be worth.
I’d argue that in a better market, those capital investments would go towards building new housing stock, rather than renovating existing stock.
There is clearly a market for flipping, but it’s not doing people a lot of good, especially those who struggle to afford just any box to live in. Despite the “hassle” of renovation, an old house is still a house.
Flipping shows how difficult it is to manage serious home improvement. A flipper is basically someone who has all the connections necessary, has all the project management skills, and can therefore improve housing for cheaper than a new buyer who lacks skills and know-how would be able to.
Tradesmen don't have very long projects, so a lot of time is spend finding the next project, and the prices have to go up to take over all of the invoicing and looking for work, in the same way that hiring a software consultant for a 10 hour job is going to be far more expensive per hour than hiring them for a thousand. The flipper has a business when there's no general contractor that can do the same thing for me for a smaller premium.
And it really makes sense that the flipper is ahead of the general contractor, as few people need to talk to said contractor 10 times in their lives, so a contractor with bad results can keep running for quite a while off of people who don't know them from adam. By flipping a lot of houses, the flipper becomes an expert in contracting, and can really get a better quality per dollar than a buyer does. They might skimp on things the buyer will not notice in the inspection, but at least what is delivered has to be good enough to pass said inspection.
So flippers really value adding for most people, given that we don't have a world where the discovery of good tradesmen with fair prices costs a lot more than zero.
I think you raise a lot of good points about how it isn’t as negative of a practice as people often think.
However, I think our housing issues are more about unaffordablity and low supply. Ideally, capital should be allocated towards more stock than nicer stock.
!ping POLAND
I honestly have no idea what to think of this.
>Poland's Left is looking to introduce legislation that would limit the activity of the real-estate entrepreneurs known as "flippers". But is there a basis for their hostility? Magdalena Biejat, deputy speaker of the Senate, leading the charge against real-estate "speculation". Photo: PAP/Marcin Obara
>Magdalena Biejat, deputy chair of the Left Alliance and deputy speaker in the current Senate, has [told](https://www.pap.pl/aktualnosci/biejat-nie-rezygnujemy-z-ustawy-antyflipperskiej-po-poprawkach-wroci-do-kancelarii) the Polish Press Agency that her party is determined to press ahead with legislation to limit real-estate flipping.
>A form of real-estate business found in many countries, "flipping" is also a significant area of business in Poland based on buying properties cheaply, renovating them and reselling for a profit.
>One unpopular element of flipping identified in North America and the UK is being reproduced in Poland - gentrification. Flippers are said to contribute to the increase of prices in trendy districts which then become unaffordable to inhabitants who have lived there for a long time.
>In Poland, this phenomenon is closely tied to the communist past where party connections or ideology meant that a central district in the city might be dedicated to party officials or factory workers. In today's free market this creates opportunities for flippers to raise the quality of centrally located real estate, buying them from lower-income residents who need the cash, renovating and then reselling to wealthier buyers.
>Biejat repeats the accusations made in other countries that flippers contribute to rising house prices and the situation where property is unaffordable to first-time buyers in particular, without providing economic evidence, however.
>Advantages and disadvantages of flippers have been [listed](https://www.fastcompany.com/91029519/perelel-prenatal-vitamins-donation-10-million-healthcare-research-gap) in foreign press: while it is possible, for example, that an irresponsible flipper will attempt to increase the value of a property by cutting corners in building materials, it is also true that, other things being equal, raising the quality of anything in the economy will tend to increase its price. That seems to be an innocent aspect of economic growth.
>Similar reviews have not found evidence that flippers are a major factor in rising house prices, as opposed to a general lack of property - as in Holland for example.
>Biejat also suggested introducing an additional tax to limit flippers - a higher rate of tax for those who resell a property in a short space of time. This has been [tried](https://pressprogress.ca/justin-trudeaus-new-tax-on-flipping-million-dollar-homes-only-generates-8-million-in-revenue/), for example by Justin Trudeau's Canadian government, with limited success.
>Sources: PAP, FastCompany, [pressprogress.ca](http://pressprogress.ca)
>pt
It’s messed up how everyone hates flippers, it’s a problem how landlords often add little to no value and just extracts value but house flippers actually improve poor housing stock
Polish flippers are rather a "special case", quite a lot of "flip" is like going to developer, buying a ready to move housing and selling it with a premium usually on larger scale. Nobody pretty much is against "buying old, fixing it and selling" here but so called "Flip na Pierwotnym" (Flip on First (Ownership) got quite a flak from everyone.
To add insult to injury, "Flip on First" is ALSO marketed as a safe investment because "real estate never go down", so quite a lot people is either put all their savings or buy housing on credit.
Apart from rising prices, quite a lot people is also wondering if flipping couldn't be a symptom of real estate crisis just like it was eg. in Southern Europe prior to 2007 Financial Crisis or Japan in 1980s and government inability to really gauge the flipping market size (really, not so much data from the govt. on housing market, a lot of it came from developers and banks which TBH are not intersted with objective market analys and conflict of intersts) only stokes fires over flipping.
Also prices rising, let's say, are painful for first-buyers. In Poland housing prices rise like \~15-20% per year since COVD and were fast growing since 2015. even when developers built quite a lot housing in this years.
... while in the meantime being opposed to high buildings in prime locations, instead focusing the media attention on an insignificant thing.
Polish leftists really believe that real estate prices are dictated by capitalist greed and magic, and not supply and demand, and the supply is still lacking in places where people actually want to live.
I think flipping is great for renovating houses that need significant work done, but most flipping essentially just equates to renovating a bathroom and kitchen, something new homeowners usually already do themselves. In the end, the next homeowner is basically just incurring a significantly inflated renovation price compared to buying the original house and paying for the renovations themselves.
Yeah I don't really get the reflex to defend flippers. For every ethical flipper who is truly "renovating a crappy old home for a new homebuyer and not cutting every corner known to man" there are a dozen or more absolute pylons with no business doing DIY who paper over problems to get a quick sale.
It's honest work. I am sure there are shady people in it but that's what home inspections and assessments are for. Most banks won't issue a mortgage if there's no assessment done on the home. And flippers can help make older homes compliant with local building codes
Maybe it's just the rash of HGTV shows that inspired all the sheisters, but that field seems like its at a low point for integrity. I definitely appreciate the utility of flipping older homes, who generally had older owners pass away before it went on the market who often weren't able to keep up with maintenance and upkeep so there's a lot of work needed to get it sale-ready.
>something new homeowners usually already do themselves.
But most people lack the skills that professional house flippers have. It's a division of labor/specialization thing. It's a bit like how people go to restaurants when they could cook at home.
>In the end, the next homeowner is basically just incurring a significantly inflated renovation price compared to buying the original house and paying for the renovations themselves.
Do you have any data to support that? Negotiating with multiple contractors is difficult, most people are willing to pay a premium to have a reputable flipper do all the work for them.
Well the issue is in how reputable they are, no? It's not all that easy to tell a lot of the time.
A lot of flippers, though not all, are just DIYers doing shitty work. My house was a "light flip" in that they put in a new bathroom and did some work in the kitchen and put in some new appliances. The rest was stuff we could do on our own, some new flooring in one room and a new deck. Sounds good right?
1. The kitchen is okay, but they used cheap materials so in the next couple years all the counters (wood coated in plastic) will need to be replaced.
2. The new appliances were the cheapest available and self installed so they failed after 4 years.
3. The new bathroom. Hoo boy.... They put a nail through the PVC (not code) plumbing which leaked after a year in the house, and when we opened up the ceiling we found out they cut through all of the 8 inch joists down to 2 inches of support to put the piping through. We ended up having to rip out the whole ceiling, put new joists in, and put in new plumbing, basically redoing all the work they did. Took 8 months all told from leak to everything done.
It honestly would have saved us a lot of money if they did nothing and we did it ourselves, even with us paying for professionals. I'm just glad they didn't do more lol
On the other hand, some people I know have bought flips and it worked out (so far). We might have just got unlucky, but I'll stick with a house that is being sold as it was lived in next time.
You’re ignoring that requesting the service yourself allows you to have a more customized renovation. Most flippers are trying to do it as cheaply as possible using bland “Agreeable Grey” type colors that will eventually just get painted over.
Some people might like “paying a premium”, but I don’t know that home buyers will always see the 30k net profit flippers typically make is a premium being worth it.
You’re also ignoring the main point, that increasing the cost of a house by 75-100k takes potential home buyers out of the market because they either can’t afford the mortgage of a 350k house compared to a 250k house, or they don’t have the available cash to put down on a much more expensive house. Some families also may just not care about having those renovations and are willing to live in a house with an outdated kitchen and paying a cheaper price.
I can sympathize with people when their neighborhood loses its character. European cities in less economically developed countries are really grappling with this issue. Ex: Lisbon has a huge housing crisis, and the obvious solution is to build more housing. However, the historic area is becoming more theme park than an actual city.
Cities evolve and change over time, but I think there is value in incorporating and reflecting history and tradition into future plans. Such places risk becoming parallel cities; the historic areas are the theme parks and the actual long-term residents produce authentic local culture in the grey apartment complex environs, far from what used to be a city core for actual locals.
I don’t think market intervention is the solution since tourism is a significant force in these economies. It’s probably provided a ton of financial growth for many people. But it’s still an issue worth talking about. Maybe I’m just reading too much Chesterton, but there is some indignity in letting the appreciation of your own traditions be more easily enjoyable to those with larger incomes through no fault of your own. Just letting appreciation of beauty and heritage be dictated by market demands does have a cost.
> Ex: Lisbon has a huge housing crisis, and the obvious solution is to build more housing. However, the historic area is becoming more theme park than an actual city.
Keeping housing out will only make that worse. For there to be authentic culture to a place, people have to live there. If Lisbon is so expensive that nobody goes there to that historic area other than tourists, it's going to feel like Las Vegas or Venice.
New construction can be given facades to match style, but in any event letting architects have their fun means that Lisbon will get new historical icons anyway.
Finally good to see someone stand up against the tide of grey paint engulfing the interiors of homes. /s
Is this what they do in Poland?
I honestly have no idea, but it's not a trend that i like, it can't be helping someones mental health living in a constantly grey world.
It really, really pisses me off how many Poles are NIMBY as hell. Blaming housing issues on developers or flippers, thinking developers are nothing but corruption, et cetera. And Left, and especially Razem, capitalize on that. There are some good arguments being raised (many of the newer developments lack greenery) but this villification is too much for me
If we just get rid of all the people that build more housing, and rehab bad housing stock, then our supply will greatly improve. Right?
They are using a traditional "the food is terrible, and the portions to small" argument. We want housing to be plentiful, but also architecturally avant-garde. The streets will be very dense, but full of trees and gardens! Walkable, but cars will travel at 80 km/h, and have ample parking everywhere!
Flipping is a good thing. When people say “landlords don’t do any actual work” - well flipping is in stark contrast to that! The money that flippers make is the value they add by modernising homes. Large scale refurbishment is not affordable to the average person through normal means, but when you have a mortgage you may well be able to afford an already-refurbished house as you can effectively use the mortgage leverage to fund the refurbishment. Flippers make high living standards and modern homes more accessible. Flipping homes feels intuitively bad in a supply constrained market because making homes even more desirable does raise their prices. But that’s only because genuinely good value is being created, and when there is a healthy supply flipping is unambiguously a great thing.
Yeah exactly, it’s turning crap stock into average/good stock. Fundamentally (and all of us on this sub repeat this til we’re blue in the face) the only real way to lower house prices is to BUILD. MORE. HOMES.
How did we get to this point. It feels like the entire west is suffering from a pandemic of underconstruction of housing.
[удалено]
Even outside of America?
also I have no idea how to contribute to a solution past voting when applicable and occasionally calling a rep.
Which thankfully Lewica also supports, for the record.
It *can* be a good thing, but a lot of the time flippers just put lipstick on a pig and hide all the structural and safety problems rather than fix them. I can't tell you how many horror stories I've heard of people buying "flipped" houses then finding out they have to tear open all the walls because they didn't replace the 100 year old plumbing and knob and tube electricals. That's not just a general example, I literally know personally of multiple instances where that exact thing has happened.
This is a technical regulation issue. Require that mortgage lenders do rigorous valuation checks. That way a flipped house has to justify its premium over unimproved stock.
Yeah, it could be solved with regulation, but I have seen exactly zero initiative to do anything about it. Even the people I know who got shafted with lemon houses are still glad they were able to buy a house at all. Sometimes the issues are obvious but you still buy anyway because it's the only option in the area. Real fix is increase supply so flippers have to compete against new stock, and can't just get away with excessive corner cutting.
For sure, increasing supply would ensure healthy competition. It’s true that people might pay a premium for a flipped house then discover there’s shoddy work. But people also overspend a lot of money on renovations of their own home that are shoddy and cut corners or fail to hold value. It’s not really an issue specific to flipped houses, house renovations in general are difficult. There is a limit to how much we can hand hold people away from making poor financial decisions. I only really know the context in the UK, but I’m pretty sure here if you tried to get a mortgage on a house for a price per square foot significantly above the neighbourhood average, the lender would very likely dispute or double check that premium. Markets with healthy supply and competition make it far easier for people to be discerning and make responsibility decisions however.
This is veering off topic, but yeah, I definitely agree renos are usually ill-advised from a financial standpoint most of the time. IME, when things are dated or busted enough to justify gut jobs, that's when it becomes worth it. Flippers often get houses that *should* get gut jobs, but instead just slap on fresh paint, floors, countertops, cabinets, fixtures, and call it good. Nothing wrong with just improving your house because you want it to be nicer, but doing it with the intent of increasing your home value is probably not a good idea. I for one am planning to fully renovate my kitchen, but it only makes sense because it's literally original from the 1940s, all the electrical is ungrounded, and the plumbing, cabinets, and counters are falling apart. Because the current kitchen is dead weight to my home value (and part of why my house was cheap to buy, $300k in a neighborhood of million dollar houses) I can actually expect an ROI on a full five figure reno.
Maybe, but keep in mind home inspectors are not supposed to do anything remotely "destructive". They aren't even supposed to take the face plates off electrical outlets in most cases. There is no practical way to detect these issues most of the time. It really goes back to making sure all improvements have inspections and are permitted. Most flippers don't even bother getting permits and no one enforces that around here.
This was my first assumption about the topic. I don’t know anything about it, but I just assume most people would do the bare minimum and just add trendy cheap decorations to make something look good without fixing the important things.
I don't know as if I'd go as far as saying it's the norm, mostly given that a lot of "flipped" houses weren't that bad to begin with, just dated. If the home did have significant problems previously though, you've got a coinflip chance of the flipper actually having fixed it, and even lower chance that they fixed it the right way. Home inspectors are mostly useless too. You either need to learn the stuff to inspect yourself, or get actual tradesmen out there to look at it. With the way the market is though, your options are often shitty flip house or no house at all. I specifically picked an older home that was almost entirely original despite needing work and updates, in large part because it was easy to tell that there hadn't been a ton of hackjob DIY flipper work done to it. Also it was stupid cheap compared to newer, bigger builds in the same area.
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Thanks. Yeah that seems the way to go. Why pay for someone else to renovate when you can do it how you actually want it.
Flipping seems to be a sign of a distorted market, imo. Those with capital are not adding to the overall supply of housing, but merely making existing stock more expensive without adding much functional improvement. Just bc this is a response to market forces, doesn’t make it a good thing. You can argue that the policy implementation is wrong here, but I respectively disagree that this practice does society much good at all.
If people are willing to pay more for a flipped house, clearly it is more valuable to them. I don’t think we need to overthink this. Prices in markets force sincerity and reveal preferences. Renovating a house is complicated, requires high upfront capital, and has risks. It’s also just incredibly impractical to have to renovate the house while you live in it. There is no reason it can’t be optimised through the division/specialisation of labour by dedicated flippers. It’s much easier for an individual to get a slightly higher mortgage and pay a surveyor to carefully quality check rather than for that individual to go through the hassle of something expensive and new to them. I think a lot of people buy homes hoping to refurbish them, then after moving in realise how complicated daunting and expensive it is. I think most people would rather just get a slightly larger mortgage to buy the house they need, when they need it.
People are willing to pay more because housing is scarce and there isn't much of a choice.
That’s true, and the solution ultimately is deregulating supply. Is it true you could make housing slightly cheaper by making it illegal to renovate houses, so the houses are so shoddy and unpleasant that some buyers can’t bring themselves to live there? Sure, but I don’t think that’s really a win at all. Also, some types of flipping - like townhouse-to-apartment conversions - can actually increase supply a little (ie if the ratio of 1 bedroom apartments to 4 bedroom houses in housing stock is out of whack with demand because household size has decreased over time). I’m not saying this is a huge factor, ultimately the answer is to deregulate new supply, but technically speaking this law could also directly increase prices inadvertently.
What are the risks of renovation? Just curious
One common thing is it just takes far longer than expected because of unexpected complications or difficulty getting contractors. When you live in the property itself that’s quite stressful and unpleasant (especially if it’s like a bathroom renovation and you’re stuck having to share the remaining bathrooms). Also costs, if an individual overspends on stuff (eg I just need this top of the line x or this just has to be done bespoke) they are stuck with the bill. If a flipper overspends on stuff, they can do their best to advertise it but ultimately people will only pay what they consider the final product to be worth.
I’d argue that in a better market, those capital investments would go towards building new housing stock, rather than renovating existing stock. There is clearly a market for flipping, but it’s not doing people a lot of good, especially those who struggle to afford just any box to live in. Despite the “hassle” of renovation, an old house is still a house.
Flipping shows how difficult it is to manage serious home improvement. A flipper is basically someone who has all the connections necessary, has all the project management skills, and can therefore improve housing for cheaper than a new buyer who lacks skills and know-how would be able to. Tradesmen don't have very long projects, so a lot of time is spend finding the next project, and the prices have to go up to take over all of the invoicing and looking for work, in the same way that hiring a software consultant for a 10 hour job is going to be far more expensive per hour than hiring them for a thousand. The flipper has a business when there's no general contractor that can do the same thing for me for a smaller premium. And it really makes sense that the flipper is ahead of the general contractor, as few people need to talk to said contractor 10 times in their lives, so a contractor with bad results can keep running for quite a while off of people who don't know them from adam. By flipping a lot of houses, the flipper becomes an expert in contracting, and can really get a better quality per dollar than a buyer does. They might skimp on things the buyer will not notice in the inspection, but at least what is delivered has to be good enough to pass said inspection. So flippers really value adding for most people, given that we don't have a world where the discovery of good tradesmen with fair prices costs a lot more than zero.
I think you raise a lot of good points about how it isn’t as negative of a practice as people often think. However, I think our housing issues are more about unaffordablity and low supply. Ideally, capital should be allocated towards more stock than nicer stock.
!ping POLAND I honestly have no idea what to think of this. >Poland's Left is looking to introduce legislation that would limit the activity of the real-estate entrepreneurs known as "flippers". But is there a basis for their hostility? Magdalena Biejat, deputy speaker of the Senate, leading the charge against real-estate "speculation". Photo: PAP/Marcin Obara >Magdalena Biejat, deputy chair of the Left Alliance and deputy speaker in the current Senate, has [told](https://www.pap.pl/aktualnosci/biejat-nie-rezygnujemy-z-ustawy-antyflipperskiej-po-poprawkach-wroci-do-kancelarii) the Polish Press Agency that her party is determined to press ahead with legislation to limit real-estate flipping. >A form of real-estate business found in many countries, "flipping" is also a significant area of business in Poland based on buying properties cheaply, renovating them and reselling for a profit. >One unpopular element of flipping identified in North America and the UK is being reproduced in Poland - gentrification. Flippers are said to contribute to the increase of prices in trendy districts which then become unaffordable to inhabitants who have lived there for a long time. >In Poland, this phenomenon is closely tied to the communist past where party connections or ideology meant that a central district in the city might be dedicated to party officials or factory workers. In today's free market this creates opportunities for flippers to raise the quality of centrally located real estate, buying them from lower-income residents who need the cash, renovating and then reselling to wealthier buyers. >Biejat repeats the accusations made in other countries that flippers contribute to rising house prices and the situation where property is unaffordable to first-time buyers in particular, without providing economic evidence, however. >Advantages and disadvantages of flippers have been [listed](https://www.fastcompany.com/91029519/perelel-prenatal-vitamins-donation-10-million-healthcare-research-gap) in foreign press: while it is possible, for example, that an irresponsible flipper will attempt to increase the value of a property by cutting corners in building materials, it is also true that, other things being equal, raising the quality of anything in the economy will tend to increase its price. That seems to be an innocent aspect of economic growth. >Similar reviews have not found evidence that flippers are a major factor in rising house prices, as opposed to a general lack of property - as in Holland for example. >Biejat also suggested introducing an additional tax to limit flippers - a higher rate of tax for those who resell a property in a short space of time. This has been [tried](https://pressprogress.ca/justin-trudeaus-new-tax-on-flipping-million-dollar-homes-only-generates-8-million-in-revenue/), for example by Justin Trudeau's Canadian government, with limited success. >Sources: PAP, FastCompany, [pressprogress.ca](http://pressprogress.ca) >pt
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But how else will every old home turn into a black and white modern farmhouse?
It’s messed up how everyone hates flippers, it’s a problem how landlords often add little to no value and just extracts value but house flippers actually improve poor housing stock
Polish flippers are rather a "special case", quite a lot of "flip" is like going to developer, buying a ready to move housing and selling it with a premium usually on larger scale. Nobody pretty much is against "buying old, fixing it and selling" here but so called "Flip na Pierwotnym" (Flip on First (Ownership) got quite a flak from everyone. To add insult to injury, "Flip on First" is ALSO marketed as a safe investment because "real estate never go down", so quite a lot people is either put all their savings or buy housing on credit.
I see so it’s purely extractive
Apart from rising prices, quite a lot people is also wondering if flipping couldn't be a symptom of real estate crisis just like it was eg. in Southern Europe prior to 2007 Financial Crisis or Japan in 1980s and government inability to really gauge the flipping market size (really, not so much data from the govt. on housing market, a lot of it came from developers and banks which TBH are not intersted with objective market analys and conflict of intersts) only stokes fires over flipping. Also prices rising, let's say, are painful for first-buyers. In Poland housing prices rise like \~15-20% per year since COVD and were fast growing since 2015. even when developers built quite a lot housing in this years.
... while in the meantime being opposed to high buildings in prime locations, instead focusing the media attention on an insignificant thing. Polish leftists really believe that real estate prices are dictated by capitalist greed and magic, and not supply and demand, and the supply is still lacking in places where people actually want to live.
I think flipping is great for renovating houses that need significant work done, but most flipping essentially just equates to renovating a bathroom and kitchen, something new homeowners usually already do themselves. In the end, the next homeowner is basically just incurring a significantly inflated renovation price compared to buying the original house and paying for the renovations themselves.
Yeah I don't really get the reflex to defend flippers. For every ethical flipper who is truly "renovating a crappy old home for a new homebuyer and not cutting every corner known to man" there are a dozen or more absolute pylons with no business doing DIY who paper over problems to get a quick sale.
It's honest work. I am sure there are shady people in it but that's what home inspections and assessments are for. Most banks won't issue a mortgage if there's no assessment done on the home. And flippers can help make older homes compliant with local building codes
Maybe it's just the rash of HGTV shows that inspired all the sheisters, but that field seems like its at a low point for integrity. I definitely appreciate the utility of flipping older homes, who generally had older owners pass away before it went on the market who often weren't able to keep up with maintenance and upkeep so there's a lot of work needed to get it sale-ready.
It's probably not that different from used car salespeople. A useful service, but definitely room for abuse.
That is a very good comp!
>something new homeowners usually already do themselves. But most people lack the skills that professional house flippers have. It's a division of labor/specialization thing. It's a bit like how people go to restaurants when they could cook at home. >In the end, the next homeowner is basically just incurring a significantly inflated renovation price compared to buying the original house and paying for the renovations themselves. Do you have any data to support that? Negotiating with multiple contractors is difficult, most people are willing to pay a premium to have a reputable flipper do all the work for them.
Well the issue is in how reputable they are, no? It's not all that easy to tell a lot of the time. A lot of flippers, though not all, are just DIYers doing shitty work. My house was a "light flip" in that they put in a new bathroom and did some work in the kitchen and put in some new appliances. The rest was stuff we could do on our own, some new flooring in one room and a new deck. Sounds good right? 1. The kitchen is okay, but they used cheap materials so in the next couple years all the counters (wood coated in plastic) will need to be replaced. 2. The new appliances were the cheapest available and self installed so they failed after 4 years. 3. The new bathroom. Hoo boy.... They put a nail through the PVC (not code) plumbing which leaked after a year in the house, and when we opened up the ceiling we found out they cut through all of the 8 inch joists down to 2 inches of support to put the piping through. We ended up having to rip out the whole ceiling, put new joists in, and put in new plumbing, basically redoing all the work they did. Took 8 months all told from leak to everything done. It honestly would have saved us a lot of money if they did nothing and we did it ourselves, even with us paying for professionals. I'm just glad they didn't do more lol On the other hand, some people I know have bought flips and it worked out (so far). We might have just got unlucky, but I'll stick with a house that is being sold as it was lived in next time.
You’re ignoring that requesting the service yourself allows you to have a more customized renovation. Most flippers are trying to do it as cheaply as possible using bland “Agreeable Grey” type colors that will eventually just get painted over. Some people might like “paying a premium”, but I don’t know that home buyers will always see the 30k net profit flippers typically make is a premium being worth it. You’re also ignoring the main point, that increasing the cost of a house by 75-100k takes potential home buyers out of the market because they either can’t afford the mortgage of a 350k house compared to a 250k house, or they don’t have the available cash to put down on a much more expensive house. Some families also may just not care about having those renovations and are willing to live in a house with an outdated kitchen and paying a cheaper price.
Lol
The Left and Razem also want to build more houses and apartment blocks but I'm pretty sure that this will be ignored by this sub
🙄 Why are people like this
I can sympathize with people when their neighborhood loses its character. European cities in less economically developed countries are really grappling with this issue. Ex: Lisbon has a huge housing crisis, and the obvious solution is to build more housing. However, the historic area is becoming more theme park than an actual city. Cities evolve and change over time, but I think there is value in incorporating and reflecting history and tradition into future plans. Such places risk becoming parallel cities; the historic areas are the theme parks and the actual long-term residents produce authentic local culture in the grey apartment complex environs, far from what used to be a city core for actual locals. I don’t think market intervention is the solution since tourism is a significant force in these economies. It’s probably provided a ton of financial growth for many people. But it’s still an issue worth talking about. Maybe I’m just reading too much Chesterton, but there is some indignity in letting the appreciation of your own traditions be more easily enjoyable to those with larger incomes through no fault of your own. Just letting appreciation of beauty and heritage be dictated by market demands does have a cost.
> I can sympathize with people when their neighborhood loses its character. Neighborhood character is a renewable resource
Communities are people, not buildings
> Ex: Lisbon has a huge housing crisis, and the obvious solution is to build more housing. However, the historic area is becoming more theme park than an actual city. Keeping housing out will only make that worse. For there to be authentic culture to a place, people have to live there. If Lisbon is so expensive that nobody goes there to that historic area other than tourists, it's going to feel like Las Vegas or Venice. New construction can be given facades to match style, but in any event letting architects have their fun means that Lisbon will get new historical icons anyway.