My realtor friend says that some lenders in this area will not finance a flip, due to poor quality work and possibly lack of permits. The lenders only look at a change of ownership in a short time period to determine a "flip". By those standards, my friend had a listing that had changed hands within the family, altho different surname, that buyers had trouble financing.

I probably wouldn't, mainly because I am not loving some of the current trendy things the flippers do to homes. Why should I pay more for that? I think I'm a person who would rather pay less and then pay to have it changed because we'll probably live there at least 20 years.

If the flip appeared to be well-done, in a style I liked, I would consider it. Living through construction with young kids is stressful.

Lenders will finance flips but there are time guidelines regarding pricing. Like if you try to have a buyer get FHA financing within 3 months of your purchase, they will only finance the cost of home plus the cost of verifiable repairs. Or within a little more time, they want 2 appraisals to justify increase in price.

My husband and I buy houses to flip. We live in them for 2 yrs after being fixed up/updated, then sell. It's been very profitable. But we are fixing them right, and the homes are not cheap homes for the area. We use higher end finishes/appliances. I'd buy a flip if it was well done. If it was cheaply done, then I'd run away. That to me says, they are probably going to cover up major issues.

In my experience, younger, first time buyers tend to be more likely to buy a flip. I probably wouldn't touch one unless I personally knew the flipper. Many will take short cuts and do sloppy work to make it look like shiny and new without doing the real maintenance work that will keep the house in good shape for years to come.

Depends on the quality of the work. I'd look closely. But I wouldn't automatically rule it out.

Probably would not buy a flip, specially if the improvements weren't the exact ones I would have chosen, style and quality wise. Why pay for something that you don't like?

Have some friends that do flips in town and they always sell them the first few days on the market with multiple offers. They do classic designs with quality products and have a good reputation in town. Some of the other/new flippers in town take longer to sell and seem to appeal to a demographic that is attracted to glitzy finishes and don't seem too worried about the cheaper material and subpar workmanship.

Linda, you are saving on Short Term Capital gains by living in each home you fix for two years. People who fix and flip short term, and think they are making bank on the flip will be faced with huge income taxes, not to mention the repercussions if they didn't get proper permits for their fixes.

That's why we do it that way..

When we were looking for our first house we saw some horrible places. Ceilings painted black, junk everywhere, dirty... THEN we walked into this freshly painted home with new carpet... OH my! We didn't blink. We bought it! So, of course the cheap fixes started showing themselves... No window screens! LOL! And it went on. Like you, Butternut, this home we purchased recently was a custom home and everything was high end, but even high end will need updating and fixing if it gets neglected. We went for the bones on this house, spent a lot to fix it to our taste, and will stay here till we can no longer cope with 1.5 acres.

Sure, but only at a price where ripping out ugly or badly done stuff and correcting it would make sense. There would probably need to be something special about the lot or the underlying house. De-remuddling a house can be strangely satisfying--pulling off vinyl siding to find real clapboards underneath is one of life's small pleasures.

Flips get a bad rap on this forum, but I've seen ones done well. I only did one short term flip and hated it because of the short time frame. I've done the move in and do it and save on taxes. That was fun and very profitable. People doing flips are knowledgeable about taxes. I've watched several locally to determine if I want to do it again. Right now I'm more interested in doing specs, we'll see how this works out, when all is said and done. I live in Southern California, good flips can be very profitable, I've seen a few that I know were profitable, some I question regarding purchase and sell price and most of all holding time, some are held too long for much profit. I'm watching one sold 9/13 for $1.5mil, it is still being remodeled and shown as coming on the market soon. It seems to be to costly with holding time and too long to remodel, I'm waiting to see what it sells for in the end.

I would not. The quality of work that goes into a typical flip here comes nowhere close to what I want. But the quality of work that goes into most new construction here doesn't come very close to what I want either. I had to buy a house that needed to be renovated and have it done myself. But a lot of people don't want that sort of hassle.

We recently moved to an area of the country were investor bought property and flipped is the main item on the market. Wonky comes to mind. Cheap and wonky. We are now building for this reason. We can build and get what we want at quality construction vs someone's cheap flip

There are a lot of properties here that are bought, redeveloped and sold, but I wouldn't necessarily call them "flips". But there is one general quality of rehabs or flips that I don't like.

Much of the housing stock here is 19th c. (and pre Civil War at that) which probably contributes to it. Some of them have not so much left that's easily salvageable.

But no matter the quality of the flip, they are almost without exception redone in some sort of generic, trend-oriented style, that generally doesn't have much to do with the existing house, and you can tell it was done to sell to a generic buyer at whatever the price point might be.

Even if the house is contemporary inserted into a historic shell, I'm fine with that, but most times there is no stylistic consistency throughout the project. And the lower the budget, the less consistent it gets. All the bathrooms and the kitchen may be completely different in style, based on whatever is available right off the shelf at the home center.

In some large houses that are divided into several smaller units the disconnect is so great that I wonder if the developer's wives or husbands each got a bathroom where they got to pick the finishes. It doesn't seem to matter what the rest of the house looks like.

I think there is a difference between someone moving into a house with intentions to remodel versus flipping. I see a flip as a strictly business transaction, where houses are inventory more than investments. I don't have a problem with someone getting paid for doing an extensive live in remodel.

As for the tax implications, long term capital gains (1 year) are probably either 0 or 15%, so not that bad. Not to mention you get to reduce that by all of your costs to remodel and fees. The real problem occurs when it goes from being investment income to active income.

Here in California many flippers are part of an investment group. "Investors made a better offer," is a common response to a house you think you wanted. How do they top Full Price Cash? They can close in 2 weeks with no inspection. This happened to us 3 times. A real buyer who wants to live in the house will always request an inspection, but these investors intention is to gut the place anyway and redo cheaply. It will appear again on the market once they have done their work, and someone will buy it only to have to re-do what they did cheaply.

I would not. I think they do things on the cheap to maximize their ROI and I value quality craftsmanship. I think they do nice looking cosmetic things with less emphasis on what doesn't show. I have some friends who flip houses - they are super cheap and just do what makes it look good.

My friend bought a flipped house and has nothing but troubles. It looked very nice but everything was done very cheaply and within five years, everything started to fall apart and look shabby.