The other day my 11-year old daughter was watching one of those house flipping shows on HGTV. When I came home she exclaimed "Dad! There was this woman doing a flip, and when she bought the house she didn’t even get an inspection! Can you believe that?" The story continued, "When they started the renovations they found termites, and cockroaches! There was all kinds of damage and it kept costing her more and more money! So she had to work during the day to get more money for the flip, and then she’d get mad about what happened to the house when she wasn’t there. I mean, what does she expect? She totally didn’t know what she was doing…"
"I can’t believe it," I said while thinking to myself that even a 6th grader knows you should get an inspection, and can tell when someone isn’t prepared to flip houses. I had to feel sorry for the dupe who ended up buying the house from her (if anyone ever did) because I’m sure those renovations weren’t done as well as they should’ve been. These flipping shows make it seem like such easy money, but rarely do they ever indicate what the home actually sells for – the ones I’ve seen end with what the seller is going to ask for the home. Flipping for a profit is much easier when the market is going up, I would expect we’ll see fewer of these shows as some markets in the US continue to languish.
PS – house sales in the US went up 2.9% this month!
