Yet I can't change the channel when I happen to flip to it. I don't watch much TV so it seems strange that it always seems to be on when I turn it on. Its like a bad nightmare...
I mean I appreciate the entrepreneurial spirit of the "flippers" and I understand that the scale of work often does not (and should not) require an architect. But... add some accent walls, some fancy crown molding, and a bathroom straight out of a Kohler catalog and all of a sudden the flipper makes 150 K in 2 months work and adds about 300K to the value of the house?
thats why i dont own a t.v...... too much stupid shit on there.... there will be a boom of people that think they can flip a house and make that.....so be on the lookout......
What really makes me sick is the fact that this kind of thing is inflating the pricing of housing without adding actual value. Being in Philly, I've seen it first hand where many people can not afford above-standard housing. Yet the prices are constantly being ballooned by these people trying to make a fast buck.
And then add to that fact that architects have to validate to clients day in and day out the value of design. But when it is being sold to some poor sucker, people are willing to put in everything that will make a house LOOK expensive (granite countertops, stainless subzero refrigerators, etc.).
I don't even care that they make that kind of money. If I wanted to make money like that, I would not have gone into architecture in the first place.
Sorry for all the ranting on here but its pretty damn frustrating.
In my [NZ] experience, it tends to be the babyboomers pushing up the price. Finding untapped equity in their own house, and with high incomes, they borrow against it and buy other properties.
The banks go nuts lending low interest loans for other dwellings based on equity, meaning more renters are needed to help finance the loans, and prices go higher and higher, because there is the need for more valuations to get more equity to borrow more, etc, etc.
In addition to this are regulations and limitations to land development and availability, intoducing a false scarcity.
Not because there is a TV show showing how ordinary monkeys can turn a buck buying a house, painting a wall and putting in new carpet. Have a look here.
it is a dual edged sword. while the people they have choosen to follow are usually caricatures of real people...part car salesman, contractor, p.t. barnum! the good part...they transform generic designs from the mass production of the 60s-80s...into more interesting, contemporary spaces. it just shows how simple minded people are when it comes to houses in the US. any sort of distinction or quirkiness needs to be quickly destroyed!!
hey...some thought placed into how someone lives...is good if you ask me. now we just need to take over this medium...instead of complaining !
diabese - I think you have misread my comments or maybe I wasn't clear. It is not the actual TV show - It is just the concept of buying something, adding some fancy commercial products without creativity and then making a huge profit off of it. I've seen properties around here go from 1.4 M to 2.4 M because of some "entrepreneur" added some nice appliances and cabinets. And because of the potential to make a lot of money off of a property, the property values HAVE gone up (No educated guesses here. Just facts). So basically, more and more properties are seen as investments instead of a place to live. The rich get richer and the poor have nowhere to go except somewhere worse. Some people can't even afford to pay property the rising property taxes. I thought it was more of a wide spread problem, but maybe its just Philly.
It's always happened, but certainly its more in the public consciousness - the flipping thing. Not to the extent though that they realise that that is often a con...
I always thought it was funny when you see these shows, what it was valued before, what they spent and what they got. If I was the new owner I'd be slutted seeing on t.v how much more I paid for some buffoon to decorate the place.
But there are always opportunities for architects to get involved and make it a more ethical practice.
Anyway, in NZ most of the housing markets are classified as unnaffordable in the above report, with the income to house price ratio at between 4.5 and 6, where affordable = 2.5. In a country where it has been traditional for 50-60% of the population to won their own homes, this is a big impact. Thank goodness I am in a position to own my own home...
one thing to keep in mind is that those shows only tell you what they listed the house for, not what they actually got for it. for every idiot that made a quick hundred thou there's an idiot on the wrong side of an ARM who's about to loose his shirt.
When you mentioned the title "flip that house", I thought it involved getting some powerful hydraulic rams and placing them under a house, and then.... Kinda like a high-powered version of knocking and running. Whoosh!
AP, i saw the lawn painting one too... that was great...
there are actually two different shows that i've seen... there is "flip THAT house" on TLC, and there is "flip THIS house" on A&E... i really like the comparison between the two...
the TLC show follows "normal" people that try their hand a flipping... the A&E show follows professional companies that do flipping as a business...
it's fun to watch the "normal" people realize that it is much more difficult than they think... my favorite one featured two orange county yuppy couples that teamed up to my a $1M house and flip it... then one of the husbands was out of town on business for almost the entire project and the other guy was left to do all the work while suffering from the flu or something... ripped their friendship apart and they barely broke even... who starts with a million dollar house as their first attempted flip?
the "professional" show is interesting to see the interplay between the flippers and their contractors... i'm always amazed by the amount of work that they do in such short periods of time... all of their project timelines are like 2-3 weeks from purchasing the house to reselling it...
While it is pretty silly to think that throwing around some paint, tile, granite, crown molding, and appliances can really add much value to a house in the $1 mil range, I can see why it works so well at the lower to average end of the market.
Flippers operate on the generally correct assumptions that the average buyer a.) perfers a house that's in "move-in" condition where little to no work is needed besides personal touches like paint and curtains; and b.) has wildly overinflated notions of how much it actually costs to modernize a house, particularly kitchen and bath remodels.
So when that average buyer walks into a house and sees kitchens and bathrooms that haven't been updated in 50 years, outdated color schemes and ancient appliances, he/she just sees the dollars stacking up and starts seeing the house next door that's been updated and lists for 50k more as a bargain (even though the updates may have only cost 20k).
Flippers operate on the generally correct assumptions that the average buyer a.) perfers a house that's in "move-in" condition where little to no work is needed besides personal touches like paint and curtains; and b.) has wildly overinflated notions of how much it actually costs to modernize a house, particularly kitchen and bath remodels
bryan4arch, just curious: what do think the average homebuyer imagines a kitchen/bath remodel would cost? I tend to think the average joe has wildly underinflated notions of what those projects cost.
In my experience, you can't get out of a complete kitchen job for less than $40K.
Hahahahahaha Steven I didn't mean an architect's kitchen!!! We can get out for like $10K because we just scrap together whatever we can find leftover from job sites, at the odd lots builder's supply, doing tile ourselves, etc. No architect can afford a $40K kitchen!! Oh you crack me up Mr. Ward....
If you're just updating and not moving appliances, plumbing, walls, or windows, a flipper can probably remodel a small kitchen at the high end of the low end for 15 to 20k and a typical 5' x 8' bath for about 5k. An experienced flipper also has the added benefit of having relationships with contractors who don't gouge him the way they would the average joe and may even be working at a significant discount if the flipper is feeding him a steady volume of work and/or giving a cut of the profits as a kickback.
Without any hard numbers it's hard to say what people think they *should* be preparted to spend on a kitchen or bath, but the point is that the flipper can get away with spending much less than the homeowner ever *would* spend on his own home. After all, the stuff the flipper installs only has to stay looking nice until the buyer signs on the dotted line.
I think that overall, the claims on this show are inflated ... you see clients replacing roofs, all the windows and finishes besides the walls (flooring, cabinets, tile, ect. ect) , and they claim they only spent $70,000 ... sure, you did a bit of the work yourself, but come on, I don't buy it. And, you know what, the show never follows up on what they've actually made on their investement.
don't get me wrong, it is a lucrative buisness ... the firm I work for does this on a hyped-up scale in san francisco (adding units or a whole lot of sq. ft.), and it is a lot of fun, and you get to do whatever you want to the house, to a large extent - screw clients. and you make a bit of $$. But in SF, that's the style. Find out how much you can legally build on an underdeveloped lot, and do it well.
I try not to find happiness in other's misery... but there are always exceptions.
I do realize there are many that lose money or make very little that it was not worth the effort. In fact it does seems like about 50/50. Still, in my area at least, the potential is still driving up the market. And I guess I didn't mention this in my bitching, but not all the blame is on the flippers. In fact, if the quote was more accurate by the real estate agents, it wouldn't be a problem at all. And the buyer is to blame as well.
Not to change the subject but the show that bothers me is the Extreme Makeover Home Edition. Where they build a giant new McMansion for some needy family, load it up with dozens of plasma screens, get plenty of sobbing on camera and pack-up and leave.
I'm all for helping out a family that needs adequate living space but they build the place in a week. Quality control cannot be very good in that kind of rushed environment. The homes are always hopelessly too large. If the family couldn't hack it in their old double wide how can they manage 4,500 sf? Imagine the utility bills alone.
I wished they'd revisit these people a couple years later and see how the house is holding up and how the family is dealing with more house than they can maintain. My guess is some have flipped their homes for the fast $$ and moved back to the trailer park.
I think when those shows show a house being built in a "week" they're probably pulling our legs. It can take that long just to get inspectors to come out sometimes. Not to mention the time always involved in waiting for things to set/dry/cure. To "build" a house in a week you'd really have to prefab and stage everything ahead of time and use the week of construction just to assemble.
The contractor for the houses is a pre-fab panel company. Most eveything for that house is built when they show up at the door. Plus they have something like 100 guys there at one time - You can build a house like that in a week - you just need 4 things:
1: A brilliant GC with everything planned out and ready ahead of time.
2: Cooperative local gov't
3: No field changes
4: An unlimited labor budget.
and maybe 5: (and the most important) The client isn't allowed any input, or even gets to see it, before it's done.
This thread also reminds me why I haven't bought any property yet. Everything in my price range right now is in the prime target for flipping. Those naive flippers out there are not building it right, they're building it to look good (and, most of the time, not even that!) - However, as an architect (almost) I do have many more years to look forward to of people trying to subdivide their grossly oversized townhomes.
Yes, I realize there is much behind the scenes work going on before the Extreme Makeover cameras even begin to roll. And yes, with a seemingly endless budget and endless labor pool a house can get built rather quickly. Still, that show to me screams shotty construction. Then again, most homes today are just that.
I guess my real problems aren't so much about the construction quality but more so that the show supports the dogma that the "American Dream" is the giant suburban McMansion. Worse yet is that they masquerade beind this charity of giving needy people a decent home. My opinion is they are essentially handing a lotto win over to these familes. Most lotto winners don't end up the better after winning.
Reminds me of the HGTV Dream House. See this article to see what those bid winners do.
Its totally shoddy construction. There is no question about it - but I'd rather have an extreme makeover house than one of those "flip this/that house" homes. The EM houses are designed to be put together quickly (and that method has the cut corners built-in, so to speak) as opposed to rushing a conventionally framed house - especially with unskilled (flipper) labor.
I remember seeing that article before. What do they say about a free lunch again?
Crowbert, you got 4 out of 5 right. (I doubt there is a #1 anywhere) My firm designed one of the houses and I had a chance to be on site. I'm sure every episode/house is different. But you'd be suprised at how fast a 3-4k sf house can go up with: fast cure concrete, off site framing fab, dozens of experienced crews, and most of all a motivated GC. The contractor is contacted/chosen first as all the labor and matl is donated. As for cutting corners, I'd say it was built just as well as any other developer cookie cutter. The GC/architect aren't going to put up some shack that will fall over in a few years. Especially since both are local and will be around long after they sell the plasma TV's & SUV's the TV show was nice enuf to get them.
i love the simple math at the end when determining profit.
Its as if there is no such thing as mortgage taxes, transfer taxes, closing costs, holding costs, and throw in a 5% broker fee. Most of those bumpkin flippers wouldn't know what hit them.
Youre lucky if youre making more than the broker.
Good luck, especially in the NYC or Brooklyn market.
That being said, there are always deals out there.
Oct 15, 06 7:18 am ·
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The TV show - "Flip That House" makes me ...
sick to the stomach.
Yet I can't change the channel when I happen to flip to it. I don't watch much TV so it seems strange that it always seems to be on when I turn it on. Its like a bad nightmare...
I mean I appreciate the entrepreneurial spirit of the "flippers" and I understand that the scale of work often does not (and should not) require an architect. But... add some accent walls, some fancy crown molding, and a bathroom straight out of a Kohler catalog and all of a sudden the flipper makes 150 K in 2 months work and adds about 300K to the value of the house?
thats why i dont own a t.v...... too much stupid shit on there.... there will be a boom of people that think they can flip a house and make that.....so be on the lookout......
?
buyer beware
Or, there are a whole lot of people with balls and not much else, making a shitload more money than most architects do....
What really makes me sick is the fact that this kind of thing is inflating the pricing of housing without adding actual value. Being in Philly, I've seen it first hand where many people can not afford above-standard housing. Yet the prices are constantly being ballooned by these people trying to make a fast buck.
And then add to that fact that architects have to validate to clients day in and day out the value of design. But when it is being sold to some poor sucker, people are willing to put in everything that will make a house LOOK expensive (granite countertops, stainless subzero refrigerators, etc.).
I don't even care that they make that kind of money. If I wanted to make money like that, I would not have gone into architecture in the first place.
Sorry for all the ranting on here but its pretty damn frustrating.
In my [NZ] experience, it tends to be the babyboomers pushing up the price. Finding untapped equity in their own house, and with high incomes, they borrow against it and buy other properties.
The banks go nuts lending low interest loans for other dwellings based on equity, meaning more renters are needed to help finance the loans, and prices go higher and higher, because there is the need for more valuations to get more equity to borrow more, etc, etc.
In addition to this are regulations and limitations to land development and availability, intoducing a false scarcity.
Not because there is a TV show showing how ordinary monkeys can turn a buck buying a house, painting a wall and putting in new carpet. Have a look here.
it is a dual edged sword. while the people they have choosen to follow are usually caricatures of real people...part car salesman, contractor, p.t. barnum! the good part...they transform generic designs from the mass production of the 60s-80s...into more interesting, contemporary spaces. it just shows how simple minded people are when it comes to houses in the US. any sort of distinction or quirkiness needs to be quickly destroyed!!
hey...some thought placed into how someone lives...is good if you ask me. now we just need to take over this medium...instead of complaining !
at the same time...i agree with philarch.
diabese - I think you have misread my comments or maybe I wasn't clear. It is not the actual TV show - It is just the concept of buying something, adding some fancy commercial products without creativity and then making a huge profit off of it. I've seen properties around here go from 1.4 M to 2.4 M because of some "entrepreneur" added some nice appliances and cabinets. And because of the potential to make a lot of money off of a property, the property values HAVE gone up (No educated guesses here. Just facts). So basically, more and more properties are seen as investments instead of a place to live. The rich get richer and the poor have nowhere to go except somewhere worse. Some people can't even afford to pay property the rising property taxes. I thought it was more of a wide spread problem, but maybe its just Philly.
Oh, I agree with you mate.
It's always happened, but certainly its more in the public consciousness - the flipping thing. Not to the extent though that they realise that that is often a con...
I always thought it was funny when you see these shows, what it was valued before, what they spent and what they got. If I was the new owner I'd be slutted seeing on t.v how much more I paid for some buffoon to decorate the place.
But there are always opportunities for architects to get involved and make it a more ethical practice.
Anyway, in NZ most of the housing markets are classified as unnaffordable in the above report, with the income to house price ratio at between 4.5 and 6, where affordable = 2.5. In a country where it has been traditional for 50-60% of the population to won their own homes, this is a big impact. Thank goodness I am in a position to own my own home...
i've only seen this show once...the painted the lawn green. paint.
one thing to keep in mind is that those shows only tell you what they listed the house for, not what they actually got for it. for every idiot that made a quick hundred thou there's an idiot on the wrong side of an ARM who's about to loose his shirt.
it all balances out.
*lose....I'm going to bed
bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch...
I'm disappointed.
When you mentioned the title "flip that house", I thought it involved getting some powerful hydraulic rams and placing them under a house, and then.... Kinda like a high-powered version of knocking and running. Whoosh!
AP, i saw the lawn painting one too... that was great...
there are actually two different shows that i've seen... there is "flip THAT house" on TLC, and there is "flip THIS house" on A&E... i really like the comparison between the two...
the TLC show follows "normal" people that try their hand a flipping... the A&E show follows professional companies that do flipping as a business...
it's fun to watch the "normal" people realize that it is much more difficult than they think... my favorite one featured two orange county yuppy couples that teamed up to my a $1M house and flip it... then one of the husbands was out of town on business for almost the entire project and the other guy was left to do all the work while suffering from the flu or something... ripped their friendship apart and they barely broke even... who starts with a million dollar house as their first attempted flip?
the "professional" show is interesting to see the interplay between the flippers and their contractors... i'm always amazed by the amount of work that they do in such short periods of time... all of their project timelines are like 2-3 weeks from purchasing the house to reselling it...
While it is pretty silly to think that throwing around some paint, tile, granite, crown molding, and appliances can really add much value to a house in the $1 mil range, I can see why it works so well at the lower to average end of the market.
Flippers operate on the generally correct assumptions that the average buyer a.) perfers a house that's in "move-in" condition where little to no work is needed besides personal touches like paint and curtains; and b.) has wildly overinflated notions of how much it actually costs to modernize a house, particularly kitchen and bath remodels.
So when that average buyer walks into a house and sees kitchens and bathrooms that haven't been updated in 50 years, outdated color schemes and ancient appliances, he/she just sees the dollars stacking up and starts seeing the house next door that's been updated and lists for 50k more as a bargain (even though the updates may have only cost 20k).
But then again, banks have great auctions. Thats the real secret to creative financing - buy low ;)
bryan4arch, just curious: what do think the average homebuyer imagines a kitchen/bath remodel would cost? I tend to think the average joe has wildly underinflated notions of what those projects cost.
In my experience, you can't get out of a complete kitchen job for less than $40K.
i have those same underinflated notions, lb...
Hahahahahaha Steven I didn't mean an architect's kitchen!!! We can get out for like $10K because we just scrap together whatever we can find leftover from job sites, at the odd lots builder's supply, doing tile ourselves, etc. No architect can afford a $40K kitchen!! Oh you crack me up Mr. Ward....
If you're just updating and not moving appliances, plumbing, walls, or windows, a flipper can probably remodel a small kitchen at the high end of the low end for 15 to 20k and a typical 5' x 8' bath for about 5k. An experienced flipper also has the added benefit of having relationships with contractors who don't gouge him the way they would the average joe and may even be working at a significant discount if the flipper is feeding him a steady volume of work and/or giving a cut of the profits as a kickback.
Without any hard numbers it's hard to say what people think they *should* be preparted to spend on a kitchen or bath, but the point is that the flipper can get away with spending much less than the homeowner ever *would* spend on his own home. After all, the stuff the flipper installs only has to stay looking nice until the buyer signs on the dotted line.
I flipped my house. my experience, i think, was more like liberty bell's ummmm...."flipping" of her house.
yeah, it was a bear. when I figured out how much I "made" at the end, I should have just gotten a part time job at Target.
the good news: I can quote the plumbing code in my sleep.
what happens when the bubble bursts?
i've watched this show a couple of times and it's really creepy the way it can suck you in against your will.
who else cheers when they find mold in the walls?
I think that overall, the claims on this show are inflated ... you see clients replacing roofs, all the windows and finishes besides the walls (flooring, cabinets, tile, ect. ect) , and they claim they only spent $70,000 ... sure, you did a bit of the work yourself, but come on, I don't buy it. And, you know what, the show never follows up on what they've actually made on their investement.
don't get me wrong, it is a lucrative buisness ... the firm I work for does this on a hyped-up scale in san francisco (adding units or a whole lot of sq. ft.), and it is a lot of fun, and you get to do whatever you want to the house, to a large extent - screw clients. and you make a bit of $$. But in SF, that's the style. Find out how much you can legally build on an underdeveloped lot, and do it well.
I try not to find happiness in other's misery... but there are always exceptions.
I do realize there are many that lose money or make very little that it was not worth the effort. In fact it does seems like about 50/50. Still, in my area at least, the potential is still driving up the market. And I guess I didn't mention this in my bitching, but not all the blame is on the flippers. In fact, if the quote was more accurate by the real estate agents, it wouldn't be a problem at all. And the buyer is to blame as well.
Not to change the subject but the show that bothers me is the Extreme Makeover Home Edition. Where they build a giant new McMansion for some needy family, load it up with dozens of plasma screens, get plenty of sobbing on camera and pack-up and leave.
I'm all for helping out a family that needs adequate living space but they build the place in a week. Quality control cannot be very good in that kind of rushed environment. The homes are always hopelessly too large. If the family couldn't hack it in their old double wide how can they manage 4,500 sf? Imagine the utility bills alone.
I wished they'd revisit these people a couple years later and see how the house is holding up and how the family is dealing with more house than they can maintain. My guess is some have flipped their homes for the fast $$ and moved back to the trailer park.
I think when those shows show a house being built in a "week" they're probably pulling our legs. It can take that long just to get inspectors to come out sometimes. Not to mention the time always involved in waiting for things to set/dry/cure. To "build" a house in a week you'd really have to prefab and stage everything ahead of time and use the week of construction just to assemble.
The contractor for the houses is a pre-fab panel company. Most eveything for that house is built when they show up at the door. Plus they have something like 100 guys there at one time - You can build a house like that in a week - you just need 4 things:
1: A brilliant GC with everything planned out and ready ahead of time.
2: Cooperative local gov't
3: No field changes
4: An unlimited labor budget.
and maybe 5: (and the most important) The client isn't allowed any input, or even gets to see it, before it's done.
This thread also reminds me why I haven't bought any property yet. Everything in my price range right now is in the prime target for flipping. Those naive flippers out there are not building it right, they're building it to look good (and, most of the time, not even that!) - However, as an architect (almost) I do have many more years to look forward to of people trying to subdivide their grossly oversized townhomes.
Oh, total threadjack here, sorry.
Yes, I realize there is much behind the scenes work going on before the Extreme Makeover cameras even begin to roll. And yes, with a seemingly endless budget and endless labor pool a house can get built rather quickly. Still, that show to me screams shotty construction. Then again, most homes today are just that.
I guess my real problems aren't so much about the construction quality but more so that the show supports the dogma that the "American Dream" is the giant suburban McMansion. Worse yet is that they masquerade beind this charity of giving needy people a decent home. My opinion is they are essentially handing a lotto win over to these familes. Most lotto winners don't end up the better after winning.
Reminds me of the HGTV Dream House. See this article to see what those bid winners do.
was the link I was trying for.
Its totally shoddy construction. There is no question about it - but I'd rather have an extreme makeover house than one of those "flip this/that house" homes. The EM houses are designed to be put together quickly (and that method has the cut corners built-in, so to speak) as opposed to rushing a conventionally framed house - especially with unskilled (flipper) labor.
I remember seeing that article before. What do they say about a free lunch again?
Crowbert, you got 4 out of 5 right. (I doubt there is a #1 anywhere) My firm designed one of the houses and I had a chance to be on site. I'm sure every episode/house is different. But you'd be suprised at how fast a 3-4k sf house can go up with: fast cure concrete, off site framing fab, dozens of experienced crews, and most of all a motivated GC. The contractor is contacted/chosen first as all the labor and matl is donated. As for cutting corners, I'd say it was built just as well as any other developer cookie cutter. The GC/architect aren't going to put up some shack that will fall over in a few years. Especially since both are local and will be around long after they sell the plasma TV's & SUV's the TV show was nice enuf to get them.
i love the simple math at the end when determining profit.
Its as if there is no such thing as mortgage taxes, transfer taxes, closing costs, holding costs, and throw in a 5% broker fee. Most of those bumpkin flippers wouldn't know what hit them.
Youre lucky if youre making more than the broker.
Good luck, especially in the NYC or Brooklyn market.
That being said, there are always deals out there.
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