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Even in a cheap area in a western red state, last year, flippers bought a house, slapped a for sale sign and doubled the price the next month. Those are still s
by downrightmike 4y ago
Even in a cheap area in a western red state, last year, flippers bought a house, slapped a for sale sign and doubled the price the next month. Those are still sitting unsold. And now houses are being bought by flippers who are slapping an extra 2.5 times the price they got it for in the same month. None of these houses are selling. Just sitting empty.
- Animats 4y agoThat sort of thing should end with the end of low interest rates. When interest rates were near zero, borrowing money to purchase unused real estate could be profitable if you could sell some of it. No longer true.
- bobthepanda 4y agoRight, unless those flippers paid with straight cash, they are going to have a hard time raising more money to buy more houses, and they might go underwater on the current ones. To see what that looks like on steroids, China's economy is at real risk of recession due to property developers running out of cash and failing to build promised developments. (Most apartments in China are purchased before construction starts, so you can buy a house and not end up with one in the end.)
- edmundsauto 4y agoEven if investors pay cash, they need cheap interest rates to be able to sell at a profit to people who need a loan.
- wil421 4y agoThe average time to flip a house is 45 days to 6 months. Let’s pretend it’s going to cost $500 more a month in interest rates, that’s only $3000 more dollars. If you could do 3 in a year you’ll only lose about $10k.
- WirelessGigabit 4y agoI wish the tax on flipping houses went up. Something is sleeping there that it economically makes sense. Like if I sell 1 car, ok, but if I sell 10 I need a dealer license. Same should happen with the flippers. More regulations, because they’re cutting corners all the way.
- joe-collins 4y agoRather than targeting flipping, I think ownership of more than one housing unit should be taxed progressively and become prohibitive rapidly.
- sokoloff 4y agoDo you feel that renters should be punished economically (which I think would be an inevitable consequence of that policy)?
- KptMarchewa 4y agoI think amount of renters would rapidly drop off.
- sokoloff 4y agoI agree. Some to ownership. Others to homelessness.
- KptMarchewa 4y agoIt depends on what facilities the country would provide. Assuming it's USA it's homelessness. If it was another country, it might be provided social housing.
- JumpCrisscross 4y agoWhy not skip the taxation and homelessness and just build the social housing?
- astrange 4y agoThey don't have infinite money to do this, not anymore. Eventually the market's going to clear or they're going out of business. Although in my experience people are convinced there's "vacant houses" absolutely everywhere based on not seeing the lights on at night. It's not true and this is not a major contribution to the housing crisis.
- huijzer 4y agoThis is also a nice description of the stock market over the last few years. Buy high and quickly sell higher. Works great until the music stops.
- Fatnino 4y agohttps://www.zillow.com/homedetails/303-Atherton-Ave-Atherton-CA-94027/15597953_zpid/ https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/303-Atherton-Ave-Atherton... Scroll down to price and tax history. This house has been on the market for at least 15 months and has had its price slashed by over 3 million dollars and nobody is nibbling. It's become a bit of a running joke around here, trying to guess if it's still the most expensive listing in the local paper each week. As an aside, the local papers are really just pages and pages of real estate ads with a few paragraphs of news sprinkled here and there. Can literally rip out half the pages and not lose a single line of news.