this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2024
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My opinions nobody asked for:
I really don't care if people want to scalp non-essential goods tbh. It sucks but my life intersects with those items so seldom that it doesn't impact me. I make a slight exception for things like electronics (i.e. GPUs a few years ago) because some peoples' livelihoods are directly tied to being able to access those goods.
If you try to flip houses for profit, you're neither a scalper nor an investor. You're a sociopath at best and a murderer at worst
I have to disagree with the first part, the principal applies unilaterally. Second part, you're bang on.
Appreciate the disagreement. Honestly, I just don't care. I've basically sculpted my entire life to avoid high-demand, low-supply luxury goods. It just doesn't impact me whatsoever whether or not two consenting adults want to buy/sell an action figure for 10x over MSRP.
Yeah I get what you're saying. Here's the thing though, scalping only exists in scenarios where there is a large difference between MSRP and true market value. That doesn't usually happen, and when it does, it's usually for a good reason. Like take concert tickets- most artists don't WANT to sell to the highest bidder, they want all (or at least more) of their fans to have a chance. So, assuming there's a reason for the price gap beyond the manufacturer being dumb, I think it's a scummy thing to do.
I get what you're saying and I don't disagree with it, but it also doesn't contradict my thoughts on the matter. I just do not care, like, at all. I have no strong opinions whatsoever on concert tickets being sold for 20x their retail price because I don't go to those kinds of concerts and I don't interact with the type of people who do. Its not a problem for me or anyone I care about, so i just dont care about it one way or the other. Sort of like how I have no strong opinion on bridge building regulation in Ecuador. At the end of the day, I believe in the agency of most consenting adults to manage their lives and decide between/for themselves what they want or don't want when it comes to non-essential luxury goods.
I mean if you manage to make money flipping houses, go for it. But I don't know how in the hell that's possible in this market.
On a small scale, I agree. I don't have much issue with individuals or local groups of people buying run down houses, repairing and modernizing them, and selling them on market for a bit of profit. But a terrible positive feedback loop has formed in the past ~10 years where everyone wants to flip houses^1 and no one wants to take a loss. It's been terrible for lower income people who can't even afford even the cheapest housing on the market. Therefore, it's just easier for me to discount housing flippers indiscriminately.
Perhaps we have a different definition of "flip" but the one familiar with is taking a home in bad shape then fixing it (usually yourself, because hiring a contractor would cost more than the profit). I don't flip myself, but I don't see this as a negative. Someone put effort to improve the house and gets profit from it (yes, there's an issue that they might use the cheapest materials, because they won't live there and just want to make it look good, but that's a different issue).
The biggest issue in driving prices up is low supply and high demand.
We should change zoning laws to allow building more houses and also place restrictions on houses purchased by corporations and international investors. Oh yeah, Airbnb is another one that drives prices up.
The issue with flipping is that they draw from the same pool of housing as the rest of the people. If a party is interested in purchasing a house to live in and along comes a flipper and purchases it instead, the flipper will add on a profit for his service, that nobody asked for.
Presumably, the party that wanted to live in had already seen the state of the house and was prepared to pay for fixes. Let's say both them and the flipper would use the cheapest materials and labour possible, levelling out the equation. The profit for the flipper has to come from somewhere then - something extra added beyond the labour and material cost - something somebody who would live there would not have to pay in normal circumstances. They do DIY to save on labour? Great - they can be contractors then, not flippers.
This means to me that flipper not only does not add any value to the house, but inflicts extra costs upon any good faith buyers. Add to that the fact that tastes vary greatly between people and they might actually do some damage by decorating or remodelling in a style thay may not appeal to everyone, or in a bland style. All of it could have been avoided if the flipper just fecked off. House flippers are like the people rushing to pump your gas for you before you get out of the car and then expecting a tip.
That was the old way - this meme is good b/c it is aware of that and discounts those situations, while the person you are replying to did not display that awareness.
I get it. Scalping sucks, but one is an annoyance, one causes a measurable impact, and the last is fucking murdering people and collapsing the foundation of society.
It's all wrong, but the magnitude of harm is much bigger
That's today's Lemmy Moment of the day.
Besides, don't house flippers generally renovate the house, and generally make it more presentable?
See my other comment about positive-feedback loops. The House Flipping trend of the late 2000s was never sustainable.
On the matter of more presentable, I disagree strongly. Late-Stage Professional House Flippers are concerned with nothing but profit. The quality, fit, and finish of their renovations are tastelessly bad. In almost every case, I refuse to believe that House flippers do a better job cosmetically than if the home had sold to people who would be living there who would then be able to work with a contractor to fix up the house into exactly what they want.
Source: I've spent more hundreds of hours than I can count doing sub work for house flippers. There's nothing defensible about what they do.
Clearly there is something defensible... You did the hundreds of hours of work. And you can't complain about fit and finish if you were the one doing the work.