Buying a house is stressful. If you’re not buying new construction, part of that stress is the condition of the house and how much work you might have to put into it. A fresh, newly renovated place will generally be more attractive to buyers. That fact has given rise to the concept of “house flipping,” where investors buy older, run-down homes, renovate them quickly, and sell them before the mortgage costs pile up.
House flipping is gaining in popularity; in 2022, 8.4% of all house sales were flips. It’s easy to see why: The average profit from a flipped house is a hair under $68,000, representing nearly a 27% return. But it’s also easy for house flipping to go wrong—many flipped homes are sold at a loss, and many people get in over their heads in a flip, then try to slap some lipstick on the pig they bought and list the house in the hopes that no one notices until the sale is final. Since no one puts the word FLIP in their home listing, you might not always know that you’re considering buying a house that was renovated in three weeks by an amateur using the cheapest materials possible. There are, however, a few signs you can look for.
Inspection failures
Your first clue that a house has been flipped is recent, very fresh renovations, obviously. But those renovations might have been done expertly, with no expense spared, so recent work isn’t necessarily a problem. So your next stop should be the local construction office to see if permits were pulled. If no permits were pulled for the work, that’s a huge red flag regardless of the home’s flipping status. Not only can non-permitted work cause you problems down the line, it also means no one inspected that work to ensure it was up to code.
If permits were pulled, check the inspection record. If you see multiple failed inspections, you’re probably looking at an inexperienced flipper struggling to figure out how stuff works. If they eventually passed, that’s sort of good, but not exactly an endorsement of the quality of the work.
Old infrastructure
A bad flip often focuses exclusively on surface finishes, making everything look shiny and new. But check out the water heater, the furnace or boiler, and the HVAC system. A clear sign that your home was flipped fast and cheap is brand-new cabinets in the kitchen and a 12-year-old water heater in the utility room, or an HVAC system that barely runs.
Poor finishes
The next most obvious sign of a bad house flip will be the finish work. Flippers are on the clock—every month they pay mortgage and insurance costs on the house reduces their potential profit, and as budgets shrink towards the end of the adventure they may skimp on the finish quality to save some cash. They may also rush a lot of those finish jobs in order to get the house on the market as quickly as possible. Things to look for:
Sloppy paint. Paint should be within anyone’s skill set—all it really takes for a good paint job is patience and time. If the paint is visibly sloppy, with drips, brush strokes, inconsistent coverage, and wavy lines, it might indicate a last-minute paint job.
Bad tile work. Tiling a bathroom or kitchen is one of those jobs that seems super easy, but is actually very hard. Tile that isn’t level, has inconsistent grout lines, or has chips and cracks should make you suspicious of everything else. And check the caulking—huge, ugly caulk lines are a red flag.
Bad or missing trim. If the home has a lot of truly awful miter cuts on the trim work, worry that a flipper decided to save money by not hiring a carpenter—and worry about where else they spared expense. And if there’s no trim at all? Be very worried.
Cheap doors and windows. Cheap doors and windows are pretty obvious—they may be new, but they stick and jam and they feel light and insubstantial. Check the weather stripping and caulking around them, too—sloppy work here indicates a rushed or incompetent installation job.
Bad kitchen layouts. A subtle sign of a bad flip is a kitchen with brand-new cabinetry and appliances but a bad layout. If drawers interfere with each other, if you can’t open the oven door without banging into a cabinet, if the layout doesn’t make much sense, it probably indicates an existing plumbing and electrical setup that a flipper didn’t have the time, money, or knowledge to change.
Shaky electrical and plumbing. Obvious signs of amateurish electrical work include loose outlets, missing wall plates, and flickering lights. Go into the basement or crawl space and check under sinks—if the plumbing is a patchwork of old and new pipes and has a lot of quick fixes like tape or clamps, someone cheaped out on the work.
Uneven or cracked floors. If the floors are obviously sloped, if they’re uneven, or if tiles are cracked, it can indicate that a flipper is trying to hide subfloor or foundation issues. If there’s fresh carpet everywhere in the house but you can tell the floor is uneven underneath it, be extremely worried.
Cheap fixes
Finally, there are a couple of cheap fixes that desperate renovators always turn to when they don’t have the time or budget for a high-quality repair:
Expanding foam. Expanding foam has its uses, but if you see it spilling out everywhere, be wary. Rushed flippers often use it to fill cracks in foundation walls or other places that require a more robust solution.
Cheap landscaping. Another aspect of a house flip that’s often left to the end when budgets have worn thin is the landscaping. If it’s a fresh ocean of mulch with some fragile young plants that will probably die in a few weeks, do a little digging—literally—to see what’s underneath.
Excess paint. Paint is cheap, and desperate flippers will use it to solve myriad problems. Painted wallpaper is a sure sign that someone was in a rush to get a house on the market, and seeing paint on anything that normally isn’t painted—like kitchen cabinets or floors—should make you question the rest of the work.