Even with the rough spots in the housing markets these days, ‘flippers’ are still buying houses. These folks buy houses in poor condition, fix them up and sell them at a profit. Home buyers often like them because flippers need to sell their houses as fast as possible to avoid paying more than a month or two on the mortgage. If a house isn’t selling, flippers can get nervous and lower their prices.

But flipped houses aren’t necessarily good buys for homeowners that plan to stick around. If you’re shopping for a new home, there are a few reasons to skip the flip.

1. Flippers limit costs when fixing up houses. Not all flippers go for the cheapest building materials, but they do try to minimize costs wherever possible. To bring a house up to your standards, you might wind up tearing out some of a flipper’s work and paying for an additional remodel.
2. Flippers focus on the visible. Most flipped houses have awesome fixtures, beautiful paint jobs and other accents that convince buyers that the house is a beautiful piece of work. But slapping a fresh paint of coat on a wall doesn’t repair cracks or bring wiring up to code. And it’s the non-visible problems that can mean expensive repair work down the road.
3. Flippers do as much themselves as possible. Most flippers aren’t professional electricians or plumbers, but odds are they’ll try their hand at some wiring or plumbing, just to keep from having to call in a professional. That doesn’t mean that their work is bad but there won’t be any sort of guarantee.

If you’ve got your heart set on a house that was flipped, there are a few things you can do to protect your investment. The first is to check with the local permit office. If a permit hasn’t been closed, walk away. That means that the inspector doesn’t think the house is ready to sell. In some locations you can even get a copy of the inspector’s notes. You might also find that no permit was taken out. Maybe the flipper did only cosmetic work — maybe the house only needed some touch ups. But it’s more likely that the flipper went without a permit, which is illegal. That also means the work isn’t up to code and could be dangerous.

You can also ask your real estate agent to help you check out this particular house flipper. What other houses has he or she sold? Are the new owners happy with their purchase? A house flipper’s reputation is a good indicator of the work you can expect. Make the effort to learn about the house flipper in question. If necessary, ask them to show you around the house and give a detailed explanation of what work was done. Give them a chance to prove that their work really is worth an extra $50,000 or however much on top of the previous sale price.

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Many first-time home buyers go shopping for a home thinking that they’ll find the perfect house and live in it happily ever after. It just doesn’t work that way. Even if a member of your family doesn’t get a job halfway across the country, it’s likely that you may want to change school districts, find a home with different amenities or move closer to family. Simply put, odds are that you’ll move at least once every five years.

As you look at homes, think long and hard about whether you’ll be able to sell it later on. For instance, is the design dated? There are plenty of homes that just scream “1970s” when you walk in — you might like that aesthetic, but it’s going to be harder to sell, without significant changes. (The current seller may be finding out just that, as well.)

A key question is whether you’ll need to do significant work on the house after you’ve lived in it for five years, or so. If the kitchen is brand new right now, it probably won’t need much effort to get it ready in a few years. But if the kitchen is already starting to seem a bit dated — older appliances, cabinets showing some wear — you may need to prepare yourself to spend some money down the road. You may be planning for such a remodel anyhow, for your own use of the kitchen, but a fairly new kitchen is practically a requirement when you plan to sell.

There are certain amenities that may be a must have today, but will make a house harder to sell down the road, as well. Consider the bathtub: there have been plenty of trends, such as whirlpool tubs, when it comes to bathtubs. And there’s plenty to be said for whirlpool tubs — they can be a nice luxury. But it’s much harder to sell a home with a whirlpool tub these days. Parents worry about their children’s safety, efficiency-minded buyers worry about the amount of water need to fill the tub, etc. You can always change out a tub down the road, but these sorts of amenities cost money, both to install and to remove.

Selling your future home shouldn’t be your primary concern when you are house hunting. However, it is a factor that you should take into account, just as you consider your wish list of amenities
in your new home: you may be willing to make significant changes to a house to make sure it meets your needs. Are you willing to make that level on investment in order to make sure that it also meets the needs of prospective buyers down the road?

It’s a story that we hear over and over again: a couple buys the most dilapidated house in town — a property that’s on the verge of being condemned. They work hard, fix it up and soon have a beautiful home. Tom Hanks and Shelley Long did it in The Money Pit, after all, so what’s stopping everyone else?

But it’s rarely that simple — there’s a reason that falling down houses are so cheap. The work necessary to bring a house to the point that people can safely live in it can equal the cost of the house itself. Bringing it up to the point that most people would consider it a good home is prohibitively expensive.

This morning, the New York Times ran an article about David and Gina Giffels, a couple in Akron, Ohio. The Giffels bought their home a little over ten years ago for $65,000. Reading the description of their home, that figure is unbelievable: it’s a huge 1913 Tudor home and could easily be called elegant.

The catch is that, when the Giffels bought the house, it was the quintessential money pit. It’s taken every day they’ve lived in that house to bring it up to the showplace it is now — and David Giffels admits that there are still some less visible parts of the house that he hasn’t finished renovating. While there’s not an exact figure listed in the article, the Giffels have easily put hundreds of thousands of dollars into renovations. They did $55,000 in repairs just to make the house habitable before they moved in and they’ve been working on it just about every weekend since.

I admire the Giffels — they dedicated themselves to the project and came out with a beautiful home (and no debt beyond their mortgage). It’s unlikely that they would have been able to find the quality of house they now enjoy for anything near their original budget. But I don’t think the money pit approach works for everyone.

It’s only partially an issue of skill — especially the skill of learning how to do new things, from grouting to mold removal. It’s also the fact that, despite what we might think when we find a romantic home in need of extensive renovations, there will a significant cost beyond the price tag on the house itself. It’s a matter of the time that a home owner will have to sink into projects, the cost of parts, the chance of an accident. And if a person doesn’t have relatives with some remodeling experience, as the Giffels do, or the money to hire a contractor, he is looking at an extended project where he will be doing each bit of work himself (and giving up weekends, vacation and any other spare time for the pleasure).

It’s your choice when you’re buying a new house. But, especially for first time home owners, I definitely recommend looking at some options besides that almost-condemned house down the road. Check out houses that have had a little more maintenance and care over the years.