That was sarcasm, FYI.
Sure, we could spend Friday looking at photos of Forest Hill mansions, with all their high-end finishes, and quality workmanship. But that’s dreaming. A reality check is much more educational.
There are a LOT of people in the city who feel they can “buy a house, fix it up, and sell it for more,” but the end result is often laughable, rather than saleable.
Have a look…
None of the following videos can hold a candle to an upside-down house!
But whereas this house was actually intended to be upside-down, the results in these videos weren’t planned, and came out after absolutely awful workmanship, and poor planning.
You’d be surprised at what I see on a daily basis in this city.
Here are just a couple quick examples.
This door made me laugh, for two reasons, as you’ll see. But I honestly don’t know which workmanship error was worse:
This video shows how lazy some people can be when they don’t have the time or wherewithal to put up three pieces of 2×4, and one sheet of drywall:
If you ever walk into a crappy flip, and you wonder why the floors aren’t even, perhaps it’s because there’s more than one floor…
There’s no excuse for this. A five year old child can “colour inside the lines” in a Dora The Explorer colouring book, and yet a “renovator” can’t keep paint from splashing around?
Here we have laziness at its finest. There’s just no accounting for standards anymore…
Honestly, I should just install a helmet-cam on my forehead, and carry it with me on every single showing…
joel
at 9:45 am
When we were looking at houses we went into 3 different houses that did not have the closet doors attached. At one house one of the doors almost fell on my girlfriend, when we told the agent he seemed upset that we had touched the door. The laziness of some people when they are selling an asset worth several hundred thousand dollars astounds me!
Mike
at 10:52 am
Whenever I walk into a flip I walk right back out, no sense in paying for someone else’s mistakes.
A flippers motivation is to maximise profit, it’s not the flaws you can see you need to worry about, it’s the ones you can’t. No use running a new 200amp panel across 50-year old wires and very few houses have had new wiring and plumbing installed because buyers are not willing to pay for it.
Frances
at 10:45 pm
Why should the wiring be replaced? My house has 60-year-old wiring, with a newer 200 amp. panel plus a few newer circuits and everything seems to be working just fine. So are the water lines.
Kyle
at 9:19 am
Yes that is a strange and interesting comment. 50 year old wiring is just fine, as long as it is made of copper and and was installed correctly. They stopped using knob and tube by the 40’s and didn’t start using aluminum wiring until the late 60’s. In fact houses built 50 years ago are some of the best built homes around (unless a previous home owner went and messed with it). No worries about knob and tube, asbestos, urea formaldehyde insulation or lead pipes. These houses tend to be built of double brick so they’re not flimsy and rattly like today’s stick built houses, but yet they have the same (or often better) quality of wiring and plumbing than you would find in a new home.
Joe Q.
at 10:23 am
How about the quality of (thermal) insulation? (I’m genuinely curious, as someone who lives in a 100-year-old, largely uninsulated home)
Kyle
at 10:44 am
100 year old homes tend not to have any insulation unless they’e been renovated along the way. Solid double brick with lath and plaster walls is about R3 vs a modern 2×6 stick frame house is about R10.5
If you want to increase your insulation, a good place to start is blowing it into your attic. if you want to increase your wall insulation, it can be blown into the space between the brick and the lath as well, but they will cut holes in your plaster that will need to be patched afterward.
Joe Q.
at 12:50 pm
Kyle — I’m aware of the limitations of 100-year-old homes… I was specifically referring to the idea in your comment that the homes of the 1960s were built very well, in many cases better than recent construction; does this also hold true for the quality / degree of thermal insulation in 1960s-era homes vs. recent construction?
Kyle
at 1:58 pm
The houses of which i’ve seen the guts of from the 60’s do have fiberglass insulation. Which is not bad, but not as good as the modern mineral wool stuff. The bigger difference between the 60’s house and a new house will be in the windows. Personally i’d still choose the 60’s house. You can easily add insulation and new windows, but you can’t easily add another layer of structural brick to a stick framed house.
steve
at 9:25 pm
Wow … incredible. Do buyers not notice these flaws and walk away?
Piotr Asimov
at 5:11 am
Very different type of construction that we use in Barcelona , http://www.chestertons.cat
Paully
at 6:45 pm
And yet, every one of those quality flip jobs could see multiple offers…