Are flippers the scourge of the earth, or are they capitalists exercising their freedom to make money? Depending on the circumstances, most flippers are somewhere in between.
Irvine Home Address … 388 FALLINGSTAR 39 Irvine, CA 92614
Resale Home Price …… $549,000
{book1}
Dear Prudence, won’t you come out to play
Dear Prudence, greet the brand new day
The sun is up, the sky is blue
It’s beautiful and so are you
Dear Prudence won’t you come out to play
Dear Prudence open up your eyes
Dear Prudence see the sunny skies
The wind is low the birds will sing
That you are part of everything
Dear Prudence won’t you open up your eyes?
Look around round round
Look around round round
Oh look around
Dear Prudence — The Beatles
Flips first attracted me to the Irvine Housing Blog. My wife discovered the IHB in November of 2006, and showed me property flips Zovall and IrvineSingleMom were profiling. I found flips funny because I foresaw flippers in the bag with bubble kool aid enduring equity seizure, and sadly to say, I enjoyed the schadenfreude (and picking on floplords).
Some notice that my attitudes and opinions about many facets of the housing bubble change over time. As circumstances change, new information becomes available, and hopefully with a small measure of wisdom from seeing a bigger picture, my views change — hopefully improve. Over the last year, I have been maligned by bulls for “missing the bottom” and various other spurious claims, and I have been attacked by the bears for losing my purity of vision and accepting that massive unprecedented government intervention may make the most dire of my prognostications unlikely. At times I feel like a politician hearing criticism from both extremes, but unlike a politician, I don’t have to please anyone; I need only report what I see and what I believe.
With that preamble, I want to look at flipping and relate my current opinion on the most common forms.
Retail Flipping
Retail flipping is the kind where a flipper purchases a normal resale home, does nothing with it while withholding it from the market briefly, then attempts to resell at a profit. Some will argue retail flipping is capitalism and the flipper earns money through taking risk. Fair enough, but consider the impact this has on families.
In a market without flippers, demand is lower, and so are prices. If a family buys a home, they pay less money, and any increase in value improves the family balance sheet. Contrast this to a flipper who is reselling for a profit; any increase in home value improves the flipper’s income statement, not his balance sheet. This income is robbed from the collective equity of families and instead is converted into flipper income, which in turn, provides a way of life for a person providing no tangible value to society (like realtors).
If retail flipping did not exist, many thousand people would no longer make money for nothing, and they would go find productive work.
Rehab Flipping
Rehab flippers, like many who watch HGTV, are at least attempting to add value to make a living. Most people who slap pergraniteel on property believe they are adding huge value, and many make a profit who have done this; however, the profit came not because they added great value, but because appreciation made money for everyone. The linkage of cause and effect — pergraniteel adds value — is deficient because improvements add about seventy cents value per dollar spent, and appreciation turns the loss into a gain — something painfully obvious to those who attempted rehab flipping since 2006.
The people who consistently make money rehab flipping are professionals who can add improvements at wholesale. For instance, a general contract can use his or her own crews to perform work at a cost less than its value resulting in profit. Only those with special advantages — or those willing to put in sweat equity — can make money this way.
Entrepreneurs investing their own time and effort to add value and make a profit are admirable, and when we see families doing it on HGTV, we can all relate. Wow! We can do that! We could either make money, or we could improve our balance sheet.
I have no problem with good rehab flipping that requires risk and special expertise. If these operators did not exist, our housing stock would quickly run down in marginal areas, and once dilapidated, it would never recover; think Detroit. Since retail flippers can’t make a living in a non-appreciating market environment, rehab flipping and Trustee Sale flipping will be the only successful flips over the next decade.
Trustee Sale Flipping
Trustee Sale flipping has the same dynamic as a rehab flip; a buyer risks cash to make a profit and takes special advantage of their cash.
When a property is going to Trustee Sale, it is either going to be purchased by the first lien holder’s (lender’s) opening bid, or a third party must bid higher. In most cases these properties discount significantly from resale, and either the bank or the third party is going to obtain the resale finance market premium for buying at Trustee Sale: the bank hopes the additional funds will cover their processing losses and help them recover capital; the third-party buyer hopes to make a profit. Banks hope to improve their balance sheets while flippers improve their income statements.
Income Statement or Balance Sheet
The disdain for retail flipping and the delight in family rehab flipping are rooted in its impact on a family’s balance sheet. Retail flippers profit at the expense of family balance sheets, and family rehab projects improves it, but what about Trustee Sale flipping?
For reasons discussed at length in Foreclosure 101: Mechanics of a Trustee Sale, families rarely bid at Trustee Sales; consequently, Trustee Sales have no impact on family balance sheets. One of the things that appealed to me about offering a Trustee Sale Service was that we could put families into Trustee Sales, and the discount from resale is added to a family’s balance sheet rather than a bank’s balance sheet or a flipper’s income statement.
Have I gone soft on flips because I can make money off them? Perhaps I delude myself, but I don’t think so. When I put a family into a Trustee Sale and put equity on their balance sheet, I will feel I earned my fee.
Irvine Home Address … 388 FALLINGSTAR 39 Irvine, CA 92614
Resale Home Price … $549,000
Income Requirement ……. $115,104
Downpayment Needed … $109,800
20% Down Conventional
Home Purchase Price … $423,000
Home Purchase Date …. 11/4/2009
Net Gain (Loss) ………. $93,060
Percent Change ………. 29.8%
Annual Appreciation … 109.0%
Mortgage Interest Rate ………. 5.11%
Monthly Mortgage Payment … $2,387
Monthly Cash Outlays ………… $3,200
Monthly Cost of Ownership … $2,560
Property Details for 388 FALLINGSTAR 39 Irvine, CA 92614
Beds 3
Baths 2 full 1 part baths
Home Size 1,411 sq ft
($389 / sq ft)
Lot Size n/a
Year Built 1985
Days on Market 5
Listing Updated 1/19/2010
MLS Number S602409
Property Type Condominium, Townhouse, Residential
Community Woodbridge
Tract Sg
Gorgeous end unit townhome with hardwood floor. All newly upgraded/installed: Kitchen cabinets,Granite countertop,carpet,paint,baseboard,water heater,light switches,door knobs,blinds. No mello Roos assessment. Move-in ready.
Now that I point out the word “gorgeous,” do you see how overused it is?
This flipper is likely to discount this property to sell it quickly, but a significant amount of that $93,060 will be made, and it could have gone to provide security to a family instead.
I hope you have enjoyed this week, and thank you for reading the Irvine Housing Blog: astutely observing
the Irvine home market and combating California Kool-Aid since
2006.
Have a great weekend,
Irvine Renter
Well, you can look at stock investors who “buy low and sell high” as flippers as well. They were **supposed** to “buy and hold”, according to financial advisers.
Yeah right (snicker*).
Our entire economy runs on top of a casino anyway.
Productive jobs outsourced to the lowest bidders in foreign countries.
We don’t have a whole lot else to do with ourselves.
David,
I love your posts, and I agree with almost all of them… however your answer is a little too simplistic. It’s more complicated than that.
Problem 1: Our currency is overvalued on a pure exchange related basis. We get a lot of value based on seniorage and flight to quality. This, however, means that it’s harder to compete in real-world transactions because our cost of labor is that much higher than everyone else. It has its good and bad points, but mostly good for the average joe sixpack.
Problem 2: Transportation costs are too low. The externalities of transportation (oil-based shipping, rail, truck, plane transport) are not factored into the price of oil. Therefore, it’s still cheaper to ship natural resources from Brazil or other 3rd world resources to China or other 3rd world manufacturing country to have their cheap and plentiful labor transform it just to ship it back to the Americas or Europe for sale. Since Americans and Europeans are the engines of consumption in the world, that is the flow of goods. It’s still cheaper than producing locally. The invisible hand of thrift does that.
On the final point, non-manufacturing jobs such as phone customer service, IT/Tech, etc will always find the point of lowest cost because the cost of transport is so low and going lower. Remember when it was $4.00/minute to call the UK? I do. I can now call on skype for like $.02… non inflation adjusted! IT work is infinitely transportable once you have an open information network (why India works and China doesn’t for outsourcing IT work). I say this because I’m in IT work; I have seen the decline in jobs here in the US for the last 12 years. It’s here, now. Global competition is here, and it’s not going away. Manufacturing jobs will come back if we are at peak oil, so the only thing the US has is its intellectual property to grow from besides that. The name of the game is innovation, because price is not a long-term competitive advantage.
Chuck Ponzi
Thank you.
I agree that I was being overly simplistic; I was just making a quick and dirty jab at the overall state.
I personally would be happy to see all the jobs leave and we just sit around all day drinking beer and chasing women.
The fundamental problem as I see it is that we live in this culture that preeches ‘hard work’ and he who does not work does not eat. So we get all these people signing up ready to do their part and we tell them we don’t need them anymore – just starve.
I am actually ready for women to run the show – they wanted to be equally as miserable in the workface as the men and they got their wish. I want my chance to stay home now and run the house while the women do their share.
All kidding aside, the dilemma that I see is we create all these technologies and processes to ‘eliminate work’ but we will never one day just decide nobody has to work anymore. So we are going to continue with increasing makework jobs and unnecessary ‘services’. I just had a dog washing place open up nearby WTF?
What else do we have to do with ourselves? Gambling on realestate futures seems just an activity as dog washing.
‘workface’? Sounded right when I was typing it. Must be a Friday thing.
My wife stays at home. There are many stories that start with “you have no idea how hard it is every day.”
Someday I hope to find out.
Dog washing is just as good as any other, but definitely lower than engineering/information work. One takes years of experience to master while dogwashing can probably be mastered within an afternoon.
Noone should be able to afford an OC lifestyle on dogwashing alone. But, thats my opinion.
We are unfortunately at the mercy of the markets, no matter how irrational they are. The key is to work with them, not against them.
I dealt with IT on a regular basis.
Don’t push it.
This accidentally posted below but was an answer to this.
David,
I love your posts, and I agree with almost all of them… however your answer is a little too simplistic. It’s more complicated than that.
Problem 1: Our currency is overvalued on a pure exchange related basis. We get a lot of value based on seniorage and flight to quality. This, however, means that it’s harder to compete in real-world transactions because our cost of labor is that much higher than everyone else. It has its good and bad points, but mostly good for the average joe sixpack.
Problem 2: Transportation costs are too low. The externalities of transportation (oil-based shipping, rail, truck, plane transport) are not factored into the price of oil. Therefore, it’s still cheaper to ship natural resources from Brazil or other 3rd world resources to China or other 3rd world manufacturing country to have their cheap and plentiful labor transform it just to ship it back to the Americas or Europe for sale. Since Americans and Europeans are the engines of consumption in the world, that is the flow of goods. It’s still cheaper than producing locally. The invisible hand of thrift does that.
On the final point, non-manufacturing jobs such as phone customer service, IT/Tech, etc will always find the point of lowest cost because the cost of transport is so low and going lower. Remember when it was $4.00/minute to call the UK? I do. I can now call on skype for like $.02… non inflation adjusted! IT work is infinitely transportable once you have an open information network (why India works and China doesn’t for outsourcing IT work). I say this because I’m in IT work; I have seen the decline in jobs here in the US for the last 12 years. It’s here, now. Global competition is here, and it’s not going away. Manufacturing jobs will come back if we are at peak oil, so the only thing the US has is its intellectual property to grow from besides that. The name of the game is innovation, because price is not a long-term competitive advantage.
Chuck Ponzi
Stocks are highly liquid investments, while housing is not. Companies can also instantly increase their stock volume through new issuance, while there is a significant lag to adding new home inventory. Generally, buying stock to remove it from ‘supply’, hoping others doing the same will help to boost prices is a losing proposition. People need housing, while investors do not need to hold stock.
I just say let them flip – we need knife catchers right now.
Someone will get lucky here and there but most are going to be losers.
I say we need MORE flippers! They provide much needed liquidity to a market sector that’s almost completely dead.
“Some notice that my attitudes and opinions about many facets of the housing bubble change over time. As circumstances change, new information becomes available, and hopefully with a small measure of wisdom from seeing a bigger picture, my views change — hopefully improve. Over the last year, I have been maligned by bulls for “missing the bottom” and various other spurious claims, and I have been attacked by the bears for losing my purity of vision and accepting that massive unprecedented government intervention may make the most dire of my prognostications unlikely. At times I feel like a politician hearing criticism from both extremes, but unlike a politician, I don’t have to please anyone; I need only report what I see and what I believe.”
The only mistake you made was underestimating the amount of wealth that was funneled towards the top 20% in society over the past 20 years. If you had chose an average run of the mill city to write about, you would have overcame this mistake, but you went and chose Irvine, where the top 20% in Southern California, the US, and the world buy houses.
I’m sure I will be flamed for this, but this is reality. If you are not part of that 20% you are not buying a single family home in Irvine. If you don’t have the means to obtain a six figure down payment you are not buying a single family home in Irvine.
Oh just wait and see how affordable things become when the cost to borrow starts to go up. Irvine buyers are sitting on a mountain of hopeless debt. Even if you come up with a six figure down payment – the cost to finance an additional 500K ‘loan’ is going to be about 1.4 million in the long run. That’s a pretty huge gamble when you consider most are relying on a double income just to make the payment. Throw in a shaky economy that is going to be sputtering off and on for the foreseable future and it would appear that the odds are not favorable to highly leveraged buyers.
This is true. Irvine real estate, due to it’s reputation for good schools and low crime, is more expensive compared to other cities and always will be. Also, rents are underpriced compared to sales in Irvine. For example, rents in Irvine are about two times as expensive as Riverside-but sale prices are about three times as expensive.
“Also, rents are underpriced compared to sales in Irvine. For example, rents in Irvine are about two times as expensive as Riverside-but sale prices are about three times as expensive.” You are assuming that sales are fairly priced. I think that many would argue that rents aren’t “under priced” but sales are still overpriced, and that disparity between rents and the cost of buying proves it.
Riverside is an FHA city an Irvine is not. Most people can get in line with a 3.5% down payment there.
Allowing the sellers to leave their “FHA City” and buy in someplace else like Irvine. You make the mistake of assuming that Irvine is somehow independent of the actions being taken by the FHA to keep the low end propped up.
Irvine is certainly indirectly affected as these downpayments being used by the current move up crowd can only become liquid when the little guy on the bottom takes the plunge.
Unless you believe that the downpayments are mostly being saved the hard way and prior house sales are a small minority.
David if you ever move to CA, there is a very nice affordable home waiting for you in Riverside. Don’t mind the 3 hours of commuting each day.
Well that’s why I will not move to California. My eyes are on Colorado as I see where people and business will we be fleeing to.
David, just avoid the areas in CO with the wealthy and good schools and you will be fine. Several cities in CO could rival Irvine for wealth and smug level.
The area that I live in right now is not that different than Irvine. I have 899K McMansions within walking distance just as many of you do. I would prefer having your summer weather, but it’s not a dealbreaker.
I don’t mind smug wealthy folk – they won’t steal the change out of your car if you leave your window rolled down and I appreciate that.
My phrasing of saying rents were underpriced versus sales was not an intent to say sales were fairly priced. I could have said it as sales were overpriced versus rents and my intended meaning would have been the same.
Planet Reality suggestion that this difference is due to FHA loans being available in lower priced areas is an idea that hadn’t occurred to me but which makes sense, at least as a partial factor.
Thanks for the clarification.
“I’m sure I will be flamed for this, but this is reality. If you are not part of that 20% you are not buying a single family home in Irvine. If you don’t have the means to obtain a six figure down payment you are not buying a single family home in Irvine.”
As written, in the present tense, your observation is accurate. It was not always that way, but many have argued that “it will be different this time.” Perhaps it will. Perhaps this change is permanent. Much will depend on how many people really have cash, and are they willing to concentrate in Irvine, particularly when coastal properties become available.
The prime coastal areas of orange county have an even greater national and global appeal. This is the top 5%. There is an enormous wealth disparity when comparing the folks in the top 10-20% and the folks in the top 5%. These folks leveraged market manipulation and global expansion to accumulate the worlds gold.
Prices in coastal areas will drop. Cash purchasers will dominate the coastal markets at bottom.
If interest rates rise, cash down payments will become larger for the top 20%.
You are wrong. No top notch hospitals, no world class universities, meager restaurant pickings, no major investment banks have outposts there, and the wealthy from the Northeast and the Bay area see OC as a cesspool of pretenders. That IS reality.
LOL – beantown – enjoy your 600k back bay condo, sweater ugly girls, loser locals, and -10 degree windchill winters, try not to kill yourself in February
The bay area? Are you serious there isn’t a bigger group of smell your own fart pretenders. Judging by your monnicker I know you don’t even have what it takes to live in SF, you live in a San jose suburb enjoys all the dorky dudes, and wannabe San jose Victorian for a cool million
what a tool. No ability to respond to my assertions. You seem to lack the perspective of someone who grew up in L.A., moved for a job across the country twice. Did some time in the Far East as well. I used to never want to leave South OC until I did. Sure, I miss Trestles and my cronies, but that’s it.
Now Back Bay…a friend was in town the summer after we moved out there and he and I did the Back Bay pub crawl on a hot Friday night ending with a feast at Capital Grille. We both agreed that after 4 hours of pre-dinner lurking the talent in BOS was really subprime. Terrible. Of course our perspective was borne of SoCal natives. But back to my assertions… tons of old money and if you get really sick MA General is there. Rich people like being around other rich people with access to premier healthcare.
SF?? WHo the F would ever want to live there unless you fit the profile? I prefer our nice little snobby family-focused West Valley suburb. I’ll pass on the faux victorians in downtown SJC. Those are for the SF-types. The 4/3 wetsuits and sometimes slow drive over 17 to Santa Cruz kind of suck but this place is all about jobs jobs jobs and $$ $$ $$. Pretty good wine in the hills above my town and no traffic on the weekends. Too many Democrats up here for my taste but back to jobs jobs jobs and $$ $$ $$. Stanford Hospital is decent. Oh, also the center of the world for the VC industry and 30+ F500 HQs.
Come back to earth PR. Prime South OC is great, but the demand is much more limited than you portray.
My commentary wasn’t directed at you, I think you understood that. I am making the point that every desirable or pseudo desirable place with top notch jobs (250k+) is very expensive. Irvine and prime oc coastal locations have more desire than Boston, let’s be real. If you are over 30 and still living there something has seriously gone wrong in your life.
You are deluded. Irvine ranges from bland to less bland. The only areas in OC that will truly hold value are the coastal areas. Irvine is middle-upper class suburbia, and ultimately cannot support current prices–it can’t compete with the coastal areas. It ain’t Santa Monica, or Rancho Park, or West L.A., or Newport Beach. It’s boring-ass land-locked Irvine. It has a UC, it has (breathless panting!) great schools (like 10000 other communities throughout the country), and… there you go.
I hate Boston, would never want to live there, and yet even I know that comparing Irvine to Boston is moronic. Are you on drugs? Get real. You sound like the bulls who used to whine how “Irvine is different!” from ’07 to ’08. Seems you missed the bus–er, shuttle.
We bought our house in ’87.
IMHO, Irvine has always commanded a premium.
I may be sick and tired of living in a fascist city, but many people love it.
Believe me, you’d rather live in a fascist city than a city where you can damn well build whatever suits your flavor as long as the land which you’re building on is yours (i.e. no zoning law…nada).
Try checking out Taiwan when you get a chance.
Can that kitchen really be considered upgraded? Cabinets might be new and possibly counters too, but the floors and lighting look very dated.
Rehab flippers perform a similar function to homebuilders and add real value. They often get properties for less than what the market would bear if everyone could do the improvements themselves. Rehab-flip-price >> flip-cost + cost-of-improvements.
That’s the great thing about an ‘upgrade’ it can be whatever you want it to be. Already got pergraniteel? Just repaint the walls a new color and call it ‘Designer’. Put some crown molding anywhere that does not have any, plant some professional weeds in the backyard, hang a ‘Kiss The Cook’ apron on the backyard ‘BBQ’, replace the cooking utensils on the granite counter with a bucket of KFC.
The possibilities are endless.
Sad to say but Charo Chicken is no more. So we’re down to El Pollo Loco..
But KFC.. DAVID!!! This is NOT Santa Ana or Compton. Please….
This seller still wants 549K for a 1400 sq ft townhouse. I know it’s Irvine, but this is still WTF ridiculous. This Irvine Kool Aid really is potent and has very few known cures. Right now the only known antidote is time, it will take many years to get all the toxins out of our collective real estate systems.
“In a market without flippers, demand is lower, and so are prices.”
IMHO, speculation is necessary and unavoidable on any market. Speculators add liquidity and offset risk.
If speculation dramatically raises prices, it means that market is inefficient. It is a mistake to blame speculators. They simply do their job. Market rules must be changed.
The only value they have in the current market is absorbing some of the loss that would otherwise be transferred to the taxpayer. As long as these knife catchers are using mostly their own money – I think it’s fantastic.
The problem however is that these losses to knife catchers will be dramatically offset by the new ‘loans’ being insured by the FHA as their balance sheet continues to collapse.
Which is why it is obvious that the government is going all in to ‘shore up housing’ by inflation of the money supply and cause prices to catch up. It would appear that the rest of the world is on board for the fleecing. I’m guessing some backroom compromises that the general public need not know about.
My guess is there is going to be a push to move away from the dollar as the world currency at some point which will result in a run and we will all be left holding a bunch of paper.
Nothing new here. US dollar is worthless piece of paper. It always was, and it always will be.
What may change is the role of United States in global economy. If all hell is set to break loose, we better be somewhere else.
Que Viva Zapata?
Two years ago I asked my old boss not to give me a raise but to pay me in pesos instead of US dollars.
He thought I was joking.
I was not.
Should have asked to be paid in Gold.
IR – You are missing the point by singling out flippers, even the type who use OPM or leverage to make money with no risk arbitrage. The leveraged flippers are no different than leveraged families who “bought” homes with over extended loans based on the knowledge that home prices always go up and they will either refinance or sell. The behavior is the same. They are no different. And the effects on society are the same. And they are the results of the same problem; central planning of interest rates instead of free market interest rates.
I would agree, but it’s hard to know what all buyers were clearly thinking until they take some kind of observable action like putting the house up for sale shortly after buying or strategically defaulting to attempt to strongarm a principal reduction out of their ‘lender’.
There are plenty of people who bought because they believed in the system and just didn’t quite think it all the way through. No need to overly pick on these types as long as they continue to honor their pledge by paying or jingle mailing.
“…And they are the results of the same problem; central planning of interest rates instead of free market interest rates.”
And the man who believed house prices were NOT inflated in 2006 has been re-elected to establish those interest rates for another four years, thanks to our senators.
Amazing. Just amazing.
END THE FED!
ZIRP is here to stay whether you like it or not.
Their definition of “extended period” means extending it until they’re being thrown out of Fed.
End the Fed? Ha….funny. All of our mattress moola will be totally worthless with the end of Fed.
Buy gold now!
IR-
I never thought of used house salesmen (Realtors) as retail flippers before!
Now that I think about it, you are right to frame their role that way. Except they don’t risk much of their capitol, just their time.
I have to admit that I am still laughing over the other day’s post where the observers were saying:
realtor (little ‘r’)
Classic.
I know the family that sold this house to the flipper. They sold and moved back to Israel. If only they had known they could have gotten another 125K.
Speaking of FLIPPERS, I’ve been looking around lately and ran into Costa Mesa, westside, near what one lady termed “the barrios.” LOL, we met her in a park and that was her term for that area. But the nearby Fairview park was nice. The school seems ok, I wonder about the crime.
http://www.redfin.com/CA/Costa-Mesa/905-Joann-St-92627/home/4563804
So, it’s a flipped house as my realtor says, and my wife says it had a higher sales price late last year (Nov) but now that I check it out, the price aint’ there! What happened? Why is this info missing? Did the lister have influence or can they have influence on that data? I wouldn’t think so, but…?
On another topic, isn’t it funny that the economy hasn’t changed much, but we are 700 points below where we were on about 2-3 weeks ago? Ahh, what was that phrase, irrational exhuberance? 😉
Don’t know what happened to the house you are referring to. I used to live in CM near there. Not a bad place at all. If I had to live anywhere in OC, I would pick HB followed by Costa Mesa (there’s something about these older, unplanned cities that I really like…or maybe I just don’t like the cookie cutter, sanitized Irvinesque places). Costa Mesa has a great central location close to anything in OC, great climate, crime and schools are acceptable (but not up to Irvine standards).
Regarding the market, it is completely irrational. I used to not be a comspiracy theorist, but I really think the market is rigged and manipulated by the powers that be. I wouldn’t trust my money with these crooks, but I guess everybody else does. We are engrained to think that money not being invested is “opportunity lost.” No thanks, I’m in capital preservation mode.
um… where do property investors who buy and hold fit in the grand scheme of things?