Sell a house, lose control over it
I’m not sure what we’re supposed to feel about this CBC piece by a guy who sold a family house and then, surprise, found out he’d lost all control over what became of it afterwards. He seems to be asking for a code of ethics over house flipping, but real estate sales are a grabby business, and you simply can’t expect to have any input into the fate of a building once you’ve sold it.
jeather 14:51 on 2021-06-29 Permalink
I felt very eyeroll-y. You should not sell your house under market value based on a well-written letter.
Dave 15:30 on 2021-06-29 Permalink
Agree. If he sold it below market value, he’s a fool to shortchange himself a windfall inheritance. If he’s upset purely for sentimental reasons, any new owner would’ve renovated a house that hadn’t been changed in decades. My grandparents’ house sold for probably $30-40K less than it “should’ve” given it’s size / location (and took quite a while), because the kitchen was a disaster.
dhomas 15:32 on 2021-06-29 Permalink
If they wanted to keep the house in the same (or similar) state it was in, they shouldn’t have sold it. They could have rented it out and had one of their family members buy out the rest (at whatever price they wanted for it) when they were ready.
Once you sell, the new owners can do whatever they want with a home. I’m not quite sure what he expected. And I really don’t know why this is a news story at all.
Blork 15:49 on 2021-06-29 Permalink
I think you folks are missing the point of the story, which is a cautionary tale about the ruthlessness of real estate developers and house flippers. Obviously, the owners were duped by unscrupulous people willing to play on their sentiment towards the house to seal the deal.
So it’s not about “oh gosh, they renovated Grandma’s house,” it’s “FFS, they scammed me into selling low on a false pretense that the house was passing to a couple who would feel attached to it.”
I doubt there will (or even can be) any sort of code of ethics for things like this. Instead we can only expose the scammers and bullshitters as well as we can, and that’s the purpose of the article.
Ephraim 15:57 on 2021-06-29 Permalink
You can’t control things from the grave. In fact, in Quebec, we have laws that specifically stop that… it has no bearing if you write it in the will.
DosgruntledGoat 16:53 on 2021-06-29 Permalink
A cautionary tale of naïveté for sure
Blork 17:20 on 2021-06-29 Permalink
Naïve, yes, but things like grief and family sentiment can cloud one’s judgment. And with a case like this, which is some level of scam but not enough to be illegal, the sense of betrayal can be enormous. (Remember, the sellers were not “cashing in;” rather, they were happy to provide an affordable home to a young couple based on how the buyer presented himself. So it’s not just the change in the house that’s at issue here, it’s the twist of the knife from that in-your-face betrayal.)
What I find interesting is that the flip — which apparently involved extensive renos — only put the price up by “tens of thousands” of dollars. That sounds like chump change, especially if you’ve put time and money into the renovations.
I’ve seen a bunch of flips in my neighbourhood over the past year, and it’s more like “buy for $280,000, gut it, rebuild it, sell for $500,000.”
walkerp 18:30 on 2021-06-29 Permalink
That is really gross. I am with him. Yes, you can’t control what will happen to something when you sell it, but often when selling a house in a seller’s market, you pick ultimately based on feeling as everybody is throwing money at you. That is pretty duplicitous of the buyer.
Renovations are just a perfect example of how stupid our society is. People buy homes the way they buy clothes now, complete prisoners of the moment and preferring the short-lived illusion of white cleanness over quality materials that have already stood the test of time because “old” or something. It’s just insane to see 100-year old pine beams, straight and dry being thrown out for metal studs, gyproc and generic tile that is going to look like tired shit in 3-5 years.
dhomas 21:40 on 2021-06-29 Permalink
I’m with you on that last bit, walkerp. When I was looking to buy a house, I would l pass through HoMa to see if I could find any properties for my family. It was gentrifying at the time, and people were buying fixer-uppers to renovate and resell. The number of times I saw solid wood furniture on the curb with IKEA boxes next to them… it was sad, really.
Ephraim 21:58 on 2021-06-29 Permalink
@walkerp – Or they renovate based on look and it’s completely unrealistic. White rooms for families.And bathrooms with these enormous impressive sinks, but no counterspace to put your damn electric toothbrush. Sure, an open staircase looks nice, but where are you going to put the luggage when you don’t need it, if you don’t have storage under the stairs? I saw once where they redid the kitchen, but used stock cabinets. There was an empty space of about 30cm on the extreme right of the kitchen…. Why? Who wants that? So everyone calculates their estimate of how much to replace the kitchen with custom cabinets into their offers… you might as well not have done it… it’s going to get ripped out. Look, just sell me the damn house, without the flipping and let me choose the future of the house. I actually won’t buy a house that’s been flipped. It’s overpriced and badly designed.
Em 10:18 on 2021-06-30 Permalink
I agree that the point of this story is about the dishonest tactics flippers are now using.
In multiple bid situations, some couples have successfully used things like letters to convince sellers to let them buy, even if their bid is a couple grand below the highest, because sometimes the sellers like the idea of helping a young family to get a home. Clearly, the investors won’t hesitate to lie in order to take away the only tiny advantage the non-investors might have.
It’s not surprising, but it’s sad.
Meezly 10:19 on 2021-06-30 Permalink
Flippers also don’t care about their impact on a neighbourhood. A friend is grieving the loss of a healthy hundred year old tree that was the lungs, shade and centrepiece of her ruelle in the Plateau. It was to make way for a bloody pool in the backyard.
That tree was right on the edge between the property line and ruelle. Residents of the alley mobilized and tried to stop it but only realized the permit was approved back in April. There was nothing they could do but watch their beloved tree being felled, which was akin to witnessing a violent act.
Many feel that residents living near a centennial tree should be informed if it’s to be felled because when it’s of that size, it becomes part of the neighbourhood because “TREES are not property of one but rather a COLLECTIVE concern. If we are to lose a tree in our neighbourhood that is this old and this large, we are entitled to know when it will be felled and why.”
House flippers are parasites and a blight to the community.
Alex 11:01 on 2021-06-30 Permalink
What I don’t understand is that the city forces us to protect building patrimony but not natural patrimony. In order to get a permit to fix our broken bricks on our apartment, we had to re-add a 30k corniche that was taken off over 30 years ago but it is perfectly fine to chop down a tree that was probably there well before the apartments were built
Joey 11:11 on 2021-06-30 Permalink
Real estate developers often add ‘right of first refusal’ conditions to sales such that a buyer cannot flip a new property within X months of the purchase without offering it back to the developer at the initial purchase price. I would assume that anyone can attach similar conditions to a sale. State that in the listing and the flippers will stay away.
Anyway, I’m not unsympathetic to the author’s plight, and grief manifests itself in many ways. Still, this line gave me pause: “It was hard to shake the feeling that this flipper only ever intended to profit off the death of my grandmother.” The family members also profited off the grandmother’s house. The flippers may have been more egregious, what with their apparent straight-up lying, but at the end of the day everyone walks away with a lot of money. From a certain vantage point, it’s all dirty, we’re just arguing about *how* dirty…
Last, suppose the flipper sells the house (with what sound like cosmetic “upgrades”) to a nice young family that builds a home there for generations to come. Is that so bad? Presumbly someone “deserving” will wind up living in the house.
The more I think about it the more I suspect that sellers picking buyers based on compelling personal stories, personal preferences, etc., the more I worry that we’re headed down a slippery slope where unconscious bias and unchecked xenophobia shut people out of the market. Maybe some seller somewhere decides he wants the house to stay in a family just like his, so he doesn’t consider offers from, say, non-white people? Say what you will about unchecked capitalism, selling to the highest bidder at least doesn’t introduce *new* elements of bias into a process (though of course race, xenophbobia, etc., all factor in majorly into who has money to buy an expensive house in the first place).
And, 100% in agreement with Meezly and Alex – our heritage-oriented permit authorizers have lost the plot. We force homeowners to rebuild their proprerties using technology that’s a hundred years old, adding purely decorative elements that haven’t been around for decades (and often may never have existed in the first place), all the while we fail to protect our common patrimony.
Blork 14:13 on 2021-06-30 Permalink
Um… a few notes to @Joey:
“The family members also profited off the grandmother’s house.” It’s hardly comparable. The “flipper” SET OUT to profit from their grief and good intentions. The family just did the normal thing of disposing of the property. It’s not like they SET OUT to profit from Grandma’s death by spiking her coffee or whatever.
“The more I think about it the more I suspect that sellers picking buyers based on compelling personal stories, personal preferences, etc., the more I worry that we’re headed down a slippery slope where unconscious bias and unchecked xenophobia shut people out of the market.”
While it’s commendable to be concerned about unconscious bias shutting people out of the market and whatnot, I pretty much always balk at any statement that worries about the “slippery slope.” Every choice we make is a slippery slope, including making it mandatory that highest bidder wins, or choosing by lottery. They all have potential for failures and discontent.
DeWolf 16:40 on 2021-06-30 Permalink
I’m with Blork on this one. It’s not a news story, it’s an op-ed (or maybe more accurately a blog-style personal essay) that underlines how the real estate market is infested with dishonest scumbags.