Here’s How to Tell if Your Future House Was Flipped — Badly

In the time of DIY house flipping, check for these signs

Photo by Phil Hearing on Unsplash

If you’re looking to buy a house, don’t be fooled by freshly painted walls and updated bathrooms. You need to do one thing with every house you inspect: Look in the nooks and crannies. Check the corners. Look at the seams. Make sure the work is done well.

Learn from our situation. We knew that a woman named Dorothy had lived in our 1960 house for only three years. But in that time frame, she updated a lot of things — the kitchen, the garage, the bathrooms, the basement. We likely wouldn’t have bought the house if she hadn’t done all of these things.

However, some of it was shoddy work. We could have seen the warning signs:

• The paint job was sloppy and barely covered the blue underneath. She also painted over the outlets.
• One corner of the kitchen cabinets had a piece of plywood jammed into a crevice.
• All the light bulbs were different from each other, and some were missing.
• The blinds were installed wrong.
• The cheap laminate on the kitchen floor was already scratched to hell.