[orthecreedence]

> Why not find an efficient model to do it

Efficient as in "most profitable?" That means changing a few cosmetic things about the property and charging the original value plus 2-3x the useless improvements that were made.

When I was house hunting a few years ago, you'd see this all the time. Someone buys a crappy house: bad plumbing, bad electrical, leaky windows, foundation issues. What do they do? Put in some frosted glass Ikea cabinets, granite countertops (wooo fAnCy!!!1), and some crappy click-lock flooring. Then they charge 150K more for the house than they bought it for.

This is my experience with flippers, and it's totally in line with "find an efficient model." They did find an efficient model: efficient for them, but sucky for the people who can no longer afford the home, and sucky for the poor sap who actually buys it and now has to dump another 200K into it to fix the real issues (and will likely end up ripping out the cabinets anyway because they are cheap and ugly).

I know there are people who do good flips, and who fix the foundational issues, but I am willing to bet they are much more skewed toward the "mom and pop" flippers.