I will preface this by saying I originally was going to buy a turnkey home in torontos east end , I am fortune enough to have a large down payment , residual income from my parents and family support .

With that said – after seeing what I saw – I decided to buy a gut job and hire contractors myself on a job by job basis ….

Most of these refinished homes had small visible issues —- floors uneven , bad paint jobs , old electrical and light fixtures …. Old furnaces and air conditioners etc … and I realized that they just wanted to shine a turd and resell it at a profit and I said fuck that .

But it was working with the contractors themselves that scared me … plumbers , electricians , waterproofer , roofer … hvac specialist . Every time I found an issue after demo and asked them if I should fix the issue or not ( is it worth it ) they asked if I was going to live in the house or flip it —- example – the old ductwork that was a minimum of 50 years old , had never been cleaned and was absolutely filled with plaster and lathe from our demo – I suggested fixing it to all 3 HVAC techs , and they all asked if I was flipping the house and said it would cost a fair amount for drawings and if I was flipping it to just leave it as is … I wouldn’t wish breathing in that disgusting filth on anyone —- much less would I intentionally not fix it to make a bit more money to dump that on someone else …. I had similar experiences with electrical quotes and plumbing – work that very clearly needed to be done was advised to me to not be done if I was flipping because no one would see it.

After this experience I would never buy a flipped home ever …. It’s a lot more work to gut it and hire contractors – but in the end , it’s going to be significantly cheaper , there’s very little competition in the gut job housing market , and I know everything is going to be done correctly from the studs to the finishes