Flip-Flop-Flip

"It's the perfect market for you," I told a longtime client and ardent home restorer recently, "lots of beat-up fixers at heavily adjusted prices."

Simultaneously, for those of us operating outside the golden triangles, there's less "finished" product, much less. Financial jitters, a seller's strike, the spiraling costs of some materials and labor, all play a part. But perhaps principally, the absence of investors, or "flippers," has eradicated a significant percentage of move-in condition offerings.

"Flipping" frequently gets a bad name--deserves a bad name, as vulgarian investors white-wash surfaces, concealing compromising conditions beneath carpet, stucco, or new drywall. Such efforts are often derided as "Home Depot specials." Still, some honest handyman types did turn product around with new roofs and plumbing, decent fencing and the beginnings of a nice landscape. Enough to move the acrid to the tolerable, to make properties more immediately palatable for intimidated first-timers, or engrossed families.

The foreclosure storm will only bring so many well maintained properties to market, a change in the weather will be necessary to evince others. The golden lining: "It's the perfect market for you," I told a longtime client and ardent home restorer recently, "lots of beat-up fixers at heavily adjusted prices."