Home, Unflipped

True Love vs. Top Dollar

For going on 40 years, my sister-in-law Amy lived in a shingle and stone 1920s colonial. This past winter, she sold it.

During Amy’s tenure, the house was shaped to her various cottage industries and personal interests. She was a potter, framer, and artisan bread-baker. She listened to music and NPR from the worn couch in the living room, set up a showroom/workroom on the sunporch for matting and framing, and reigned over her beloved jumble of a kitchen, coated and seasoned like a favorite frying pan. Of late, Amy’s house shambled ever deeper into chaos. Any attempt at maintaining the interior or the yard was abandoned. Afternoons found Amy sitting in a plastic chair on her front porch, reading a book or talking to neighbors, or doing the exact same thing in an identical plastic chair set in the unchecked overgrowth of her back yard. She knew it was time to move on.

A real estate agent advised Amy to sell the house as-is. Keep the price low. It sold in one day to the first people who came to see it, a young family who submitted their offer with a heartfelt letter saying they absolutely fell in love with the house exactly as it was.

After the sale, people told Amy she should have used Caps, our local house flipper, his grin and brawny biceps on billboards and buses all over town, along with his promise to “pay top dollar for your house in any condition!” Caps and his crew yank out old appliances and replace them with stainless steel, slap neutral paint on every wall, and insert plastic tub enclosures into bathrooms, transforming what was once uniquely your old house into something utterly generic and move-in ready. Amy heard this opinion and shrugged, saying the letter from the buyers was all she needed.

I drove by the house yesterday and sitting on the front porch, exactly where Amy used to set her plastic chair, was one of the new owners. He looked happy. Content, even. I’m sure Amy would have gotten a kick out of seeing him sitting in her spot. It gets good sun, she would say, and you can see everything that’s happening in the neighborhood.

Try flipping that.