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IMO we should probably reduce taxes on house builders. Maybe even give them tax exemptions. Do what we can to increase supply.

Speculators wanting to buy a house, redo the kitchen, and mark up the price 20% 6 months later though? We could just let older, unrenovated houses be cheap. That opens up deals to new home buyers. You can redo the kitchen after buying the house if you really care. You don't need some middle man to do it and mark up the house.

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Lots of people want to buy a move-in-ready house. Many don’t know much about construction, don’t know which end of a hammer to hold, can’t afford to have a house sit idle for 3 months while a renovation happens, and want to have the “Apple” experience for one or two hundred a month more in their mortgage payment.

That’s the service flippers provide, IMO. (I’m not one but I think they’re more helpful than not in terms of providing housing that owner-occupants want.)

There's flippers who truly restore a dilapidated house and help resuscitate a neighborhood, and there are flippers who put a thin veneer of newness on a rotting frame, bury the waste in the backyard, and then still try to charge the same as the first kind. We don't need more of the second kind.

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