"The dangers of buying a "flipped" house"

[Account Closed]

I hope it isn't but I'll bet this is common:  People buying "flipped" houses only to find that it has been remodeled in a shoddy fashion. 

http://features.aol.com/video/dangers-buying-flipped-house

[Mike F.]

Home inspectors only find the most obvious of defects and only surface issues, and that's if you're extremely lucky. I've yet to find one who had any depth of knowledge on building codes beyond the extremely obvious, could spot building violations beyond something extremely glaringly obvious and none of them have x-ray vision.

Jetted tubs with no access to pumps, lack of required dedicated electrical circuits, missing outlets, dangerous electrical issues such as lighting in wet areas, wire nutted connections  together and buried in a wall, miss-wired electrical panels, extension cords used for wiring buried in walls, bathroom exhaust fans that aren't vented anywhere... that's just a tiny list in one small category that are witnessed over and over again in flips that had home inspectors involved in the sale. 

None of that even begins to start addressing plumbing issues, structural issues, covered up defects, defects created by the flipper and a thousand other things anybody in the construction business continually uncovers on a daily basis dealing with homeowners when that homeowner calls in a professional to do some renovations and exposes all the criminal activity that flippers do in the name of their profits.

Now I hate to generalize, and their may be exceptions in other parts of the country, but I have 10 years of personal experience witnessing this over and over again here in Denver. If the property was flipped and it's value is under $400,000.00 I've yet to have not found it to be a train wreck and I've yet to find a homeowner who wasn't now paying out of their pocket over and over again for the flippers short-cuts.