I disagree with some of your second statement. I'm pretty handy and my dad is a carpenter. My significant other sand I spent almost a year and a half looking for a "fixer-upper" homes with the intent to buy and fix and live. For that entire year and a half almost every time we found a home that wasn't a complete trainwreck, someone would come in (sometimes from out of state) pay cash sight unseen and they would get the home. Considering this was going to be our first home, we couldn't compete.

A few months later, we would see the same home back on the market, with a significant markup and basically some light tile work, and a coat of paint. Not really worth the "fee" IMO.

Further, most of the "flipped" homes we looked at were absolutely done by DIYers. Not to knock people who have the drive to do it, but the work was absolutely not to professional standards and not worth the price listed.

So to say that buyers are free to buy fixers-uppers isn't completely true, nor fair.

> Buyers are all free to buy fixer-uppers.

If the flippers haven't grabbed them already. They've got an information and time advantage over normal folks looking to buy a house.

where do they get the information ahead of everyone else?

Someone doing a lot of flipping is likely to cultivate a relationship with realtors, government officials, etc. in their area.

All of those signs out there that say "We buy homes for cash" that are linked to a flipper gets them some info. Otherwise, they actively send out mailers as junk mail to see if there's any interested parties willing to sell their house. They also tend to watch foreclosure auctions much more closely than your average home buyer.

There's many many ways an interested party can learn advantages over your common house hunter.

They are rent-seeking with the information asymmetry created by the real estate cartel in this country. Many of the flippers do barely any 'fixing up' besides manipulative adds to increase the houses prices over the cost of the improvement. In a perfect information system, that shouldn't be possible. But the real estate industry locks down the information in order to justify insane fees for selling homes.

Flippers, like scalpers, are scumbags who manipulate a market w limited supply. Flippers are worse in a lot of ways because instead of not being able to afford a concert, people can't afford a place to live.

The problem happens when the flippers are betting on home appreciation for the vast majority of their returns, instead of home improvements.