Who's met Mr. Bylowe (Mister Buy Low)

[stubaz]

Have you been unlucky enough to meet this overweight scammer? I have 6 times and every time I've refused his bid and it's cost me $1,000 every time I say No Sale.

He's always a lone bidder and his bid is usually less than your house cost in total. His last 4 bids have been around $1,500 under what I paid for the house, plus what I spent renovating it. less what I made selling it's contents. I refuse to sell my houses for less than I spent, just on principle. OK it's costing me a $1,000 fine at each refusal, but I'd do exactly the same if it was factual.

I don't care. I'm in business to make money, not to make Mr. Bylowe money. Why the devs would purposely give us a scammer and to have him appear 6 times in a row is pushing coincidence a little too far. Is anyone else getting bids from Bylowe?

[tatiana]

I have a little theory.

I suspect that there is a hidden way to make maximum profit on each house. With some, it's clearing everything out and starting again; with others, it's replacing only what needs to be replaced (usually the really worn stuff); with some, you are supposed to add rooms, with others knock walls down. Usually, it's a mixture of two or three strategies.

I only met Mr Bylowe once, and his offer gave me a record low profit of about 450 gold. I suspect that his appearance is a signal: "You did something wrong, try again". It could be spending too much or too little, or selling too many clutter items without adequate replacement. That's why many people are asking to bring back buyer likes and dislikes. Everyone hates "invisible checklists", especially if they are different in each property.

I usually accept any offer, no matter how low, but if you would rather pay a fine that's fine too (I wonder if the pun was intended here? Haven't decided yet).

[Kathykins]

He only shows up if you made a boo-boo. Like, I forgot a bathroom once, and that made him appear instead of my usual 3 buyers. A residential house without a bathroom (or kitchen, or bedroom) is not a proper house, so he bids you what he thinks its worth. He's not scamming you, he's telling you (like Tatiana said) go back and try again.

I usually sell all clutter. Why would anyone buy a house with someone's personal belongings in it? I also don't put any clutter back in the house. I would think the buyer have their own personal stuff to fill it with.

[tatiana]

[quote
I usually sell all clutter. Why would anyone buy a house with someone's personal belongings in it? I also don't put any clutter back in the house. I would think the buyer have their own personal stuff to fill it with. [/quote]

Depends on the clutter. If it's scattered about, it's obviously for sale. If it's neatly arranged on the shelves or stacked in a sensible pile (is there such a thing?), it might actually be increasing the price of the property. If you have ever flipped the Sunny Bungalow, you may remember the hobby room with the aeroplanes and pc monitors. Which contrasts with the doodle disaster in the little girl's room :)

In that sense, the wrecks that need every inch renovated are actually easier than the homes with a lot of new-looking furniture - no need to decide what to keep.

[Kathykins]

Oh yeah, I actually leave that room alone, planes and all :) There's plenty of other stuff to take care of in that house! Like the keyboard/mouse, that always need saving from a dip in the kitchen sink XD

I meant especially toothbrushes and toilet paper in the bathrooms (I would NOT like to keep items that are THAT personal!), stray books and 152 vases/figurines randomly placed. I try to flip each house as if its being styled by a realtor (is that the right word...?) Everything nice, neat and tidy. Although my own home doesn't reflect it, I'm no fan of clutter in games :)

[stubaz]

Well, I definitely didn't make any "Boo Boos" The house in question was the mansion and it didn't involve any changes to the rooms, It simply needed cleaning and as yet found no reason for making mistakes. The house finally sold along with $3.6 million dollars worth of other houses. including my 5 story mega apartment block.

Please note. Due to constant crashes most likely caused by excessive furniture which over taxed the system. The complex sold with 5 apartments out of Nine were completely bare. So I think perhaps the "Boo Boo" theory has gone out the window. For some reason I wasn't charged the $5,000 in fines. Perhaps that was a scare tactic to force the gullible to sell.

Obviously something sorted itself out because I can now dictate exactly when I sell houses. Perhaps it's due to an unknown bug fix. Has anyone else suddenly had their auctions start again? Now I can sell off everything I've renovated and buy plenty of different houses.

My latest buy has morphed from a one bedroom/ one bathroom home to a 3 bedroom and 1.5 bathrooms, a sun deck and three large verandahs, all in story mode.

[tatiana]

The house that made me meet Mr Bylowe was the Charity Mansion. I have re-painted, relaid the flooring, sold much of the clutter, made the rooms exactly how I wanted them, and was shocked by the record-low offer.

I've attempted the same house again, immediately after. Kept most of the clutter, only removing what was getting in the way, only re-painted the rooms where the owners couldn't decide on the wall colour, and only sold the furniture that wasn't in keeping with the rest. I also changed the weird storage/laundry into a cinema room, and moved the laundry into an empty closet. Result? 3 bidders and a profit of 195K, despite probably spending less than the first time around!

The moral of the story: Although Mr Bylowe is a signal that you made a boo-boo, it isn't always obvious what the boo-boo actually is.

Although maybe it was that storage/laundry. If HF2 is similar to HF1, there are some rooms that have Maximum room sizes. If the laundry in the original house didn't count because it was too large, it must have counted as an empty room. So when I renovated the house a second time, I must have effectively added two rooms to it.

[Kathykins]

That complex sounds massive, Stubaz. I don't think it matters that some apartments were bare/empty, as long as the furnished ones had the required rooms. I believe the ones that are absolutely needed are kitchen, bedroom and bath. Rest is optional.

I've not had much problem with selling houses. Met Mr Bylowe twice, and 4-5 houses turned out not being sold at all after ended auction. Had to go in and sell them again.

[stubaz]

No, an entire floor the biggest I could fit on the block had nothing but a corridor (painted) and three divisions which were supposed to have all the rooms you mentioned, hang on. except one where the rooftop swimming pool took up a portion of one of the bare apartments.

You've got no idea what a brainteaser that build was. Access to each floor and then access to each apartment, then the layouts for each apartment. Did you know you can plant trees on rooftops?

Every day I come up with better ideas for access which don't waste as much space. There's a lot of dead real estate with a large complex. I've learned why architects get paid so much for designing 50 or more story towers. Sadly 5 stories is the maximum height on HF2. I tried to pop a flag on the kiddy's play house on the sunroof and it simply refused. I made it shorter and bingo, that was max height. Not long after that the game started crashing. Actually it sold almost immediately and not to Mr. Bylowe. I don't think I'll be building another. Although I may try one on a smaller block.

My 3 story plus a sunroof went without a hitch. A house on the ground floor plus twin garages with twin bathrooms. Men's fishing club with bar 1st floor, Disco 2nd floor and rooftop play area with bar, kiddies play area, Stage for 6 piece band and sunbathing area. It was a lot of fun and took up a few 16 hour days. I just need to dream up something new. If we had more packaged and tinned food plus bottles of water I'd give a prepper's basement conversion a try. But only in Sandbox mode. We can't dig in Story mode and none of the basements have a suitable size.

[SassyJo]

Originally posted by Kathykins:

I try to flip each house as if its being styled by a realtor (is that the right word...?)

The actual term is "home staging." I have a friend who stages homes for a living: she and her team go in and make the place look neatly lived in. They bring in furniture, some decor items, etc. to enhance the appearance over what it would look like with empty rooms. Kind of like how IKEA stages rooms and full compact apartments/living spaces as opposed to just having the pieces sitting out separately in displays.

It definitely helps sell houses in real life, and that's what we're doing in House Flipper as well. :)

[SassyJo]

Originally posted by tatiana:

The house that made me meet Mr Bylowe was the Charity Mansion. I have re-painted, relaid the flooring, sold much of the clutter, made the rooms exactly how I wanted them, and was shocked by the record-low offer.

I've attempted the same house again, immediately after. Kept most of the clutter, only removing what was getting in the way, only re-painted the rooms where the owners couldn't decide on the wall colour, and only sold the furniture that wasn't in keeping with the rest. I also changed the weird storage/laundry into a cinema room, and moved the laundry into an empty closet. Result? 3 bidders and a profit of 195K, despite probably spending less than the first time around!

The moral of the story: Although Mr Bylowe is a signal that you made a boo-boo, it isn't always obvious what the boo-boo actually is.

Although maybe it was that storage/laundry. If HF2 is similar to HF1, there are some rooms that have Maximum room sizes. If the laundry in the original house didn't count because it was too large, it must have counted as an empty room. So when I renovated the house a second time, I must have effectively added two rooms to it.

This is a mystery to me. Why would the devs give us such a hard time trying to figure out what buyers want? I do appreciate that we don't have buyers breathing down our necks every second we're trying to renovate (so glad we're able to turn that off in HF1!), but not having *any* guidelines is unnecessarily challenging. I personally don't want to work on a house for many hours only to find Mr Bylowe is my only buyer because I didn't "guess" what other buyers wanted.

I don't like guessing games. And I don't play House Flipper to "guess" what room requirements are or what buyers want. We need some kind of guideline like we had in HF1. (Devs, I hope you're reading this thread.)