Painting: Is it worth it? Some numbers for you.

[Iced Tea Blizzard]

I bought the $280,000 house. Cleaned everything, mounted the missing appliances, sold the furniture, auctioned it ...
Time: 9 minutes
Renovation Cost: $619
Furniture Sold: $2082
House Sale Price $286,400
Profit: $8,800

I ALT-F4'd out (to avoid the refusal fee). Went back, painted every room in the house (13 rooms, 1262 segments, 13 cans of paint).

Time: 42 minutes
Renovation Cost: $619 (Paint isn't counted in this, apparently)
Furniture Sold: $1,797 (Nothing different was sold other than paint cans. How did this go down?)
House Sale Price: $289,200 ($2,800 higher)
Profit: $11,300

So 33 minutes of work was worth about $3,000. Just a smidgen over 1% of the amount the house originally sold for. I took notes on a few other runs, as well. In another test I did on a $50,000 house, also for 1,200 paint strokes, it came out to the same $3000 bump in profit. So it seems to be a flat rate based on the walls painted (not on paint value, not on per-room completion percentage, not on two-tone or three-tone paint jobs). Whether or not painting is worth your time depends on how much you need that $3000. Although I still have to do it sometimes if there's a phantom plaster spot that I can't find, and the only way to spot it is that you can't paint over it. The flooring and wall paneling has shown similar results.

I really hope they go back and look at their cost and price formulas and tweak them a bit. It's really disappointing when the most efficient way to play the game is simply cleaning the house, tossing up some radiators, then selling it. I mean, isn't that kind of a waste of all the awesome things you can do to these houses? But the more you decorate, the lower your profit margin and your dollar-per-hour goes MUCH lower. These formulas need some multipliers based on the house cost and mouse clicks/time spent in the house

[James Langille]

Dude, I love you

[tatiana]

I believe there Are some multipliers based on the cost of the house, as well as the number of rooms added. There also seem to be some based on the cost of furniture/fittings used. I agree that there should be some based on the number of jobs done.

As for paint not being worth it, I disagree. House Flipper is not about profits made. Like every other video game, it's primarily about enjoyment. And like some of them, it's about creativity. Also, the longer you spend on each house, the more value you get for your Real-Life money you've paid to buy the game and its expansions.

[Kiwi Bug]

So I'm not 100% sure on this, but I feel like there is some level of RNG to the house offers. I've bought a house, done absolutely nothing to it, then sold it for a profit. I've also done that and lost money on it.

Although you really reach a point in the game where the price doesn't even matter anyways and it's more just doing things to make a pretty house.

[ShylØ]

I honestly appreciate your work into making this! Very much thankful

[piranha]

Nice research! It's always good to know, and I agree that it might be worth the dev's while to tweak all this (though considering how little they have done in 4 years to fix more obvious gameplay issues I doubt it). I don't personally care whether painting is worth it because after a few weeks of playing I sit on a cool €2.5 million which I can never spend. I paint because I like painting; it relaxes me, and I enjoy the transformation. I could also have cheesed all my buyer achievements but I didn't because it was more fun to play for real than for "efficiency". I am not speedrunning HF.

I do appreciate the data because I am a data nerd and like to know how things work under the hood. I am currently doing fairly quick renos just to sell each house once so I get to freeplay and can more easily experiment.

[Lilykatze]

I did some kind of test like that with the first office :). In there, it's not the 3000,- "flatrate", it was just 184,- (in €, not $). It was a profit gain of 0,75 % compared to selling without painted walls. Removing trash, cleaning and installing radiators all added around between 3 and 5 % profit each. Perhaps you might want to calculate and compare percentages instead of sums as well ;)?

And yes, although I totally get that this game is about more than optimizing profits, it's still SOME part of it and some kind of gratification for the work (and love and time and passion ;)) you put into a house. And yes, I know how nerdy it is to do stuff like that :D!

[wolfman77_24]

i'm trying to figure this all out myself. I myself have taken a house pretty much cleaned it up, fixed all holes in the walls, painted with basic white, fixed all fixtures got rid of trashy broken mirrors, replaced ratty furniture and made a full working bathroom, kitchen, living room with tv and all, lights and switches in every room, cleaned yard and mowed the grass, and did the basic making the floors all nice and have made $70k more profit then i did on a house I spent more time and money to fully customize. I made a beautiful marble bathroom, with custom workshop furniture throughout the house, plenty of painting and such on the walls, full and complete kitchen with island and cabinets on every wall possible. I put electronic microwave coffee pots, tvs, computers, entertainment center, tools in the garage, custom flooring on top of in game floors, all painted walls with workshop wall sliders, all new doors everywhere, everything high end, pool out in the yard with kids toys solar lights, plants and shrubs around the house, mailbox, and a flagpole in the yard and got a $7k profit. I bought it said house for $58k and sold for $65k. could not even negotiate a $10k profit. i seen so many people make amazing houses that you could hardly recognize what it was before and it sold for a nice profit. I was highly disappointed and frustrated.

[tatiana]

Originally posted by wolfman77_24:

i'm trying to figure this all out myself. I myself have taken a house pretty much cleaned it up, fixed all holes in the walls, painted with basic white, fixed all fixtures got rid of trashy broken mirrors, replaced ratty furniture and made a full working bathroom, kitchen, living room with tv and all, lights and switches in every room, cleaned yard and mowed the grass, and did the basic making the floors all nice and have made $70k more profit then i did on a house I spent more time and money to fully customize. I made a beautiful marble bathroom, with custom workshop furniture throughout the house, plenty of painting and such on the walls, full and complete kitchen with island and cabinets on every wall possible. I put electronic microwave coffee pots, tvs, computers, entertainment center, tools in the garage, custom flooring on top of in game floors, all painted walls with workshop wall sliders, all new doors everywhere, everything high end, pool out in the yard with kids toys solar lights, plants and shrubs around the house, mailbox, and a flagpole in the yard and got a $7k profit. I bought it said house for $58k and sold for $65k. could not even negotiate a $10k profit. i seen so many people make amazing houses that you could hardly recognize what it was before and it sold for a nice profit. I was highly disappointed and frustrated.

It's also possible that properties are pre-programmed to sell for a certain amount. For instance, I have recently done a "no expense spared" renovation on one of the two big mansions in the Luxury DLC, even painting the external walls, and got a profit of over 100K. If I had tried to do the same thing to a smaller and/or cheaper house, I may not have been as successful.

So another way of looking at it would be asking yourself: "What price bracket is this house supposed to be in?" There seem to be about 4:

- Cheap: small rooms, awkward layouts, nothing beyond the usual "lounge, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, hallway", and sometimes not even that. Overspending on these is dangerous for your budget.

- Mid-range: comfortably-sized rooms. In addition to the basic rooms, these properties have one of the "middle-class comforts": garage and/or basement, store room, two or more bedrooms, second bathroom, downstairs room to be used as a bedroom/study/dining room. No need to use the cheapest furniture in those, but don't overspend either.

- Upper-middle-class: Two or more rooms from the mid-range list above. One of the bedrooms may have an en-suite bathroom or potential for one, and sometimes also a built-in wardrobe nook. As long as you don't use the most expensive furniture you'll be fine with those.

- Luxury: Same as upper-middle-class list. Large rooms, two or more en-suite bathrooms, two or more reception spaces. Plus one or more luxury features: closet, balcony/terrace, store room. Safe to spare no expense in these!

[wolfman77_24]

Originally posted by tatiana:

Originally posted by wolfman77_24:

i'm trying to figure this all out myself. I myself have taken a house pretty much cleaned it up, fixed all holes in the walls, painted with basic white, fixed all fixtures got rid of trashy broken mirrors, replaced ratty furniture and made a full working bathroom, kitchen, living room with tv and all, lights and switches in every room, cleaned yard and mowed the grass, and did the basic making the floors all nice and have made $70k more profit then i did on a house I spent more time and money to fully customize. I made a beautiful marble bathroom, with custom workshop furniture throughout the house, plenty of painting and such on the walls, full and complete kitchen with island and cabinets on every wall possible. I put electronic microwave coffee pots, tvs, computers, entertainment center, tools in the garage, custom flooring on top of in game floors, all painted walls with workshop wall sliders, all new doors everywhere, everything high end, pool out in the yard with kids toys solar lights, plants and shrubs around the house, mailbox, and a flagpole in the yard and got a $7k profit. I bought it said house for $58k and sold for $65k. could not even negotiate a $10k profit. i seen so many people make amazing houses that you could hardly recognize what it was before and it sold for a nice profit. I was highly disappointed and frustrated.

It's also possible that properties are pre-programmed to sell for a certain amount. For instance, I have recently done a "no expense spared" renovation on one of the two big mansions in the Luxury DLC, even painting the external walls, and got a profit of over 100K. If I had tried to do the same thing to a smaller and/or cheaper house, I may not have been as successful.

So another way of looking at it would be asking yourself: "What price bracket is this house supposed to be in?" There seem to be about 4:

- Cheap: small rooms, awkward layouts, nothing beyond the usual "lounge, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, hallway", and sometimes not even that. Overspending on these is dangerous for your budget.

- Mid-range: comfortably-sized rooms. In addition to the basic rooms, these properties have one of the "middle-class comforts": garage and/or basement, store room, two or more bedrooms, second bathroom, downstairs room to be used as a bedroom/study/dining room. No need to use the cheapest furniture in those, but don't overspend either.

- Upper-middle-class: Two or more rooms from the mid-range list above. One of the bedrooms may have an en-suite bathroom or potential for one, and sometimes also a built-in wardrobe nook. As long as you don't use the most expensive furniture you'll be fine with those.

- Luxury: Same as upper-middle-class list. Large rooms, two or more en-suite bathrooms, two or more reception spaces. Plus one or more luxury features: closet, balcony/terrace, store room. Safe to spare no expense in these!

You might be correct on this assumption. Its something I didn't think about. That house did have a bathroom, living room, kitchen, and a bedroom and 1 other room i forget what it was. I think I might have to try this with a bigger house.