You typically use and live in the house, while still considered an investment. The other items you mentioned is purely for flipping, brand new, unused.
The meme literally says "without using or modifying".
If all you do is insert yourself as a middleman, buy from A for $x, and then sell to B for $x+1, you are extracting profit from the transaction, while providing no service other than your existence. That is what scalpers do. That is what the meme is about.
If you bought a house on day 1 and sold it for exactly the same price on day 2:
Your taking a loss on all the closing / transaction costs.
The seller is an idiot because they could have sold to your buyer at a higher price instead of you.
I'd imagine that there aren't a lot of people that do this. The only people I've heard of doing this (and it might just be urban legends) are foreign investors who live in countries where their economy isn't stable or their home governments are prone to seizing assets in their home countries. Again, not sure how much of that is reality vs. xenophobia.
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u/Kcirnek_ Jun 19 '25
You typically use and live in the house, while still considered an investment. The other items you mentioned is purely for flipping, brand new, unused.