Flooring

What it is

Flooring is the finish surface in every room. On a flip, the four main options are luxury vinyl plank (LVP), tile, hardwood, and carpet. Each has a price, a lifespan, and a use case.

LVP installed typically runs $3-4 per square foot. Tile is 2-3x that depending on size and pattern. Hardwood refinish on an existing floor is cheaper than new LVP if the subfloor is sound. New hardwood installation is the priciest option and rarely makes sense on a flip.

Why it matters

LVP is the answer on almost every B-class flip. Durable, waterproof, easy on the back to install, looks clean with generic shaker cabinets and white walls. Tenants can’t destroy it the way they destroy carpet, and buyers read it as a modern finish.

The key move: run LVP throughout with no transitions between rooms. Living room, hallway, bedrooms, kitchen — same plank, same color, same direction, front door to back door. The house reads as bigger the second you walk in. That’s one of the highest-ROI moves in the cosmetic playbook, part of the psychological appreciation stack alongside the hardware package and consistent paint. I ran LVP throughout on the 42K-bid property and it was the obvious call. The same thing I’ve done on probably every B-class flip.

That guy across the street in Colorado left the carpet in the bedrooms — just steam cleaned it probably — put in some budget floors elsewhere, wore flip-flops, and sold the house for $600K. Meanwhile I was building European-style cabinets across the street and losing $150K. The floors don’t have to be fancy. They have to be right for the neighborhood.

How it shows up

Tile lives in wet rooms: bathrooms, sometimes kitchens. That’s it. Don’t tile a living room unless you’re in a climate where tile is the cultural norm. Tap every installed tile after it sets — hollow sound means insufficient mortar and guaranteed cracking in year one.

Hardwood is a refinish story, not a new-install story. If the house has old hardwoods under the carpet, pull the carpet, sand, stain, poly, done. Cheaper than LVP and buyers love it. If there are no hardwoods, don’t install new ones on a flip. The price-per-square-foot almost never recovers on resale outside of A-class markets.

Carpet is the weak link. It wears fast, stains permanently, and signals cheap. If you must use it, install it last — after every other trade finishes. Carpet is Phase 5. Otherwise the HVAC guy, the paint crew, and the trim guys all walk muddy boots across it and you’re re-carpeting at your expense.

The flooring package on a mid-sized flip is not a big number if you don’t overthink it. LVP throughout, tile in the bathrooms. Buyers read it as a full renovation.

Related

big three, hardware package, property class, psychological appreciation, phases, cosmetic renovation