A house flip unlike any other, the Epic Flip

Flipping is a very popular way of investing in real estate, in which a property is purchased on the secondary or primary market (usually for a good price), renovated to increase its value, and then sold for a profit. Usually, flipping comes down to buying full ownership of the property. Meanwhile, an idea for an alternative form of house flip which departs from the standard procedure has appeared on the Polish real estate market, named an Epic Flip by the originator.
In the Epic Flip, 20,000 shares were offered in apartment No. 504 on ul. Zlota 44 in Warsaw. The apartment is located on the 50th floor of a high-rise building, and has an area of 485.30 sqm. The share in the apartment can be purchased for: 777 units of the cryptocurrency $bigSB, PLN 5,000, or by receiving 504 NFT AIRdrop. Polish law does not provide for a limit on the number of shares in a property, and therefore there is also no limit on the number of co-owners or any restrictions concerning disposal of these shares. Nevertheless, certain restrictions apply to the acquisition of shares in the premises in this case, such as:
- the co-owners cannot all be in the premises at the same time – primarily for security reasons, so a quoad usum agreement, i.e. an agreement on division for use, will have to be concluded;
- due to the increase in the number of co-owners of the premises, there will also be greater usage of the common areas, and thus the cost of maintenance of the entire common area will be higher; this may mean increased maintenance fees for premises No. 504, which are already high, at PLN 20,000 per month;
- the amenities in the building at Zlota 44 include a swimming pool and wellness and fitness area. However, access to these common areas is subject to the rules of the housing community, so in practice, the shareholders of apartment No. 504 may have limited access to these amenities.
Meanwhile, the Epic Flip encountered opposition from the housing community, which, in order to block the sale of shares in apartment No. 504, brought a court action for the forced sale of the apartment and obtained an injunction to secure its claim, prohibiting the sale and encumbrance of the apartment for the duration of the proceedings. A forced sale of an apartment is a means employed in the case of a disruptive landlord who, for example, causes disorder in the building or fails to pay rent. The injunction securing the claim for the forced sale of apartment No. 504 at ul. Zlota 44 is interesting however since it was granted in a situation where the owner only intended to sell 20,000 shares in his apartment, and thus even before he did so. Bringing an enforcement action for the sale of the premises, on the other hand, is the last resort when other, non-judicial methods of dealing with a troublesome landlord have failed. Analysing the statements made by the people involved in the case, however, one can get the impression that organizing the Epic Flip was only an additional argument in the claim, because, according to the housing community, the owner of apartment No. 504 had already breached the building discipline rules. The statement of reasons for the ruling granting the injunction decision has not yet been made known, so we do not know the specific reasoning behind it. The case continues.