In real-estate listings, these changes are frequently called updates, which is notably not the same thing as an upgrade. If you look closely, you can see where you’re getting fooled: Is open shelving really a chic, minimalist alternative to bulky upper cabinets, or is it just much less expensive than replacing the old, outdated uppers that the demo guys ripped out? Tiny mosaic glass tiles look delicate, but they come in sheets that make quick work of a bathroom and can help disguise a multitude of installation sins. Laminate flooring is much cheaper than hardwood, and considerably less repairable and adaptable; unlike real wood, luxury vinyl can’t be refinished in another color when trends change. Switching out a regular door for a barn door costs as little as $200, as long as you don’t mind sacrificing privacy and quite a bit of space where you won’t be able to hang anything on the walls. If you live in a rental, landlords don’t want you doing that anyway. If you live in a flip, once the paperwork is signed, that’s your problem to discover.

In theory, the things that make up the interior of your home should be either beautiful or useful; if you’re lucky, they’ll be both. And surely some people do lose their mind for gray laminate or subway tile or barn doors, and not just because there’s no accounting for taste. Once a particular design element becomes a shorthand for newness and freshness and successful domesticity, people come around to it precisely because they want their home to reflect those qualities. But that’s a different phenomenon than appreciation for the thing itself—for how nice it is to look at, or how much more functional it makes a space. In the hands of flippers and landlords, these choices are generally made not by people who want to fill the world with the best, safest, most comfortable homes possible but by those looking for a return on the bets they’ve made on the place where you’ll start your family or play with your future grandkids. They’ve chosen these things just as much for what they aren’t as for what they are—inoffensive, inexpensive, innocuous. These houses aren’t necessarily designed to be lived in. They’re designed to go into contract.