Then, nothing happened. Reilly wouldn't start fixing the house up because Robbins' company owned the redemption rights. Finally, records show, 171 days after the auction, Robbins' company exercised those rights, taking the house away from Care. (Had Reilly invested, say, $25,000 in remodeling the house, Robbins could have bought the house for the auction price and paid nothing for the improvements Reilly had made.) Flippers would generally prefer not to exercise redemption rights because doing so restores any pre-existing liens, such as property taxes or second mortgages, that otherwise get wiped out in a foreclosure auction.