The profit nobody was ever going to pay
“Profit at this price” was the ask minus what you had invested: the profit if the house sold for exactly what you asked.
It never does. A buyer pays what the house is worth, capped a little over the ask. So the ask sets the sale price only when it is low enough to bite, and above that point it sets nothing at all.
The old label and the old sum agreed with each other, and both were wrong. That is the worst way to be wrong, because there is no internal inconsistency to notice — the screen was confidently reporting money nobody was ever going to pay.
On a house whose costs had crept past its value, it turned a real loss into a rounding error. Reported from the game as −0.7% on a house that was actually losing 6.7%.
It says “Likely profit” now, computed from what a buyer would actually pay, with a line underneath saying which of the two situations you are in.
The same investigation killed the price presets, which were worse than the bug. An offer is priced off the house, and your ask only ever caps it — so past a certain point every extra pound earns nothing and costs you viewings. The preset labelled “Push it” was already past that point. The game shipped a button whose entire function was to make you poorer, and it was the button that sounded most like ambition.
A number you cannot check is worse than no number. A recommendation you cannot check is worse still.