House Flipping Is Back, With All Its Opportunities And Risks
Tai Bixby, SIOR, CCIM
Director @ Real Estate Advisors | Commercial Real Estate
By Trent Gillies
5 February 20017
Flipping is back.
The trend of buying a fixer-upper, making some repairs and "flipping" to a new buyer quickly is making a return to real estate markets, years after the trend fell out of fashion with home buyers.
More than 6 percent of home sales last year were "flips", according to a new report from Trulia. The real estate data website defines a flip as the selling of a home at least twice within a year.
That's the highest number in a decade, before the real estate bubble burst and the financial crisis of 2008. So could the housing market flip out again?
"When you see flipping reach ten-year highs, economists like us start to worry a little bit." Trulia's Chief Economist Ralph McLaughlin told CNBC's "On the Money" recently.
"We think it's a little bit different this time ," McLaughlin added, "because we think more flips are actually value-added improvements that investors are making to the house, rather than speculative flips which is basically someone buying and sitting on a home waiting for the prices to rise."
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