Completed Home Flipping at a Six-Year High

ATTOM Data Solutions, the new parent company of RealtyTrac, released its Q2 2016 U.S. Home Flipping Report, which shows a total of 51,434 U.S. single family home and condo sales were completed flips in the second quarter of 2016. This is a 14 percent increase from the previous quarter and up 3 percent from a year ago to the highest number of home flips since Q2 2010 making this a six-year high.

The report states that homes flipped in Q2 2016 represented 5.5 percent of all single family and condo sales during the quarter. This was a decrease from 6.7 percent of all sales in the first quarter but the report notes that it is up from 5.4 percent of all sales in Q2 2015.

Additionally, the report states that a total of 39,775 investors, including both individuals and institutions, completed at least one home flip in Q2 2016. This was the highest number of home flippers since Q2 2007 making it a nine-year high.

“Home flipping is becoming more accessible for smaller operators thanks to an increasingly competitive lending environment with more loan options for real estate investors, who are also benefitting from the historically low mortgage interest rates,” said Daren Blomquist, senior vice president at ATTOM Data Solutions. “That favorable lending environment for flippers has helped to fuel the recent flipping frenzy we’ve seen over the past five quarters.

Of the 51,434 homes flipped in the second quarter, the report states that 68.3 percent were purchased with cash by the flipper. This percentage is a 71.1 percent decline from the previous quarter as well as down from 69.6 percent in Q2 2015 to the lowest level since Q3 2008. This is a nearly eight-year low.

“We’re starting to see home flipping hit some milestones not seen since prior to the financial crisis, which is somewhat concerning, but there are a couple of important differences in the home flipping of 2016 compared to 2006 when home flipping peaked during the last housing boom,” Blomquist continued. “First, home flippers are realizing a much bigger gross ROI in 2016, averaging 49 percent in the first two quarters compared to an average gross ROI of just 27 percent in 2006. Second, while an increasing number of flippers are financing their purchases, more than two-thirds are still using cash to purchase compared to about one-third using cash to purchase back in 2006.”

In addition, the report says that homes flipped in Q2 2016 sold on average for $189,000. This is $62,000 more than the average purchase price of $127,000, according to ATTOM data. Likewise, the report notes that $62,000 average gross profit was up from an average $59,250 gross flipping profit in the previous quarter and up from an average $57,900 gross flipping profit in Q2 2015. This is the highest average gross flipping profit since Q1 2000, the earliest quarter tracked in the report.