Hampton Roads in TOP 15 Markets for house flipping
Real estate investors who flip houses in the Hampton Roads are are making a few bucks this year.
They saw an average gross profit of $26,565 or 13 percent, on an average purchase price of $206,765 in the first six months of the year, according to a report released this morning by RealtyTrac, an online researcher of foreclosures It is worth noting that RealtyTrac did not factor in how much was spent on the rehab.
As the Hampton Roads housing market has gradually improved over the past year, so has the potential for making a quick buck.
At least, so says research firm RealtyTrac, which ranked Hampton Roads as the ninth-most profitable U.S. market for buying and quickly selling homes during the first half of 2013.
Daytona Beach, Fla., topped the list with a profit margin of 82 percent. Omaha, Neb., came in second at 56 percent. Five other Florida metro areas and Pittsburgh finished above Hampton Roads.
The report also showed that flipping is cooling in Las Vegas, Phoenix and Southern California, places that previously had been hot spots.
Daren Blomquist, vice president of RealtyTrac, sees a wave moving across the country from west to east. The wave is the housing recovery, and it is driving trends such as flipping.
The report also broke down flipping by state. For the entire state of Virginia, flipping was up 135 percent. In Maryland, it was up 104 percent, and in D.C., it was unchanged.
Rising mortgage rates don’t appear to have a dampening effect on flipping, since most real estate investors pay cash or finance through a hard money lender. However, the rising rates are making it more challenging for the investors to sell their properties once they have renovated them.
Statewide, real estate investors made an average gross profit of $23,170 on an average purchase price of $326,333 in the first half of the year, according to the report.
By comparison, investors nationwide made an average gross profit of $18,391 on flipping houses, a 9 percent gross return. The average cost of the house for the investor was $200,942.
Top 15 Markets for Profitable Home Flipping
RealtyTrac, an online marketplace for real estate data, defines a flip as a home sale that happens within six months of the home’s previous sale. Gross profit is simply the difference between what the flipper paid and what the flipper later sold the property for. The profit figure doesn’t take into account any improvements the flipper might have made on the property, nor does it factor in the possibility that the flipper bought the house with a mortgage rather than cash (which could greatly increase the profit — though many investors pay for homes in full rather than use borrowed money).
“While flipping continues to be profitable in most markets, particularly those where the home price recovery is still nascent and a recent rebound in foreclosure activity allows investors to find distressed inventory at a discount, home flipping is tapering off in markets where fewer of those distressed bargains are available,” said Daren Blomquist, vice president at RealtyTrac. “Out of the 100 markets we analyzed for the report, 32 had declining flipping numbers, including perennial flipping hot spots like Las Vegas, Phoenix, Southern California and Atlanta. Still flipping was on the rise in more than two-thirds of the markets, including New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago and several Florida metros.”