Across the country last year, home flips dropped about 13% from 2019 to the lowest level since 2016. In 2020, 241,630 single-family homes and condos across the U.S. were purchased and resold, mostly by investors looking to make a profit.
“Last year was a banner year for the U.S. housing market, with the apparent exception of the home-flipping business, which saw its fortunes slide a bit more in 2020,” Attom Data’s Todd Teta said in a new report. “Home flippers did still make a nice profit on investments that generally take around six months to turn around — just not as much as they did in the previous few years.
“It’s too early to know if that small slide was a sign of weakness in the broader housing market or just a bump in the road,” he said. “We will know much more as we gauge other key market metrics in the coming months.”
On average, U.S. home flippers made $66,300 in gross profits from properties they sold, with an average return of just over 40%, Attom Data Solutions found.
Home flipping activity fell in more than 60% of major U.S. markets, including all 10 of the metro areas with the most home flips.
Attom Data counts flips as any property sale that was an arm’s-length transaction that occurred in the quarter where a previous arm’s-length transaction on the same property had occurred within the last 12 months.
