ATTOM, a leading curator of land, property, and real estate data, today released its second-quarter 2023 U.S. Home Flipping Report showing that 84,350 single-family homes and condominiums in the United States were flipped in the second quarter. Those transactions represented 8 percent, or one of every 13 home sales, during the months running from April through June of 2023.
The latest portion was down from 9.9 percent of all home sales in the nation during the first quarter of 2023 and from 8.9 percent in the second quarter of last year. Despite the flipping rate remaining historically high, it dropped to nearly its lowest point since 2021.
However, the report also reveals that even as flipping activity decreased, investor profits and profit margins both showed more signs of recovering from a slump that had slashed them by more than half in just two years. Both increased for the second quarter in a row, with investment returns climbing at the fastest pace since 2020, and raw profits spiking more than at any point over the past decade.
The typical profit margin, while still far below peaks hit in 2021, rose almost five percentage points from the first to the second quarter of this year. Raw profits on typical flips, meanwhile, shot up 18 percent quarterly.
The home-flipping profit improvement came amid a rebound in the broader U.S. housing market, which saw the single-family median home price spike 10 percent during the Spring buying season, after falling from the middle of last year to the early part of 2023.
“Fortunes for investors who flip homes for quick profits are showing more signs of turning around after a long and unusual period when they went down while the rest of the market went up,” said Rob Barber, CEO for ATTOM. “However, the latest investment returns may not be substantial enough to cover the holding costs on typical deals. And it’s still too early to declare the profit downturn over, as much will depend on whether the second-quarter market…
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