Tampa Bay 3rd in Nation for House Flipping

TAMPA, FL — Not everyone in Tampa Bay’s real estate market is on the hunt for a dream home. An estimated 10 percent are out to find, buy and then sell someone else’s dream home at a profit, according to RealtyTrac.

In a report issued Thursday, RealtyTrac named Tampa Bay number three in the nation for the number of homes flipped in the second quarter of 2016. Overall, flipping is on the rise across the country with numbers for the quarter representing a six-year high.

For the purposes of creating its report, RealtyTrac defined home flips as properties sold for a second time with a 12-month period. The data was drawn from deed information collected by ATTOM Data Solutions, covering more than 950 counties across the country. A total of 51,434 condo and single-family home flips were reported across the country, up 14 percent from last quarter and up over last year’s numbers by 3 percent.

“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,” Daren Blomquist, senior vice president at ATTOM Data Solutions, said in a statement. “That favorable lending environment for flippers has helped to fuel the recent flipping frenzy we’ve seen over the past five quarters."

The report zeroed in on markets with the highest home-flipping rates. Memphis, Tennessee, came in first place with a 11.1 percent rate, followed by Visalia-Porterville, California, at 10.1 percent. Tampa Bay only trailed slightly to earn third-place honors at 10 percent. Other Florida markets where flipping is a frenzy included Lakeland-Winter Haven at 9.5 percent; Deltona-Daytona Beach-Ormond Beach at 9.4 percent; and Miami at 8.6 percent. All of these markets had at least 90 homes flipped in the second quarter of 2016.

While Tampa Bay’s flipping rate is among the highest in the nation, sellers didn’t necessarily receive the biggest profits in the process. Among the 100 metropolitan statistical areas with at least 90 flips in the quarter, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, ranked number one for the highest gross return on investment at 133.3 percent. Allentown, Pennsylvania, came in second with a return of about 117.9 percent.

To check out the full report, visit RealtyTrac online.

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