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Flipping Houses Becoming Profitable Again

By Cornelius Nunev


Remember the flipping houses boom before the economic downturn hit, where a lot of people turned over run-down properties and sold them? It's making a bit of a return recently, as investors were able to grab a lot of properties for dirt cheap and now are beginning to see a bit of a payoff.

Making money on a house

Prior to the housing market imploding and a recession starting, lots of people turned to flipping homes. Certainly it was a great idea when people actually were buying properties and there was a profit to be made but since then, it hasn't been as lucrative.

Flipping a house is one of the few ways a person can make cash on properties. The average house doesn't make much, as a lot of people do not contain the costs of maintenance, repairs or improvements, insurance, taxes or closing costs, as much as just comparing the purchase and sales prices. If one can get a house bought and flipped for under they sell it for, the potential is there.

However, the formerly-popular house flipping industry, according to the Washington Post. RealtyTrac, the real estate site, reports a 25 percent increase in the first half of this year over the same period last year.

Leading flipping area

Oddly enough, the top area for flipping properties in RealtyTrac's data is Phoenix, Ariz., one of the hardest-hit states in the real estate slump, with almost 10,000 flips. Arizona, along with Nevada, Florida and California were particularly affected, as real estate values were drastically inflated in those areas.

There have been over 100,000 houses flipped in the nation total. The Chicago Tribune pointed out that Chicago is just one of the cities experiencing a rise in flipping. It saw a 30 percent increase with 1,067 houses flipped this year alone. Areas where there were a lot of foreclosure sin the recession, such as Atlanta, Miami, Las Vegas and LA, saw huge flipping numbers as well.

Getting the right skill

It is not all that simple to flip houses in spite of what you may think. In fact, it can be really challenging to come up with the cash to buy the house. On top of that, the properties are usually uninhabitable when you buy them and need a ton of work before they could be sold to somebody, according to CNBC. It is costly, so make sure you research the house to make sure it is secure first.

According to MSN, getting a flappable property with no cash down isn't likely to happen and surely do not expect realtors to have properties that fit the bill. Auctions aren't always going to have many either.

The net profit on flipping houses is not very inexpensive either, according to the Washington Post. The average profit per flip on RealtyTrac was $29,432, which seems good except that is only the main difference between purchase price and sale price. That does not account for any other flipping costs, which are ridiculously high. It is probably not worth it unless you can do all the work in flipping the house on your own or can somehow get really cheap labor.




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