S. Florida among Top Markets for Home Flips in 2016

According to recent news from Trulia, South Florida’s major cities ranked high for their percentage of homes that were considered “flipped” in 2016. Fort Lauderdale was the top South Florida city on the list coming in with 8% of its home sales considered “flipped” last year ranking number 7 out of 100. Other South Florida cities included West Palm Beach coming in at number 15 with 7.3% and Miami at number 22 with 6.9%.

The winning combination of a stronger labor market and rising home prices have assisted home flipping numbers to reach an all time high for the past decade. Roughly 6.1% of all homes in 2016 were flips which is defined as the purchase of property at market rate and the subsequent sale of the same property at a higher price resulting from improvements or short-term gains. This figure is up nearly by a percentage point from 2015.

The breakdown includes increases in Fort Lauderdale by 2.2%, West Palm Beach by 1.4% and Miami by 1.3 % from 2015.

Last year showed the third highest level of flipping activity since 2000 and the increase from 2015 to 2016 was the second largest since 2000.

Flipping activity in 2016 seems to be a result of nationwide increases in home prices. Trulia’s research indicates that in nearly all of the 100 cities across the United States home prices have shown increases. In 44 of these markets there were gains of at least 5% over the 12 month period that was studied. Overall Trulia reports that the 2016 flipping ration was the highest on record since 2006 when many markets peaked. At that point 7.3% of all home sales had qualified as flips.