Greenville County topped all Counties in South Carolina with House Flips

Article courtesy of the Charleston Regional Business Journal:

Last year, 3,108 single-family homes were flipped in South Carolina, encompassing 5% of all home sales during 2015, according to a report from real estate data company RealtyTrac.

Home flipping — defined as property that is purchased and then resold within a 12-month period — increased by 4% across the Palmetto State since 2014, RealtyTrac said.

The median purchase price of S.C. homes was $85,000, while the flipped price was $130,000, meaning flippers earned an average gross profit of $45,000, the report said.

Across the United States, nearly 180,000 homes were flipped last year, accounting for 5.5% of all sales, according to RealtyTrac.

“As confidence in the housing recovery spreads, more real estate investors and would-be real estate investors are hopping on the home-flipping bandwagon,” Daren Blomquist, senior vice president at RealtyTrac, said in the report. “Not only is the share of home flips on the rise again, but we also see the flipping trend trickling down to smaller investors who are completing fewer flips per year. The total number of investors who completed at least one flip in 2015 was at the highest level since 2008, and the number of flips per investor was at the lowest level since 2008.”

The average gross profit for home flipping was $55,000 nationwide, the largest amount since 2005, the report said.

“More inexperienced home flippers with a smaller financial cushion could be a sign of an over-speculative market, but the data indicates that flippers in 2015 continued to operate within relatively conservative margins,” Blomquist said in the report. “Homes flipped in 2015 were on average purchased at a 26% discount below estimated market value and resold by the flipper at a 5% premium above estimated market value.”

Home flipping data for select S.C. counties

County Aiken Anderson Beaufort Berkeley Charleston Dorchester Florence Georgetown Greenville Horry Lexington Richland Spartanburg York

Home flips 2015 120 121 206 150 338 157 54 11 463 248 184 252 212 198

% of total sales 5.3% 6.1% 4.4% 5.6% 4.7% 6.1% 4.2% 2.5% 5.8% 4.9% 5.1% 5.4% 5.8% 4.2%

Year-over-year % change 46% 20% -1% 2% 7% 17% -24% -47% 17% -18% 11% 3% -2% 31%

Home flipping gross profit 2015 $41,400 $36,800 $36,000 $46,309 $82,000 $39,000 $39,379 $65,000 $51,500 $27,600 $38,200 $50,950 $40,000 $42,250

Source: RealtyTrac