Orlando Top Market for Property Flipping

With investors currently driving the national housing recovery, RealtyTrac expects property flipping to be a major practice even as home prices continue to rise.

That is why the Irvine, Calif.-based firm released a report revealing the top 25 markets where property flipping is most profitable based on the flipper’s gross profit—the difference between average original purchased price and the eventual flipped sales prices.

Property flipping is the process of buying, rehabbing and reselling for a profit usually within about 90 days. RealtyTrac’s list was created from more than 600 metropolitan areas analyzed in its database where flips of single family homes occurred in 2012. A flip was counted as any situation where a sale of home occurred within six months or less of the previous sale of the same home.

Orlando was listed as the top market for property flipping, where a flipper’s gross profit is 63%. The average purchase price in Orlando is $103,701, but a flipper would then resell the same housing unit for $168,677, RealtyTrac stated.

Four other Florida cities rounded out the top 10, including Tampa, ranked fourth with a 43% profit, Miami was sixth with a 37% profit, Lakeland was next on the list also at 37%, while Sarasota came in ninth with a 34% profit.

Another market strong for property flipping was Las Vegas. Here, the average purchase price to acquire a home is $133,198. But after renovations were conducted, a flipper could make back 53% on their investment by selling the same housing unit for $203,945.

Not surprisingly, Phoenix was third where flippers can earn a 44% profit, while Memphis, which was recently named by RealtyTrac as the best market to buy single-family rentals, rounded out the top five with a 42% gross profit for flippers.

Despite not having one city included in the top 10, California still accounted for 11 metropolitans on this list.