Michael Sasso | Tampa Tribune |
“It’s getting harder to find homes to flip for a profit in the Tampa Bay area as big rental home companies crowd out traditional flippers, according to new data from real estate and foreclosure marketplace RealtyTrac.
Irvine, Calif.-based RealtyTrac researches millions of real estate sales across the country and estimates how many are flipped, which it defines as a home that was purchased and resold within a six-month period. Overall, it appears flipping has slowed significantly over the past year.
In the fourth quarter of last year, flipped houses accounted for 4.9 percent of all single-family home sales in the region, RealtyTrac estimates. That’s down from the furious flipping days of fall 2012, when flips made up 9.9 percent of all single-family sales.
Daren Blomquist, a RealtyTrac vice president, said big hedge funds and private equity firms might be squeezing out smaller investors. In the past couple of years, giant investors such as Blackstone Group’s Invitation Homes bought up thousands of local homes, and instead of flipping them, they’re renting them.
To be sure, the big investment firms have slowed their purchasing of homes to rent out in recent months, but flippers still have fewer homes to buy and resell quickly, Blomquist said.
One Tampa-area investor, Barry Bass of Badger Investments, said he feels the increased competition for houses.
Three years ago, everyone was afraid to buy houses, so investors could pick them up cheaply. Nowadays, scores of people have jumped into the flipping game. Banks today want more money for the foreclosed houses they sell, but the prices investors can resell them at aren’t keeping up, he said.”