The art of buying and selling homes is paying off for Angelenos, who have raked in more than $100,000 per flip over the last four years.
A study by LendingHome shows that from 2014-2017 flippers sold 39,042 homes in Los Angeles County, where more than a quarter of all flips happen in California, CurbedLA reported.
Between January and October of this year, flippers sold 8,023 homes in Los Angeles County, according to LendingHome. The firm’s most-recent data shows that house flips represented 6.7 percent of total sales in the second quarter of this year.
The median sale price in those transactions was $140,000 more than the last price paid.
That statistic doesn’t take into account repairs and renovations before selling, however, so the true profit is likely less. A separate Zillow study from June found that sellers in Los Angeles and Orange counties collected median profits of $137,000 in 2017.
Overall, more than 10,570 homes were flipped in L.A. last year, down 10 percent from 11,692 in 2016, but up from 8,886 in 2015.
Flipping has become a favorite hobby of L.A.-based celebrities like Kylie Jenner and Ellen DeGeneres.
Unlike flippers in other parts of the country – who typically sell within a year of buying – homeowners in Southern California typically owned their homes for more than nine years before selling for a profit, according to the report.
Nationally, flipping represented 5.7 percent of total home sales in 2017 – the highest level since 2013, according to a separate report by Attom Data Solutions. [Urbanize] – Gregory Cornfield