Why NJ has become a hot spot for flipping houses
Flipped homes represented more than 6 percent of all New Jersey home sales in 2017.
More than 7,500 one-family properties that exchanged hands last year already had a sale on record in the previous 12 months, according to state-by-state analysis from real-estate tracker ATTOM Data Solutions.
FLIPS BY COUNTY
- Atlantic — 388 flips, 5 percent of total sales
- Bergen — 556, 7.6 percent
- Burlington — 581, 95 percent
- Camden — 805, 3.6 percent
- Cape May — 150, 6.6 percent
- Cumberland — 119, 6.1 percent
- Essex — 535, 7.2 percent
- Gloucester — 309, 2.8 percent
- Hunterdon — 56, 7.2 percent
- Hudson — 394, 5.9 percent
- Mercer — 295, 4.7 percent
- Middlesex — 244, 5.1 percent
- Monmouth — 573, 4 percent
- Morris — 297, 7.6 percent
- Ocean — 1,040, 3.2 percent
- Passaic — 101, 6 percent
- Salem — 60, 4.3 percent
- Somerset — 176, 6.2 percent
- Sussex — 204, 8.5 percent
- Union — 592, 3.8 percent
- Warren — 68, 1.3 percent
New Jersey's flip rate of 6.2 percent ranked 10th among the states, according to ATTOM's report. At 27.6 percent, the Garden State experienced the second-highest rate change from 2016. Nationally, the rate jumped less than 2 percent.
Compared to five years ago, the state's flip rate doubled.
"New Jersey has become very attractive for real-estate investors recently — maybe not for good reasons," Daren Blomquist, senior vice president, told New Jersey 101.5.
New Jersey posted the highest foreclosure rate in the country in 2017. The state hit an 11-year high for the number of homes repossessed by lenders — when the foreclosed homes actually hit the market.
"The foreclosures often represent great fodder for home flippers because they can be bought at a discount and then turned around," Blomquist said.
And it appears flippers are doing quite well with their buy-sell ventures. They saw an average gross flipping profit of $107,000 in 2017 — an 82 percent return, based on the original purchase price.
Blomquist said a surge in home flipping nationally is built on a more fundamentally sound foundation than the "flipping frenzy" witnessed a little more than a decade ago.
“Flippers are behaving more rationally, as evidenced by average gross flipping returns of 50 percent over the last three years compared to average gross flipping returns of just 31 percent between 2004 and 2006 — the last time we saw more than 200,000 home flips in consecutive year," he said.
The 207,088 single-family homes and condos flipped nationwide in 2017 represented 5.9 percent of sales.
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Contact reporter Dino Flammia at dino.flammia@townsquaremedia.com.