Popular before the housing bust, house flipping—where a property is bought, renovated and sold quickly to make a profit—is seeing a comeback nationwide. Rising prices and tight inventory are driving more investors to the upper end of the market, writes the Wall Street Journal. Flips of homes priced at $1 million or more shot up 35% in 2012 compared with 2011, according to market researcher RealtyTrac.
“Investors have actually run out of inventory on the low end of flips, and now they’re moving to the higher end,” says Daren Blomquist, vice president of RealtyTrac. The million-dollar homes are “the untapped market.”