Tune in to HGTV on any given day, and you'll come across programs where smiling people transform eyesore properties into jaw-droppingly beautiful homes. Sometimes these magicians are professional real estate investors, sometimes they're just ordinary individuals — but they almost always resell the newly renovated property for a tidy profit. Welcome to the lucrative world of flipping houses.
According to real estate data firm ATTOM, nearly 68,000 U.S. homes were flipped in the first quarter of 2024 alone — that's one out of every 12 homes sold.
What's more, ATTOM data shows that the flippers typically earned a gross profit of more than 30% on each transaction. Of course, house flipping in real life is almost never as easy as it looks on TV. If you're interested in giving it a try, here's a guide to flipping houses for beginners.
What is house flipping? House flipping is when someone buys a property, holds on to it for a short time and then sells it for a higher price. The quick-turnaround resale is why it's called a "flip." So instead of buying a home to live in as a residence, you're buying it as an investment — in effect, speculating in it as you would a stock.
Sometimes, flipping houses means you buy a fixer-upper and renovate it to make it market-ready; other times, it means just holding the property until the market shifts and you can sell it for more than you paid for it. Either way, the goal is to buy low and sell high, earning a profit in a relatively short amoun.