By Sanette Tanaka | The Wall Street Journal
Jordan Ghrist bought a four-bedroom in Washington, D.C., for cash, gutted it and resold it after three days on the market at an estimated 28% profit.
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. 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.”
Some new players are behind the uptick: foreign buyers, institutional investors and professionals who have made money in other industries.
