Curbed's Jeff Andrews reports that as home prices are beginning to hit a wall in markets across the country—particularly on the West Coast—home flipping has started to slow down, according to numerous pieces of data from ATTOM Data Solutions, a real estate data tracking company.
The volume of home flips year-over-year were down by 18% across the country in August, marking the third time in the last six months home flipping has dropped by double-digit percentages year-over-year. In California, it was down 22% in August, the fifth time in the last six months there’s been a double-digit percentage drop in the Golden State.
What’s causing this drop? Home prices have been steadily rising since the housing market bottomed out after the financial crisis in 2008, but various signs in housing data over recent months point to home prices having finally risen beyond people’s capacity to pay.
This is evident in supply of homes for sale spiking across the country. This trend has been most prominent in West Coast markets, which have been among the hottest in the country over the last five years. In those same markets, home sales have been falling, and the pace at which home prices are rising has started to slow down.
All this suggests that despite strong demand and good economic fundamentals, home prices are too high with properties lingering on the market longer. If this continues, price drops could be next.
