http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/sNUVgM2_42s/sound-familiar-home-flipping-us-hits-11-year-high
In a disturbing echo of the runup to the housing crisis, a recent study has revealed that the practice of flipping homes in the US is back in vogue - with the number of houses flipped rising to its highest level in 11 years.
If that doesn't spook residential real-estate speculators, we're not sure what would. Hundreds of thousands of American homebuyers have apparently forgotten how, 11 years ago, a Mexican immigrant working as a strawberry picker in Bakersfield, California, making $14,000 per year, was lent every single penny he needed to purchase a $720,000 home. And as crazy as that might sound, stories such as that were alarmingly common during the period before the 2008 housing crash (though, of course, few, if any, alarm bells actually went off).
Now, data provided by ATTOM Data Solutions - which maintains the largest database of US home sales - showed the home flipping reached a new peak, with 207,088 single family homes and condos flipped in 2017, up 1% from the 204,167 homes flipped during 2016. Again, that's the highest rate since 2006. That's 5.9% of all single family home sales.
Meanwhile, a total of 138,410 entities (which includes both individuals, who typically buy and sell under the cover of an LLC, and institutions) flipped homes in 2017, up 4% from the 133,407 entities that flipped in 2016 to the highest level since 2007. That's a 10-year high.
However, an executive at ATTOM Data Solutions assured readers that home-flipping today is "built on a more fundamentally sound foundation than the flipping frenzy that we witnessed a little more than a decade ago.
Home flip lending volume up 27 percent to 10-year high
Realist - Everybody in America is soft, and hates conflict. The cure for this, both in politics and social life, is the same -- hardihood. Give them raw truth.
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