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IRVINE, CA-The incidence of US home flipping increased 16% in 2013, and average gross profit on flips rose to more than $62,000, according to RealtyTrac. A total of 156,862 single-family homes were flipped last year—defined as a home being purchased and subsequently sold again within six months—up 116% from 2011.

Homes flipped in 2013 accounted for 4.6% of all US single-family home sales during the year, up from 4.2% in 2012 and up from 2.6% in 2011, RealtyTrac reports. Flips accounted for 3.8% of all sales in the fourth quarter, down slightly from 3.9% of all sales in the third quarter and down from 7.2% of all sales in the fourth quarter of 2012—the highest percentage of sales represented by flips in a single quarter since RealtyTrac began tracking flipping data in the first quarter of 2011.

Also, the average gross profit for a home flip—the difference between the flipped price and the price the flipper purchased the property for—was $58,081 for all US homes flipped in 2013, up from an average gross profit of $45,759 in 2012. The average gross profit for homes flipped in the fourth quarter was $62,761, up from $52,746 in the fourth quarter of 2012.

In addition the average time to complete a flip nationwide was 84 days in 2013, down from 86 days in 2012 and down from 100 days in 2011.

“Strong home-price appreciation in many markets boosted profits for flippers in 2013 despite a shrinking inventory of lower-priced foreclosure homes to purchase,” says Daren Blomquist, VP of RealtyTrac. “For the year, 21% of all properties flipped were purchased out of foreclosure, but that is down from 27% in 2012 and 32% in 2011. Meanwhile, flipped homes were still purchased at an average discount of 13% below market value in 2013, the same average discount as 2012, indicating that investors are finding discounted buying opportunities outside of the public foreclosure process—particularly in those markets with the biggest increases in flipping for the year.”

As GlobeSt.com reported in October 2013, home flipping is not a practice one should enter into blindly. In fact, two of the most successful home flippers—Doug Clark of Spike TV's “Flip Men” and Scott Yancey of A&E's “Flipping Vegas”—found mentors in the real estate industry and learned all they could from them before buying their first home to flip, they revealed during a RealtyTrac-sponsored webinar moderated by Blomquist titled “Learn Before You Leap: Lessons from Reality TV Flippers.”

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