Best & Worst States to Flip a House
Flipping houses often sounds like easy money: Buy an older home, do a little fixing up, make it look pretty and sell it shortly thereafter. However, it’s not that easy — especially if you live in a state where house flipping just isn’t that profitable.
If you want to start flipping homes, give yourself the best chance of success by doing your research. The five best states for house flipping are Tennessee, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Louisiana and Colorado, according to a recent GOBankingRates study.
The study looked at the median list price, how long it took to flip a house, the average gross profit and the average return on investment of each flip. Lower prices boosted a state’s ranking because you don’t have to tie up as much capital. States with faster average flip times also ranked higher because the sooner you can get your money out of one flip, the sooner you can reinvest it in another home. Of course, the higher the returns, the better the states fared in the rankings.
The best states for flipping houses are primarily in the East, with Colorado being the only state completely west of the Mississippi River to make the top 10 best states.
The best states also have much faster turnover times for their flips. Among the top 10 states, the average days to flip is 180. Among the bottom 10, flips take an average of 203 days. While 203 days might not sound like a lot of time, that’s over three weeks more per flip. Plus, if you’re borrowing the money to buy each home you flip, that’s 23 more days of interest you have to pay on potentially a few hundred thousand dollars.
In Tennessee, which took the top spot in the study, the average flip time is only 147 days. In Wyoming, which has the slowest turnover time, it’s 231 days — an 84-day difference. Mississippi, the worst state in the study, averages 220 days but fared the worst in the study because it had the smallest average gross profit and average gross ROI of any state.
Here are the 10 best states for house flipping:
| Rank | State | Average Listing Price | Days to Flip | Average Profit | Average ROI |
| 1 | Tennessee | $268,692 | 147 | $57,600 | 132.7% |
| 2 | Pennsylvania | $224,090 | 199 | $105,190 | 162.4% |
| 3 | New Jersey | $372,916 | 207 | $102,300 | 141.6% |
| 4 | Louisiana | $232,610 | 166 | $71,866 | 104.2% |
| 5 | Colorado | $538,477 | 176 | $74,300 | 155.6% |
| 6 | Maryland | $369,454 | 198 | $109,617 | 109.6% |
| 7 | Virginia | $341,015 | 184 | $91,783 | 99.3% |
| 8 | Florida | $406,803 | 151 | $59,917 | 83.0% |
| 9 | Illinois | $277,163 | 196 | $77,317 | 110.0% |
| 10 | Kentucky | $213,848 | 172 | $55,241 | 107.8% |
And here are the 10 worst states for house flipping:
| Rank | State | Average Listing Price | Days to Flip | Average Profit | Average ROI |
| 1 | Mississippi | $195,390 | 220 | $9,875 | 4.3% |
| 2 | Hawaii | $905,687 | 198 | $76,266 | 27.7% |
| 3 | Montana | $314,959 | 223 | $30,326 | 12.9% |
| 4 | Wyoming | $291,855 | 231 | $33,475 | 18.0% |
| 5 | South Dakota | $238,163 | 188 | $17,750 | 26.1% |
| 6 | Idaho | $349,000 | 182 | $26,606 | 14.6% |
| 7 | Utah | $440,946 | 194 | $49,295 | 27.9% |
| 8 | New Mexico | $254,798 | 203 | $43,863 | 26.6% |
| 9 | North Dakota | $226,863 | 208 | $54,934 | 39.6% |
| 10 | Missouri | $204,506 | 179 | $36,475 | 47.3% |
Methodology: GOBankingRates evaluated all 50 states using a combination of relevant metrics, including 1) median home listing price, sourced from Zillow; 2) average number of days to flip a house, 3) average gross profit on house flip; and 4) average gross return on investment on house flip, all sourced from ATTOM Data. The last three metrics were available on the metropolitan area level; thus, the average was taken of the largest metro markets in order to approximate the state level. If three metro areas weren’t available, two were used. Kansas, Maine and Vermont are excluded due to insufficient data.
Source: gobankingrates.com
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