IE Business Daily Business news for the Inland Empire.
The practice of buying a home so it can be sold, rather than occupied by the owner or a renter, rose nationwide during the first quarter of 2015, an online newsletter that covers the housing industry has found.
Overall, the number of investment buyers who said they planned to “flip” the properties they’ve bought recently rose by 6.5 percent in the first quarter compared with the fourth quarter of 2014, according to Auction.com’s First Quarter 2015 Real Estate Investor Activity Report, which was released this week.
That practice, which some economists believe helped cause the housing crisis by artificially driving up of single-family home prices, has been strong in the west.
In California, 75 percent of the investment buyers surveyed during the first quarter said they preferred flipping their properties to renting them. That three-to-one ratio in favor of investment sales was common throughout much of the western United States, the report stated.
Nationwide, 53.5 percent of the investors surveyed said preferred to flip their homes, while nearly 45 percent said they plan to rent the houses they’ve bought recently. However, a majority of first-time investment buyers – nearly 70 percent – said they intend to rent their properties, Auction.com found.
