Home-Flipping in Central Florida Fuels Bubble Fears

From the Orlando Sentinel: “With about half of all resales these days closing as cash deals, and a quarter of all properties going for more than their asking price, the region’s house “flippers” have been selling hundreds of homes and condominiums in the past year to equity companies and institutional investors, as well as to regular homebuyers, an Orlando Sentinel analysis of commercial-real-estate data has revealed. […] Home-sale profits have been easy to come by in the past 18 months. The median price of existing-home sales in the core Orlando market has increased from $108,000 at the beginning of last year to $145,000 as of April.”

The Sentinel analysis of 3,400 local sales records from January 2012 through April 2013 shows sellers getting a median price “50 percent more than what they paid for the house less than six months earlier.” A review of 30 flips by a single seller shows a median buy price of $41,178 and resale price of $74,000 — after accounting for repairs and renovations. […] The biggest buyer of flipped homes in the four-county Orlando metropolitan area has been an investment group affiliated with Blackstone Group LP, a publicly traded company that is one of the world’s largest private equity firms. […] Having Blackstone and other well-financed groups swooping through housing markets such as Orlando’s worries some experts.” See the full story.