They say history doesn’t repeat itself exactly, it rhymes.
By NICK TIMIRAOS
David McNew for The Wall Street Journal
Real-estate investor Robert Ganem, shown in a Ladera Ranch, Calif., home, said he flipped 20 houses last year, double the previous year.
LADERA RANCH, Calif.—Rising home prices have fueled the return of a practice that some blamed for inflating the bubble: house flipping.
In California, the number of homes sold in recent months that had been flipped—or bought and resold within six months—has reached the highest levels since late 2005, according to PropertyRadar, a real-estate data firm. About 6,000 homes have been flipped in the state this year through April, or more than 5% of all homes sold statewide.
While flipping is re-emerging nationwide, brokers say it is happening most in California, where home prices have risen sharply over the past year. Six of the 10 largest price gains in major U.S. cities over the past year have been in California, according to Zillow. In April, home values rose by 25% from a year earlier in San Jose, San Francisco and Sacramento, and by 18% in Los Angeles.