House Flipping Statistics 2026: What the Data Says About Cash-Buyer Demand

If you wholesale, flipper data is not background noise. Flippers are your buyers. When a flipper's margin is fat, they'll take a marginal deal and still make money. When the margin is thin, they get selective and only the cleanest, best-priced deals get an assignment signed. So reading the 2026 flipping numbers is really a way of reading how hungry, or how picky, your cash buyers are right now.

Here's the short version: 2026 is a picky-buyer market. Volume is down, margins bottomed out and just barely turned up, and the buyers who are still active are chasing fewer, older, more distressed properties. Every number below is pulled straight from ATTOM and Redfin primary reports, and I've labeled each one with its exact period so you don't mix a full-year figure with a quarterly one. Let's walk through it.

1. The 2026 Flipping Snapshot

Start with the full-year 2025 picture, because that's the foundation Q1 2026 builds on. Per the ATTOM 2025 Year-End U.S. Home Flipping Report, investors flipped 297,045 single-family homes and condos across the country in 2025. That's the fewest in a single year since 2020, and it's down 3.9% from the 309,050 flipped in 2024. HousingWire's coverage of the same report independently confirmed the five-year volume low.

Then look at the first read on 2026. The ATTOM Q1 2026 Home Flipping Report shows 64,348 homes flipped in the first quarter, equal to 8% of all home sales. That's up from 7.2% in Q4 2025 but still down from 8.2% in Q1 2025. Important: 64,348 is a quarterly number against a quarterly sales denominator, so do not stack it against the 297,045 full-year figure. They count different things over different windows.

So the headline for 2026 is steady-but-thin. Fewer deals are happening, but the ones that close are happening at margins that just stopped falling. For a wholesaler, that's a more workable market than it sounds, because the buyers still in the game are the ones with capital who know how to underwrite.

2. Gross Profit and ROI Trends

This is the section that tells you how much room your buyers have to pay you. Per ATTOM, the typical 2025 flip netted $65,981 in gross profit, down from $77,000 in 2024. The 2025 ROI came in at 25.5%, which ATTOM flags as the lowest since 2008. That's down from 32.1% in 2024. For context on the slide, the ATTOM Q3 2025 report already showed ROI dropping below 25% mid-year, part of a multi-quarter margin compression that finally bottomed at 24.7% in Q4 2025.

The 2008 comparison is about the ROI percentage hitting a low, not a 2008-scale market crash. Different thing. Margins got thin, the housing market did not collapse.

Now the turn. Q1 2026 was the first profit-margin increase in seven straight quarters, rising to 25.4% from Q4 2025's 24.7%, with gross profit of about $66,000. That sounds like good news, and directionally it is, but keep it honest: 25.4% is still well below the 29.6% margin flippers saw in Q1 2025. So this is a first uptick after a long slide, not a full recovery. Frame it that way to buyers and you'll sound like someone who actually reads the data instead of someone hyping a turnaround.

For acquisition data on flippers, one more ATTOM 2025 number matters: the median purchase price was $259,019, the median resale was $325,000, and the median year built was 1978, the oldest on record in ATTOM's tracking. Older stock means more distress, more rehab, and buyers who specifically want a discounted, problem property. That's a wholesaler's exact lane.

3. Flips as a Share of All Sales

This metric trips people up, so let's be precise. There are two different "investor share" numbers floating around and they measure completely different things. Don't merge them.

• ATTOM's flip share (about 7-8%): flips specifically, as a share of all home sales. This is purely the buy-renovate-resell crowd.
• Redfin's investor share (about 18-19%): all investor purchases, which includes rentals, flips, and iBuyers combined. A much wider net.

On the flip side, ATTOM puts flips at 7.4% of all U.S. home sales in 2025, down slightly from 7.6% in 2024. In Q1 2026 that ticked up to 8% of sales, from 7.2% in Q4 2025, though still under the 8.2% from Q1 2025. So flipping's slice of the market is roughly holding, maybe nudging up off the Q4 low.

On the broader investor side, the Redfin Q1 2026 Investor Home Purchase Report shows investors bought 19% of all U.S. homes in Q1 2026, down a touch from 20% a year earlier. Their purchase count fell 6% year over year to 45,397, the lowest level since 2020. For full-year context, the 2025 Redfin release pegged investors at roughly 18% of all home purchases, about flat with 2024.

4. By Market: Where Flipping Is Hot

This is the most actionable table for a wholesaler, because flipper ROI by metro is basically a map of where your cash buyers can still make a spread. ATTOM's Q1 2026 report breaks out gross ROI by metro for areas with a population over one million. The gap between top and bottom is enormous.

The pattern is hard to miss. Rust Belt and Mid-Atlantic metros are printing 60-86% gross margins, while the big Texas markets have collapsed to single digits. If you're sourcing deals in Pittsburgh or Baltimore, your cash buyers have real room to pay. If you're in Austin, your buyers are squeezed and you'll need a sharper discount to get an assignment taken.

There's also a flipping-rate angle, which is how concentrated flipping is in a given market. ATTOM's Q1 2026 leaders for flips as a share of sales were Columbus, GA (15.2%), Atlanta, GA (12.3%), Canton, OH (12.3%), York, PA (12.2%), and Spartanburg, SC (12.1%). High flipping rate means a lot of competing buyers in that market, which is good for moving an assignment fast but can compress your own spread if you're buying retail.

5. What Flipper Activity Means for Wholesalers

Pull it together and here's what the 2026 data actually tells a wholesaler.

Your buyers are still buying, and they're paying cash. ATTOM reports 61.1% of Q1 2026 flips were all-cash purchases, and for full-year 2025 only 37.7% of flips used any financing. On the broader investor side, Redfin's 2025 data put roughly 60% of all investor purchases in cash. Note that the 60% figure is from the 2025 Redfin release; the Q1 2026 report did not restate the cash share, so I'm attributing it to 2025. Either way, the dominant flip buyer is a cash buyer who can close fast. That's the exact profile that takes a clean wholesale assignment.

Thin margins make sourcing more valuable, not less. When flippers were clearing 32% ROI in 2024, they could overpay on the buy and still win. At 25% gross, with the real take-home far lower after rehab and carry, they cannot. They need the discount on the front end. That discount is what a good wholesale deal is. A property already sifted to their buybox and priced to leave them a margin is worth more to a picky buyer than it was to a fat-margin buyer.

The inventory they want is exactly what outbound surfaces. The median flipped home in 2025 was built in 1978, the oldest on record. Buyers are chasing older, more distressed stock, and there's less of it changing hands. Those owners don't list with an agent. They're reached through cold calling and SMS to motivated-seller lists. That's the supply side of this whole equation, and it's where a real estate outbound system earns its keep.

So if you're a wholesaler reading flipper data, read it as a demand signal. The buyers are selective, cash-heavy, and hunting older distressed properties in specific metros. Your job is to feed them deals that fit, in the markets where their math still works.

6. How to Supply Flippers With Deals

The bridge from "flippers are picky" to "I close more assignments" is consistent, in-buybox deal flow. You can't manufacture motivated sellers on demand, so the operators who win in a thin-margin year are the ones running outbound steadily, not in bursts. A few practical moves the data points to.

Build your buyer list around the ROI map. If flipper ROI is 86% in Pittsburgh and 2% in Austin, your buyer recruiting should reflect that. Match the deals you source to metros where cash buyers can still pay. Here's a walkthrough on how to build a cash buyers list for wholesaling, and the related data set in our cash buyer statistics 2026 roundup.

Vet the buyers before you assign. A thin-margin market means more buyers will try to renegotiate or walk at the last minute. Knowing who actually closes saves you a blown contract. Our guide on how to vet cash buyers for wholesaling covers the proof-of-funds and track-record checks that matter.

Keep the seller pipeline full so you're never out of inventory. The constraint is rarely buyers. It's having enough quality, in-buybox seller leads to feed them every month. That's a volume game: lists, skip tracing, dials, and disciplined follow-up. It's the part most wholesalers underinvest in, and it's the part that decides whether your buyers get a steady flow or a trickle.

The thread running through all of it: flippers are the cash buyers who take your assignments, and your edge in 2026 is being the wholesaler who reliably hands them deals that pencil.

Sources

• ATTOM 2025 Year-End U.S. Home Flipping Report. 297,045 homes flipped in 2025 (down 3.9% from 2024); 7.4% of all sales; median gross profit $65,981; ROI 25.5% (lowest since 2008, down from 32.1%); median purchase $259,019, resale $325,000, year built 1978.
• ATTOM Q1 2026 Home Flipping Report. 64,348 flips in Q1 2026 = 8% of sales (up from 7.2% in Q4 2025, down from 8.2% in Q1 2025); margin up to 25.4%, first rise in seven quarters; gross profit $66,000; 61.1% all-cash; metro ROI leaders Pittsburgh 85.9%, Buffalo 84%.
• ATTOM Q3 2025 Home Flipping Report. ROI dropped below 25% in Q3 2025, illustrating the multi-quarter margin slide that bottomed in Q4 2025 at 24.7%.
• Redfin Q1 2026 Investor Home Purchase Report. Investors bought 19% of all U.S. homes in Q1 2026 (vs 20% a year earlier); purchases down 6% YoY to 45,397, lowest since 2020.
• Redfin Investor Activity Press Release (2025). Investors averaged 18% of U.S. home purchases in 2025, roughly flat with 2024; about 60% of investor purchases made in cash.
• HousingWire coverage of ATTOM 2025 flipping report. Independent confirmation that 2025 home-flipping volume fell to a five-year low and margins hit 2008-era levels.