Real Estate Flipping

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The housing market has long been the playground for the rich and famous, but now the average American is getting into the real-estate-buying craze.

A new survey by the National Association of Realtors estimates as many as 25 percent of all home buyers never intend to actually live in their new home.

Big Profit Potential

It's called "flipping," where people buy property, wait a few months for it to go up in value and then "flip it," or sell it for an instant profit — sometimes a huge instant profit.

Carlos Lidsky is a Florida attorney who "dabbles" in flipping real estate. In just two years, he and his wife Betti have dabbled their way to nearly $1 million in real-estate profits.

See the rest of this article at: http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Business/story?id=553568

Flipping has come of age - This is a nice article "For a change".

[Michael Seeker]

Based on the context of the article, it sounds like they're suggesting/talking about "flipping" as buying low and selling high.

"It's called "flipping," where people buy property, wait a few months for it to go up in value and then "flip it," or sell it for an instant profit -- sometimes a huge instant profit."

This bothers me as it is akin to buying/selling stocks or putting $100 on red or black at the casino. If you don't know what you're doing, it's a complete gamble. If you know what you're doing it leans the odds in your favor, but it's still a very risky short-term investment. In fact that type of mentality helped build and burst the housing bubble.

When I think of "flipping", I think of buying distressed properties and fixing them up for a profit. It involves a great deal of know-how and work, not just signing some documents and then listing/re-listing the property.

I hope there isn't a wave of wanna-be investor's cleaning out their life savings to go prospecting in an area of town they know nothing about. Although, on the bright side, this will create a great opportunity to clean up their mess(es).