Investors flipped fewer homes than a year ago, but the ones who did made more money.
That’s the headline finding from ATTOM’s first-quarter 2026 home flipping report. The report reveals that 64,348 single-family homes and condos changed hands as flips nationally, down from 70,579 in the first quarter of 2025 and from 69,711 the quarter before.
But gross profits on those flips rose to $66,000, up from $64,300 in the fourth quarter, and the national gross ROI ticked up to 25.4 percent from 24.7 percent.
Flipping’s share of overall home sales actually grew, hitting 8 percent of all transactions in the first quarter. That was up from 7.2 percent the prior quarter, though still below the 8.2 percent share flippers claimed a year earlier. Fewer total sales in a slow housing market means flips are eating a bigger slice of a shrinking pie.
Margins recovering, but not fully
The topline story is a partial rebound.
After several quarters of eroding returns, investors appear to be tightening their numbers by buying at better prices, controlling renovation costs or both. That has been enough to nudge profitability back up.
But ATTOM’s data makes clear the recovery is incomplete. National ROI and gross profit both remain below where they stood a year ago, and the typical flip is taking longer to close out. Median time from purchase to resale stretched to 165 days in the first quarter, up from 160 the quarter before.
Financing use also crept higher, with 38.9 percent of flips purchased using a loan rather than cash, up slightly from 38.6 percent in the fourth quarter.
That’s a small shift, but one worth watching. Financed flips have carrying costs that eat into margins if a renovation runs long or a resale drags.
Pennsylvania leads in ROI
Georgia posted the highest flipping rate in the country at 11.1 percent, followed by Ohio, Texas and Missouri. They are all interior markets where lower price points and steadier renovation-cost math make flipping easier to pencil out.
But activity and profitability aren’t the same thing, and the states leading in flip volume aren’t the ones producing the best returns.
Pennsylvania flippers posted the highest ROI in the report at 70 percent, though that’s down starkly from 92.9 percent a year earlier. Louisiana followed at 67.7 percent ROI, up from 53.8 percent a year ago. Michigan flips returned 59.3 percent, down slightly from 61.6 percent a year ago.
New Jersey led the way in average gross profit at $147,250, up slightly from last year. Maryland, California and Massachusetts followed in average gross profit.
Idaho had the least average gross profit of all states at $10,760, down significantly from $30,577. Other states with meager average gross profits included Mississippi, Texas, Montana and New Mexico.
Idaho also had the worst home-flipping ROI at 2.5 percent, followed by Montana, Texas, Utah and Mississippi.
The takeaway for investor-facing agents
For real estate agents working with investor clients, the ATTOM numbers argue against treating flipping as a uniform strategy. A high flip rate in a market doesn’t guarantee strong margins. Georgia, Ohio, Texas and Missouri lead in flipping rate but sit outside the top tier for ROI.
Meanwhile, some of the best-margin markets, including Pennsylvania and Maryland, are seeing those margins erode fast enough that this year’s returns may not repeat next year.
The financing uptick is also worth flagging to investor clients. At 38.9 percent of flips now using borrowed money, rate sensitivity is creeping back into a business that’s traditionally leaned cash-heavy specifically to avoid it.
