Lately, it seems that you cannot go one day without someone offering a Top 10 chart of the best metro areas for the quirkier aspects of the housing market. Today, a pair of new charts is being offered to highlight the best places for house flipping and the most expensive places for off-campus college rental housing.
On the flipping front, WalletHub’s Best Cities to Flip Houses for 2016 listing studied 150 cities using a 19-point measurement guide that covered such aspects as “median purchase price,” “average full home remodeling costs” and “housing-market health index.” The resulting number crunching resulted in naming Sioux Falls, S.D., as the best house flipping metro area. Other markets in the list’s top 10 were Fort Wayne, Ind.; El Paso, Texas; Oklahoma City; Lincoln, Neb.; Lubbock, Texas; Tampa, Fla.; New Orleans; Boise, Idaho; and Laredo, Texas.
At the other end of the spectrum, Grand Rapids, Mich., was crowned the worst market for house flipping. Pittsburgh had the highest average gross return on investment with 129.5 percent, while Austin, Texas, had the lowest with 21.2 percent. Cleveland had the lowest median purchase price for properties to flip ($45,000) and San Jose had the highest ($580,000). And Memphis had the highest percentage of home flips (11.1 percent) while Austin, Indianapolis and Pittsburgh tied for the lowest percentage at 3.2 percent each.
Separately, HomeUnion studies off-campus rents within a two-mile radius of the campus of a college or university with enrollments of 15,000 students or higher. As a result of this analysis, HomeUnion found the most expensive off-campus rental units surrounding of UCLA ($4,343 per month) and Stanford University ($5,705).
“As college students return to school this month, we wanted to let them and their families know where off-campus rents would be the most expensive,” said Steve Hovland, director of research for HomeUnion. “Tuition for both public and private universities continues to increase nationwide, prompting students and their families to consider the cost of living in off-campus housing like single-family rentals. To minimize living expenses, students can look at more distant accommodations or consider having roommates in a rental home.”
