Homes are being flipped in Southwest Florida at the fastest pace since the housing boom, and about 1 in 4 deals involve some kind of financing — often provided by the same banks that fueled the last bubble, who have proven themselves willing to lend money to flippers who burned them during the crash, according to an analysis by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

The newspaper reviewed 1,287 property flips in Sarasota, Manatee and Charlotte counties identified by RealtyTrac Inc., examining who was behind the flips, the source of their funding, and who the properties were sold to.

Many flippers who had defaulted on loans they’d obtained during the boom were able to finance new deals, often from the same lenders they’d burned before. Big banks that “played a central role in the financial meltdown” have been the most active in financing flips, the paper found, along with personal financiers and smaller credit unions.

So far, the deals have been profitable — the flips analyzed by the Herald-Tribune generated almost $23 million in profits, or close to $18,000 per deal. But some wonder how long that trend can last.

“We’re starting to see many of the same factors we saw during the last boom and bust,” real estate analyst Jack McCabe told the paper. “There is going to come a day of reckoning.”

Source: heraldtribune.com