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Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. During the pandemic housing boom, home flipping surged as soaring home prices and ultralow-interest rates attracted more flippers, especially newcomers, to the market. However, as the market shifted due to the rate shock of 2022, home-flipping activity has seen the biggest pullback since 2007, and many of those newcomers pulled back. In the last quarter of 2018, there were 71,358 home flips. In the last quarter of 2021, that shot up to 120,531 flips, before falling to 87,851 flips in the last quarter of 2022. In the last quarter of 2024, there were just 69,929 flips. While some experienced flippers remain active, caution now prevails in the market. Regional challenges (including tight inventory in Connecticut and rising inventory in Florida) along with escalating costs have caused flippers to move forward with greater care. To better understand what’s going on in the home-flipping market, we’ve created the first-ever LendingOne-ResiClub Fix-and-Flip Survey. The flipper survey was fielded from February 1 to February 19, 2025. In total, 244 U.S. home flippers took the survey. To conduct the survey, ResiClub partnered with LendingOne, a private real estate lender. Our findings reveal that the home-flipping market in much of the Northeast remains competitive, as price appreciation, tight inventory, and aging housing stock create investment potential for fix-and-flip projects. However, home flippers in the region face intense competition for properties and elevated purchase prices. Here are some of the highlights: 1. Home flipper sentiment and plans Fix-and-flip activity: 89% of home flippers plan to conduct at least one fix-and-flip in 2025. 64% plan to convert at least one fix-and-flip project into a rental using the fix-to-rent method. Market outlook: 32% of home flippers say demand for fix-and-flip properties in spring 2025 is “very strong.” In the Northeast, 59% of home flippers described demand as very strong. 2. Financial considerations Renovation costs: 56% of U.S. home flippers say kitchen upgrades provide the best return on investment. 3. Flippers’ biggest concerns across the country Northeast: Housing inventory is the biggest challenge (34%). Midwest and Southwest: Competition for properties is reported as the top concern among flippers (31% and 34%). Southeast: Borrowing costs are the biggest concern, with several home flippers specifically noting trouble accessing enough financing for projects. West: Labor and material costs are the top challenge (24%). Below you will find the full results to the LendingOne-ResiClub Fix-and-Flip Survey. (Due to rounding, some total responses might not equal 100%.)
Category:
E-Commerce
After yet another round of protests disrupted hundreds of Tesla dealerships over the weekend, Elon Musk, the carmakers CEO/presidential sidekick, fumed on the social media platform he owns. In a series of tweets and retweets, Musk characterized those taking part in the demonstrations as paid protesters, sparking sympathetic replies on X, such as: How pathetic is your political party when you need to hire people to support it? Musk then went on to spend Sunday night orchestrating a rally for his political partys candidate in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, during which he gave away checks for a million dollars to two voters, as previously promised. Much like Walt Whitman, Elon Musk contains multitudes. Acting hypocritically is not against the lawwhich is probably for the best, since nearly everyone is guilty of it in one way or another. What makes Musks double standard so egregious, however, is that he has presented no hard evidence of the allegation he broadly lobs at othersoffering payouts to affect a political outcomewhile flagrantly engaging in the very activity he claims to find so repugnant. (Not to mention its questionable legalitydespite the Wisconsin Supreme Court declining a request to stop Musk.) Ever since protests started springing up at Tesla charging stations and showrooms back in February, a response to DOGEs haphazard firing and defunding spree, Musk has claimed these protests are bought and paid for by shadowy forces. Its apparently inconceivable that citizens would object to having their Social Security payments threatened or cancer research disrupted, and organically decide to put pressure on the DOGE heads stock portfolio. Musk even implied that the tens of thousands attending Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezs recent rallies are similarly paid protesters the Dems are moving around from one staged event to the next. This brand of political accusation is nothing new. During his first term, Donald Trump regularly accused the many hordes or protesters responding to his actions of being paid agitators. (Notably, the protests kept coming, despite the accusations.) The tactic extends back far beyond Trump, though. According to historian Kevin Kruse, segregationists claimed the high schoolers who desegregated Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957, had been paid for their efforts. If protest movements are meant to reflect the shared values of a diverse community with a common cause, such claims muddy the purity of participants and delegitimize their purpose. Among those aiding in the quest to cast suspicion on the staggering number of Tesla protests breaking out around the globe are Fox News and Joe Rogan, both of whom Elon Musk retweeted during a marathon griping session Sunday on X. But none of the evidence any of them have offered proves that a single protester has been paid to attend a Tesla demonstration. Indeed, the headline of the Fox News article that Musk tweeted on Sunday uses the words, Critics speculate, to frame its claims. What the accusations all boil down to is that Democrat-aligned groups such as Indivisible have become involved in the planning and execution of some of these protests. This is true, and those groups neither deny nor try to hide that. Seemingly because the truth does not sound nefarious enough, however, Musk and various media outlets instead claim these groups are leading the charge rather than connecting with already existing protest energy to make it even more powerful. Musk also contorts himself into logic pretzels to link these groups to 94-year old, left-leaning philanthropist George Soros, a longtime boogeyman for conservatives. (He also blamed Soros for hecklers showing up at his million-dollar giveaway on Sunday.) As for the allegations that these protesters must be paid operativesthey couldn’t possibly be sincere in their demonstrating outragethe smoking gun appears to be on an Indivisible web page offering reimbursements of up to $200 for any eligible expenses that local chapters incur during Musk-related protests. Keen observers of how money works may notice that a reimbursement is not exactly the same thing as a payout. Still, when an X user suggested that those supposed $200 payments to protesters are being funded by LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, Musk jumped in to agree, claiming the probability is 100% that Reid is funding them. (Hoffmans response: The probability many, many people don’t like you? 100%.) While Elon Musk cannot seem to imagine a world in which left-leaning billionaires are not paying off citizens to engineer a political outcome, he is simultaneously paying off citizens to engineer a political outcome. (A win for Musks preferred candidate in Wisconsins special election Tuesday could affect abortion and voting rights in the state along with, uh, whether a Tesla dealership will be allowed to open there.) Beyond the million-dollar checks he handed out Sunday, Musk is offering $20 payouts for anyoneeven those out of state, he explicitly mentionswho will help get the word out for his candidate in Wisconsin. Musks cash infusion in Wisconsin not only represents a continuation of his $270 million effort to elect Trump in November, which also involved hefty giveaways, but its a test run for the primary challenges hes vowed to fund against any Republicans who cross Trump. The irony is, part of what the Tesla protesters object to is the Tesla CEO using his vast fortune to influence politics. Musk keeps asking whos paying to fund these protests, when the simple answer is: Its him.
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E-Commerce
When meeting clients, I make one promiseto see the world as it could be. Thats not a bad message right now. Its a pretty weird world out there. The volatile political and socio-economic landscape can make us all feel like things are going to hell. And in the slightly less real world of marketing and advertising, thats even more the case. The challenges of any agency or client team continue to escalate. Instability abounds. Then theres the issue of client loyalty, reduced scopes, tighter timelines, and the not-so-secret plan of AI to take everyones jobs. And then the cynicism comes. As we know, misery loves company, so soonif you want to find itit can turn up everywhere. Youll see it in status meetings, LinkedIn posts, industry events, and coffee machine catch-ups. Quickly it becomes less funny. In the end, its just a deluge of boring negative energy. Thats why optimism is a way out. We need radiators, not drains, in our teams and our businesses. But lets be clear here, its not about smiling and hand clapping and whooping. Toxic positivity can be a nightmare, and will inevitably create a feeling of mistrust or emptiness from employees. Its about harnessing a belief and way of working that will refuse to allow the status quo to take hold or accept that things are inevitably going to be terrible. Active optimism Lets turn to the concept that I call active optimism. I see this as being willing to see what others dont, to learn, and to try new things. Its about fostering the growth mindset, which in turn allows people to be who they are and do things they never thought possible. Critically, as opposed to the cynics who are simply tiring to be around, active optimism creates a flywheel of energy that gathers people up and becomes a magnet for others. Now, dont get me wrong, a little bit of skepticism is sometimes useful. But in the world we face today, active optimism can be a powerful tool. And you can embed it into an organization. Practically, I define active optimism as follows: Taking responsibility Some days its hard to be positive. We have to deal with the truth and honesty. Sometimes, the truth isnt great. But we also know that our team needs us on our feet and to find a way forward. We need to take more responsibility for the environment, aspirations, and world as it could be. Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan recently made a plea to the writing community – to take more responsibility by Writing More Good Guys. In a world thats turning dark, taking responsibility is what a leader does. Adopting the we can if mentality Adam Morgan and Mark Barden in their brilliant book, A Beautiful Constraint talk about the power of using we can if as a starting point for finding a solution when faced with obstacles. Im obsessed with this approach. We spend so much of our time with challenges its so easy to default to its not going to happen. In many cases, that seems a perfectly reasonable point of view (back to that point about healthy skepticism). But the moment we use we can if weve started to create an answer. From there we can build a way forward. Try it, I promise it works. Implementing a reality distortion bubble My good friend, the brilliant Rob Schwartz, introduced me to this. Like some kind of Rebellion Base in Star Wars, you need something to keep the dark side out. When the chatter or negativity can start to rise, having you and your management team able to take time to live in this reality distortion bubble means you can help each other believe and keep moving. Far too many of us spend time with people coming up saying things arent going well. Even if they are. So it can sometimes feel like theres no good news, or that its only ever a problem. Sadly thats the job, which is why protecting yourself and your leadership team from it can be so useful. Now, as Ive mentioned before, this doesnt mean not dealing with the truth or putting your head in the sand. It does mean dont get taken down by these hits and occasionally give you and your team the opportunity to go into that bubble and think about the positivity in your journey to the world as it could be. Never wasting momentum A small win here, a positive meeting there. Grab them, socialize them, and understand why they went well. Learn and repeat. Negativity is toxic and can get into the corridors and crevices of a team very easily. But so can momentum. Surrounding yourself with the right people You want to spend most of your time with radiators, not drains. Were the sum of the people we surround ourselves with. Get the energy in the room and, where necessary, change the people, or change the people! It can be hard to be optimistic when fortune doesnt smile on you, and its even harder when you are surrounded by cynicism or negativity. Right now, many of us see a world and industry full of volatility and pessimism. But I believe for businesses, teams, and leaders, active optimism in seeing the world as it could be is the only practical course of action.
Category:
E-Commerce
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