By DON FENLEY

Home flipping across the Tri-Cities region fell to its lowest level since 2019 in 2025, declining 9.6% from 2024 to 556 transactions . Rising acquisition costs and tighter profit margins pushed many investors on the national level to the sidelines, according to ATTOM’s 2025 year-end U.S. Home Flipping Report.

The local market mirrored, and in some pockets exceeded, a national retreat. Across the United States, home flips fell 3.9% from 2024 to roughly 297,000, the fewest recorded in a year since 2020. Nationally, gross return on investment dropped to 25.5%, the lowest level since the Great Recession of 2008, down from 32.1% the year before.

Despite that national compression, local investors managed considerably stronger returns – a function of the region’s lower price base and the durable demand for older housing stock that characterizes much of northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia.

“Competition for homes remains strong in many markets due to constrained supply. With prices staying elevated, investors are finding it harder to secure deals that deliver strong returns. Flippers are having to get more creative to maintain profitability,” according to Rob Barber, CEO, ATTOM

2025 Key Metrics at a Glance

Source: ATTOM 2025 Year-End Home Flipping Report. Tri-Cities figure combines Johnson City and Kingsport-Bristol MSAs. National YoY change reflects full-year 2024 to 2025.

JOHNSON CITY METRO

Steeper Volume Drop, But Strongest Returns in the Region

The Johnson City metropolitan area recorded 205 flips in 2025, an 18.9% drop from the prior year and the sharper of the two local declines. The flip market share of all home sales rate was 7.2%, marginally below the national rate of 7.4%.

Even so, the market’s financial profile remained robust. Investors bought flipped properties at a median price of $150,000 and sold them for $265,000, generating $115,000 in gross profit and a gross ROI of 76.7%. While that return was down from 83.7% in 2024 it’s more than triple the national average of 25.5%.

The median year built for flipped properties in the Johnson City metro was 1996. Yet context matters: approximately 96% of the region’s total housing stock was built in 2019 or earlier. That means the supply of aging homes provides a robust remodeling and flip market.

Cash buyers accounted for 32.6% of flipped-home purchases in the Johnson City metro in 2025, down from 39.7% in 2019, suggesting that some of the speculative, all-cash investor activity that intensified during the pandemic years has cooled. FHA buyers represented 13.0% of flip sales, up modestly from 10.3% in 2019.

KINGSPORT-BRISTOL METRO

Larger Share of Local Activity, Steadier Margins

The Kingsport-Bristol metro posted 351 flips in 2025, a 9.0% year-over-year decline, and carried the higher flipping rate of the two markets at 8.8% of total sales. That above-average rate which exceeded both the Johnson City metro and the national benchmark points to a local market where investor activity is embedded more deeply in the transaction mix.

Gross ROI in Kingsport-Bristol reached 73.1% in 2025, essentially flat with the 72.8% recorded the prior year. The stability reflects a lower median purchase price of $130,000 – the cheapest entry point among the three markets tracked –  and a resale median of $225,000, producing $95,000 in gross profit per transaction.

The median flip in Kingsport-Bristol was built in 1989, somewhat older than in Johnson City but newer than the 1978 national median. Again, the broader regional housing stock context applies: with the overwhelming majority of local homes built before 2020.

FHA buyers represented 17.7% of flipped-home buyers in the Kingsport-Bristol metro last year, the highest share of any market in this analysis and up from 13.7% in 2019.

Year-Over-Year ROI Comparison

A PRE-PANDEMIC BASELINE: WHERE THE MARKETS STAND VS. 2019

Six years after the last “normal” flipping cycle, both local markets look starkly different in price terms — even as transaction volumes have barely budged.

In the Johnson City metro, flip volume fell from 232 transactions in 2019 to 205 in 2025, an 11.6% decrease. Over the same span, the median purchase price for flipped properties surged 108%, from $72,160 to $150,000, while median resale prices climbed 110%, from $126,250 to $265,000. Put differently, investors are paying twice as much to acquire properties and collecting twice as much when they sell. It’s a dynamic that keeps ROI ratios elevated even as absolute affordability erodes.

Kingsport-Bristol tells a different volume story: the 2025 count of 351 flips was essentially flat with the 344 recorded in 2019, a 2.0% uptick. Yet prices have inflated sharply there as well. Median acquisition costs rose 114%, from $60,750 to $130,000, while median resale prices climbed 90%, from $118,250 to $225,000. Notably, resale prices in Kingsport-Bristol have not kept pace with acquisition cost inflation at the same rate as in Johnson City — a trend that may partially explain the modest margin compression evident when comparing 2019 ROI to 2025 in that market.

2019 vs. 2025: Volume and Price Comparison

Source: ATTOM Data Solutions. 2019 represents last full pre-pandemic year.

WHO IS BUYING FLIPPED HOMES

The buyer profile for flipped homes in both markets has shifted noticeably since the pandemic. Cash buyers — a proxy for investor and second-home demand — declined in both metros from 2019 levels, with Johnson City dropping from 39.7% to 32.6% and Kingsport-Bristol from 31.1% to 28.1%. Nationally, cash buyers accounted for 38.7% of flipped-home purchases in 2025.

The uptick in FHA-financed purchases across both metros, particularly in Kingsport-Bristol, suggests that renovated homes are increasingly filling a supply gap for entry-level buyers who cannot compete in a thin market for move-in-ready traditional listings.

OUTLOOK

The structural conditions that have made the Tri-Cities a durable flipping market – a large stock of older homes, a price base well below replacement cost, and consistent first-time buyer demand – remain intact. But the era of easy margins appears to be giving way to a more disciplined environment.

Methodology

ATTOM analyzed sales deed data for this report. A single-family home or condo flip was defined as any arms-length transaction in the period where a prior arms-length transaction occurred within 12 months. Gross profit is the difference between the median resale and median acquisition price and does not account for renovation costs, financing, taxes, or carrying costs. Gross ROI is gross profit as a percentage of the median acquisition price. The Tri-Cities combined figure aggregates the Johnson City and Kingsport-Bristol metropolitan statistical areas as defined by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. The 2019 data serves as the pre-pandemic benchmark year.

This report is the combined product of human and AI research and writing.

Categories: REAL ESTATE