From 2021-2025, 10,053 homes were flipped in New York City. Areas with the highest rates of home flipping are 90% people of color, and have a larger share of cost-burdened homeowners than areas where homes are less likely to be flipped. These are some of the last neighborhoods in the city with affordable homeownership opportunities, but home flipping is driving up prices. Building on Pratt Center’s 2024 report, Flipping Out: How Home Flipping Reduces Affordability in NYC Neighborhoods of Color, this policy brief analyzes home flipping in New York City from 2021-2025 and its racial and economic impacts.

Background

To deter professional investors from buying up homes in New York City, state lawmakers are considering creating a new tax on home flipping. The End Predatory Home Flipping Act would establish a tax of up to 65% on 1-3 unit homes re-sold less than two years after they were last purchased. The bill was first introduced in early 2021 in response to East New York resident and housing advocate organizing around a pattern in their neighborhood: investors buying out vulnerable homeowners with predatory offers, making superficial and even shoddy renovations, and quickly reselling homes–sometimes at prices much higher than the neighborhood norm. Each year since, those residents and the now-citywide End Toxic Home Flipping coalition have advocated for this bill in Albany. In those same years, from 2021-2025, 10,053 homes were flipped in New York City, primarily in neighborhoods of color.

Building on Pratt Center’s detailed examination of home flipping in 2024’s Flipping Out report, this policy brief provides an updated snapshot of home flipping and shows a consistent pattern: home flipping drives up prices in already cost-burdened neighborhoods of color. This contributes to New York City’s record-high housing costs, growing racialized wealth inequality, and loss of Black residents. In a moment of renewed political momentum to tackle the affordability crisis, there is both urgent need and opportunity to enact policies that curb corporate speculation on New York City’s small homes. 

Key Findings

1. Rates of home flipping remain highest in neighborhoods of color in Central Brooklyn, Southeast Queens, the Northeast Bronx, and the North Shore of Staten Island.

• In some parts of the city, like Jamaica, Queens, as much as 30% of 1-3 unit homes and apartments sold from 2021-2025 were flips. By comparison, the citywide rate of home flipping was 4.3%.

• In areas of the city with the highest rates of home flipping, the population is 90% people of color. 

• Racial disparities in the geography of home flipping are most stark for Black New Yorkers: in areas with the highest rates of home flipping, 47% of the population is Black, compared to 20% citywide and 10% in areas with the lowest rates of home flipping. 

2. Home flipping increases housing prices, especially in the already cost-burdened neighborhoods of color where it is most prevalent.

Pratt Center’s analysis shows that in areas with the highest rates of home flipping, the median price of flipped homes is consistently higher than non-flipped homes. Comparing the price flippers pay to buy a home versus the price of their re-sale (flip) also shows that home flipping drives up prices. In areas with the highest rates of home flipping, the median price flippers paid to purchase a property in 2021-2025 was $470,000, while the median price they re-sold (flipped) homes for was 64% higher at $770,000. By comparison, the median price of non-flips in those areas was $660,000.

Thank you to our partners:

This work is made possible through generous support of New York Community Trust and the Scherman Foundation. Our community partner organizations in the End Toxic Home Flipping coalition provided essential leadership and collaboration on understanding the issue of home flipping.