In a market like San Francisco's, house flipping is an art, a vocation, and occasionally a crime. Hardly a day goes by without the carcass of some poor slain Edwardian turning up on Redfin, stripped of moldings, its old fireplace replaced with a cheapie impostor, and any detail deemed complicated or just too pricey to work with snuffed out. It's no wonder that flippers in San Francisco pull down the highest gains in the country by dollar amount. And they do pretty well ROI-wise, too. On average, the city's flipped homes sell for 31 percent more than their last sale price (though, unfortunately, data that isolates out profits is not forthcoming from the rakers-in of said profits). A RealtyTrac report in June found that SF has the third-highest sales price for flips in the nation, behind only Pitkin County, Colorado, and Marin County.
Naturally, when it came time to map the biggest residential somersaults of the past year, a measly 31 percent gain would be utterly ho-hum. So we searched our flip-stalking archives for the homes that made the highest gains. Every property on the map that follows saw, with one exception, at least a 100 percent increase—a few went to 200 percent, and, in one extreme Cow Hollow case involving a total reboot, we noted a fourfold gain. Let us pause here a moment to say: DAMN.
Overall the flippiest neighborhood in this wholly unscientific roundup of superflips (remember, we're only looking at the homes we happened to write about over the past year) turned out to be the Richmond. Noe has a bit of a reputation, but in this group the Richmond had six superflips, beating out Noe's three and Glen Park's two. (Note: the majority of the map points compare prior sale prices to new ones. For properties that haven't yet sold, we went with the new ask price.)
This is not to say that every flip is a bad one, or that all of the new prices are unjustifiably jacked up. Quite a few on the map are passable, even commendable, renovations, and several boosted their prices by genuinely adding value—a bedroom here, a half-bath there. There are horrors, too, yes. One commenter saw her grandmother's little pink home in Noe transformed into something marketed as "the Noe White House." Is it any wonder that "flipping" is a euphemism for you-know-what-ing? Here now is our map of the 21 biggest flip gains from the past year, featuring some homes that grew in a good way and others that were, shall we say, totally "flipped" over.
· San Francisco Flippers Get the Highest Gains in the Country [Curbed SF]
· The Average SF Flip Sells for 31% More Than Its Initial Price [Curbed SF]
· Flipping Out Archives [Curbed SF]
· Eureka Valley Edwardian Dumps Edward for Someone Richer [Curbed SF]
· Edwardian Flip Near Lake Street Adds $1.573M to Price [Curbed SF]
· Two Noe Valley Homes on One Lot Flip for Nearly $3M Gain [Curbed SF]
· This Glen Park Flip Added $1.6M to its Price in Under Two Years [Curbed SF]
· $1M Noe Valley Teardown Transforms Into $3.4M Modern Home [Curbed SF]
· What Does it Take to Double the Price of an Outer Sunset Flip? [Curbed SF]
· Inner Richmond Flip Adds $1.535M to Price in One Year [Curbed SF]
· Noe Valley House Transforms to Flip for $1.5M Gain in One Year [Curbed SF]
· Totally Remodeled Richmond Flip Doubles Its Value in One Year [Curbed SF]
· Pacific Heights Penthouse TIC Flips for $1.34M Gain [Curbed SF]
· Inside the $1.9M Gain of a Richmond Arts & Crafts Flip [Curbed SF]
· Before & After Photos of Richmond Flip That Added $1.05M [Curbed SF]
· Sunnyside Flip Doubles in Value in Only Seven Months [Curbed SF]
· Nine Months Later and Bernal Heights Flip Gains Nearly $900K [Curbed SF]
· Sea Cliff Mega Manse Gets a Contempoary Makeover [Curbed SF]
· A Year Later and $2.325M More: 507 Capp in the Mission [Curbed SF]
· Richmond Edwardian Does Triple Somersault, Hits $2.7M Mark [Curbed SF]
· Big Richmond Flip Can't Find a Buyer, Drops Price $246K [Curbed SF]
· This Totally Bonkers Cow Hollow Flip Added $10M to its Price [Curbed SF]
· Glen Park Flipper Adds Modern Style and $915K to Price [Curbed SF]
· Midcentury Megaflip Goes Modern, Adds $5.2M to Price [Curbed SF]
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