Finding Flippers in Your Hyperlocal Market Using PropertyRadar
Competitive market research is important. For investors, finding your competition, knowing what deals they are doing, and how those deals are performing, provides valuable insights to inform your investing strategies and market assumptions. For real estate professionals and home service businesses, finding flippers can be a great source of new business.
In this video, we’ll show you how to use PropertyRadar to
- Find and know who the Flippers are in your market.
- Uncover insights about where the opportunities are…or are not.
- And Reverse engineer recent Flipper deals to ascertain their ROI and validate your own market investment assumptions.
From the main menu, go to ‘Discover’...
Click on ‘Criteria’, ‘Transfer’, ‘Most Recent Change of Ownership’ and then ‘Transfer type'
Click Clear All to uncheck the existing boxes, and then check ‘Market Flip’, ‘Short Sale Flip’ and ‘REO Flip’.
A ‘Market Flip’ is a full value, arms-length transfer, that was not in foreclosure and was flipped in less than six months.
A ‘Short Sale Flip’ is a market transfer where the sale amount of the prior sale was less than the estimated total loan balance at the time of sale, and the property was flipped,
A ‘REO Flip’ is a market transfer of a property that was banked owned as a result of a foreclosure, purchased by an investor from the bank, and then flipped.
From most recent change of ownership, select Purchase Date. From the date, picker select the last 365 Days to see every flip that was completed in the last year.
Now, head to Location.
For this example, we’re interested in identifying Flippers in Sacramento County, select California for the state and Sacramento for the county.
Click Criteria, Property, Type, Basic Type, Clear all the checkboxes, and then select Single Family Residences.
Review the results on the map to see where flips are happening, and where they are not. Add layers to reveal insights into specific characteristics of the properties, property values, transactions, and property owners.
Next switch to Grid View. Click on the down arrow in any of the column headers and then click “Columns” to add data to your results. Here’s the data we recommend for finding flippers:
Seller Name - this will tell us the name of the flipper, as they are the one who sold, or flipped, the property.
Purchase Amount Change is the dollar increase or decrease in purchase amount from the previous change of ownership.
Months Since Prior COO is the number of months between the most recent change of ownership and the previous change of ownership, or simply how long the flip took.
Purchase Amount is the amount of the most recent change of ownership recorded at the county recorder’s office.
Let’s also remove some columns we don’t need.
Re-order your columns to make your results easier to read.
Next, Sort by Seller Name to start looking for multiple transactions by the same Seller.
These repeat buyers are your key competitors if you are an investor; potential buyers if you are a wholesaler; and potential customers if you’re a realtor, title company, hard money lender, or home services company.
To get an idea of how good they are at quickly flipping properties look at Months Since Prior Change of Ownership.
To get an idea of how well they are doing, take a look at Purchase Amount Change, and compare that to Purchase Amount, which is how much they sold the property for. Though keep in mind that’s not how much profit they made as you need to deduct repair, holding and sales costs.
Next, let’s use the Investment Analysis tool to try to estimate their actual profit. First, find out what they paid for the property by looking at Transactions. $200,000. Then the sale amount. $309,000.
In Investment Analysis, click edit. Enter $200,000 for my max bid. Set eviction to $0. Let’s estimate repairs at $25,000. Change the sales price to $309,000. Feel free to adjust any of the assumptions to your best guess, but based on this analysis, this investor made more than sixty grand.
Now let’s dive into learning more about a particular investor, but before we do, let’s save this list so we can easily come back to it. Click Make List, and name it Sacramento Flips.
Once you’ve found an investor your interested in, for example, B-K-S-P PROPERTIES, you can look for all of their deals..
Go back to Discover. Under Criteria, select Transfer, All Transfers, Seller Name. Enter BKSP Properties. Now you can see a full list of properties they have resold. Note that they won’t necessarily show as Seller on the list, as some properties may have resold again since they sold it, and seller name shows the most recent Seller. To learn more about each deal, what they paid for it, what they sold it for, and when they flipped it, click on the property and go to Transactions.
Next switch to Map View to see where they do most of their deals. Often a Flipper will concentrate in a specific location to keep their crews in close proximity, or they know something about the market that you should figure out.
Want to monitor the activity of this flipper. Just click Make List, to save this list - BKSP Flips. Then in My Lists click Alerts and add a new match notification and we’ll let you know each time they complete a flip.
Want to know each time they buy a property? That’s easy to, just go back to Discover, Criteria, Transfer, All Transfers, buyers name and enter BKSP Properties. Save that mailing list, and add an alert. It’s that easy.
Finally, check out Insights and take a look at the property tab to get a good understanding of the types of properties they are targeting.
Try PropertyRadar FREE For 3 Days
Why Flippers Target FSBO Properties First
If you are tracking flippers to understand your competition, you need to understand where they find their deals. One of the most productive FSBO deal sources for flippers is For Sale By Owner properties, and there are three specific reasons why experienced investors target FSBO investment properties before any other source.
First, FSBO properties offer direct access to the seller. There is no listing agent managing the process, screening offers, or negotiating on the seller's behalf. Flippers can make direct contact, present their offer, and negotiate terms face-to-face with the decision-maker. This direct access accelerates deal timelines from weeks to days.
Second, FSBO deals eliminate seller-side commission. On a $300,000 property, that is roughly $9,000-18,000 that stays in the deal instead of going to a listing agent. For flippers, that saved commission goes directly into the rehab budget or expands the profit margin. It is one of the primary reasons experienced flippers prioritize FSBO investment properties over MLS listings.
Third, FSBO sellers who have been on the market for 30+ days are increasingly motivated. They have discovered that selling a home without professional help is harder than they expected. They are tired of showing the property, fielding lowball offers, and managing the process alone. A flipper who arrives with a clean, all-cash, quick-close offer is solving a problem the seller desperately wants solved.
How to Find FSBO Deals Before Competing Flippers
If you are a flipper, the FSBO deals that your competitors are buying come from two sources: active FSBO listing sites and pre-FSBO data. Most flippers rely on the first source. They check Zillow, Craigslist, and ForSaleByOwner.com daily, just like every other investor in their market. That approach works but produces crowded deal flow.
The edge goes to flippers who find FSBO deals before properties hit the listing sites. PropertyRadar's 250+ data criteria let you identify homeowners who show every signal they are about to sell: high equity, long tenure, property condition signals, and no current listing or agent relationship. When you reach these pre-FSBO sellers with a fair cash offer before they even decide how to sell, you are the only buyer at the table.
If you are an agent competing against flippers for listings, this same data works in your favor. Identify the same FSBO-adjacent homeowners and reach them with a listing presentation before a flipper arrives with a cash offer. Show them what professional marketing, pricing strategy, and buyer exposure can add to their sale price compared to accepting the first investor offer.
Track Flipper Activity to Find Opportunity
PropertyRadar's transaction data lets you identify active flippers in your target areas by tracking properties that have been purchased and resold within 12-24 months. Map where flippers are buying. Look for patterns: ZIP codes, property types, price points, and deal sources. If you see flippers consistently buying FSBO properties in certain neighborhoods, that tells you exactly where to focus your own FSBO prospecting.
