How to confirm whether a market is conducive to flipping or not?

[Rod Smith]

Good evening all,

I am a small investor, but not a beginner because this is my second stint in the investment game. I have been a party to 7 buy, rehab and hold transactions and advised others on many more. I am also a licensed real estate agent. I know what to do, but my business is moving slow right now because I am using the method of buying distressed properties for cash, renovating and doing cash out re-fi which, as discussed in many post lately, requires that I wait 6 months for the refi. Well at least all of the lenders I know have that requirement. Then it takes a minimum another 2-3 months for me to find another property I want to move on, so I am basically buying 1 every 10 months. I want to move a little faster, especially while interest rates are low.

Anyway, that was just a little background. To increase my cash reserves I have decided I want to make my next couple projects flips and then I will get back into the buy and hold game. Here is my dilemna. As I look for properties in my target market, I see houses that appear to be attempts at flips and they are sitting on the market 6-9 months. This scares me! I like to give others the benefit of the doubt, so I want to think they did a good job on their rehab and even if the house is overpriced maybe they would have taken a lower offer by now so they could sell and move on. Maybe I am wrong..lol. I know some markets are hotter than others, but if you price a house right and rehab it properly in even a lukewarm market it seems like it should sell. It is not rural rural and the job market is stable, so people can afford moderately priced homes.

So my question is to the experienced flippers, what do you look at when researching a market? I know once you have bought and sold a couple properties in a specific area you kind of know the market and can even help set the values. But I am talking about when you first go into a neighborhood. As an agent my experience tells me that if I had accesss to the MLS in my target area I could make my life much easier because I could do a quick CMA on every property I am interested in. Then I could tell if the list price on a house is truly below market value, see what has recently sold and for how much, how long it takes houses to sell in that neighborhood, etc. However, when searching genericly I have not found the public sites to be reliable enough to depend on. Zillow is ok at best, but at times there are so many varying values stacked on top of each other in a given neighborhood, I begin to doubt the information. Based on what I just said I have reached out to the BP community for a referral to an investor friendly agent. Other than that, what methods have people used? Or is it that some areas just aren't good for flipping?

Your thoughts......

Thank you in advance for your assistance/advice.