Does home flipping help ease affordability? November 2, 2017 Investors have re-emerged in home flipping, scouring markets to find homes they can make over to earn a profit. The practice – once blamed for helping to fuel the housing crisis a decade ago – is now a welcome sign to some city officials who say it's helping to solve an affordability crunch. States like Florida and Nevada continue to have a large stock of foreclosed homes, and flippers are stepping in to renovate homes that, at the same time, help battle neighborhood blight and create more options for first-time and low-income buyers. In many cases, the flipped homes being sell well below the rest of the market. Industry analysts point to that as a sign that it's filling a shortage of affordable housing. "This flipping activity could be seen as a social good if it's bringing houses up to standards and putting them back on the market," says Steven Swidler, an Auburn University profe