Where Flip Margins Are Actually Highest Right Now: ATTOM's Q1 2026 Metro Data

What just happened

ATTOM's Q1 2026 U.S. Home Flipping Report put national gross ROI at 25.4%, up from 24.7% the prior quarter — the first quarterly improvement after seven straight quarters of decline. But that national figure covers an enormous range. Among metros with populations over 1 million, the widest typical profit margins were in Pittsburgh, PA (about 85.9%), Buffalo, NY (about 84%), Virginia Beach, VA (about 74.9%), Baltimore, MD (about 65.9%), and Philadelphia, PA (about 62%). At the other end, Idaho posted the weakest state-level ROI at roughly 2.5%, followed by Montana, Texas, Utah, and Mississippi.

The headline: a rising national average doesn't mean margins are improving everywhere. Where you buy is doing more work than the national trend right now.

Why the spread is this wide

The metros topping the list share a pattern: low acquisition prices relative to resale value, and resale values that have stayed relatively stable while purchase prices stayed cheap. Rust Belt and Mid-Atlantic markets like Pittsburgh, Buffalo, and Baltimore let investors buy in at a fraction of what a comparable rehab costs in a Sun Belt boomtown, so even a modest post-rehab price lift produces a large percentage return. The lowest-ROI states, by contrast, are mostly markets where flippers were still paying pandemic-era premiums to acquire, leaving little room between purchase price and ARV after rehab and carrying costs.

• High-margin pattern: cheap entry price + stable-to-rising resale value = wide dollar spread relative to what you put in.
• Low-margin pattern: acquisition price already close to ARV before rehab even starts, leaving no room for the numbers to work.
• Activity ≠ margin: some of the busiest flipping metros (Dallas, Kansas City, Memphis, Atlanta) aren't the highest-ROI ones — volume and margin are different questions.
• This is gross ROI before rehab, holding, and transaction costs — net margins will be materially lower everywhere on this list.

What it means for flippers

If you're flipping in — or picking between — multiple markets, the metro-level data is a better guide than the national headline. It doesn't mean chase the top of the list blind; it means understand why a market is producing margin before you commit capital there. A city near the top of the ROI list because entry prices are genuinely low relative to resale value is a different opportunity than a city that just happens to have had one hot quarter.

• Run your own comps before trusting a metro's average — ROI figures are typical, not guaranteed, and vary block to block.
• In lower-margin metros, tighten your buy price further; the 70% rule matters more where the ARV-to-acquisition spread is already thin.
• In higher-margin metros, don't get complacent on rehab scope — a wide typical margin can mask a bad individual deal just as easily as a thin one.
• Use our flip calculators for specific metros to model your own numbers against local comps rather than relying on the metro average alone.

The takeaway

National ROI ticking up to 25.4% is genuinely good news, but it's an average across markets that are moving in very different directions. The flippers getting the best of this environment are underwriting each deal against its own metro's real spread between acquisition price and resale value — not assuming the national number applies everywhere they're looking to buy.