Americans are flipping houses like it's 2006

New York

A TACTIC that helped define the height of homebuying madness in the US in the years before the market collapsed is rearing its head again.

Home flippers, who buy homes as a speculative bet on short-term price appreciation, accounted for 6.1 per cent of US home sales in 2016, according to Trulia, which defines a flip as a property sold twice in a 12-month period in arm's-length transactions. That's the highest share since 2006, when flips accounted for 7.3 perc ent of sales.