Flippers in Bradley Beach

The housing bubble blog covered this story pretty well already so most of you have probably already seen it. If you haven't it's a good read.


[It wasn't a pretty picture when Charles Kovach and his wife, Brenda Connolly, first took a look at an octagonal-shaped house on LaReine Avenue in Bradley Beach, a block-and-a-half from the beach.

The home was run-down. It had no insulation or closets.

"It was a disaster," said Connolly, a real estate agent at Diane Turton Realtors in Avon.

But Kovach, who buys residential properties, fixes them up and resells them — also known as "flipping," — saw something and bought the house for just under $500,000 last August. He spent about $200,000 for renovations and other costs, completely transforming the structure. Now he hopes to sell it for $849,000.

But the house has been on the market for three months. A year or two ago, it probably would have already sold.

While home prices are still edging up, they are not rising at the furious double-digit clip of the past three years. And that is starting to put a damper on the real estate market for investors —some would call them speculators — who have had a hand in driving up prices in recent years.]

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