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Anyone who’s in the business of renovating and selling homes in the area around Connecticut’s capital city didn’t have a great year in 2024, at least compared to their peers.

A new report from real estate data firm Attom says home-flippers in Greater Hartford saw the second-biggest drop in their return on investment in the nation last year, after Philadelphia

Greater Hartford home flippers saw the delta between a home’s purchase price and its sale price, if it sold again within 12 months of being bought, drop from 59 percent to 45.7 percent.

The annual median single-family sale price in Hartford County rose from $330,000 in 2023 to $360,000 in 2024 according to The Warren Group, publisher of The Commercial Record. In Middlesex County, also part of the Hartford metro according to Attom and the U.S. Census Bureau, the median single-family sale price jumped from $379,000 to $420,000 over the same time period.

The latest nationwide return on investment, before accounting for mortgage interest, property taxes, renovation expenses and other holding costs, was up from 28.6 percent in 2023 and from 29.4 percent in 2022, according to Attom, but it remained barely more than half of the 54.2 percent peak over the prior decade, set in in 2016.

Investors, nationally, saw their profit margins tick upward last year, as the median price of the homes they flipped increased slightly faster than the median price they had paid to purchase properties – 3 percent versus 2 percent.

“The home-flipping industry saw investors shy away even more in 2024 amid the extended period of languishing profits. But even as activity waned, there was at least a glimmer of hope that returns were starting to turn around,” Rob Barber, CEO at Attom, said in a statement. “While home flippers still seemed to be having difficulty timing the market for big profits, their margins at least stopped going in the wrong direction.”

The other metro areas that saw flippers experience the biggest drop in return on investment were Philadelphia (down from 82.4 percent in 2023 to 68.4 percent in 2024), Hartford, Pittsburgh (down from 123.7 percent to 110.9 percent); Richmond (down from 81.7 percent to 69.7 percent) and Detroit (down from 66.7 percent to 59.2 percent).

“This year poses significant uncertainty for investors, what with a short supply of homes for sale, declining numbers of low-priced foreclosure properties, mixed economic forecasts and elevated mortgage rates. So, they will have to do some very smart buying and quick renovating to keep the profit rebound going,” Barber said.