House flipping may have been more of a threat to a weakened economy during the housing crisis, but it's not a big deal now, because flippers have higher profit margins.
Rice economics Professor John Diamond says he's not sure house flippers have ever been much of a threat to the economy.
"If someone's going to lose money it's going to be the flippers themselves. We should be much more worried about how much debt are homeowners taking on and what's happening to that debt later on in the process."
Professor Diamond says flippers are much more professional now than they were ten years ago.
"You have these groups like OpenDoor and Zillow and other places that have monetized house flipping and made it a more professional business than the old wildcat way of doing it."
Analysts at CoreLogic say flippers made nearly 23% profit in the fourth quarter of 2018. In 2006 it was just 6%.