Buyers' market worries house 'flippers'

The Boston Globe reports:

Karl Case, a Wellesley College economics professor and real estate analyst, said he sees a ''growing excess supply" in Boston's western suburbs that has dampened the expectations of flippers.

Case said demand from both flippers and typical homebuyers could be fizzling. ''Buyers are disappearing or they're remaining but lowballing on prices," he said.

Real estate investing by buyers who don't plan on living in their properties is arguably at historically unprecedented levels, Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan said last month in a speech to the American Bankers Association.

This suggests that speculative activity may have had a greater role in generating recent real estate price increases than it customarily has had in the past, he said.