WHAT COULD GO WRONG? As Home Prices Rise, Flippers Make a Comeback.

The number of investors who flipped a house in the first nine months of 2016 reached the highest level since 2007. About one-third of the deals were financed with debt, a percentage not seen in eight years.

Now Wall Street, which was nearly felled by real-estate forays almost a decade ago, is getting back into the action. A number of banks are arranging financing vehicles for house-flippers, who buy and sell homes in a matter of months. The sector is small—participants say roughly several hundred million dollars in deals have been made in recent months—but it is expected to keep growing.

“The floodgates have opened,” says Eduardo Axtle, a 35-year-old former telecom entrepreneur in Oakland, Calif., who has taken out about 50 home loans over the past five years. These days, he is bombarded with unsolicited emails from brokers offering him access to financing, and fellow flippers invite him to get-togethers that are advertised with YouTube videos showing off recent projects.

Just try not to be the last flipper left unflipped.