Between home price gains and inventory shortages, house flippers are scrambling to make a profit in the Dallas-Fort Worth market.

According to the Dallas Morning News, a new study by Attom Data found that flips from short-term investors in the third quarter only account for 5.1 percent of the previously-owned home sales in Dallas-Fort Worth, which is consistent with the national average.

Though flipping was up 14 percent in D-FW, its 1,200 flips barely put a dent in the nearly 47,000 flips nationwide, while flippers in Miami and Phoenix sold around 2,000 houses.

"Home flipping profits continue to be squeezed by a dwindling inventory of distressed properties available to purchase at a discount and increasing competition from fair-weather home flippers often willing to operate on thinner margins," Daren Blomquist, senior vice president at Attom Data, said in a statement. "A more than nine-year low in the ratio of flips per investor is evidence of this increased competition, which is pushing many investors to new metro areas that often have weaker market fundamentals but also come with a bigger supply of discounted distressed properties to flip."

The most profitable areas for house flippers are Pittsburgh with a 147.7 percent return on the investment, Baton Rouge (122.2 percent), Philadelphia (114.0 percent), Baltimore (101.5 percent), and Cleveland (98.6 percent). 

Compare that to the national return average of 48 percent and the anemic return of only 22.7 percent in Dallas-Fort Worth.

Home flips are identified as any property that changes hands twice within a year. On the national level, the median flipped home contained 1,405 square feet and sold for around $206,000. The average flipped sale in Dallas-Fort Worth was $220,248 for a 1,759-square-foot house.