This is based on my limited experience but I think houses that haven't been sold in a while and don't have huge price jumps between sales are less likely to be flips. You can check past proprety sales on Zillow/redfin and past assessed values on SDAT.

Owning a home costs money. You should be putting away some amount of cash each month for the inevitable repairs and also try to be preventative about fixing issues before they become serious emergencies.