CoreLogic: US Home Investor Share Remained High in Early Summer 2023

Here are some excerpts from a CoreLogic report on investor buying: US Home Investor Share Remained High in Early Summer 2023

The sizable U.S. home investor share seen over the past two years held steady going into the summer. In March 2023, investors accounted for 27% of all single-family home purchases; by June, that number was almost unchanged at 26%.

Investors - by CoreLogic’s method - are still buying about a quarter of all homes in Q2 2023. Of course, the total number home bought by investors has declined.

Figure 2 illustrates the number of U.S. home purchases made by both investors and non-investors through March 2023. In April, May and June of 2023, home investors made 85,000, 98,000 and 82,000 purchases, respectively. Over the course of the second quarter, this was an annual decline of 90,000 purchases. However, when compared with the same months in 2019, the increase in home investor activity rose by more than 43,000. When comparing that number with non-investors, who made 392,000 fewer purchases in Q2 2023 than in Q2 2019, it becomes clear how different the current market than it was in the previous few years.

Most of the purchases are by small investors:

As the total number of investor purchases declines, smaller investors are growing their market share. Figure 3 shows that throughout 2023, mega-investors (those that own 1,000 or more properties) and large investors (those that own 100 to 999 properties) have both held market shares of between 8% and 10% in each month. In the case of mega-investors, this is a drastic decline from the high of 17% of all investor purchases recorded in June 2022. Medium investors (those that own 10 to 99 properties) saw a modest decrease in activity, from 37% to 35%.

Typical housing market investors are becoming more and more likely to operate smaller scale (owning three to nine properties). In June, this group accounted for 47% of investor purchases, the highest level since 2011, according to CoreLogic data.

On investor purchases, housing economist Tom Lawler noted:

CoreLogic defines an investor as “an entity (individual or corporate) who retained three or more properties simultaneously within the past 10 years or has a corporate or non-individual identifier on the deed. Examples include LLCs, CORPs, and INCs, to name a few.”  Thus, CoreLogic would include many small investors … though it may also include primary-resident purchases by individuals who also own other investment homes.

There is much more in the CoreLogic report.