Is Wall Street Buying Up All the Homes in America?

If you’re thinking about buying a home, you may find yourself interested in the latest real estate headlines so you can have a pulse on all of the things that could impact your decision. If that’s the case, you’ve probably heard mention of investors, and wondered how they’re impacting the housing market right now.

According to SFR Investor, which studies the single-family rental market in the United States, there are eighty-two million single-family homes in this country. According to data shared, sixty-eight million (82.93%) of those homes are owner-occupied – meaning the person who owns the home lives in it. If you subtract that sixty-eight million from the total number of single-family homes (82 million), that leaves just about fourteen million homes left that are single-family rentals (SFRs).

There are four categories of investors (see photo). These categories show that not all investors are large institutional investors. To help convey that even more clearly, the percentages of rental homes owned by each type of investor are shown in the chart. The green shows the vast majority are not owned by large institutional investors. Instead, most are owned by small mom & pop investors, like your friends and neighbors.

What’s actually happening is, that there are people out there, just like you, who believe in homeownership, and they view buying a home (or a second home) as an investment. Maybe they saw an opportunity to buy a second home over the last few years to use it as a rental and generate additional income. Or maybe they just decided to keep their first house rather than sell it when they moved up. If you have other questions about things you’re hearing about the housing market, let’s connect so you have an expert to give you the context you need.