Top 10 metros with the highest institutional investor share of all purchases
“Large corporate investors are often viewed as a primary driver of today’s housing affordability challenges, but the data show their footprint is relatively small and has been shrinking,” said Danielle Hale, chief economist at Realtor.com®. “While institutional investors expanded during the favorable buying conditions of the pandemic market, they remain a minor share of overall purchases. Policies focused on boosting housing supply are likely to have a far greater impact on affordability and homeownership than restricting a small segment of buyers.”
Key findings from the report:
- Although overall investor activity is structurally higher than it was a decade ago, large institutional investors – across various definitions – make up a small and shrinking share of US single family home purchases.
- Institutional investors (defined in this report as those who have made over 350 single family purchases since 2015) account for a very small portion (1%) of total single-family home purchases nationally, and even at their peak, comprised just 16% of all investor purchase activity from 2015-2025.
- Most investor activity is driven by small, “mom-and-pop” investors (those with fewer than 10 purchases), who now make up over 60% of all investor purchases, up from 50% in 2021-2022.
- Institutional investor activity is highly concentrated geographically, but typically highest in markets with relatively more available inventory and lower home prices.
- The Top 10 metros by total activity account for over 50% of institutional (350+) investor purchases. The top 25 metros account for 75%.
- Even among these hotspots, the institutional investor share remains small compared to overall single family purchases. In Memphis, the nation's top metro by purchase share, institutional buyers accounted for only 4.4% of total single-family purchases from 2015 to 2025.
- Within hotspot metros, purchase activity is similarly concentrated in select zip codes.
- Over a quarter of metro Houston’s 40,000+ institutional purchases over the last 11 years were clustered in just ten zip codes, where they captured up to 73% of the local investor market but at most 10% overall sales activity.
- The small scale and high concentration of institutional activity limits the scope for crowding out homeownership at the metro-level, let alone national displacement.
- Even at peak moments and in hotspot metros, the scale of institutional activity limits how much it could have meaningfully altered local supply or affordability.
- Any proposed investor ban, therefore, should carefully weigh the concentrated, short-term benefits of adding a small fraction of homes to the market against the risk of adding yet another barrier to new housing supply in the long run.
Top 10 Metros with the Highest Institutional Investor Share of All Purchases
|
Metro |
Institutional Share (350+) |
Large Share (100-349) |
Total Investor Share |
|
Memphis, TN-MS-AR |
4.4% |
4.4% |
19.2% |
|
Colorado Springs, CO |
4.3% |
1.6% |
9.7% |
|
Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, NC-SC |
4.2% |
2.4% |
13.5% |
|
Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA |
3.8% |
2.7% |
13.2% |
|
Birmingham, AL |
3.8% |
2.7% |
15.7% |
|
Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX |
3.6% |
2.4% |
13.9% |
|
Raleigh-Cary, NC |
3.5% |
2.8% |
15.0% |
|
Indianapolis-Carmel-Greenwood, IN |
3.5% |
2.7% |
11.8% |
|
Winston-Salem, NC |
3.1% |
2.0% |
12.0% |
|
San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX |
3.0% |
1.8% |
12.2% |
