Economists at Realtor.com estimate that investors making more than 350 purchases accounted for roughly 1 percent of all single-family home purchases nationally over the 2015 to 2025 period, although shares were higher in selected Sun Belt metros. Using a 100-purchase threshold raises the national share to about 1.7 percent. Investors buying fewer than 10 properties account for more than 60 percent of investor purchases. The data distinguish a large overall investor footprint from the much smaller component attributable to large corporate buyers.
The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act got the distinction right: institutional investors should not have an unlimited ability to aggregate the existing supply of homes, but federal policy should welcome capital that creates new ones. The data also puts the issue in perspective: regulating institutional acquisitions may improve competition in some neighborhoods, but America's affordability crisis will be solved by producing millions more homes, not by rearranging ownership of the ones we already have.