Small Investors Dominate Purchases as Mega-Investors Continue to Retreat from the Market

AUSTIN, Texas, June 23, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- As home sales fell to a multi-decade low in 2025, investor buying activity held steady, reaching 11.3% of all purchases – up from 11.0% in 2024 – while investor selling eased for the first time in two years, according to the annual Realtor.com^® Investor Report. Roughly 534,000 homes were purchased by investors in 2025, a 0.7% year-over-year increase, even as overall non-investor home sales fell 2.1%. Meanwhile, investors sold 442,000 properties, 1.5% fewer than the prior year and the lowest count since 2020, signaling that investors are no longer unwinding pandemic-era positions at the pace seen in previous years.

"The investor market has found a new equilibrium," said Hannah Jones, senior economist, Realtor.com^®. "With small investors now comprising nearly two-thirds of all investor purchases and large institutional players continuing to pull back, the dynamics shaping competition in entry-level housing are shifting – but that competition hasn't gone away, particularly in affordable Midwest and Sun Belt markets."

While all home sales were down more than 25% compared to the 2021–2022 peak, investor purchases were down a smaller 22.6% over the same period. Zooming out further, overall home sales fell 14.3% relative to pre-pandemic levels, while investor acquisitions rose 14.6% – a divergence that underscores investors' persistent engagement even as typical buyers remain on the sidelines.

Investor Seller Activity Eases After Two Years of Elevated Selling

After two consecutive years of record-high selling, investors showed meaningful signs of stepping back from the sell side in 2025. The share of investor sellers held at 9.3% in 2025 – matching its 2024 level – but the absolute count of investor sales edged down from 448,000 to 442,000. As a result, net investor accumulation – the gap between purchases and sales – widened from roughly 80,000 properties in 2024 to approximately 92,000 in 2025.

Despite the year-over-year easing, investor sell share of 9.3% remains well above the pre-pandemic norm of 6.7%, a residual effect of the aggressive accumulation that took place in 2021 and 2022. Still, the direction of travel has shifted. Investors are no longer flooding supply at the pace seen during the post-pandemic correction, and the market appears to have found a more stable footing.

Small Investors Continue to Grow Share; Mega-Investors Hit Decade-Plus Low

The pandemic era reshaped not just how many investors are active in the housing market, but who those investors are. In 2021 and 2022, mega investors – those with 350 or more purchases – briefly expanded their typical share of all investor purchases to more than 16% at their 2021 peak. By 2025, mega investors accounted for just 7.5% of investor purchases, their smallest share since 2011 – and their purchase volumes are down nearly 70% from that peak.

Small investors, corporate entities with fewer than 10 total purchases, have always been the majority of the investor buyer market, and that dominance has deepened. As larger operators pulled back, small investors' share of all investor purchases climbed to roughly 63% in 2025, the highest concentration of small-investor activity in more than 15 years. While all other investor size categories have transitioned to net-selling over recent years, small investors remain steadfast net-buyers, acquiring approximately 53,000 more properties than they sold in 2025.

"Small investors are the stable floor beneath the more volatile institutional activity," said Jones. "They purchase at a median of $330,000 nationally – about 25% below the overall market median of $440,000 – meaning they are systematically active in the entry-level tier where first-time buyers are also competing. In high-investor metros like Kansas City, that gap stretches to more than $100,000, making the overlap with first-time buyer budgets particularly acute."

Large investor purchases are down approximately 30% from their peak and continue to decline, while mega-investor net accumulation has flipped sharply negative. Over the past three years, mega investors have sold roughly 135,000 more properties than they purchased, a meaningful, if gradual, release of supply back to the market.

Midwest and Sun Belt Drive Investor Activity

Investor activity in 2025 remained highly concentrated geographically. Among the 50 largest metros, Memphis, Tenn. (23.7%), Kansas City, Mo.-Kan. (21.2%), and St. Louis, Mo. (21.1%) led the nation in investor buyer share, meaning roughly one in four or five homes sold in these markets went to a corporate investor. Birmingham, Ala. (21.0%) and Oklahoma City, Okla. (17.9%) rounded out the top five. These markets share a common profile: relatively affordable median prices, strong rental demand, and sufficient transaction volume to attract both local small-investor operators and investors expanding regional footprints.

Metros with the Highest Investor Buyer Share for 2025

The Sun Belt picture is more varied. San Antonio, Texas (15.9%) and Dallas-Fort Worth (15.6%) remain deeply investor-active, sustained by population growth and a steady supply of entry-level inventory. Birmingham and Las Vegas saw the most dramatic year-over-year acceleration among large metros, with investor buy share rising 3.2 and 2.7 percentage points, respectively. The surge in Las Vegas was driven in part by softening prices creating renewed acquisition opportunities for investors who had largely exited the market during the 2022–2023 rate shock.

On the other end of the spectrum, high-cost West Coast and Northeast markets remained the least investor-penetrated among major metros. Portland, Ore. (5.8%), Sacramento, Calif. (6.1%), and Hartford, Conn. (6.1%) all sat well below the national average, reflecting higher purchasing costs, compressed rental yields, and in several cases policy environments that have made residential investment less attractive. Both Sacramento and Portland registered as net investor-selling markets in 2025, as investors continued offloading pandemic-era accumulation.

"Atlanta is perhaps the most striking reversal in the data," said Jones. "Once among the most investor-active markets in the country, Atlanta's investor buy share has now fallen below its pre-pandemic baseline at 10.0% – and investors were net sellers there in 2025 by nearly 1,800 properties, the largest negative net position of any major metro. The combination of elevated prices, a softening rental market, and significant earlier accumulation appears to have pushed that market into an ongoing offload cycle."

The Affordability Lens: Where Investors and First-Time Buyers Overlap

Aggregate investor share figures tell part of the story, but the more consequential question for housing affordability is which segment of the market investor activity is concentrated in. Kansas City and Charlotte, North Carolina illustrate the range of dynamics at play.

In Kansas City, investors purchased 21.2% of all homes sold in 2025, up 1.5 percentage points year-over-year. Small investors alone accounted for 9.5% of all purchases – nearly 2.5 percentage points above the national small-investor average. Small investors purchased at a median of $240,000 against an overall market median of $347,000, a gap of more than $100,000, placing their activity squarely in the tier most accessible to first-time and moderate-income buyers.

Charlotte tells a more encouraging story. After investor buy shares peaked at 18.5% in 2022, driven by mega and large investors capitalizing on the region's pandemic-era price appreciation, activity has pulled back to 13.6% in 2025. Mega investors, who briefly accounted for 6.4% of all Charlotte home purchases in 2021, retreated to just 2.3% by 2025. The institutional surge has receded; the small-investor presence has not, with small investors' share of all purchases growing modestly even as total investor activity declined. Small investors in Charlotte purchased at a median of $250,000 against a market median of $410,000 – a discount of 39%.

Looking Ahead

The 2025 data describes an investor market that has found a new floor rather than continuing to retreat. Investor purchase share has now held above 11% for three consecutive years, and with small investors comprising two-thirds of all investor activity, that floor is unlikely to erode quickly even if financing conditions remain challenging. The composition shift away from mega investors removes one source of potential future surge, but it also removes the most likely source of large-scale market exit. Absent a significant change in the rental economics that sustain small-investor returns, or policy intervention targeting corporate ownership at the local level, 2025's elevated-but-stable investor share appears to represent the new baseline.

Metro Investor Data – 50 Largest U.S. Markets

Methodology

This report uses deed transaction data to identify corporate real estate investors active in the residential market. Investors are defined as entities purchasing single-family homes, condominiums, townhomes, and related residential property types using a corporate structure – limited liability companies, limited partnerships, general partnerships, trusts, and REITs – with occupancy codes indicating absentee or tenant-occupied use. Builder, relocation service, iBuyer, and financial institution transactions are excluded.

Investors are categorized by total purchase count across the full dataset: small (1–10 purchases), medium (11–50), large (51–350), and mega (351 or more). Because these categories are based on cumulative all-time activity, an entity's classification reflects its full history in the data rather than its activity in any single year. Metro-level analysis is restricted to the 50 largest U.S. metropolitan statistical areas by transaction volume. Pre-pandemic benchmarks use 2017–2019 averages. All figures reflect transactions recorded through December 2025.

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