Posted on 07/09/2025 5:04:53 AM PDT by yesthatjallen
Real estate investors are snapping up a bigger share of U.S. homes on the market as rising prices and stubbornly high borrowing costs freeze out many other would-be homebuyers.
Nearly 27% of all homes sold in the first three months of the year were bought by investors -- the highest share in at least five years, according to a report by real estate data provider BatchData.
Between 2020 and 2023, the share of homes bought by investors averaged 18.5%.
All told, investors bought 265,000 homes in the January-March quarter, an increase of 1.2% from the same period a year earlier, the firm said.
Despite the modest annual increase, the rise in the share of investor home purchases is more a reflection of how much the housing market has slowed as traditional buyers face growing affordability constraints, according to BatchData.
The U.S. housing market has been in a sales slump since early 2022, when mortgage rates began to climb from pandemic-era lows. Home sales fell last year to their lowest level in nearly 30 years.
SNIP
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
Something needs to be done about this.
What do these investors do with the homes after they are purchased?
Do they rent it out at enormous cost? Do they let the house empty for a year and then resell it for profit?
It seems risky, considering all the illegal alien squatters out there looking for free housing.
Send every last illegal home, then any recent house purchases won’t look good unless you want to live in it yourself for a long time.
So what do ‘investors’ do with homes, live in 10 of them at the same time? Sit on them empty.
Probably not. My guess is that they rent them out, pulling buyers off the market and into rentals...to some extent at least. But the numbers don’t change - less buyers chasing fewer homes for sale. Bottom line - nothing changes, except all of the risk of home ownership is on the backs of ‘investors’ and as we learned in 2008, investing in real estate is not always a sure thing.
...and DEFINITELY not a sure thing if Trump, then Vance are able to send packing a HUGE NUMBER of people living in this country, that being the Illegals, of course. Even though they’re at the bottom of the housing market, once the lower end opens up with really cheap prices, there will be huge downward pressure right up the chain.
...anyway, maybe I’m being optimistic!
LOL - I posting almost the same thing. And, actually, Bush Jr’s “Ownership Society” is a huge part of the 2008 mess - “we need (unqualified) people owning homes so they can cash-in on the equity”. Stupid-ass idea.
The article is superficial in that it does not say where the investor purchases are occurring. I do not believe the practice is widespread across the whole country
Many Youth in America have no savings discipline, and are therefore destined to be rent slaves.
Not business’s fault that they see this market to “serve”.
“The article is superficial in that it does not say where the investor purchases are occurring. I do not believe the practice is widespread across the whole country.”
Tell me about it, I don’t see any shortage of listings. The only thing that I can think of is that they’re snatching up crappy houses to rent out...but crappy houses are generally in crappy neighborhoods, so most people won’t even notice the difference.
This is fueling the exorbitant rise in housing costs. I suggest that the minimum down payment for these homes be 30%.
Don’t just do something. Stand there!
Also, I’m not sure what to make of the assertion that high interest rates are preventing buyers from entering the market. In the early 1980s I bought my first home with an 11.5% mortgage and homes were selling briskly then. I was in the Navy and VA loans made buying easier but it just seems there are so many local issues that drive home purchases that it’s hard to look at national data and know what to think.
I would like to see interest levels come down a bit though.
It used to be that fixer-uppers were the first homes that allowed young people to be home owners.
Now, you don’t want to live in an area of fixer-uppers because of the high crime in the area.
In the neighborhood my BIL lives in, all homes are over $750k and they sell in a heartbeat.
Of the last 7 homes sold 18 months ago, TWO are still empty. One has an out of state investor who “tries to make the home look lived in” and the other investor pops in every 2-3 weeks. So in other words, investors are letting the homes sit. One that sold 6 weeks ago looks to be a possible “flip” after a flurry of work and then zero activity. Sitting empty for now.
Blackrock bought several in my prior neighborhood and sold them at a loss to some undesirable folks who then moved in all of their family members. That was the one time I was thankful for a strong HOA. They handled business!! No more cars on the street, no more kid toys in the yard, no more loud music. Those folks sold at a huge profit and left. It was a social justice, virtue signal that didn’t work out for the corporation.
Cool Story! But yes, it’s a TOUGH BUSINESS to be in and Blackrock seems pretty damn stupid to me. Not to mention that they really thought they could somehow cash-in on Ukraine. IDIOTS!
This has been going on for years, AP just now acknowledging? LOL!
If they didn’t spend all of their money traveling through Europe and all the other sewers around the world, they could probably afford a house.
“Of the last 7 homes sold 18 months ago, TWO are still empty. One has an out of state investor who “tries to make the home look lived in” and the other investor pops in every 2-3 weeks. So in other words, investors are letting the homes sit.”
Expense to do that, considering the expenses for letting it sit...probably around 10% of the home’s value per year, considering the opportunity cost of interest, insurance, taxes, and upkeep. Eventually the bottom will will drop out of housing (again, if Trump has his way with Illegals, sooner than later), and the Blackrock ‘investors’ will get a lesson for a lifetime!
I would bet they rent them out to WELFARE RECIPIENTS and so We Pay the Rent!
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