Map shows where home investors are still buying the most houses in America

Investors’ home purchases in the U.S. have grown between 2024 and 2025, but not for the big corporations that lawmakers targeted in their historic bipartisan housing package, now stalled by President Donald Trump.

What has been driving the rise in investors’ buying activity from 11 percent of all purchases in 2024 to 11.3 percent last year, according to a study by Realtor.com, are mom-and-pop investors, who now dominate the market after Wall Street has retreated.

Trump canceled the signing ceremony for the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, but the landmark housing package could still automatically become law without his signature under the 10-day rule as long as Congress remains in session. The president demanded that Congress first pass the citizenship-proving SAVE America Act.

Institutional buyers comprise roughly 1 percent of overall single-family purchases, illustrating a potential disconnect between Washington's legislative focus and actual market forces.

Roughly 534,000 homes were purchased by investors last year, Realtor.com found, up 0.7 percent from a year earlier, even as overall noninvestor home sales fell 2.1 percent due to ongoing affordability struggles burdening U.S. buyers.

Within the same period, investors sold 442,000 properties, or 1.5 percent fewer than the prior year and the lowest count since 2020—suggesting that investor selling has stabilized amid broader market constraints, rather than the rapid unwinding of pandemic-era positions.

This is the time when institutional investors first came into the spotlight as an issue for regular Americans. In 2023, when buying a home was particularly hard to afford for everyday buyers due to high mortgage rates and skyrocketing prices, investors bought 26 percent of the country’s most affordable homes, exacerbating the existing shortage of homes at a lower cost level.

Since then, the phenomenon has significantly subsided, though it remains very much in the political and public spotlight. By 2025, large institutional investors—those with 350 or more purchases—accounted for just 7.5 percent of investor purchases, their smallest share since 2011.

Their purchase volumes are down nearly 70 percent from their 2021 peak, according to Realtor.com.

"The investor market has found a new equilibrium," Hannah Jones, senior economist, Realtor.com, said in a statement.

"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 small investors have always been the majority in the investors’ market, they now represent 63 percent of the market—the highest concentration of small-investor activity in more than 15 years.

In the currently regionally divided U.S. housing market, where housing shortages remain most acute in the Northeast while states like Florida and Texas experience a surplus of supply, mom-and-pop investors are concentrating their purchases in the Midwest and the Sunbelt.

Among the 50 largest metropolitan areas, Memphis, Tennessee reported the highest concentration of investors’ purchases, at 23.7 percent, followed by Kansas City, Missouri-Kansas (21.2 percent), and St. Louis, Missouri (21.1 percent).

In these three metros, about 1 in 4 or 5 homes sold went to a corporate investor.

Birmingham, Alabama, and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, followed with 21 percent and 17.9 percent respectively.

Investors are focusing on these cities because they are all relatively affordable, they have strong rental demand, and there are enough transactions signaling the markets are lively.

The metros with the lowest share of investors' purchases last year were Portland, Oregon (5.8 percent), Hartford, Connecticut (6.1 percent), Sacramento, California (6.1 percent), Seattle, Washington (6.4 percent), and Boston, Massachusetts (7 percent). All these are competitive markets with tight inventory.

Homebuyers who supported a ban on new purchases by institutional investors would be happy to know that their presence in the U.S. housing market has shrunk dramatically since the pandemic.

While there is not the same acrimony towards mom-and-pop investors, the latest data shows that these are still faring better than regular buyers. All home sales were down more than 25 percent in 2025 compared to the 2021 to 2022 peak, while investor purchases were down a smaller 22.6 percent over the same period, Realtor.com found.

During the same period, overall home sales fell 14.3 percent relative to pre-pandemic levels, while investor acquisitions rose 14.6 percent.

Realtor.com identifies investors through corporate deed records, meaning the data primarily tracks small-scale investors who purchase properties using corporate structures like LLCs.

Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Ben Kelly and James Debens.