The housing market may have found a “new equilibrium,” a recent Realtor.com report suggests, with small investors outpacing large corporate buyers.
Key points:
- With new data suggesting large investors are pulling back from buying homes, small investors now make up nearly two-thirds of all investor purchases, according to a new report from Realtor.com.
- In some markets, small investors typically buy at lower prices than the market median, making them stiff competitors for first-time and moderate-income buyers.
- Entry-level housing dynamics “are shifting,” according to Realtor.com Senior Economist Hannah Jones — “but that competition hasn’t gone away, particularly in affordable Midwest and Sun Belt markets.”
Investor activity in residential real estate is experiencing a shift, with more small investors making up the market and retaining properties today than mega-investors.
Buying activity among investors ticked up to 11.3% of all purchases in 2025 — compared with 11% in 2024 — even as home sales dropped to a multi-decade low, according to Realtor.com’s annual Investor Report released June 23.
Investors bought about 534,000 homes last year, up 0.7% year-over-year. But investors also sold about 442,000 properties, or 1.5% fewer than in 2024 and the smallest total since 2020. This indicates that investors are no longer seeking to offload pandemic-era investments, the report suggested.
At this stage, the market is achieving a “new equilibrium,” according to Realtor.com Senior Economist Hannah Jones. “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,” Jones said in the report.
Investor sales slow as regional trends emerge
The national share of investor sellers was 9.3% in 2025, unchanged from 2024, the report noted. But the absolute number of investor sales ticked down from 448,000 to 442,000. Consequently, the gap between investor purchases and investor sales expanded from around 80,000 properties in 2024 to 92,000 in 2025.
Even so, the share of investor sellers remains well above the pre-pandemic norm of 6.7%, a result of the large swaths of homes scooped up in 2021 and 2022. Regional trends have also emerged, with the Midwest and the Sun Belt leading in investor activity in 2025.
Topping the list was Memphis, Tennessee (with investors accounting for 23.7% of all purchases), followed by Kansas City, Missouri (21.2%), and St. Louis (21.1%) — areas where affordable median home prices, strong rental markets and transaction volume attracted small and large investors alike.
In the Sun Belt, San Antonio and Dallas-Fort Worth remained consistent hubs amid population growth and ample supplies of entry-level inventory, with shares of investor buyers of 15.9% and 15.6%, respectively. Meanwhile, Birmingham, Alabama, and Las Vegas saw the largest annual growth of large metros, with the report attributing the uptick in Las Vegas to softening prices.
One Sun Belt city bucking the trend: Atlanta. Though once one of the most active investor markets in the U.S., Atlanta’s investor buyer share has dipped below its 10% percent pre-pandemic baseline with “the largest negative net position of any major metro” recorded in 2025, Jones said.
“The combination of elevated prices, a softening rental market, and significant earlier accumulation appears to have pushed that market into an ongoing offload cycle,” Jones added.
Small investors ramp up
“Mega investors,” a term with varying meanings that this report defined as investors with 350 purchases or more, accounted for a peak of 16% of all investor purchases in 2021 — a share that shrank to a 14-year low of 7.5% in 2025.
Meanwhile, “small investors” — defined as corporate entities with fewer than 10 purchases — filled that gap to become “the stable floor beneath more volatile institutional activity,” Jones said. Small investors accounted for nearly 63% of all investor purchases, their highest share in more than 15 years. This group also purchased about 53,000 more properties than they sold last year.
Affordability impacts differ by location
The impact of investor activity on housing affordability varies significantly by market.
In Kansas City, for instance, the report said small investors made up 9.5% of all home purchases in 2025 and bought at a median price of $240,000 — well below the market median of $347,000 and solidly within the price tier for first-time or moderate-income buyers.
In Charlotte, North Carolina, the share of investor buyers fell to 13.6% after hitting a 18.5% peak in 2022. Although the share of mega investors has dropped over the past few years, activity among small investors has steadily increased, with their median home purchase price hitting $250,000 in 2025, or 39% below the market median.
Barring any major changes in rental economics or policy intervention, last year’s “elevated-but-stable investor share appears to represent the new baseline,” the report said.
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