Investor demand for single-family home purchases remained stable in the fourth quarter of 2022, despite a decline in iBuying and an increase in investor demand, according to the company. report Released this month by core logic.
According to CoreLogic economist Thomas Malone, the percentage of single-family home purchases by investors fell to 21% in June 2022, but recovered to 26% in September, and has stabilized since then. doing.
“[T]Investor share flattened out in the fourth quarter of last year, about two percentage points below its February 2022 high of 28%. However, this is much higher than at any time before the pandemic,” he said in the report.
Broadly speaking, the market has cooled for both investors and owners. Investor buyers purchased an average of 81,000 homes, a 25% drop in activity compared to buying activity observed in the fourth quarter of 2021. However, this is generally in line with investor buying activity in 2019 and his fourth quarter of 2020.
“On the other hand, purchases by owners are well below what they were at the time,” Malone said. “Overall, housing demand appears to have fallen fairly evenly for both investors and homebuyers, and both may have been dampened by higher prices and higher interest rates.”
While so-called “mega-investors” appear to be rapidly exiting the market, smaller players in the investment space (defined as those who own less than 10 properties) are increasing investment activity in the homebuying space. occupying a larger market share. .
“The share of mega-investors fell from 11% in September to 9% in December,” Malone noted. “Over the same time frame, the share of small investors rose from 45% to 48%. It remained stable, with large investors (those with between 101 and 1,000 properties) accounting for 8% of all investor purchases.”
Mega players in the investment space remain active in the Greater Atlanta Area (MSA), which was the only MSA to achieve 10% or more of home purchases in Q4 2022.
“With the exception of Memphis, no other MSA in the top 10 investment markets has a corresponding figure above 5%, making Atlanta a big outlier,” Malone explained.
Purchasing activity dropped sharply from the summer of 2022 and remained depressed until the end of the year.