Investor Home Purchases Sagged in Q4
As home sales surged and prices soared, real estate investors were no small part of the mix. CoreLogic says the share of home sales going to investors, large and small, climbed steadily during the pandemic, rising from around 14 percent in the spring of 2020 to a peak of 26.9 percent last October. The data in the CoreLogic report, authored by economist Thomas Malone, is too limited, covering only the fourth quarter of 2021, to draw any solid conclusions, but they may be an early indication that investors are rethinking their business strategies. Moore says that, after accounting for the largest share of home sales transactions in CoreLogic’s records in October, the investor portion slipped the following month for the first time since July 2020. It wasn’t a big decline, 1.5 percentage point, but by year-end the share of home purchases was at 20.4 percent. Moore adds that, while the percentage share fell, the absolute number of homes purchased was in line with historical winter investor activity. In as shown in figure 2, the number of homes purchased by investors each month was fairly consistent pre-pandemic regardless of overall market movement. Malone says the trendline indicates that first quarter 2022 data may show that the investor share ticked back up in January and February if owner-occupied home sales slowed as they typically do in the winter months. It will be investor purchases in the summer months, when owner occupied buyers are most active, that will tell us whether the investor purchasing spree is here to stay or if investors will revert to their pre-pandemic level of buying.