IRVINE, Calif. – Feb. 23, 2017 – Who is buying homes? A study by ATTOM and Clear Capital, “Landlord Land,” analyzes the “who.” It’s a deeper look at the recent real estate boom that has seen home prices flirt with all-time highs even as the national homeownership rate remains near its 50-year low.
“Though prices in several markets are nearing pre-bust levels, the composition of both the supply and demand of today’s real estate market is starkly different than a decade ago,” says Alex Villacorta, Ph.D., vice president of research and analytics at Clear Capital.
Unlike earlier housing recoveries, investors are a higher percentage of today’s buyers. A U.S. heat map created by ATTOM lists both the number of investor homes in each zip code and the percentage of that zip code area’s housing stock owned by investors.
In Central Florida’s Kissimmee area near Disney World, for example, 75.3 percent of the housing stock is investor-owned in the 34747 zip code, while in the nearby 34746 area investors own roughly half of the homes (52.6 percent).
In Naples, investors own 41.9 percent in 34109 but only 16.8 percent in 34117. In Jacksonville, 32254 is 49.7 percent investor owned – but in many surrounding zip codes, the percentage is closer to 20 percent.
Nationwide, most investors – four out of five – only own one or two properties. However, institutional investors that own at least 100 homes make up 3 percent of all investors.
“Early on it was the mid-size investors all the way up to the large institutions (that) had the most urgent need for capital,” says Ryan McBride, COO at Colony American Finance. “We see a lot more opportunities from the smaller, midsized operators, and so that is where we are focusing our efforts: the broad base of the pyramid.”
U.S. investors by size
- 79% own two investment homes or less
- 8% own 3 to 5 investment homes
- 4% own 6 to 10
- 6% own 11 to 100
- 3% own more than 100 investment homes
“A housing recovery that is highly dependent on real estate investors is a bit of a double-edged sword,” says Daren Blomquist, senior vice president at ATTOM Data Solutions. “Rapidly rising home values have been good for homeowner equity but also have caused an affordability crunch for the first-time homebuyers.”
According to the study, the Southeast, which includes Florida, is in demand among investors.
“A lot of demand is people in the Bay Area and New York City looking to buy in the Southeast,” says Gary Beasley, CEO and founder at Roofstock, an online marketplace for single family rentals. “We have one Google engineer who just bought his sixth house. He said, ‘This is fantastic, real estate is so expensive here and I don’t want to be tied just to Bay Area real estate.'”
The study also includes a heat map of housing flips by zip code.
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