U.S. investors made a slightly larger share of home purchases in 2025, even as mortgage affordability remained difficult for many would-be buyers. But the data do not show an investor boom: investor purchases rose just 0.7% year over year and remained well below their recent norm. A growing share partly reflects the broader market’s weakness, not investors taking over the housing market.
What the 2025 numbers actually show
Realtor.com Research estimates that investors bought about 534,000 U.S. homes in 2025, up 0.7% from 2024. Investors accounted for 11.3% of purchases, compared with 11.0% a year earlier; noninvestor purchases fell 2.1%. Yet investor purchases were still 22.6% below the 2021–22 norm, while overall home sales were more than 25% below that norm. The investor share edged up in a depressed market, rather than signaling a return to peak activity. Realtor.com Research’s June 2026 investor report uses deed records and its own investor classification.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
A separate measure also shows a modest increase: Redfin’s analysis of 2018–2025 HMDA data found investment properties made up 9.6% of U.S. mortgage originations in 2025, up from 9.3% in 2024. Primary residences accounted for 87.7%. These figures describe the purpose of reported mortgages, not the same universe as deed-recorded purchases. Redfin’s mortgage measure excludes purchases made without a reported mortgage, while Realtor.com’s 11.3% is a purchase share based on deed data. The percentages should not be treated as directly interchangeable.
“Investor” covers more than large companies
Investor statistics depend on how a buyer is identified. Realtor.com’s deed-based method tracks buy-and-hold corporate investor activity, so it can miss individuals who buy in their own names. In that report, smaller investors accounted for about two-thirds of investor purchases. Large and mega investors had pulled back from their peaks; mega-investors, defined in that dataset as buyers with at least 350 purchases, represented 7.5% of investor purchases in 2025, their smallest share since 2011. Those are the report’s operational categories, not universal definitions.
#1 Best Overall
That distinction matters when the question is whether Wall Street firms are buying most homes. In a separate Realtor.com analysis, institutional buyers were defined as purchasers of more than 350 single-family homes between 2015 and 2025. They accounted for 1% of total single-family purchases nationally during that period. Using a lower threshold of 100 or more purchases raised the figure to 1.7%. These numbers measure purchases over a decade, not the share of homes currently owned.
Institutional buying was concentrated geographically: the top 10 metro areas accounted for more than half of those purchases. Even Memphis, the metro with the highest institutional purchase share in the analysis, had a 4.4% share of total single-family purchases over 2015–2025. The national figures therefore do not mean large institutions never have a substantial local presence; they do show why a local market story should not be generalized to the whole country. Realtor.com’s institutional-investor analysis explains its thresholds and period.
Rank #2
Mortgage access was difficult, but not every buyer was shut out
Affordability pressure is visible in mortgage data, though it does not prove that every typical buyer was sidelined or that investors caused the difficulty. Urban Institute’s analysis of CFPB HMDA data found that purchase-mortgage originations increased only 1.2% in 2025. Across all mortgage purposes, originations rose from 3.9 million in 2024 to 4.3 million in 2025, still far below the 12.3 million recorded in 2021; refinancing accounted for much of the overall increase.
Do these 3 things before closing this tab:
1Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches2Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors3Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteAmong purchase-mortgage applicants, 14.5% were denied in 2025, up from 12.4% in 2021. Debt-to-income ratio was cited in 39% of denials. Among borrowers who obtained purchase mortgages, 30.6% had debt-to-income ratios above 45% in 2025, versus 19.3% in 2021. The figures describe applicants and borrowers in the mortgage data, not all people who hoped to buy. Urban Institute also reports median discount points of $2,588 in 2025, compared with $3,000 in 2024 and $1,224 in 2021; points are an upfront cost associated with the loan, not a measure of the full cash needed to close.
Rates stayed consequential. In Urban Institute’s analysis, the average 30-year mortgage rate reached 7.8% in November 2023 and fell as low as 6.1% in 2025. Redfin put the average 30-year fixed rate for 2025 at 6.6%. These are source-specific measures, so they should not be collapsed into one universal annual rate.
Buyer-age estimates also depend on the analysis: Redfin reported a median first-time buyer age of 35 in 2025, while the National Association of Realtors reported 40. The figures are not necessarily contradictory; the organizations use different analyses. Neither age estimate alone establishes how affordable homeownership was for a particular household.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Why the headline needs a qualification
Investors did gain a slightly larger share of purchases and mortgage originations in 2025, at the same time that affordability remained strained for many mortgage applicants and borrowers. That is a real contrast, but it is not proof that investors displaced those buyers. The data measure different things, and a rising share can result when the overall market contracts faster than a subgroup.
Claims about investors can also vary sharply with the source and its scope. For instance, an Associated Press story in July 2025 reported a BatchData estimate that investors represented 27% of purchases in the first quarter of 2025. That figure should not be compared directly with Realtor.com’s 11.3% annual share: the reports use different data definitions and coverage. The available figures support a nuanced conclusion—investors remained an important part of transactions, while large institutional buyers were a small share nationally under Realtor.com’s stated thresholds, and ordinary buyers faced measurable financing barriers.
How to read investor and mortgage statistics
- Check the denominator. A share of deed-recorded purchases, a share of mortgage originations, and a share of homes owned answer different questions.
- Check who counts as an investor. Individual landlords, corporate buyers, second-home borrowers, and large institutions may be classified differently.
- Check the period and location. A quarterly estimate, annual national figure, and decade-long metro analysis cannot be compared without accounting for their scope.
- Separate correlation from cause. Rising investor activity alongside affordability pressure does not by itself establish that investor purchases caused buyers to be priced out.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s mortgage data dashboard describes closed-end mortgage coverage by purpose—including primary residences, vacation homes, and investment properties—and excludes junior liens and home-equity lines of credit. That scope is one reason mortgage-originations figures should be read as financing data, not a full count of all home sales.
Quick Recap
Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.
