If you're thinking of buying a home, you might be curious about the latest real estate news to stay updated on factors that could affect your decision. And in that process, you must have come across the term "investors" and wondered how they're currently influencing the housing market. This might make you question things like:

• So, how many homes are owned by investors?

• Are you wondering if those big-shot Wall Street firms and other institutional investors are snatching up tons of homes, leaving regular folks like us struggling to find one?

To answer your questions, let me tell you the real story of what's happening based on the data.

So, let's figure out how many single-family homes (SFHs) there are in total and how many of those are actually rentals owned by investors. According to SFR Investor, they study the single-family rental market and found that there are a whopping eighty-two million single-family homes in the United States. But here's the question we really need to answer: out of all those homes, how many are actually being rented out?

So, basically, out of the total number of single-family homes (82 million), around sixty-eight million of them (82.93%) are owned by the person who lives in them. That means they are not up for rent or anything. Now, if you take away those sixty-eight million from the total, you're left with roughly fourteen million single-family homes that are actually being rented out to people.

Are you asking if all those leftover fourteen million homes are owned by institutional investors? Oh no, not even close! Let’s take it one step further. There are four categories of investors:

• Are you familiar with the small-scale investors who own anywhere from 1 to 9 single-family rental properties?

• Are you referring to the savvy local investor who happens to own somewhere between 10 to 99 single-family rental properties in the area?

• So, basically, we're talking about a smaller national investor who owns somewhere between 100 and 999 single-family rental properties.

• So, there's this big investor who actually owns more than a thousand single-family rental homes. Can you believe that? They're like a huge player in the real estate game!

So here's the deal: these categories prove that it's not just those big institutional investors who are in the game. Just to make it crystal clear, I've got the breakdown of the percentage of rental homes owned by each type of investor right here (check out the chart below).

You know, if you take a look at that chart, it's pretty interesting. Contrary to what you might hear on the news or see on social media, the green part actually represents the majority of properties, and guess what? They're not owned by big institutions at all. Nope! Most of them are owned by regular folks, just like your friends and neighbors.

So here's the thing: there are folks out there, just like you, who really believe in owning a home. To them, buying a house (or even a second one) is like making an investment. Some of them took advantage of the opportunity in recent years to snap up a second home and rent it out for some extra cash. Others simply made the choice to hold onto their first house instead of selling it when they moved on.

You shouldn't completely believe everything you come across or hear about those institutional investors. They're not going around buying up all the homes out there and making it impossible for regular folks like you and me to buy. Trust me, it's not as crazy as it sounds! That’s just not what the numbers show. Institutional investors are the smallest piece of the pie chart.

Bottom Line

You might've heard that big investors are snatching up all the houses in the market, but that's not entirely true. They do play a role in the rental market, but there are plenty of other houses available too. If you have any more questions about what's going on with the housing market, I'm here to help. Let's connect and I'll give you all the context you need from an expert.