Realtor.com data challenges effectiveness of Senate ban on big home investors

In the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, overwhelmingly approved by the Senate on Thursday, is a provision titled, “Homes Are for People, Not Corporations.” This provision seeks to impose new restrictions on institutional investors in the single-family housing market. Under the provision, entities owning 350 or more single-family homes would face limits on purchasing additional homes. Legislators and politicians have stated that this will help improve housing affordability by bringing more homes to the market, but economists say the data suggests otherwise.

In a report published on Friday by Realtor.com, report authors and economists Jake Krimmel and Hannah Jones found that between 2015 and 2025, institutional investors, which they defined as those who have made over 350 single-family purchases since 2015, accounted for roughly 12% of all investor purchases in the past decade, and just 1% of all single-family home purchases nationwide between 2015 and 2025. 

Additionally, in 2015, institutional investors made up 12.2% of all investor purchases, but this share has shrunk to 7.5% in 2025, after rising to a peak of 16.3% in 2021.

“One of the biggest takeaways is that from a national perspective, the largest investors account for a really small proportion of single-family home purchases and that share has decreased in recent years,” Krimmel told HousingWire in an interview. “So the ban is going to have less of a bite now than it would have had it been enacted a few years ago. It is attacking a trend that is already decreasing as opposed to one that is becoming increasingly part of the market.”

Small investors account for some 53% of investor purchases

In contrast to the small share of institutional investor purchases, small investors (those who purchased less than 10 homes) accounted for roughly 53% of all gross investor purchase activity in the past decade, followed by 27% for medium investors (those who purchased between 10 and 99 homes) and 8% for large investors (those who purchased between 100 and 349 homes). In total, the report found that investors purchased roughly 5.5 million single-family homes over the past decades, while non-investors purchased 58 million single-family homes during the same time period. 

The report also found that institutional investor activity is highly concentrated in certain metros and certain ZIP codes inside those metro areas.

According to the report, the top-10 metros by total activity account for over 50% of institutional investor purchases, while the top-25 metros account for 75%. Top-10 metros with the highest institutional investor share of all purchases include, Memphis, TN-MA-AR (4.4%); Colorado Springs, Colo. (4.3%); Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, NC-SC (4.2%); Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, Ga. (3.8%); Birmingham, Ala. (3.8%); Dallas-Forth Worth-Arlington (3.6%); Raleigh-Cary, North Carolina (3.5%); Indianapolis-Carmel-Greenwood, Ind. (3.5); Winston-Salem, North Carolina (3.1%); and San Antonio-New Braunfels, Texas (3.0%).

The Memphis metro area also reported the largest share of all investor purchases at 19.2%, followed by Birmingham (15.7%), Raleigh (15.0%) and Dallas-Fort Worth (13.9%). However, when it comes to the number of homes purchased by investors, the Dallas-Forth Worth metro topped the chart with 65,579 total investor purchases between 2015 and 2025, followed by Atlanta (57,691 homes), Houston (41,870 homes) Phoenix (39,888 homes) and Charlotte (29,998 homes).

Houston has a high concentration of investor purchases

The report highlighted Houston as an example of a metro area where investor purchases are highly concentrated, as over the last 11 years, institutional investors purchases were clustered in just 10 ZIP codes, where they captured up to 73% of the local investor market. However, at their peak of activity, institutional investors represented just 10% of all sales activity in these ZIP codes.

Given the high concentration of institutional investors in ZIP codes like those in Houston, Krimmel said it is understandable that this trend has grabbed the attention of many.

“The concentration is why this delivers such a visceral reaction especially from people who are living in those particular metros or ZIP codes,” Krimmel said. “But this type of situation is much more the exception than the rule, so as a result, we don’t think this is really going to more the needle on affordability, as it is in just a handful of ZIP codes, which will not move prices at a metro level let alone at a national level.”

Investor ban should weigh short-term benefits

According to the report, the small scale and high concentration of institutional activity limits the impact these investors have on pushing out potential homebuyers at the metro-level. Due to this, the report argues that any proposed investor ban should weigh “the concentrated, short-term benefits of adding a small fraction of homes to the market against the risk of adding yet another barrier to new housing supply in the long run.”

However, the report notes that institutional investor activity is cyclical and sensitive to financing conditions. Due to this, their participation in the market could increase if macroeconomic conditions change, meaning that a ban on institutional investors may have a different  impact under different economic conditions. 

“The genesis of institutional investors coming into the market was the very unique and unfortunate position the market was in after the financial crisis. The housing market was in a really unhealthy position and there was all this stock, so investors came in,” Krimmel said. “The other time we saw this was during the pandemic and that was another historical anomaly.”

Even if conditions like these were to arise again, the report states that an institutional investor ban most likely will not deliver “rapid inventory relief or meaningfully alter national, or even metro level, affordability conditions in the short run.”

Better ways to improve affordability

Due to anticipated lack of impact, the report recommends things like zoning reform and increased construction as better ways to improve housing affordability.

“While restricting large-scale acquisitions might provide a modest, one-time injection of inventory into select neighborhoods, it does not address the underlying need for new construction,” the report states.

Data from Cotality also supports these claims. In a report published in mid-February, Cotality found that small investors (less than 10 homes purchased) made up the greatest share of investor purchases, representing 13.9% of all investor purchases as of early December 2025. This was followed by medium investors, or those who own between 10 and 99 homes, (10.8%), large investors, those who own between 100 and 1000 homes, (3.0%) and mega investors, those who own over 1000 homes, (2.8%). Additionally, the share of investor purchases fell in 2025, dropping from 31.9% in January 2025 to 30.3% in December 2025. However, this share is still up from 2021’s high of 25.5%, according to Cotality.

Additionally, Cotality’s data showed that the San Jose metro area had the largest share of investor purchases in 2025, while Atlanta recorded the largest share of mega investor purchases last year. However, like the Realtor.com report, Cotality also found that investors purchased the greatest number of homes in 2025 in the Dallas metro area, followed by Houston, Atlanta, Phoenix and New York.

It remains to be seen if this data, as well as concerns raised by trade groups will have any impact on the bill which is headed to the House of Representatives for consideration before it can be signed into law by President Donald Trump.