Where Real Estate Investors Bought the Most Homes in 2020
A decade of migration influence has changed which housing markets investors put their money into.
A new report from analysis company CoreLogic compared the metros with the most investor activity in 2011 to the metros with the most investor activity in 2020.
The results show that while California dominated the rankings early in the last decade, it was nowhere to be found on the 2020 list.
In 2011, seven California metros made it into the top 10: Los Angeles, San Jose, San Diego, San Francisco, Sacramento, Oxnard, Stockton and Riverside.
“This reflects the nature of the market after the Great Recession. California has been hit hard and has had many foreclosures and sales of real estate owned by financial institutions as a result, “the report said.
The list also included the Las Vegas metropolitan area in Nevada and the Corpus Christi and McAllen metro regions in Texas.
But in the top 10 of 2020, Corpus Christi was the only subway to reappear. According to CoreLogic, the other nine metros on the list included Boise, Idaho; Kansas City, Missouri; Atlanta; Memphis, Tennessee; Salt Lake City; Wichita, Kansas; Provo, Utah; Phoenix; and Springfield, Missouri.
Image Credit: CoreLogic
The drastic shift in investor interest in 2020 was likely due to low prices and the growing number of potential homeowners looking to escape the high prices in California.
“Cities in the West of the Mountains, western Midwest, and South led investment through 2020, and investment has increased in metropolitan areas like Boise, Phoenix, and Salt Lake City as they tend to have lower prices and a growing population performing Emigration is being driven. “In California,” the report said.
While investment has increased in countries like the Midwest, it has declined at the national level. According to the report, investor activity in the US has slowed since 2018. In 2020, 15.5 percent of home purchases in the U.S. were made by investors, up from 16.3 percent in 2019 and 16.8 percent in 2018.
However, despite the decline, CoreLogic found that investors have a healthy presence in the housing market, with a growing number of mom-and-pop investors taking a piece of the pie. As the market continues to cool and prices drop from record highs, CoreLogic predicts that investor activity at the national level could indeed pick up.
“At this critical point – in the first year of the new decade and further and further away from the pandemic – as the hot housing market cools, we may see an increase in investor activity as they try to buy more properties at lower prices,” Molly Boesel, Chief Economist at CoreLogic, was quoted in the report’s press release.
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