Investors Swoop in to Swoon for Your Home

Letter to Ephesians: No sooner did I read WSJ’s piece titled “With Individual Home Buyers on the Sidelines, Investors Swoop Into the Market” ... than I get a call from a foreign sounding somebody wanting to know if I’d be interested in selling my home “for the right price.”

My reaction was swift and ended with a firm click. Yet, having recently (and luckily) sold a home relatively quickly (i.e., within 40 days of being put on the market) I can understand why “High Interest rates and prices are deterring [many] individual buyers, leaving an opening for firms to snap up single-family properties.” So much so, the paper says, that investors are now “dominating the market.” Indeed, so far in 2025, “investors who buy homes to flip or rent out have made up about 30% of purchases of both existing and newly-built single-family homes.” It’s the highest such share on record, says analytics firm Cotality.

And, no longer are the investors themselves dominated by giants like Blackstone or Starwood Capital. Instead, it’s the small investors who make up about 25% of these homes that do get sold now. Frankly, however, unless they successfully low ball the seller or real estate values exceed the 5.8% nationwide rate of increase last year and 2.5% projected by many experts through 2025, I am not “sold” on the supposed great investor opportunity.

Davd Soul