Institutional investors spent a record $77 billion on homes in the past six months, according to Business Insider, citing a Redfin report.
That’s up from the already huge $55 billion spent on homes in the second and third quarters of 2020.
According to the Real Deal, the number of homes acquired by investors jumped 2.7 percent year-over-year when looking at Q1 data. Of those home purchased by investors in Q1 2021, some 39,000 of the 55,000 homes were single-family properties—marking a 4.8 percent increase over last year.
This increase can spell even tighter competition for properties for the average home buyer, seeing as how institutional investors can often swoop in with all-cash offers and make off-market deals. And Redfin analysts tell Business Insider that this trend is only likely to increase, as investors ostensibly took 2020 “off” during the pandemic, and now are making up for lost time.