Investor Home Purchases Reached New High By Year’s End In 2023

Peak pandemic proved to be a profitable time for real estate investors, but new numbers out from CoreLogic show that even high mortgage rates wouldn’t stop buyers in 2023. The share of U.S. home investors hit a new high in December when investors accounted for 28.7 percent of national home purchases. That beat the previous all-time high of 28.3 percent in February 2022.

In fact, October and November 2023 also saw investor purchases hovering near record levels at 28 percent and 27.3 percent, respectively. Given the upward swing, CoreLogic notes investor purchases could exceed 30 percent in 2024.

California led the U.S. for home investor shares in 2023, with about 35 percent of home bought by investors. That’s followed by Georgia, New Mexico, Kansas, Texas and Nevada. Only Wisconsin, Louisiana, North Dakota, New Hampshire and South Dakota had investor shares below 20 percent last year.

Interestingly, home flips continued to fall in 2023. Only 12 percent of investors who purchased a home in March 2023 resold by the end of December 2023. The downward trend is clear in the data: about a 1 percentage point decline every year.