From housing economist Tom Lawler:
Below is a table showing quarterly home sales based on CoreLogic’s property records database for “non-investors” and for “investors” based on size of investors. For fun I also included the YOY % change in the S&P/Case-Shiller National Home Price Index., As a reminder, here is how CoreLogic defines an investor purchase:
Using CoreLogic’s public records data, we define an investor as an entity (individual or corporate) who retained three or more properties simultaneously within the past 10 years or has a corporate or non-individual identifier on the deed. Examples include LLCs, CORPs, and INCs, to name a few.”
CoreLogic’s “size” categories fir investors are as follows: small 3-10 properties, mid-sized 11-99 properties, and large 100+ properties.
What is striking is that investor home purchases by investors in all three size categories exploded upward beginning in the second quarter.
Note that while total home purchases in the third quarter of this year were up 7.5% from the third quarter of 2019, non-investor home purchases were DOWN 5.2%.
I’ll have even more on this topic later. WRT the above chart, however, here are some questions to consider:
Did investor purchases surge BECAUSE home prices were accelerating? Or was the surge in investor purchases behind the surge in home prices? Or … was it a combination of both?