What agents should know about the investors buying 1 in 3 homes
Investors purchased over 345,000 homes in the U.S. during the second quarter of 2025 — the highest level of investor activity in at least five years.
Key points:
- Overall investor activity was back on the rise in Q2 of 2025, with small-time players accounting for the large majority of investor purchases.
- Over 90% of investor-owned homes belong to operators who have fewer than 11 properties, while just 2.1% are owned by large-scale investors.
- As mom-and-pop investors dominate, there are opportunities for agents to help investors build their project pipelines and sell completed flips.
As economic volatility and housing affordability challenges sideline traditional buyers, investors are stepping into new and more complex roles as they go from being market stabilizers to strategic capital deployers, a new report suggests.
The Q2 2025 Investor Pulse Report from BatchData reframes the investor class as consisting more of small-scale entrepreneurs with targeted acquisition strategies than monolithic Wall Street landlords. For agents, these shifts could present challenges and new opportunities alike.
Investor purchase share higher now than in several years
The report found that investors bought 345,752 homes in the second quarter of 2025. This accounted for 33% of all home purchases during that time in the United States — the highest level in at least five years, BatchData researchers said.
Additionally, 60% of investors purchased homes with cash and 60% of homes sold by investors ended up going to owner-occupiers, which researchers said suggests that investors aren't only selling properties to other investors.
Investors — particularly home flippers — also typically targeted homes in need of work, which tend to sell at lower price points. The average purchase price investors paid for houses in Q2 was $455,481 — a figure well below the national average sale price of $512,800.
Since most investors are targeting a different kind of housing stock, they aren't necessarily always competing with regular individual buyers. Overall, the report found that investors own approximately 1 in 5 homes in the U.S. — or about 17 million of the country's 86 million single-family homes and townhouses.
Mom-and-pop investors dominate
The Q2 report sought to dispel "misconceptions" around investor purchases, BatchData researchers wrote. This included spotlighting data that suggests the large majority of real estate investors are small-time players, not major corporate investors like hedge funds or private equity — data that appears to be in line with other recent reports.
Over 90% of investor-owned homes belong to small-time operators with fewer than 11 properties, the report found, while larger, corporate landlords who own 1,000 homes or more control just 2.1% of the inventory. Roughly 95% of all investor inventory — just under 16 million homes — is owned or controlled by landlords with 50 properties or fewer.
Institutional investors appear to be retreating from the market. BatchData's report marked the sixth consecutive quarter in which large investors have pulled back as part of "a strategic market withdrawal" that demonstrates "sophisticated risk management rather than market abandonment," researchers wrote.
Opportunity remains for small investors — and agents
As mega investors and institutional buyers scale back, smaller players and mom-and-pop investors are stepping up to fill the gap — and many will still need expert guidance from local agents to manage their opportunity pipeline.
Investors are "essential market stabilizers," not competition for typical homebuyers, BatchData researchers wrote — and agents can help connect the two parties.
For investors who are looking to build a portfolio or have a location preference or specialization, agents can play a major role in prospecting. Even small investors typically plan to expand over time — and one closing could lead to many more for agent partners.