Investors accounted for 27% of all U.S. single-family home purchases from March through June, down from 28% at the close of the first quarter, according to an investor activity update that property data firm Cotality released Wednesday from Irvine, Calif.
The share is the least interesting number in the report. Underneath it, investors bought roughly 40,000 fewer homes than in the second quarter of 2025 β and the largest landlords, who buy a small fraction of the total, accounted for about 10,000 of that decline.
“The investor share dropped in Q2 2026, but that is par for the course in the summer,” said Thom Malone, principal economist at Cotality, in the release. “The more compelling story lies in overall volume.”
Malone tied the volume drop to policy. “That represents a significant drop given their small market presence, suggesting that proposed restrictions on institutional investors had an immediate chilling effect,” he said of the mega-investor pullback. “The true test will occur in Q3, now that the legislative framework and exemptions are finalized. We will see whether this was a permanent retreat or just a pause while investors waited for a clear path forward.”
The numbers behind the share
Total investor acquisitions in the second quarter came to 273,000 single-family homes, Cotality said. The 40,000-unit year-over-year decline was proportionally sharper than the 70,000-unit pullback among owner-occupant buyers, who hold roughly double the market share.
Measured against a longer baseline, the picture reverses. Compared with average second quarters in 2020 through 2022, investor transactions were down 12%. Owner-occupant transactions over the same comparison were down 40%.
That gap is the durable finding in the data: investors have given back far less ground than ordinary buyers during the high-rate stretch, and their 27% share remains well above the sub-20% levels that were typical in the 2010s.
The pullback is concentrated at the top
Cotality breaks investors into tiers by portfolio size, and the retreat is almost entirely a large-landlord story. Mega investors, defined as those owning more than 1,000 properties, averaged about 4,500 purchases a month in the first quarter, a 40% drop from a year earlier. Large investors, holding 100 to 999 properties, cut acquisitions by 21% year over year. Medium investors, with 10 to 99 properties, contracted 17%.
Small investors β the 3-to-9-property owners who make up the bulk of the count β barely moved, with volume down 3%.
The company attributes the split to the 21st Century Road to Housing Act, signed into law on July 11, which restricts single-family acquisitions by entities that own 350 or more homes. Cotality notes that buying behavior shifted as early as January, when the measure was introduced β months before it took effect. The chilling effect, in other words, ran ahead of the statute.
RealtyWire has tracked both the federal threshold and the state rules moving alongside it, including Michigan’s ban on large investors buying single-family homes, which sets a tighter limit than the federal law. Operators have argued the restrictions will not move prices quickly; Invitation Homes’ chief executive made that case publicly this summer. Sentiment across the smaller-investor base has also been weak, with a record-low reading in one industry survey.
Where investors are buying
Dallas, Houston and Atlanta led all metropolitan areas in both investor and non-investor purchases in the first half of 2026, Cotality said, with Phoenix and Los Angeles completing the top five. By investor share of purchases, the leading states were Georgia, California, New Mexico, Kansas and Texas.
California is the outlier in a list otherwise built on population growth. Cotality suggests the elevated interest there is probably driven by municipal rules that speed approval of accessory dwelling units, which open value-add strategies on existing lots β the company frames that as a likely explanation rather than a measured cause.
Cotality’s methodology defines an investor as any buyer owning three or more properties, and counts only arm’s-length purchases of detached houses and townhomes. It measures who bought, not what the buyer intends to do with the home.
What it means
The verified facts are the counts: 273,000 investor purchases in the quarter, 27% of single-family transactions, a 40,000-unit annual decline weighted heavily toward the biggest portfolios.
Malone’s read that the new law caused the retreat is an attributed interpretation, and a plausible one given that the tier hit hardest is precisely the tier the 350-home threshold targets. It is not proof β rates, home prices and rent growth all moved during the same window.
RealtyWire’s analysis: for agents and sellers, the practical change is in who shows up with cash. Bulk institutional bids have thinned, while the small-investor buyer β the local landlord with a handful of doors β has held steady and now represents a larger share of investor demand than a year ago. That is a different negotiation, and generally a slower one. For more on demand, prices and inventory, see our Housing Market coverage.
What to watch
Cotality flags the third quarter as the real baseline, because the statute’s exemptions β including inter-investor transfers and properties receiving substantial improvements β are now defined. If institutional capital returns under those carve-outs, the second-quarter drop reads as a pause. If mega-investor volume stays near 4,500 homes a month, it reads as a structural exit, and the question becomes which buyers absorb the single-family rental pipeline that large operators were funding.
