Has the Single-Family Home Market Peaked for Institutional Investors?

IRVINE, CA—Last week RealtyTrac reported that 96% of housing markets are better off than they were four years ago when foreclosures peaked in 2010 and that 80% of the housing markets were better off than two years ago in 2012, when median home prices hit bottom. Thirty percent were better off than six years ago in 2008, at the front-end of the Great Recession. So yea for beleaguered US homeowners. These statistics, however, are the latest data point in a larger trend that doesn’t necessarily bode well for institutional investors that have been piling into the single-family home asset class in the last few years.

In short, it appears that buying activity for this asset class may have peaked in the second quarter of 2013, according to other RealtyTrac figures reported in the Wall Street Journal. Institutional investors bought 44,087 properties in Q4 of last year, a dramatic slide from 60,648 in the second quarter of 2013.