Rental Housing: Institutional Investor Ownership of Single-Family Rental Homes

What GAO Found

Large institutional investors with access to cash or low-cost financing purchased foreclosed single-family homes in bulk across the country following the 2007-2009 financial crisis, helping to stabilize the housing market. Over time, these investors built large portfolios of single-family housing and became a growing presence in the single-family rental market, as GAO previously reported. In more recent years, these investors have increased their holdings through additional acquisitions and new construction.

GAO found the following trends in institutional investor homeownership from 2018 through 2024 in six metropolitan statistical areas-Cincinnati, Dallas, Jacksonville, Nashville, Phoenix, and Seattle:

• The number of single-family rental homes owned by institutional investors increased in all six metro areas (see figure).

Number of Single-Family Rental Homes Owned by Institutional Investors in Six Selected Metropolitan Statistical Areas, 2018-2024

• The share of homes owned by institutional investors varied in all six areas but remained relatively low overall. While these investors owned from 4 percent (Seattle) to 22 percent (Jacksonville) of single-family rental homes, they owned from less than 1 percent (Cincinnati and Seattle) to 3 percent of all single-family homes. The largest year-to-year increases generally occurred during 2021-2023 and declined in 2024.
• Institutional investors acquired homes from owner-occupants, non-owner-occupants (such as smaller investors), and new construction. For example, 35 percent of institutional investor-owned homes in Nashville were acquired from owner-occupants and 15 percent were newly constructed as of 2024.
• Institutional investors also sold homes from their portfolios, including to owner-occupants. However, these sales represented a small share of the homes they owned-never exceeding 8 percent of institutional investors' holdings in any year in any of the six selected metro areas.

Why GAO Did This Study

Few public data are available on the number and share of single-family rental homes owned by institutional investors.

The Joint Explanatory Statement accompanying the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023, includes a provision for GAO to study the prevalence and location of institutional investment in single-family housing. This report-the second in a series-presents institutional investor ownership trends from 2018 through 2024 for a nongeneralizable sample of six metropolitan statistical areas (selected to reflect a range of estimated investment concentrations and geographic diversity).

GAO used property-level ownership and mailing address information from Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. and its affiliates to identify homes owned by institutional investors-defined for this analysis as those with 5,000 or more single-family homes nationwide and with homes in at least five metro areas-and to assess the locations and characteristics of those homes. GAO also used the Census Bureau's American Community Survey 1-year estimates to describe housing market characteristics of the six selected metro areas.

For more information, contact Jill Naamane at [email protected].