Real Estate Statistics & Benchmarks

Property Tax Rate Statistics by County (2026)

The average effective property tax rate on US single-family homes reached 0.9% in 2025, up from 0.86% in 2024 and the highest rate since 2020, generating an average annual bill of $4,427 on a home valued around $494,231. Illinois carries the highest effective rate in the country at 1.84%, while Hawaii carries the lowest at 0.33%. Westchester County, New York averages the highest county tax bill in the nation at $18,386 a year. Rising tax bills add to a distress picture that already includes 227,548 US foreclosure filings in the first half of 2026, up 21% year over year. This page collects the sourced numbers behind both trends.

Home Equity and Equity-Rich Homeowner Statistics 2026

Just 43.3% of mortgaged US homes were equity-rich, meaning the loan balance sits under half the property’s market value, in the first quarter of 2026, down from 44.6% the previous quarter and the lowest equity-rich share since the fourth quarter of 2021. At the same time, 3.2% of mortgaged homes were seriously underwater, with loan balances at least 125% of market value, up from 3.0% in the fourth quarter of 2025 and 2.8% a year earlier. Both numbers are moving the same direction: fewer owners sitting on a large equity cushion, more owners with almost no room to absorb a price dip or an unexpected expense. That shift is worth tracking alongside the 227,548 US properties that had a foreclosure filing in the first half of 2026, up 21% year over year, since equity position is a big part of what determines whether a distressed owner can simply sell and walk away or ends up somewhere worse.

Absentee Owner Statistics 2026: How Many US Homes Are Investor-Owned

25.1 million of the nation’s 104.9 million residential properties, 23.9%, were investor-owned as of the second quarter of 2026, according to ATTOM’s vacancy tracking (ATTOM’s own report text labels this cohort "institutional investor-owned homes," a broader stock measure than the narrower share of quarterly purchases made by large institutional buyers specifically). Those investor-owned homes sat vacant at 3.5%, more than twice the 1.3% national vacancy rate for all residential properties, with 890,135 investor-owned homes standing empty in the second quarter of 2026. A vacant, investor-owned property is a distinct signal from a vacant owner-occupied one: it usually means the owner is managing the property from somewhere else, has lost a tenant, or has let the asset sit idle, any of which can turn an absentee owner into a motivated seller.

Housing Inventory and Months of Supply Statistics 2026

Unsold US housing inventory held at a 4.6-month supply in July 2026, unchanged from both June 2026 and July 2025, according to the National Association of Realtors. Total housing inventory reached 1.54 million units in July 2026, down 0.6% from roughly 1.55 million units a year earlier. A 4.6-month supply is still below the 6-month mark real estate economists generally treat as a balanced market, meaning the national market remains tilted toward sellers even as the pace of tightening has flattened out. For a wholesaler, a low-supply market changes where the margin comes from: it is less about finding any available property and more about finding a seller willing to sell off-market, at a discount, without ever competing for buyer attention on the open listing side.

Institutional Investor Market Share Statistics 2026

Institutional investors accounted for 6.6% of all US home purchases in the first quarter of 2026, down from 6.8% a year earlier. Zoomed out to every kind of investor, institutional and individual combined, that share was 19% of US homes sold in the first quarter of 2026, down from 20% a year earlier and the lowest overall investor share since 2020. As reported by The Real Deal, citing a CJ Patrick Company analysis of BatchData data, investor home purchases fell roughly 23% year over year in the first quarter of 2026 to just over 236,000 homes nationally, and 96% of those purchases came from small investors owning 1 to 10 properties, not large institutions. Algorithm-driven iBuying, once a heavily funded bet on instant cash offers, is a smaller part of that picture than it was at its peak and no longer moves these market-share numbers on its own.

Mortgage Delinquency Rate Statistics 2026: Is a Foreclosure Wave Coming

Federal Reserve data on single-family mortgage delinquency, the FRED series banks and analysts watch most closely for early foreclosure-wave warning signs, put the delinquency rate at all US commercial banks at 1.78% in the fourth quarter of 2025. That rate held inside a tight 1.77% to 1.79% band across every quarter of 2025, far below the double-digit delinquency rates of the 2008 to 2010 foreclosure crisis. That flat, low delinquency rate sits in tension with a separate number: US foreclosure filings reached 227,548 properties in the first half of 2026, up 21% year over year, with bank repossessions up 33% over the same period. The two data points are not measuring the same thing, and reading them together says more than either one alone.

Housing Starts Statistics 2026: What New Construction Means for Wholesalers

Privately-owned housing starts hit a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,427,000 in June 2026, up 19% from May 2026’s revised 1,199,000 and up 3.5% from June 2025’s 1,379,000, according to the US Census Bureau and HUD. Building permits, the forward-looking indicator of what gets built next, moved the opposite direction: 1,367,000 on a seasonally adjusted annual basis, down 3.0% from May 2026’s revised 1,410,000 and down 2.3% from June 2025. Starts jumping while permits pull back in the same month is a diverging signal, more homes broke ground in June than the pace of new permitting suggests will continue, and it is worth reading against the roughly 64,348 homes flipped in the first quarter of 2026 alone, 8% of all US home sales that quarter, competing supply that wholesalers and flippers are both selling into.

Rental Vacancy Rate Statistics by State 2026

The national rental vacancy rate held at 7.3% in the second quarter of 2026, not statistically different from 7.0% in the second quarter of 2025, according to the Census Bureau’s Quarterly Residential Vacancies survey. That single national number hides a wide state-level spread: data aggregator Innago, citing the Census Bureau’s Housing Vacancy Survey, puts Maine’s rental vacancy rate at the nation’s lowest, 2.5%, and South Carolina’s at the highest, 12.0%. A landlord in a low-vacancy state has an easier time re-renting a unit and less reason to sell; a landlord in a high-vacancy state is more likely sitting on income gaps that make an off-market sale look better than another round of turnover costs.

Mortgage Denial Rate Statistics 2026: Why Cash Offers Have an Edge

Lenders denied 15.1% of home purchase mortgage applications in 2024, the most recent full year of federal data available, 526,127 of 3,491,513 completed applications, up from a cycle-low of 12.2% in 2021, according to a Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis working paper analyzing public HMDA data. Denial rates were not uniform across buyer types: VA loans had the lowest denial rate of any loan type at 8.5%, and investment-property purchase applications were denied less often, 13.4%, than owner-occupied purchase applications at 15.3%. That gap exists because investor and cash-adjacent buyers carry materially stronger underwriting profiles, a lower median debt-to-income ratio of 37% versus 41% for owner-occupants, and a larger median down payment, 75% loan-to-value versus 91% for owner-occupants. Those same buyers, 61.1% of Q1 2026 flip purchases were made with all cash, are the ones a wholesaler is usually selling to.

Manufactured and Mobile Home Market Statistics 2026

New manufactured homes of all sizes averaged $131,500 in October 2025, the most recent month available given the Census Bureau’s reporting lag, according to Census Manufactured Housing Survey data tracked via the Federal Reserve’s FRED database. That average hides a wide gap between the two dominant configurations: new double-wide manufactured homes averaged $162,100 in the same month, versus $88,800 for new single-wide homes, an 83% price gap between the two. Both figures sit well below the median price of a new site-built home, the affordability spread that keeps manufactured housing a growing niche for wholesalers, though it comes with a deal structure, chattel financing, and titling rules single-family wholesaling does not.

Land and Vacant Lot Price Statistics by Region 2026

US farm real estate averaged $4,500 per acre in 2026, up $150 per acre, 3.4%, from 2025, according to the USDA’s annual Land Values survey. Within that total, cropland averaged $6,020 per acre, up 3.3%, and pasture averaged $2,000 per acre, up 4.2%. The regional spread is extreme: 2026 farm real estate values ranged from roughly $1,030 to $1,260 per acre in New Mexico, Nevada, and Wyoming, to $14,100 per acre in California and $23,600 per acre in Rhode Island. That spread, more than twenty-two times between the cheapest and most expensive states, is the single biggest reason a land deal has to be priced off local comps, never off a national average.

Age of the US Housing Stock: Statistics by State (2026)

The median owner-occupied US home reached 42 years old in 2024, up sharply from 31 years in 2005, according to an NAHB Eye On Housing analysis of Census American Community Survey data. Roughly 47% of owner-occupied homes were built before 1980, including about 34% built before 1970. The spread by state is wide: New York carries the oldest median housing stock in the country at 64 years, while Nevada carries the newest at 25 years. An aging housing stock means more deferred maintenance, more aging systems nearing replacement, and more owners weighing a sale instead of another round of repairs, especially in the older-stock states this page breaks out.

Probate Filing Statistics: How Estate Cases Are Trending in 2026

California’s court system logged 41,985 statewide "estate and trust" probate filings in fiscal year 2024-25, according to the California Judicial Council’s 2025 Court Statistics Report, up 30 percent over the prior decade. In Texas, the Office of Court Administration reports that almost 90 percent of new probate and guardianship-court cases filed in fiscal year 2023 were "estate cases," proceedings for handling or transferring property after a death. Neither state court system publishes a figure for what share of those estates actually include real property, and no other authoritative source tracks that number nationally either. What the filing data does show clearly is that estate-related court activity is rising, and real property is commonly the largest, and slowest-to-settle, asset in an estate when one is present.

Eviction Filing Statistics 2026: Where Filings Are Rising Fastest

Princeton’s Eviction Lab tracks eviction filings across 11 states and 43 cities nationwide through its Eviction Tracking System, with data updated through July 1, 2026. Austin, Texas is running the hottest among tracked metros, with filings 35 percent above its historical baseline over the trailing 12 months, totaling 15,683 filings. Portland, Oregon is also elevated, 20 percent above baseline with 17,677 filings over the same window. Both cities sit well above their own historical norms, not just above each other, against a national rental vacancy rate of 7.3% in Q2 2026, which is the more useful way to read eviction data as a metro-specific distress signal.

Housing Cost Burden and Affordability Statistics (2026)

HUD’s Worst Case Housing Needs: 2025 Report to Congress found 8.46 million very low-income renter households had "worst case housing needs" in 2023, the most recent year covered, virtually unchanged from the record 8.53 million in 2021. Within that population, HUD reports that 74 percent, 8.2 million households, of the nation’s 11 million extremely low-income renter households are severely cost-burdened, spending more than half their income on rent and utilities. Those are renter-side numbers, not homeowner numbers, but they describe the same affordability pressure that pushes some renters toward homeownership on any terms they can get, cash, creative finance, seller financing, and pushes some landlord-owners to raise rents faster than their tenants can absorb.

New Construction vs. Existing Home Sales: 2026 Statistics

New single-family home sales ran at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 628,000 in June 2026, up 1.6% from May’s revised 618,000 but 5.6% below June 2025’s 665,000, per Census Bureau and HUD data. Existing-home sales ran far higher, a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.09 million in June 2026 with a median price of $440,600 and 4.6 months of inventory, according to NAR. Combining those two official series, new construction accounted for roughly 13% of completed single-family-equivalent home sales in June 2026, existing homes the remaining 87%, a calculation combining the Census and NAR figures rather than a number either agency publishes directly. That 13% is the share of the completed-sale market wholesalers are effectively competing against when a builder is active in the same submarket.

Investment Property Purchase Statistics by State (2026)

Institutional investors bought 6.6% of all US home sales in Q1 2026, down slightly from 6.8% in Q1 2025, according to ATTOM’s Q1 2026 U.S. Home Sales Report. Among metros ATTOM tracks, Mobile, Alabama led the country at 15%, followed by Memphis, Tennessee at 14.8% and Boise City, Idaho at 14.4%, while Honolulu, Hawaii (2.4%) and Naples, Florida (2.7%) posted the lowest institutional shares. At the state level, Axios Houston reported, citing ATTOM data, that 8.2% of Texas home sales went to institutional investors in 2024, down from 9.6% in 2023, still above the 6.3% national rate that year. The pattern across all three data points runs the same direction: institutional buying is cooling from its recent peak, but it remains heavily concentrated in a specific set of Sunbelt and mid-size metros rather than spread evenly.

Homeownership Duration Statistics: How Long Sellers Wait (2026)

The typical US homeowner held onto their house for 12 years as of 2025, the longest median tenure since 2020, according to Redfin. Tenure varies widely by metro: Los Angeles homeowners hold the longest at 20.0 years and San Jose homeowners at 18.7 years, while Louisville has the shortest tenure in Redfin’s data at just 8.3 years. Separately, NAR’s 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, as reported, found the median time a homeowner stayed in a home before selling reached 11 years, a record high, with today’s buyers expecting to stay even longer, a median 15 years, and 28% calling their purchase a "forever home." Longer tenure means more built-up equity by the time an owner finally does sell, and it means fewer sellers cycling through the market at any given time, both relevant to how a target list should be read.

Sunbelt Migration and Investor Interest Statistics (2026)

Per U.S. News’s reporting on Census Bureau state-to-state migration flows data, Texas was the top source of new residents for nine other states in the 2024 flows: Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. On population growth, Census Vintage 2025 estimates, as reported, show Texas adding the most residents in absolute terms at 391,243, followed by Florida (196,980) and North Carolina (145,907), while South Carolina grew fastest by rate at 1.5%, ahead of Idaho (1.4%), North Carolina (1.3%), and Texas (1.2%). That growth figure reflects total population change, including births and deaths, not migration alone, a distinction worth keeping in mind when reading it as a pure in-migration signal.

Second Mortgage and HELOC Statistics: 2026 Data

HELOC balances rose to $446 billion in Q1 2026, up $12 billion from the prior quarter and $129 billion above the Q1 2022 low, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Q1 2026 Household Debt and Credit Report. ICE’s June 2026 Mortgage Monitor reports that second-lien lending posted its strongest first-quarter volume in nearly two decades, with 54% of all home-equity extraction in the quarter happening through second liens rather than cash-out refinances; an estimated 3.9 million homeowners who took out primary loans between 2020 and 2022 now also carry a second lien, and average second-lien HELOC rates fell to 6.6% in March 2026. Homeowners are increasingly tapping equity through a second lien instead of refinancing their low-rate first mortgage, which means more owners carrying real debt against their equity even as their headline mortgage rate stays locked in low.

Single-Family Rent Growth Statistics (2026)

The Cotality Single-Family Rent Index rose just 1.3% year over year in March 2026, continuing a slowdown that has kept annual rent growth in a narrow 1% to 1.5% band since fall 2025. That national number hides real metro divergence: Chicago led the 10 largest metros at 4.9% annual growth, followed by Philadelphia at 4.7%, while Florida accounted for 10 of 16 metros in Cotality’s tracking posting outright rent declines, and Los Angeles recorded a 1.2% year-over-year decline. Rent growth this flat, sitting against a national rental vacancy rate of 7.3% in Q2 2026, is a landlord-side signal in its own right, some markets still have real pricing power and others have none.

Cash Buyer Statistics 2026: All-Cash Home Purchase Share by Source and Metro

Cash buyer statistics for 2026: Redfin puts the all-cash share near 29%, ATTOM near 39%. See the trend off the 2023 peak, the metros where cash buyers cluster, and what it means for building a dispo buyers list.

Foreclosure Statistics 2026: Filings, Rates, and State Data

Foreclosure statistics 2026: Q1 filings up 26% year over year, national rate of 1 in 1,211 housing units, plus state-by-state and metro tables read as a proxy for motivated-seller supply.

House Flipping Statistics 2026: Data Every Wholesaler Should Read

House flipping statistics 2026: flip counts, flips as a share of sales, median gross profit, ROI, and the metros where flipping is hot. Cited ATTOM and Redfin data framed for wholesalers reading cash-buyer demand.

Motivated Seller Statistics 2026: Where Seller Supply Is Rising

Motivated seller statistics for 2026: state-by-state foreclosure-filing growth, life-event seller drivers, rising ownership costs, and how to read the data for your buybox.

52 Real Estate Cold Calling Statistics (2026 Data)

52 verified real estate cold calling statistics for 2026, covering contact rates, dials per deal, dialer ROI, follow-up data, VA vs in-house cost, and what actually moves the needle.

Real Estate Investor Statistics 2026: Who Actually Buys the Homes

Real estate investor statistics 2026: investors bought 34% of homes sold in Q3 2025, but Wall Street is a net seller. Small 1 to 10 property investors own about 96% of investor-held homes. Heavily cited data.

48 Real Estate Virtual Assistant Statistics (2026 Data)

48 verified real estate virtual assistant statistics for 2026, covering VA adoption rates, cost savings vs in-house, productivity benchmarks, task delegation data, and outsourcing ROI for real estate investors.

44 Real Estate Wholesaling Statistics (2026 Data)

44 verified real estate wholesaling statistics for 2026, covering deal volume, average wholesale fees, lead generation benchmarks, market trends, and team scaling data for active investors.

Vacant Home Statistics 2026: How Many Vacant Homes in the US

Vacant home statistics for 2026: about 15.3 million vacant US housing units, a 10.3% vacancy rate, rental vs homeowner splits, state and metro data, and why year-round vacant homes feed the absentee seller lead pool.