Where Institutional Investors Are Buying the Most
ATTOM’s Q1 2026 U.S. Home Sales Report puts institutional investor purchases at 6.6% of all US home sales for the quarter, down from 6.8% a year earlier. That national number, though, hides a lot of concentration: at the metro level, ATTOM’s data shows Mobile, Alabama led the country at 15% of sales going to institutional buyers, followed by Memphis, Tennessee at 14.8% and Boise City, Idaho at 14.4%.
At the other end, Honolulu, Hawaii saw only 2.4% of sales go to institutional investors and Naples, Florida just 2.7%, a spread of more than 12 percentage points between the highest and lowest tracked metros. A metro’s institutional-buyer share is not a fixed feature of its market, it moves with local pricing, rental yields, and how many bulk-purchase programs are actively targeting that submarket in a given quarter.
Texas as a State-Level Case Study in a Cooling Share
Axios Houston, citing ATTOM data, reported that 8.2% of Texas home sales went to institutional investors in 2024, down from 9.6% in 2023, but still above the 6.3% national rate for that same year. That combination, a cooling share that still runs meaningfully above the national average, is a useful read on where a market sits in the broader institutional pullback: still investor-heavy relative to the country overall, but moving in the same cooling direction as the national number.
For a wholesaler dispositioning to institutional or fund buyers, that combination matters directly. A state or metro where institutional buying is still above the national rate, even while cooling, is still a market where that channel is worth cultivating, just with the expectation that the buyer pool is thinning slightly quarter over quarter rather than growing.
The Numbers
Institutional investors bought 6.6% of all US home sales in Q1 2026, down from 6.8% in Q1 2025.
Mobile, Alabama led all tracked metros at 15% institutional investor share in Q1 2026, followed by Memphis, Tennessee (14.8%) and Boise City, Idaho (14.4%); Honolulu, Hawaii (2.4%) and Naples, Florida (2.7%) had the lowest shares.
8.2% of Texas home sales went to institutional investors in 2024, down from 9.6% in 2023, versus 6.3% nationwide that year.
Sources
The external data in this article draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.