Market data

Where Investors Are Buying

SFRCalc Editorial

Investors bought 19% of U.S. homes sold in the first quarter of 2026, down slightly from 20% a year earlier, according to Redfin's quarterly investor-purchase report. That's a share figure — it says what fraction of a (shrinking) pool of sales went to investors. The actual number of homes investors bought, 45,397, fell 6% year over year to the lowest quarterly total since 2020, and before that you'd have to go back to 2016 to find investors buying this few homes. Redfin attributes the pullback to elevated mortgage rates, continued home-price growth, and rising insurance, tax, and maintenance costs squeezing the math on rental purchases. Share held roughly steady; volume didn't — worth keeping both numbers in view rather than just one.

That national number also hides a lot of metro-to-metro range. The map below shows investor purchase share for 39 major metro areas; hover or tap a dot for the exact figure.

19%

National investor share, Q1 2026

45,397

Homes investors bought — lowest since 2020

33%

Highest metro share — Miami, FL

10%

Lowest metro share — Providence, RI

Investor share

10%16%21%27%33%

Circle size also scales with share

Dot color and size both track investor purchase share. Metros close together on the map (the Bay Area, South Florida, the NY–NJ–PA corridor) are spread slightly apart so every dot stays clickable — use the table below for exact rankings.

Full metro ranking (39 metros)

Investor share of home purchases by metro, Q1 2026, ranked highest to lowest.
Rank	Metro	Investor share
1	Miami, FL	33%
2	Anaheim, CA	29%
3	San Francisco, CA	28%
4	Cleveland, OH	27%
5	San Diego, CA	26%
6	Los Angeles, CA	25%
7	New York, NY	24%
8	Las Vegas, NV	22%
9	San Jose, CA	22%
10	Atlanta, GA	21%
11	Detroit, MI	21%
12	Oakland, CA	21%
13	Orlando, FL	21%
14	Philadelphia, PA	21%
15	Sacramento, CA	21%
16	Baltimore, MD	20%
17	Fort Lauderdale, FL	20%
18	Milwaukee, WI	20%
19	Phoenix, AZ	20%
20	Riverside, CA	20%
21	West Palm Beach, FL	20%
22	Tampa, FL	19%
23	Charlotte, NC	18%
24	Cincinnati, OH	18%
25	Jacksonville, FL	18%
26	Newark, NJ	18%
27	Nashville, TN	17%
28	Chicago, IL	16%
29	Denver, CO	16%
30	New Brunswick, NJ	16%
31	Columbus, OH	15%
32	Virginia Beach, VA	14%
33	Minneapolis, MN	13%
34	Portland, OR	13%
35	Seattle, WA	13%
36	Montgomery County, PA	12%
37	Washington, DC	12%
38	Warren, MI	11%
39	Providence, RI	10%

What "investor" means here

Redfin defines an investor purchase as one made by any entity that used a business name, or filed with an address that doesn't match the property, at the time of sale — it captures everything from a single-property landlord buying through an LLC to institutional buyers, and it does not distinguish between them. That's a broad definition, and it's worth being explicit about: it's not the same as the narrower "institutional investor" or "iBuyer" share sometimes cited elsewhere, which typically runs much lower nationally. A high share in a given metro says investor activity of some kind is elevated there; it doesn't say what kind of investor, or at what scale.

A metro sitting near the top of this list isn't automatically a good market to buy in — high investor share can reflect real cash-flow fundamentals, or it can reflect a market that's already been bid up by competition. Run the actual numbers on a specific property with the SFR calculator before treating this as a buy signal either way.

Curious how a specific metro's numbers pencil out? Start with the SFR calculator, or read where to find reliable comps and rent data for any market on this map.

Data: Redfin's investor home-purchase share report, Q1 2026 (39 of the largest U.S. metros by transaction volume; not every U.S. metro is covered). Redfin defines an investor as any purchaser using a business name — this map shows purchase share (percent of homes sold), which held roughly flat year over year; the underlying purchase count (45,397 homes nationally) fell 6% year over year to the lowest quarterly level since 2020, which Redfin attributes to elevated mortgage rates, continued price growth, and rising insurance, tax, and maintenance costs. Figures were current as of the publish date and are subject to revision — this is a snapshot of one quarter, not a trend line, and isn't a recommendation to buy or avoid any specific market. Map positions reflect each metro's actual coordinates, projected geographically; closely spaced metros are nudged apart for legibility rather than stacked exactly on top of one another.