Institutional investors accounted for 14% of all home sales in the US in September, up from 9% in August, according to new data from RealtyTrac, and the volume of institutional investor sales hit the highest level since January 2011.
Institutional buyers - that have bought 10 or more properties within the last 12 months - accounted for 9% of sales in September 2012 also, so demand is up more than 50% compared to a year ago.
“While the institutional investors are pulling back their purchases in many of the higher-priced markets like San Francisco, Washington, D.C., New York, Seattle and Sacramento, they are continuing to ramp up purchases in markets where median prices are still below $200,000, which includes places like Jacksonville, Atlanta, Charlotte, St. Louis and Dallas,” Daren Blomquist, vice president at RealtyTrac, said in the report.
The report comes in the wake of news that Blackstone Group, which is now the largest owner of single family homes in the US, is planning to securitise the income from rental homes that it has purchased in the last two years.
Blackstone is preparing to issue the first-ever bonds backed by rental income from single family homes. The group is the largest owner of single-family homes in the US, after spending an estimated $7.5bn to buy 40,000 foreclosed properties.Deutsche Bank will begin marketing a $500m offering in the next few weeks, based on the cash flow generated by those rental properties.
