With the ROAD to Housing Act now law, Realtor.com data reveals who is still buying — and which US markets will feel it most
Small investors claimed their largest share of the US housing market in 15 years in the first half of 2026, accounting for 66.2% of all investor purchases even as total investor buying fell to its lowest six-month volume since 2020, according to a midyear analysis from the Realtor.com economics team.
Total investor home purchases declined 7% year over year to 224,000 homes, the lowest first-half figure since 2020.
Investors still represented 10.7% of all US home purchases, down just 0.3 percentage points from the first half of 2025. The pullback coincided with passage of the 21st Century Renewing Opportunity in the American Dream (ROAD) to Housing Act, which became law in July, barring large institutional investors from acquiring additional properties once they control more than 350 single-family homes.
Mega-investors step aside
The decline was far from uniform. Mega-investor purchases have plunged 70% from their 2021 peak, outpacing the 34.3% drop in non-investor home transactions over the same period.
The median investor purchase price was $295,000 in the first half of 2026, up 3.5% year over year yet still 22.4% below the $380,000 market-wide median.
Cash purchases fell to 55.5% of investor acquisitions, down from approximately 68% in 2021 and 2022, a sign of growing mortgage reliance across a market where affordability has become the defining challenge of 2026.
“Small investors are the stable floor beneath the more volatile institutional activity,” said Hannah Jones, senior economist at Realtor.com in Austin, Texas.
What this means for mortgage brokers
Missouri, Montana, and Mississippi each recorded small investor shares of roughly 10% of all purchases, where their lower-priced acquisitions put them in direct competition with entry-level buyers.
Higher-cost West Coast metros including Portland, Colorado Springs, and Oxnard recorded below-average investor activity; in those markets, investors were net sellers in the first half of the year.
Mega-investors retained modest footholds in Texas at 1.9% of purchases, Nevada at 1.8%, and Georgia at 1.3%, according to real estate analytics firm Cotality.
Kelli Lawrence, CEO of Indianapolis-based build-to-rent developer Onyx+East, told Realtor.com that legislative uncertainty disrupted capital markets last year.
“It definitely put a pause on the capital markets,” Lawrence said. “But the long-term demand and need didn’t diminish in any way.”
Valerie Saunders, chief executive strategist at the National Association of Mortgage Brokers (NAMB) in Washington, DC, previously told Mortgage Professional America the legislation reflects the industry’s affordability mandate.
“No bill is perfect, but we have a big push for affordability, so anything that is going to help modernize the process, make it easier or less cumbersome for people to get into homes and create greater access to credit, we’re in favor of,” Saunders said.
With regulatory clarity restored, large investors may re-enter the market in the second half of 2026.
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