Where the Big Players Are Buying Housing

The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta has put out a very informative chart on where three big money players are buying houses, how much they are spending and a bit about their investment strategies:

macroblog: Investor Participation in the Home-Buying Market



Fed Atlanta concludes:

What this table implies is that institutional investors ramped up activity earlier this year and have indeed concentrated their investment activity within a handful of markets that were hit hard by the housing downturn. Acquisition strategies for these larger investors focus on mostly low-priced, distressed properties. 

This makes sense. The markets hit hardest by the housing downturn are also the markets where distressed properties make up a significant portion of the available homes for sale. However, data from CoreLogic indicates that the share of distressed sales is steadily declining over time.