Early figures show purchases in the first quarter by investors with at least 10 rental houses fell 57 percent from a year earlier, according to a presentation by CoreLogic. Blackstone, whose Invitation Homes unit invested more than $8 billion in 43,000 homes, slashed its buying pace by 70 percent from last year’s peak, Jonathan Gray, the New York firm’s global head of real estate, said in March.
Fewer investors in South Florida are fishing in the shrinking pond of discounted foreclosures and distressed homes, according to Danny Kattan, principal at Property Investment Advisors Group USA, a Miami-based landlord with 600 rental homes and apartment units. He said he buys 10 to 15 homes a month, about half the pace of last year.
“There’s no lack of money,” he said in a telephone interview. “There’s a lack of opportunities.”
Miami prices have risen 31 percent from an April 2011 low, the S&P/Case-Shiller index shows. The number of delinquent mortgages in Florida fell 34 percent in the year through March, according to Black Knight.
Arizona Cools
In Arizona, where investors have helped drive a 44 percent increase in home prices in the past two and a half years, “momentum is gone,” said Jim Belfiore, president of Belfiore Real Estate Consulting LLC in Phoenix.
“The market has been deteriorating since June of last year,” Belfiore said. “It started with the significant interest rate increase and it was at the same time new home prices were going up at 1 percent on a monthly basis. It shocked some buyers and sapped some momentum from the housing market.”
Phoenix-area sales fell 26 percent in February from a year earlier and total spending on homes fell 16 percent, according to a report this month by the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. Investors bought 20 percent of homes, half their July 2012 peak share of the market, the report showed.
Bay Area
Other areas are being affected by tight supply more than declines in demand. Sales in the San Francisco Bay area fell 13 percent in March from a year earlier as prices climbed 23 percent, according to research firm DataQuick, a unit of CoreLogic. Bay Area cities Oakland, San Jose and San Francisco had the fastest-moving housing markets, with about 70 percent of listings selling within two months, Trulia Inc. said.