19% of California houses are owned by investors

https://www.ocregister.com/2025/07/21/19-of-california-houses-are-owned-by-investors/

by milleramp • 12 months ago

115 169 12 months ago

ocregister.com

HWR_14• 12 months ago

That 19% excludes buildings/subdivisions specifically built to be rental units.

kulahan• 12 months ago

Those aren't houses, typically

infecto• 12 months ago

Depends. In the sunbelt these are quite common. Entire subdivisions being build of single family homes for a single investor to rent out.

acegopher• 12 months ago

http://archive.today/tq9Vw

rawling• 12 months ago

... and by the looks of it that's lower than (or as low as) any other state.

xoqem• 12 months ago

For anyone who didn't click into the article, the headline may be misleading without the sub headline, which currently is "Relatively speaking, California is not a hot spot for housing investors". The map graphic shows that 19% is lower than other large states (e.g. 22% in Texas, 21% in Florida, 20% in New York). And lower than other west coast states generally (22% in Washington and Oregon, 25% in Nevada, and 23% in Arizona).

taeric6• 12 months ago

It would probably be easier to understand if worded the other way? 81% of California houses are owner occupied.

dgrcode• 12 months ago

I think the 81% group would also include unocuppied houses, right?

brentm• 12 months ago

But how is that going to trigger someone?

jondwillis2• 12 months ago

Yeah but that nuance doesn’t fit into the current “California bad” memetic onslaught being peddled by my owners.

tims33• 12 months ago

But it is also the largest state with the most expensive home so on a $ weighted basis it is a big chunk of the national total.

bigbadfeline• 12 months ago

Good point. Similar to how the share price of a company is meaningless, total capitalization is the only useful metric. Similarly, investors have gone to great expenses to commit their money into 19% of California's housing, greater expenses than any other state, even when considered on per-capita basis.

To understand the meaning of this, consider that supply/demand curves are naturally non-linear and even 5% increase in demand can double the prices.

joe_the_user• 12 months ago

The headline isn't misleading unless your only concern is placing California in relative position.

The headline is true and relevant if you are wondering how investors influence housing prices - with a 20% share, clearly investors influence prices a lot. Moreover, California is where the housing bubble began but it's quite logical it's no longer where the bubble is concentrated so again 20% doesn't imply investor ownership is unimportant.

grafmax11• 12 months ago

And yet 20% of the market being captured by those who already have a home, while so many go without one, indicates a shortcoming in our society’s ability to distribute resources from those who don’t need them to those who do.

bpt315• 12 months ago

20% of CA residents are homeless? Citation please!

tptacek18• 12 months ago

Renting a home out isn't "capturing" the house. Rental housing is a desirable product. Lots of people don't want to own, be locked into a particular house for years to offset transaction costs, and to own all the downside and maintenance risk of the property.

hn_throwaway_99• 12 months ago

I think another metric that's probably just as important is what percentage of those investors are large institutional investors vs. "Mom and Pop" landlords with one house for rent.

I mention that because I remember reading during the pandemic that institutional investors generally make shittier landlords: they're quicker to evict, quicker to raise rents, less likely to work with a tenant on a payment plan, and they have fewer ties to the community. There was a concern that with all the eviction moratoriums during the pandemic that large landlords could wait it out, while smaller landlords got screwed and got out altogether in some cases, leaving their housing stock to be gobbled up by the shittier institutional landlords.

Gibbon1• 12 months ago

George Orwell made a comment that the landlord in the impoverished coal mining town he visited was usually an old widow.

Always gets me is the ideological contortions people will get up to in order to not face that California is short a couple million units of housing. Really the US has been investing in looting schemes and not in build out for the last 40 years.

comfysocks• 12 months ago

California houses are not popular with professional “landlord” investors because the cap rates (net operating income / house value) are poor. Rents are limited to what potential renters are actually able to pay, while the prices are very high.

On the other hand, during the upswing in prices, house flipping in California was really popular with investors because the (then) low interest and likely capital gain made things easy.

ashdksnndck2• 12 months ago

I’m interested in the methodology they use to identify investor-owned homes. Are they comparing known resident addresses to the names on property tax records? How does it work when multiple members of the same family have different last names? It seems fairly common for members of different generations of family (including in-laws) to live in a house that one person owns. How are you distinguishing an investment from a family living arrangement?

rtkwe2• 12 months ago

Easy first step is anything not listed as owned by individual people. Investors will have some type of business ownership arrangement in 99%+ of cases and individuals will rarely have an LLC or similar setup for their purchases.

fortran774• 12 months ago

My house is owned by an LLC that I own. I live in the house and don't rent it. If you count this way you will overcount by quite a bit!

mikeryan• 12 months ago

Most real estate investors will own inventory via an LLC - often one LLC per property so liability is limited to the value of a single property.

Simply looking for properties owned by corporations will get you really close.

ianferrel• 12 months ago

California has a homeowner-occupied tax exemption, and it is listed on the county assessor's website whether a given property is taking it (at least it is for a relative's property in CA I just checked). So I expect they're using that.

This might undercount (if owners don't file the form) or overcount (tax fraud or error), but there's financial incentives to get it right on both sides, so it's probably fairly accurate.

ashdksnndck2• 12 months ago

The article shows numbers for all 50 states, which makes me wonder if they are using a blanket methodology that works everywhere.

The link to the original source is paywalled.

jimmytucson• 12 months ago

To save you a click, 19% is actually not a lot (I thought it was):

19% of California houses were owned by investors, ranking No. 36 among the states and just below the 20% national norm.

States with the highest share of investor-owned houses:

Hawaii at 40%, Alaska at 35%, Vermont at 31%, West Virginia at 30%, and Wyoming at 30%.

States with the lowest are all in the Mid-Atlantic and lower New England:

Connecticut at 10%, Rhode Island and Massachusetts at 12%, and Delaware at 13%.

Why so low in California (again, I'm baffled that this is "low")?

the sky-high price tag for single-family homes, the third-highest nationally at $866,100

the_gastropod• 12 months ago

It's a pretty weird statistic because it ignores the denser forms of housing that are also owned by investors. So while 45% of Californians live in homes they don't own, "only 19% of homes are owned by investors" (the article repeatedly mixes the terms "home" and "house")

tossandthrow2• 12 months ago

That doesn't really qualify it for "not a lot".

Look at it in a historic or idealized context.

Personally I would say that is is a lot, and also too much - people tend to be less indifferent about things they own.

AnimalMuppet• 12 months ago

You say it is a lot, but you also say to look in a historic context. So, got any data to present, to say that 19% is a lot historically?

hk13373• 12 months ago

And from the link on the page: https://www.ocregister.com/2025/07/16/where-in-california-do...

Most of California’s single-family house investors are “mom and pop” types, according to BatchData.
Small-fry owners, with up to five properties nationwide, control 91% of California investment houses.
The rest is divvied up this way: Owners of six to 10 houses control 4% of California investment houses. Investors with 11 to 50 houses own 3% of this Golden State housing group. And 51 or more? Only 2% of investment houses.

crooked-v• 12 months ago

Or in other words, small independent landlords (using that arbitrary 5-house cutoff) own 17.29% of Caliornia houses, and other landlords own 1.71% of California houses.

yojo2• 12 months ago

I’m one of those mom and pop owners. The decent ROI on renting out my starter home financed me adding an ADU to the lot, which I also rent out.

I’ve owned the house long enough that I’ve had several tenants churn out when they buy their own houses.

This doesn’t feel like a policy failure, IMO. Renters have the option to live in a free standing home while they save for a down payment, and “investors” have an incentive to increase density/add to the housing stock.

Not everyone is at a point in their life where it makes sense to own a home. It feels weird making a judgement that these people should be required to live in apartments.

lotsofpulp• 12 months ago

High property tax rates means low ROI. You can be easily paying 2%+ market value in property tax in those northeastern states.

California incentivizes holding onto real estate with prop 13, which caps property tax increases to 2% per year for the entire time you or your beneficiaries own it. There are people paying less than $10k per year property tax on $3M+ properties, and they can rent for $7k+ per month.

mandevil• 12 months ago

Seeing Hawaii, Alaska, Vermont and Wyoming at the top makes me wonder if their definition of "investor-owned" is actually picking up vacation houses/second homes? Just those are all small states with significant vacation housing markets, wonder if that is driving things here.

jimbokun2• 12 months ago

Well obviously those would be included. Anything that’s not owner occupied.

nikanj4• 12 months ago

California real estate is such a tragedy, as huge portions of the population are suffering from a housing shortage caused almost exclusively by not building enough homes.

A majority of people own real estate, so they're happy with the status quo. Why would you put up with even the slightest personal inconvenience from added housing, if all it got you was a reduced value of your property?

koolba5• 12 months ago

California real estate is such a tragedy, as huge portions of the population are suffering from a housing shortage caused almost exclusively by not building enough homes.

The real issue with CA real estate is prop 13. It directly disincentivizes selling your home as you would be paying significantly higher taxes on the same house (same value etc) somewhere else.

So if you do own a home, you’re much better off keeping it and renting it out rather than putting it on the market. The only thing stopping one from doing that is needing the home value itself as the down payment for their next residence. But even that can be avoided by getting a line of credit on your original house.

If you want to fix CA real estate, scrap prop 13, force granny to sell and move to the boonies (to avoid the massively ratcheted property tax she will now be paying), and you’ll have a massive supply of homes for sale.

nikanj4• 12 months ago

No amount of tax adjustments can fix not having enough homes for the population. Focusing on those is a red herring

deanmoriarty• 12 months ago

Do you have any hope that either what you are suggesting, or an increase in housing supply, will ever actually happen?

It's clearly interesting to speculate the ideal solution on the Internet, but after having been here 10+ years I worry that it's just never going to get better.

I wouldn’t even be interested in a house. Just give affordable cookie cutter apartments in a 50-floor building somewhere.

fortran774• 12 months ago

The real issue with CA real estate is prop 13

I don't want to be forced out of my home because the neighbors paid too much for theirs raising my "property value" and tax assessment.

siliconc0w• 12 months ago

Prop 13 massively distorts the market and creates large disparities in what two neighbors may be paying. It essentially ensures that you cannot live where you were born, breaking up families and hurting communities.

stackedinserter• 12 months ago

"Just force people to move out of the region", what a great plan.

lo_zamoyski2• 12 months ago

If you want to fix CA real estate, scrap prop 13, force granny to sell and move to the boonies (to avoid the massively ratcheted property tax she will now be paying), and you’ll have a massive supply of homes for sale.

Sounds callous.

I would focus first on banning the use of homes as investment and permitting mixed-use, medium- to high- density construction (with something like 15 min city as a point of reference) before we reach for the big hammer and start coercing the poors out of their homes.

timeflex• 12 months ago

A majority of banks & investors own real estate. You think people have the funds to pay cash at market rate? I've got an even better idea though to deal with people like this. About time we give renters the same rights as labor unions. If you think it is an inconvenience now, wait until it becomes legal for renters to go on strike & landlords are forced to negotiate in good faith.

arcticbull• 12 months ago

I mean someone has to rent, to renters right? Not everyone plans to live in the same place forever, and not everyone wants to put up the capital to buy a place. Some percentage of housing needs to be owned by investors to make that capacity available for short-term living. What's the delta between 19% and neutral?

California has a massive housing problem, which is just not building enough houses. Doesn't matter much to me who owns them.

kamikazeturtles3• 12 months ago

Who owns them probably has an effect on whether new housing will be built. A city of mostly renters will vote to have rent controls. Your property taxes are a percentage of the assessed value of your house, usually 1-2%.

If your houses value is increasing but rent is capped, the landlord business isn't going to look very rosy. No new rentals will be built. Of course, I could be wrong.

Interested in counter arguments

taeric6• 12 months ago

This kind of cuts to the problem of conflating housing to houses. Most short term living is almost certainly better served by things other than stand alone houses. Is why colleges are dominated by dorms.

whimsicalism• 12 months ago

I prefer to rent whole homes and would appreciate that not being legislated away.

kamikazeturtles3• 12 months ago

Students stay in dorms "for the experience".

I don't think any middle aged person is looking for any communal living type experience.

Also, what do you mean by "short term"? Usually it only makes economic sense to buy a house if you plan on staying there for 5+ years otherwise closing costs and realtor fees eat away any savings you made from not renting. The period of our life where we are the most mobile and willing to change cities due to job changes (20-40yrs) is also the period in our life when people start families and have children.

I think most people prefer houses

jondwillis2• 12 months ago

I live in the (relatively affordable) part of the “hills” in LA, and there are a LOT of houses (single family and some multi-family, not apartments) sitting unoccupied, prices not moving. I’m talking 1+ year on the market. The managing real estate agents do some Zillow dance moves from what I can tell to obfuscate how slow the market is, and avoid lowering the prices significantly, even to 2021ish levels.

This indicates some broken market dynamics to me. Entities with more capital are having property sit unoccupied, decaying slowly, paying property taxes, because they are betting their self-interested reward for doing so outweighs the risk.

I realize this doesn’t generalize to the entire housing stock, but it sure seems vulgar to me.

scottyah• 12 months ago

Reminds me of the crisis Spain had not too many years ago where there'd be giant buildings never completed that banks apparently refused to devalue on their balance sheets. The buildings just sat empty, not being worked on because the money went dry.

kamikazeturtles3• 12 months ago

Why is Minnesota(14%) so low compared to other states? Our property taxes aren't that high.

Maybe stable white color employing businesses mixed with a constant out migration of younger people, more likely to be renters, to the coasts?

fortran774• 12 months ago

And this is _less_ than the national average. In fact, below the median.

From the article:

By this math, 19% of California houses were owned by investors, ranking No. 36 among the states and just below the 20% national norm. By county, tiny Sierra has the most (83%) and Ventura the least (14%).

breakyerself7• 12 months ago

People don't like being told that the problem is a housing shortage.

jsbg• 12 months ago

Really. If obsessive zoning and building regulations didn't artificially restrict the supply then there would be no reason for anyone to "invest" in houses.

breakyerself7• 12 months ago

100%. I'm a far left anticapitalist, but facts are facts. Zoning, restrictive building codes, and the death of much of the housing construction industry post 2007. All contribute to housing costs and homelessness.

I'd like to see zoning opened back up for increasing density wherever it's needed, but I would also like to see a strong social housing policy.

rconti3• 12 months ago

That doesn't strike me as true at all. Nationwide, housing has generally been a "good investment", regardless of whether we're talking about an area that restricts supply or one that does not.

grafmax11• 12 months ago

An unregulated supply will still offer promising investment opportunities to those with enough money to buy them up. Look at crypto or private equity. These markets are lightly regulated. But prices are bid up by big money. Unfortunately just dumping regulation is unlikely to fix housing.

mordae• 12 months ago

Huh. So, like, maybe if rents were not spiking and people were not bleeding money to predatory landlords, maybe, hear me out, maybe they would instead pay someone to build them a house.

klipt2• 12 months ago

pay someone to build them a house

On what land? With what planning permits?

NewJazz• 12 months ago

Sorry but this is a fundamental misunderstanding of supply and demand.

bpt315• 12 months ago

2021 called, it would like its performative talking points back.

Build more housing, and "predatory" landlords will have more competition. The endless restrictions on residential construction are the root cause, not your envy of wealthy individuals.

Side point: There are many people who are in no position to own a home or have one built for them. Where do they live if there aren't any landlords?

jayd16• 12 months ago

Percentage owned by investors doesn't really imply inventory vs demand, does it?

breakyerself7• 12 months ago

Investors tend to invest where the ROI is good. Which tends to be where demand is outstripping supply, but I don't think investor percentages would track that perfectly. I'd expect there to be confounding variables.

gosub100• 12 months ago

A problem, not the problem.

Regulations block new supply. If this cannot be overcome, why not add another regulation that private equity cannot own houses? There's no reason they should not be subject to CAs extensive regulations too.

tptacek18• 12 months ago

Private equity owns virtually none of the homes in the municipality I live in, just outside the city of Chicago, adjacent to redlined neighborhoods with abysmal schools full of families who would love a chance at the resources we have. Despite insanely high property taxes that depress housing values, our home prices set new records every year.

Homeowners here would just love to spend a year workshopping regulations to prevent investors from buying homes. They know that those regulations would do nothing at all to address the scarcity that drives their home prices, and wouldn't result in them having to adapt to large numbers of new neighbors.

It's the exact same reason they obsess over inclusionary zoning ordinances (IZOs). Affordability is so important! That's why we need new, toothier regulations to ensure that no new housing projects here can ever pencil out for the developers.

PE is a complete sideshow. The root cause of the housing crisis is exclusionary zoning.

akmiller2• 12 months ago

That's because it's not. That's a cop-out. Wealth inequality is the crux of the issue.

bpt315• 12 months ago

Then why is almost every metric of housing affordability highly correlated to housing availability?

Or maybe I am misunderstanding what "issue" you're referring to?

twiceaday• 12 months ago

This is naive. The problem is that there are enough people with enough power who want house prices to keep going up. The solution must involve making them upset that they cannot get their way. Anything that doesn't have this shape is a stalling tactic in their favor.

tamimio• 12 months ago

Not entirely, the major factor is banks' credit creation. When any person can go and take a loan that was created from nothing (literal digits created by your bank), and sometimes based on another "speculated value" of a house you own, you will flood the market with an exponential rise of demand that will ALWAYS be higher than the supply. To solve the housing issue you have to follow the root cause, and always follow the money: first, halt credit creation, disincentivize it (ban interest), no speculation values. Second, make housing a depreciated asset, like cars, etc. Without these two, housing markets will never be solved. The thing is, the government knows that, but it's in its interest to keep the prices up, because that will mean more paid taxes! Which is why they fought WFH and created this hybrid model, to keep people around urban areas and keep prices up. I think Canada even admitted it later -I remember I read it somewhere. It's a multi-dimensional issue and the only losing party here is the average middle class person.

kyleee• 12 months ago

Instead of all those unrealistic things we should just build enough houses

verteu• 12 months ago

From my cursory analysis, "# of new housing units authorized" is by far the strongest predictor of rent & home values decreasing: https://i.imgur.com/BMsPrKY.png (r^2 = 0.47, P-value 0.000)

Nothing else ("% of housing owned by investors"?) is even close.

edit: Yes, obviously I included a time lag (3 years).

[1] https://constructioncoverage.com/research/cities-investing-m...

[2] eg, https://www.zillow.com/home-values/10221/austin-tx/#/

rconti3• 12 months ago

That's surprising to me, given the lag time between authorization and completion, and the dynamic of people moving into a given area vs moving out.

klipt2• 12 months ago

Hypothesis: investors rent out their investment housing (to make a profit) so it doesn't really reduce housing supply, it just shifts supply from owned to rented.

rzazueta• 12 months ago

It was recently stated that 40% of owner-occupied homes are mortgage free: (https://www.fastcompany.com/91376388/housing-market-the-real...)

Various stats put the ratio of owner-occupied residences to renter-occupied residences at roughly 70% to 30% (https://www.apartmentlist.com/research/rent-statistics)

Since only 40% of those "owner"-occupied homes have their mortgages paid off, that means the bank owns the other 60%.

Doing the math, this means only about 28% of people actually own the place in which they live. The other 72% is owned by banks, investors, landlords, etc.

That fully 20% of homes in California - intended to be owned by families or individuals as their primary residence - are instead served out as rentals, and this is a low percentage compared to other states, is a massive indicator of the one the key issues facing Americans:

We don't own anything. Not even our own homes. Not even our lives, which we sell to others at a discount as "labor".

When we don't own anything, we have no stability. When we have no stability, we live in a constant state of uncertainty, which is just another word for "fear". Fear makes us act desperately or angrily or selfishly.

And the people who run everything use that fear to manipulate us into agreeing to be exploited by them - to work for them, vote for them, worship with/for/on them, etc.

If you actually want peace and freedom and liberty and all those things Americans claim to care about, we need to start by building stability in our lives.

That starts by taking back ownership of those things that belong to us through our efforts. The mortgage companies provide zero value to homeowners - they simply gate who gets to live in a home vs. who must pay for a rental, which is even more unstable.

Replace hierarchies with cooperatives. Stop using money as the exclusive determining factor of whether someone is housed, fed, clothed, or cared for.

Desperate people make lousy workers - ask any power and money pervert who believes in this system how hard it is to find good indentured servants who will just obey without complaining.

Stable, cared for people make excellent workers - fear may be a motivator, but gratitude is an even greater motivator. When people are stable and able to relax, they are more often willing to contribute toward keeping that stability. You see this when people who have "free" time spend it volunteering for their community.

If that stability comes at the expense of others, however, it's inherently unethical and leads us back exactly to the situation where we are now - where some people gain stability by manipulating others into working for them and stealing from them a significant portion of the value they create.

dcreater• 12 months ago

Its crazy that the article is missing the point that on an ABSOLUTE basis, 1 out of 5 homes being owned by investors is ludicrous. California's relative "not hot spot" is not the central issue.

skeptrune• 12 months ago

Actually less than I would have guessed

NuclearPM• 12 months ago

Is that good?

tptacek18• 12 months ago

Seems like extremely important context that 91% of these investor-owned houses are owned by entities with 5 or fewer houses: in other words, these are mostly houses that normal mom-and-pop homeowners bought.

lossolo• 12 months ago

This seems to be the source https://www.ocregister.com/2025/07/16/where-in-california-do...

"Most of California’s single-family house investors are “mom and pop” types, according to BatchData.

Small-fry owners, with up to five properties nationwide, control 91% of California investment houses.

The rest is divvied up this way: Owners of six to 10 houses control 4% of California investment houses. Investors with 11 to 50 houses own 3% of this Golden State housing group. And 51 or more? Only 2% of investment houses."

cloverich5• 12 months ago

It's notable but why is it extremely important exactly? It ultimately causes the same problem.

tptacek18• 12 months ago

Among other things, it suggests that concerns about institutional investors distorting the market (at least in California) are misplaced; they're a microscopic component of California house ownership.

astrobiased• 12 months ago

What I find odd is that definition of "investor" is not that clear. When you click through the links you get blocked at the data provider with no context. There's also a link to another post by the same news provider. When clicking through reference to the data source, the link doesn't work.

insane_dreamer3• 12 months ago

That number needs to be broken down between institutional investors and "regular" landlords who own a second property which they rent out (and likely either just covers the mortgage/taxes/upkeep, or is an older already-paid-for property i.e., inherited). The former is a business, the latter is not.

19% of California houses are owned by investors

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