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Wednesday, October 12, 2022

Institutional investors ‘buying in bulk’ as homebuying cools

 Rising mortgage rates have sidelined many would-be homebuyers, but for institutional investors, it has become an opportunity as home builders try to unload properties.

“What we're seeing is builders have to make their quota. They have to make the end-of-the-year numbers," Kinloch Partners Cofounder and CEO and President Bruce McNeilage told Yahoo Finance Live (video above). "So they're reaching out to folks like us, the institutional owners of houses, and we're buying in bulk using those as rental homes.”

September marked the ninth consecutive month that confidence in the housing market fell among builders as persistent supply chain disruptions and high home prices continue to wedge into their sales and profits, the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index showed.

As a result, homebuilders are slashing prices. About 24% of builders reported reducing home prices, which is up from the 19% last month, said NAHB Chairman Jerry Konter, a homebuilder and developer from Savannah, Georgia.

The weakening market could be a factor that “people are just not walking in and the traffic has stopped in looking at models and looking at houses in suburbs and the subdivisions,” McNeilage added.

Another problem: Climbing mortgage rates have reached nearly 7%, continuing to take a toll on affordability.

Thanks to elevated construction costs and an aggressive monetary policy, home builders are trying to offload their supply quickly. The trend has prompted builders to think about incentives to boost sales.

“I'm getting five to 10 emails or calls a day. It really has picked up,”McNeilage said. “We're so far into the year, people are trying to make their numbers. And we're looking at a 10% to 20% discount off of retail pricing that's being offered to us if we're buying in bulk.”

These sales conditions are across the country as companies build these homes for specific purposes to sell to investors, according to McNeilage. However, there's still too much supply on the market.

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