Are Corporate Investors Wrecking Housing? Plus How to Date Without Wrecking Your Budget

0:01Every soda's got something to say. Colas brag. Probiotics give TED Talks. Then there's Mr. Pibb. No pitch, no promises, just bold cherry bringing the flavor. Bold kick of cherry. Hey yo, Mr. Pibb. So good, so good, so good. Spring styles are at Nordstrom Rack stores now, and they're up to 60 % off. Stock up and save on Rag & Bone, Madewell, Vince, All Saints, and more of your favorites. How did I not know Rack has Adidas? Why do we rack? For the hottest deals. Just so many good brands. Join the Nordy Club to unlock exclusive discounts, shop new arrivals first, and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite rack store for free.

0:40Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack. All right, who's paying? You? Me? Does it depend on which date we're on, first or third? What about who's paying what when we're in a real relationship? Money plus love equals vexing questions, but we're here to help answer them. Welcome to NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast, where you send us your money questions and we answer them with the help of our genius nerds. I'm Sean Piles. And I'm Elizabeth Ayola. Even though it's way past Valentine's Day, although it's always Valentine's Day in my house, we are answering a listener's question about money and romance.

1:19But first of all, our weekly money news roundup, where we break down the latest in the world of finance to help you be smarter with your money. Now, our newest colleague, Anahel Hosky, is back. Hey, Anahel. Hey, Elizabeth. Hey, Sean. Yeah, if you've been following the housing market or even just scrolling certain corners of social media, you've probably seen a lot of frustration about large investors buying up single-family homes. That's become a political flashpoint, with some lawmakers proposing limits on big institutional investors in an effort to make housing more affordable. But how big a role do those investors actually play?

1:54And would restricting them make a meaningful difference? Today, we're joined by mortgage writers Abby Badak-Doyle and Kate Wood to break it down. Welcome back, both of you. Thanks for having us. Good to be here. It's always convenient to cast Wall Street as a villain, and most people don't have a problem with that. And at the moment, corporate homebuyers really seem to be the bad guys in the housing market. So can you explain a little bit about that? Sure. It really taps into how frustrated a lot of buyers feel. Home prices are high and inventory is tight and buyers just kind of feel like they're competing against forces that they can't control.

2:27And this is an explanation that resonates. To sum up the issue, the concern is when real estate companies come in and buy up lower priced homes, sometimes paying cash or outbidding local buyers. And then what would have been a starter home owned by someone local is now a rental property owned by a corporation with no real connection to the neighborhood. She's nearly go here. Exactly. And in a story that I reported for NerdWallet last year, one first time home buyer in Pittsburgh told me that she would keep seeing this happen. Like a good listing would pop up, she'd get excited, and then it would sell quickly and she'd see it on the market, you know, in a couple weeks flipped as a rental.

3:05And it always had that same look, right? The gray floors, the gray walls, everything like very gray washed. Thank you, HGTV, just shout out for making house flippers think that that is what everybody wants. It's frustrating, right? Like if you've been house hunting for a year or more, it can feel like the goalposts just keep getting pushed back and it's only human to want something to blame and corporate investors are an easy target. So how widespread is the narrative that big investors are buying up all the homes? It seems like a pretty classic populist message that resonates across the political spectrum.

3:39So this is really popular with voters, and you're absolutely right, Ana, all across the board. So last fall in September, the left-leaning think tank, the Searchlight Institute, did a survey looking at voter sentiment around the housing market. They found that nearly half of respondents, so 48 % of voters, believe that investors using housing for profit is a primary driver of high home prices. So this is something that a lot of folks out there feel pretty strongly about. And why is it resonating at this moment? You know, this idea that corporate investors are buying up housing isn't exactly new.

4:14It's not new. What's also not exactly new is that the housing market is not especially buyer friendly. And so, you know, a couple of years of just housing market fatigue and you're really looking for a punching bag. But why we're really hearing a lot about this right now is because investor owned housing has become this political talking point. Back in January, President Trump signed an executive order that was specifically aimed at limiting large institutional investors from buying single-family homes. At that time, it was pretty vague. We didn't really have any numbers or how that was going to work.

4:45But since then, it's become a lot more crystallized. That's because this so-called investor ban is now being debated as part of the 21st Century Road to Housing Act. So this is a major bipartisan housing bill that's been working its way through Congress for a while, but it passed the Senate. It's now with the House. The investor ban wasn't part of the original bill, but Trump had made clear that he was not going to sign off on this bill if the investor ban was not included. So all of a sudden, the investor ban is back, and it's actually been getting even more play recently than when it was initially floated back in January.

5:20All right. Well, we've established that corporate investors are getting a lot of attention in the housing debate. But what does the data actually say about the role in the market? So when you dig into property data in the U.S., institutional investors' role is much smaller than people might expect. So first, let's zoom all the way out, right? If we're looking at all single-family properties across the U.S., right? We're ignoring multifamily for right now. I'm sorry, guys. So overall, single-family properties, about 18 % are owned by investors, period. So investors of any size, it's about one in five homes.

5:54When we had that original executive order, it didn't define institutional investors, like how many homes until you're institutional. The Road to Housing Act actually has put in a threshold, and it's 350 or more properties. So last year in 2025, investors who owned 350 or more properties accounted for 7.5 % of all investor purchases. So this is according to data from realtor.com. Really need to underscore 7.5 % of all investor purchases. So this isn't all home purchases. It's just purchases where the buyer was an investor. So if it's not the big guys, who's buying all these houses? Well, if you're looking at who owns investor-owned properties, the vast majority of investor-owned properties are held by folks with portfolios of one to five properties.

6:48As of Q4 2025, these folks with one to five properties made up 92 % of that investor-owned pie. And if you add in the folks who have six to 10 properties, so they're still pretty small time players, that goes up to 96%. And these numbers are coming from Batch Data, which is an investor-focused real estate data platform. TLDR, if we are looking at who owns investor-owned properties in the US, these small-timers piece of the pie is so big that they pretty much own the whole pie, at least, you know, numerically. When you're looking at it from that other perspective, particularly the perspective of a homeowner, this is something where when people have that opportunity, it's like, oh, passive income stream.

7:31People don't think about how hard it is to be a landlord or like, what a pain it's going to be. But the whole idea of like, wait, you could just like have this business is so big. When I sold my home, people were in like disbelief that I wanted to sell and that I didn't want to retain it as a rental. Right, exactly. And to be clear, owning an investment property is not a bad thing, right? And we've written that advice here at NerdWallet about how buying a duplex or a multifamily home can really be a path to financial stability for folks, especially for single buyers. So to sum it all up, the image of the Goliath Wall Street firm buying up entire neighborhoods and pricing out local buyers is not actually typically what's happening.

8:13This generally isn't the case. So I really tend to explain this to people as a full on Scooby-Doo scenario, because we are out here, we are chasing this monster, this big institutional investor, this Wall Street fat cat, right? But we finally catch them. Fred pulls off the mask. It's someone we've already met. Okay. It is a regular everyday person. It's not a monster. It's your friends. It's your neighbors. It's a family member. These are regular people who maybe, you know, for different reasons, came into owning a separate property, liked it, maybe bought another one. But they don't own, you know, these massive portfolios and don't really have a like hidden agenda for the country or the city or even the neighborhood.

8:54They're kind of just trying to make money. So the proposal among lawmakers would restrict large investors. But would that actually make homes any more affordable? It could make a difference in certain local markets where investors are really concentrated. But nationally, an investor ban really wouldn't be a magic bullet. Like the bigger issue here is supply, right? Like we still don't have enough homes for sale, especially at that entry level price point. So demand from everyday buyers still outpaces what's listed for sale. So even if you reduced the role of institutional investors, it wouldn't suddenly flood the market with homes or bring prices down dramatically.

9:34Okay. Is there anything else that listeners should understand about how corporate investors are fitting into the housing market right now. Sure. So to build on what Abby just said, and also to add a little more nuance to my, you know, Scooby-Doo metaphor, one thing is to understand that, you know, we are again talking at the national level. So this might look really different depending on where you live. Institutional investors are relatively concentrated, and you tend to see the most institutionally owned homes in your Sunbelt cities. So think places like Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Charlotte. These are places where the housing stock tends to be newer and more standardized.

10:07So it's a lot more large investor friendly. Needless to say, where I live in New England, institutional investors barely have a foothold. And again, sort of your devil's advocate point is that investors are just like part of that overall housing market, you know, ecosystem. Yes, on one hand, these are not, you know, family owned homes. They're owned by another person or by an entity, but they are providing rental housing and rental housing is a significant portion of the sort of overall American housing ecosystem. So when we're talking about affordability, again, the bigger lever is going to be building more homes rather than focusing on who is buying the homes.

10:46Totally. And that's why I've been following this housing bill as it's moving through Congress. And if it becomes law, it could spark some real change about making it faster to build homes, easier to build homes. And more supply is really what moves the needle on affordability rather than limiting institutional investors alone. All right. Any final thoughts from either of you? I would say it is really easy to feel overwhelmed when you're house hunting because so much of the market is out of your control. There are just a ton of factors that you don't really have a hand in. So it's really important to focus on the aspects that you can control.

11:23These are things like your budget, your financing, making sure every part of your financial picture is strong and in place so that you are a strong candidate when you are ready to apply for a mortgage. You're able to make an offer that will be competitive in your market. And when the right home does come along, you will just be ready to pounce and move forward with that sale. This is the time of year that we start to see more inventory coming on the market too. And all it takes is one house. So if it's felt hopeless for a little while, there's still hope ahead in the springtime. Abby and Kate, thanks so much for joining us.

11:56Oh, thank you for having us. And thank you, Ana. I mean, my biggest takeaway here is that I'll be blaming my family and friends for the unaffordability of the housing. And Sean, if you buy another house, I'll be blaming you too. You're looking at me. I am fully a landlord and Garrett and I are looking into buying a duplex. So I'm happy to put on my Scooby-Doo Max anytime. It's all your fault. It's all your fault, Sean. Just kidding. All right. Up next, we answer a listener's question about money and love and who is spending what. But before we get into that, we want to remind you all to send us your money questions.

12:30If you are struggling to get into the housing market yourself, then please send us questions about how you can get into the market with your budget. And if you have a question about budgeting or anything else under the sun, we are here to help you. Leave us a voicemail or text us on the nerd hotline at 901-730-6373. Again, that's 901-730-NERD. We also see all of your lovely comments on Spotify. Keep them coming. And you can also pop your money questions in the comment section there, too. You can also send us an email to podcast at nerdballet.com. We're back in a moment. Stay with us.

13:08Today's episode is sponsored by Spectrum Business. Picture this. You're running a business and the internet drops during business hours. Your to-do list instantly becomes, one, panic. Two, stare at the router like you're negotiating with it. And three, start offering customers a brief moment of mindfulness while the checkout screen loads. For business owners, being connected isn't a perk. It's how you take payments, talk to clients, and keep things moving. Spectrum Business keeps businesses connected seamlessly with fast, reliable internet and advanced Wi-Fi. Plus, phone, TV, and mobile services if you need them.

13:42And Spectrum Business offers 100 % U.S.-based customer support 24-7 to help you stay up and running. That means you get actual help, not submit a ticket and hope for the best. Our colleague Carrie is a Spectrum customer. Shout out to our social media team. And she told us that she chose Spectrum because people online kept recommending it as a reliable and affordable option for internet and phone service. Carrie told us she was actually a little hesitant to switch at first because she'd been using a different service for a while. But after a year with Spectrum, she's had a really good experience.

14:12Her phone gets strong, reliable service, and it automatically connects to Spectrum Wi-Fi everywhere. Join the millions who rely on Spectrum Business. Visit spectrum.com slash business to learn more. One more time, that's spectrum.com slash business. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. This episode is brought to you by Indeed. Stop waiting around for the perfect candidate. Instead, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs to find the right people with the right skills fast. It's a simple way to make sure your listing is the first candidate seat. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs have four times more applicants than non-sponsored jobs.

14:48So go build your dream team today with Indeed. Get a$75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. We're back and answering your money questions to help you make smarter financial decisions. This episode's question comes from a listener's Spotify comment. Hey nerds, wondering if there's any tips and tricks for dating while maintaining financial goals and budget. I have some more traditional values. I pay for all the dates as the man, want to show her I care for her and value her, but also don't want to build in bad habits of going out all the time and potentially overspending.

15:22Thanks. All right. Sean and I are going to answer this listener's juicy, very, very juicy question ourselves. Are you ready, Sean, to get into it? I have a feeling we might disagree at some point. I'm so ready. And frankly, I hope we disagree, but we'll see. So one of the first things I'm thinking about with this question, because there's so much to dig into here, is really how to maintain financial goals while dating and where dating fits into your budget. In my mind, dating is going to come from the wants category. It's a discretionary expense, and it can vary so much what you're spending on a date, how you're spending on dates, who's spending what on dates.

16:00But I do think it should come from that wants category. What do you think? I agree with you there, Sean. However, honestly, I don't spend much on dates. So it's not a big line item in my budget. I'm being taken out. So I'm not spending much on dating. But wait, are we including getting cute for the date? I mean, you know, hair, lashes when I want to waste money. Are we talking about things like that or just paying for the actual date? Well, our listener seems like they're talking about paying for the event itself. But what you're getting to is that there's a lot that can be paid for before the date.

16:31Like, what are your clothes that you're wearing? You mentioned your hair. But yeah, there's a lot that can be spent on a date itself. And I think it's important to understand how that's going to fit into other financial priorities. So with our listener here, what else do they want to be spending their money on? What else do they want to be doing in their life? So are they saving for retirement? I would say that might be more important than going out to an expensive date. Are they saving for their emergency fund? Do they have their necessities covered in their budget too? All of these essentials should be, I think, taking precedent over just going out on a date.

17:03I agree. And like you said, I think it could just be baked into your fun money for people like you, Sean, who have a fun money sinking fund or bucket. I think the money can be baked into there. And my boyfriend gives me a lot of flack for saying this and other people may as well. But I don't know if people should be dating if they don't have enough money in their budget today. Maybe it should be a priority. Yeah. But I think this speaks to how you don't necessarily have to spend a lot of money to be dating. You can find creative, inexpensive ways to go out and still have that romantic need fulfilled.

17:36I agree. However, this is where this thought comes from. And I mean this for both people, not just for one party, whatever way that you identify yourself in terms of genders. So when I first moved back to the States, I had just gotten a divorce and I decided it was time to start dating again and getting my feet wet, as they say. I was really broke when I first moved back here and I barely had enough money to do anything, to be quite honest. And I said to myself, you know, what if I go on a date because I have this rule for myself that I will not go on a date if I can't afford to pay for the meal that I order.

18:10So, you know, heavens forbid the other person says, hey, I'm not paying for the food or goes to the bathroom, never comes back. I should be able to pay for my food. And I feel like if I can't do that, then I probably shouldn't be prioritizing dating. This is obviously extreme circumstance. But if I can't fill my gas tank, for example, to go to and from the date, then I probably shouldn't be going on it. So those are just the rules that I set for myself. And that's why I say if you can afford the basics, just the basics of going out on a date, then maybe you shouldn't be dating. But that's just my two cents.

18:39My twist on that is adjust the date to make sure that if your date does leave you in the middle of the date to, you know, secret run off to the bathroom and never come back, that you would still be covered. So in that case, maybe it's doing something like going for a walk in the park, having a nice picnic. You don't have to go out to an expensive meal. And I think a lot of people who maybe have a more traditional mindset around dating can get caught in this loop of what a date should be looking like, where you bring flowers and you take them out and you're driving them around. I don't think a lot of people necessarily expect that.

19:11And if they do, it makes me wonder what the priority really is in dating. Is it to get to know someone who could be a partner or is it to be treated? And, you know, I guess sometimes it can be nice to be treated for sure. But, yeah, it comes down to what you want out of the relationship. Sean, I love that you bring that up because the answer to your question depends on what side of social media that you're on. Did you ever see that viral video about the Cheesecake Factory? No. The lady who left. Okay. This lady who, you know, went on camera and said that she wasn't going on a date. You know, she got all dressed up, got to the front of the Cheesecake Factory.

19:47She didn't realize that's where her date was taking her. And she refused to go inside because she's like, I'm not going on a cheap date to the Cheesecake Factory. And of course, it created this yes. Okay, so look, sorry to interrupt you, Elizabeth. One, a Cheesecake Factory date might be cheesy, pun intended there, but it's not cheap. That place is expensive. But this is the times we're living in, depending on what side of social media you're on, where people are saying Cheesecake Factory is a cheap date. There's also a site of the Internet that says people are not going on a coffee date for the first date.

20:17Many people I see online are attaching the cost of the date to how much the person taking them out on the date values them. And I'm finding that interesting. Our listener is basically saying that I can only show that I care for her and value her if they're putting money toward that date. When to me, that's just so not how I approach relationships. For me, time spent together or words of affirmation are more kind of my love language and how I show people that I love that I do love them. And money is not really a factor in that. I feel the same. And it also makes me think about the listener didn't specify, but what stage of dating that they're in.

20:55Right. Because I think when you're first getting to know someone, the first couple of dates are very different from you've been dating maybe for six months. And I think the nature of your dates can also evolve in addition to how much you spend. There was a time I had an extremely traditional mindset and was like, look, if I'm putting on my makeup and leaving my house, it can't be, you know, a Starbucks or I don't know, a coffee date. I would like to go out and eat a nice dinner. But then I had to take a step back and kind of think about what you're saying, Sean, which is especially when you first meet someone, I don't even know this person.

21:25I don't know if I'm going to like them. And then now I'm stuck at some dinner with someone that I don't even know. So I do think it's more important to see if there's a connection first to see if you actually even like the person. And yeah, you can do that in a variety of ways. One of my most memorable first dates was a walk on the beach. And that didn't cost much money, did it? And maybe we grabbed a pizza. It was an incredible date. We got to talk. I got to know the person, learn a little bit about their values. And we didn't have to spend so much to do that. Yeah, some of the best dates are ones where you can actually see how the person views the world and engages with the world around them.

21:54And going for a walk on the beach is a good example of that. But I would say sitting down at a restaurant and having an expensive meal isn't really a great way to get to know someone except for maybe how they treat wait staff, which is very important, I will say. And hopefully you can get a glimpse of how well they're tipping, too, because that's an important thing to me. But it's such a narrow slice of who they are as a person. And then if you don't like them or if they're really boring, then you're stuck at this table with them, which sounds really miserable. Something we keep kind of circling around is these traditional gender notions of who's dating and who's paying for dates.

22:26And all of this is really confined to what I see as sort of more typical heterosexual forms of dating because in gay relationships, I've never even had to deal with this because I've always approached it kind of 50-50. We are coming to this in a really equal footing and I'm okay splitting the cost of whatever because, look, we're both making money here. We both want to be on this date together. And it just never felt to me like something where I needed to expect for someone to pay for something or me being expected to pay for something either unless I say, oh, I'm going to treat you tonight. So do you find that you still are falling into these kind of traditional heterosexual gender dating norms in your relationships, Elizabeth?

23:09Because it seems like our listener is really steeped in that traditional way of thinking. In my current relationship, it is pretty traditional. So my boyfriend pays for most of the dates, but it doesn't mean I don't pay for any dates. So there are times where I take him out and I pay for the date. Of course, I treat him and do things for him as well. But I think that's just the pace that we've set for ourselves. That's my personal preference. But I will say ultimately, these kind of conversations always spark so much debate and I don't understand why. Right. And the reason I don't understand why is because it's based on your personal values and everyone's values are different.