Why we should be cheering for the mom-and-pop investors in the housing market

Mom-and-pop investors run the show

Mom-and-pop investors have run the show as the highest percentage of investors for as long as I can remember. Just imagine if we didn’t have these smaller investors increasing supply in the marketplace. The CPI inflation data that we are all trying to contain could have been higher for decades, as shelter is over 40% of the index. As we can see in the data below, the percentage of large institutions buying homes has always been small, but mom-and-pop investors have been the largest share of investor buyers for years.

However, with higher mortgage rates, even mom-and-pop investors can feel the pinch as they finance some of their purchases.

Primary-residence mortgage buyers run the show in America, so even though the percentage of…