Realtor.com | December 11, 2012 | By Diedre Woollard
A new survey shows that active real estate investors are still ready to buy up plenty of properties. A joint BiggerPockets.com/REI Nation survey conducted by ORC International for BiggerPockets.com shows that despite rising prices and shrinking foreclosure inventories, 65 percent of active real estate investors plan to buy as many or more residential properties in the next 12 months as they did in the past year. A total of 39 percent of active investors intend to increase their purchases over the next twelve months while 26 percent plan to buy as many in the year to come as they did in the past year. This group represents an overall pool of 4.5 million investors. Only 30 percent said they plan to buy fewer properties than they have in the past. Last year investors purchased 1.23 million homes, a 64.5 percent increase over 749,000 in 2010, according to the National Association of Realtors.
Investors Contribute To Local Economies
Some 3 percent of American adults, or 7 million people, consider themselves to be real estate investors and an additional 9 percent of all Americans own investment property today but have no current plans to buy more. Investors are a huge part of the economy, spending $9.2 billion a year to repair housing with a media expenditure of $7500 per property. The survey found that real estate investors are spending more than four times as much as the federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program to repair and rehabilitate the nation’s housing stock. Twenty percent will spend $10,000 to $30,000 on their next property and 16 percent plan to spend more than $30,000. “This survey puts some hard numbers behind the contribution that investors are making towards not only improving neighborhoods and fighting blight, but also towards driving the economy. Those dollars provide jobs and put money into local economies with local companies,” said Chris Clothier, a partner with REI Nation.
This article was originally posted by Diedre Woollard at Realtor.com.
