It would be interesting to know the ratio of new investors to old, in that mix. Are investors buying more houses because there are more of them, or because the same number buy more? Probably some of each, but it would be interesting to know which was the more important factor.
“You'll own nothing and you'll be happy.”
Here in Washington DC, 1.2m$ houses are being sold & almost universally converted to $750k+ condos. To me, it's fairly depressing. We go from nice, expansive, owned houses, to much more partial ownership of a single floor slice of property.
This is a very obvious rapid change in the city. But I think there's a lot of other ways that real-estate investment is taking over property purchasing here, and in general, imo, making housing radically less and less affordable.
Since I'm at my comment limit, replying with edit: yes this does "help" affordability. We do have to expand housing. But a 4 story house (3 + basement) being broken up like this (and losing a bunch of space to an expanded entry-way system+stair well): it's sad. It's real sad. DC used to have a history of making coops- of a couple adjacent houses getting together & building a much larger taller shared-building across the properties. That expanded the usable area. Conversely, rarely is the actual amount of space increased with this current system, and buyers get way way way less space/$ than buying a more out-of-reach unconverted house (whose prices are inflated by investors snatching them up). Rather than simply carve up what we have into smaller somewhat more affordable pieces (building over-produced condos), we should actually expand. This way now: it sucks.