Nick Fountain

But regardless, Caitlyn and everyone agree, the issue is concentrated in these Sunbelt cities and suburbs.

That's where that idea that big companies are buying up a lot of properties, it is very real.

And she said the answer was yes.

Basically, it depends on when you were talking about, what time frame.

For example, there was a period when the industry was first kicking off that rents fell in neighborhoods with a lot of houses owned by big investors in comparison to similar neighborhoods.

And she found a few years later, there was this period when in these Sunbelt neighborhoods with lots of these large landlords, the sale price of the houses actually fell.

So the opposite of what people fear.

She says this surprised her.

She still doesn't know exactly why it is, but she pointed us to some other research that she says might help explain it.

Basically, as more renters came into neighborhoods, they changed them.

So that's two different periods Caitlin discovered when housing prices were lower in areas with more institutional ownership.

In one, rents were lower and the other, sale prices were lower.

But Caitlin did find one period in recent history when areas with high concentrations of large investors saw both higher rents and higher sale prices.

Sure, bananas.

Yeah.

Like we said, Caitlin's data stops in 2022.

She says she's working on updating her paper with the more recent data.

All in all, across the dozen years she did study, the only period she found that these big landlords might be making housing more expensive was the most recent, the bananas period.

And I guess the question is, is that a one-off bizarro period in the real estate market?

Or is it our new normal, like today?