The large investment companies that amassed thousands of Valley homes for rentals during the housing boom have nearly stopped buying in Maricopa County and are instead selling off some of their holdings, new housing data show.
Institutional investors purchased just 25 homes in Maricopa County during the first six months of this year while selling 298 — nearly 12 sales for every purchase.
At the same time, another breed of corporate homebuyer is moving cautiously in the opposite direction.
So-called iBuyers purchased 400 Valley homes during the first half of the year and sold 256, making them net buyers of 144 properties.
The contrasting trends don’t signal a return to the corporate buying frenzy that helped reshape the Valley housing market earlier this decade.
Both types of buyers remain dramatically less active than they were at the height of the housing boom.
But the divergence caught the attention of housing analyst Paridhi Saboo as she examined first-half sales data for Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service (ARMLS).
“This is not another 2022 investor boom,” Saboo said.
She noted iBuyer purchases fell 86.7% in the first half of this year below the number bought in the first six months of 2022. In that same time frame, large investor purchases of homes in the Valley were 99.4% lower.
The numbers indicate that “iBuyers are cautiously rebuilding from a much smaller base, while institutional investors have almost completely stopped acquiring homes in Maricopa County,” Saboo said.
Companies such as Opendoor and Offerpad are known as iBuyers because their business generally involves buying houses directly from homeowners and then reselling them relatively quickly after making any necessary repairs or improvements.
They offer sellers speed and certainty in exchange for the opportunity to make money on the eventual resale.
Institutional investors include large companies that accumulated thousands of single-family houses to hold as rental properties. Their returns depend more heavily on rental income and the long-term value of their housing portfolios.
Those companies have almost disappeared from the Valley as buyers, according to data from The Information Market, a subsidiary of the ARMLS. Saboo prepared the analysis while still senior analyst for the Information Market before joining Opendoor this week as an analyst.
The 25 purchases by large investors during the first half of 2026 represented a 67.1% decline from the same period last year.
Meanwhile, they sold 298 homes, 12.6% fewer than during the first half of 2025 but still nearly 12 times the number they purchased.
That produced a net reduction of 273 houses from their Valley holdings during the six-month period.
Saboo said several factors could be contributing to the pullback.
Higher borrowing and operating costs, slower rent growth and more moderate increases in home values make it more difficult for companies to generate the returns they enjoyed when both Valley rents and home prices were soaring, she said.
Some companies also could be selling older properties to realize gains or rebalance their portfolios, she said.
Phoenix was the center of the selloff.
Institutional investors purchased 11 homes in the city during the first six months of the year but sold 104, reducing their holdings by a net 93 properties.
In Mesa, they purchased four and sold 25.
They sold 25 in Surprise while buying two and sold 19 in Glendale while purchasing three.
The numbers are particularly striking when compared with the housing boom.
iBuyers are telling a different story.
Their 400 purchases during the first half of 2026 represented a 17.6% increase from the same period last year.
At the same time, the number of houses they sold dropped 45.1%, to 256.
That left iBuyers with 144 more purchases than sales.
A year earlier, the equation was reversed: they had sold 126 more homes than they purchased.
The change represents a 270-home swing in their net activity.
Saboo said the pattern suggests iBuyers are selectively rebuilding their inventories rather than simply handling more transactions.
A slower housing market could actually offer advantages to their business model, she said.
Sellers having difficulty finding traditional buyers may place greater value on the speed and certainty of an iBuyer offer. A more negotiable market also could provide opportunities for iBuyers to acquire houses at favorable prices.
At the same time, relatively stable home prices can make estimating a home’s eventual resale value easier than during a rapidly falling or highly volatile market.
Recent company reports, Saboo said, indicate iBuyers are increasing their activity cautiously rather than attempting to recreate the scale of their pandemic-era operations.
iBuyers in the first half of 2026 were most active in Phoenix, Mesa and Gilbert, according to the data. But while their 90 purchases in the time period in Phoenix were 10.9% below their 101 buys last year, they were 289.2% up in Mesa and a whopping 215.4% higher in Gilbert.
Saboo said the numbers suggest “a geographic rotation toward East Valley and outer-suburban markets, rather than a countywide expansion.”
The relatively small numbers in individual communities, however, make percentage changes appear particularly dramatic and warrant caution in drawing conclusions about any one city, Saboo cautioned.
For ordinary buyers, institutional investors’ retreat is not enough to fundamentally change the Valley’s overall housing supply, Saboo said.
Buyers may instead notice the trend at the neighborhood level, where former rental properties could provide additional choices and potentially more negotiating room.
Saboo also said iBuyers remain highly selective and that sellers considering an iBuyer offer should compare the convenience and certainty of the transaction with its fees and the amount they might receive from putting their home on the traditional market.
In Scottsdale, for example, iBuyers purchased only eight houses and sold six during the first six months of 2026. Institutional investors bought none and sold two.
Across Ahwatukee’s 85044, 85045 and 85048 ZIP codes combined, iBuyers purchased six homes and sold two, while institutional investors purchased none and sold one.
“The numbers are too small to establish a meaningful Ahwatukee-specific trend,” Saboo said, although she noted they generally point in the same direction as the countywide numbers.
Saboo’s historical data also show that the divergence itself isn’t unprecedented.
During the first half of 2024, iBuyers purchased 617 Valley homes and sold 465, adding a net 152 properties.
Institutional investors purchased 299 and sold 380, reducing their holdings by 81.
What’s different now is the magnitude of the institutional retreat.
Two years ago, institutional investors were still purchasing hundreds of Valley houses.
During the first six months of this year, they bought 25.
