U.S. investor home purchases ticked up 2% from a year earlier in the fourth quarter, coming in at just under 50,000. That’s the eighth straight quarter of minimal changes in investor activity.

This is based on a Redfin analysis of county-level home purchase records across 38 of the most populous U.S. metropolitan areas going back through 2000. We define an investor as any institution or business that purchases residential real estate, meaning this report covers both institutional and mom-and-pop investors. Please see the end of this report for a more detailed methodology.