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Aided by new technologies, individual investors are buying homes across the U.S. to rent out, with many viewing the properties as a core investment alongside stock or bond funds. ⁠ ⁠ Data services help would-be landlords pick neighborhoods with precision, feeding them detailed reports on sales prices, crime rates and local schools. Online real-estate marketplaces connect these laptop landlords with financing or local managers who can handle property maintenance and leasing. Content publishers and web forums offer up investment strategies and tips on where to buy.⁠ ⁠ “It can all be done online,” said real-estate consultant John Burns in Irvine, Calif. “That’s been the game-changer.”⁠ ⁠ Home purchases by investors large and small climbed to record levels during the pandemic, reaching a high of 28% of all single-family home sales in February of 2022, up from 17% during the same month in 2019, according to housing data firm CoreLogic. Individuals or other small enterprises that own 10 or fewer homes accounted for about half of all investor purchases.⁠ ⁠ A separate measure of investor purchases by Attom Data Solutions, prepared for the Journal, shows that the niche of out-of-state small investors has also grown. Members of this group, who purchased between two and 10 homes a year, bought 2.1% of all American homes sold in the second quarter of 2022, up from 1.5% during the same quarter in 2019. Purchases of just one house were excluded to rule out vacation homes.⁠ ⁠ Read more at the link in our bio.