Perry (KY) Investor Pulse Report (2025-Q4)

In Perry County, investors hold a modest 88 Single Family Residential properties, representing just 3.0% of the total 2,913 SFRs in the market.

The investor landscape is overwhelmingly dominated by individuals, who own 84 of the 88 properties (95.5%), leaving companies with a minimal footprint of just 6 properties (6.8%).

This individual dominance is also reflected in the entity count, with 114 individual landlords compared to only 6 company landlords, indicating a market driven by small-scale, local investment.

A strong preference for all-cash acquisitions is evident, with 65 properties held free of financing, more than double the 23 properties that are financed.

The portfolio is heavily geared towards rental income, as 86 of the 88 investor-owned properties are rented, demonstrating a clear focus on buy-and-hold strategies rather than speculation.

In Q4 2025, landlords in Perry County acquired properties at a remarkable discount, paying an average of $106,000 while traditional homeowners paid $184,143. This represents a 42.4% price advantage, saving investors an average of $78,143 per home.

The price gap between landlords and homeowners has been significant but volatile. The Q4 discount follows an even larger 50.8% gap in Q3 (a $115,142 difference), but is a sharp increase from the minimal 3.9% discount observed in Q2.

While homeowner prices fluctuated dramatically, from $226,542 in Q3 down to $184,143 in Q4, landlord acquisition prices remained relatively consistent, hovering between $105,644 and $111,400 over the past three quarters.

The data suggests landlords are adept at finding undervalued properties, consistently purchasing assets for significantly less than the prevailing market rate paid by owner-occupiers.

Comparing recent activity to historical data, the average landlord purchase price of $108,901 in 2025 is lower than the pandemic-era (2020-2023) average of $122,333, indicating a potential cooling in the prices investors are willing to pay.

Landlords demonstrated significant market influence in Q4 2025, purchasing 6 of the 15 total SFRs sold in Perry County, capturing an outsized 40.0% market share.

The bulk of this purchasing power came from small-scale investors, with mom-and-pop landlords (1-10 properties) responsible for 5 of the 6 acquisitions, or 83.3% of all landlord activity.

New market entrants were the primary driver, as 6 entities in the single-property tier acquired 5 homes, signaling fresh capital and new landlords joining the local rental market.

Despite the dominance of small investors, a single institutional purchase (16.7% of landlord activity) indicates that even larger players have some presence in the county.

This high concentration of Q4 activity among new and small landlords highlights a grassroots expansion of the rental market rather than a corporate-led takeover.

The ownership structure in Perry County is definitively controlled by small-scale investors, with mom-and-pop landlords (Tiers 01-04) owning 97.7% of the entire investor-held SFR portfolio.

This concentration is most pronounced in the single-property tier, where landlords with just one rental property hold 83 homes, accounting for an overwhelming 94.3% of all investor-owned real estate.

The mid-size investor category is virtually non-existent, with only a handful of properties held by landlords with 2 to 50 homes.

In stark contrast to national narratives, institutional investors (Tier 09) have a minimal footprint, controlling only a single property, which represents just 1.1% of the local investor market.

This distribution underscores a market defined by local, small-time landlords rather than large, out-of-state corporations, with the barrier to entry seemingly low for first-time investors.

Individual investors maintain overwhelming control across all smaller portfolio tiers in Perry County, effectively shaping the entire ownership landscape.

In the largest and most dominant tier, single-property landlords, individuals own 81 of 85 properties, a 95.3% share, compared to just 4 properties held by companies.

The trend of individual dominance intensifies in slightly larger portfolios, with individuals owning 100% of the properties in both the two-property and 3-to-5 property tiers.

Unlike larger metropolitan markets, there is no crossover point where company ownership becomes prevalent in Perry County; the market remains firmly in the hands of private individuals.

This data indicates that the typical investor journey in this region involves personal ownership rather than forming a corporate entity, even as portfolios begin to grow.

Real estate investment in Perry County is not evenly distributed but is instead highly concentrated within a single geographic area.

The vast majority of activity is found in the 41701 zip code, which contains 51 investor-owned SFR properties, representing 58% of the county's entire investor portfolio.

Within this key zip code, the investor ownership rate is 3.1%, closely mirroring the county-wide average and indicating this area is representative of the broader market.

Data for other zip codes such as 41348, 41367, and 41712 is insufficient for comparison, which further elevates the significance of 41701 as the primary and most transparent sub-market for investment.

This geographic clustering suggests that investors are targeting a specific community, likely driven by localized factors such as employment, amenities, or housing stock characteristics.

Investors in Perry County are in a strong accumulation phase, consistently acting as net buyers across all recent timeframes.

In Q4 2025, this trend was particularly pronounced, with landlords purchasing 7 properties and selling only 1, resulting in a robust 7-to-1 buy-to-sell ratio and a net gain of 6 properties.

This aggressive buying behavior extends throughout the year, as investors acquired 25 homes while only divesting 7 in 2025, for a net portfolio growth of 18 properties.

The momentum appears to be increasing, with 25 purchases in 2025 nearly doubling the 13 purchases made in all of 2024.

Even the institutional segment, despite its small size, contributed to this growth, ending 2025 as a net buyer with 3 acquisitions versus 2 sales.

Landlords played a substantial role in the Q4 2025 market, participating in 7 of the 24 total transactions for a 29.2% share of all activity.

The transaction volume was heavily weighted towards the entry-level, with single-property landlords responsible for 6 of the 7 investor deals.

A key finding from Q4 is the complete absence of inter-landlord trading; 0% of properties acquired by investors were purchased from other landlords, signaling that portfolio growth comes from acquiring homeowner-occupied or vacant properties.

The average purchase price for new single-property landlords was $106,000, consistent with the significant discounts observed compared to the general market.

This pattern of acquiring properties from outside the investor pool suggests landlords are actively expanding the rental housing stock in Perry County rather than trading existing rental assets among themselves.