Day (SD) Investor Pulse Report (2025-Q4)

Landlords in Day County collectively own 395 SFR properties, representing a significant 29.0% of the county's total SFR market of 1,364 properties, indicating a substantial investor presence. This contradicts a common narrative that investors are minor players.

Individual investors form the overwhelming majority of the landlord base, accounting for 455 of the 531 total landlord entities (85.7%), far surpassing the 76 company entities (14.3%). This highlights the prevalence of private individuals managing small portfolios in the local market, as shown in CH04.

The portfolio composition reveals that 100.0% of landlord-owned properties, totaling 395 properties, were acquired using cash, with no financed properties reported. This suggests a highly cash-intensive investment strategy or a lack of available financing data.

A striking 99.7% of landlord-owned SFR properties (394 out of 395) are rented, confirming the strong focus on generating rental income within these portfolios. This near-complete non-owner-occupancy rate underscores the professional landlord nature of these investments.

Comparing entity counts, individual landlords (455 entities) hold an average of 0.74 properties per entity (337 properties / 455 entities), while company landlords (76 entities) average 0.97 properties per entity (74 properties / 76 entities). This suggests that even within companies, portfolio sizes tend to be small, aligning with the overall mom-and-pop market structure.

No acquisition pricing data was recorded for Q4 2025, preventing any analysis of landlord versus traditional homeowner acquisition prices in Day County. This data gap makes it impossible to determine if landlords secured discounts or paid premiums during the most recent quarter.

The absence of purchase activity data also means no quarter-over-quarter trends in the landlord-homeowner price gap can be assessed. This limits understanding of evolving market dynamics and investor pricing strategies over time.

With no recorded acquisitions, it is not possible to determine specific acquisition price trends by timeframe for 2024, 2020-2023, or overall. Therefore, insights into price appreciation from the pandemic era to the current quarter are unattainable from the provided data.

Similarly, the lack of acquisition records prevents any comparison of average prices paid by individual versus company landlords in Q4 2025 or across different timeframes. This hinders an understanding of potential differing investment strategies based on owner type.

The current dataset does not include information on the number of properties acquired in each timeframe, which is crucial for gauging market velocity and the scale of recent investor activity. This absence further limits comprehensive market analysis.

A critical finding for Q4 2025 is the complete absence of reported SFR purchases in Day County, with 0 total purchases recorded for both landlords and other buyers. This results in landlords accounting for 0.0% of the market, signaling either a complete market pause or a data reporting gap.

Given the lack of Q4 activity, no investor tiers were active in purchasing properties this quarter, with zero purchases reported across all categories. This means there were no new entrants (Tier 01) and no activity from established landlords or institutional investors.

Consequently, mom-and-pop landlords (Tier 01-04) made 0 purchases, representing 0.0% of landlord purchases, and institutional investors (Tier 09) also made 0 purchases, for 0.0%. This highlights the stagnant nature of the market for the reported period.

No new landlords, including those acquiring a single property (Tier 01), entered the market in Q4 2025, as 0 entities were recorded making purchases. This indicates a lack of market entry by first-time investors during this quarter.

With no purchase activity, the number of entities active in each tier and the average properties per entity remain at zero for Q4 2025, preventing any insights into buying intensity or concentration of activity by tier during the period.

The investor-owned SFR market in Day County is exclusively composed of mom-and-pop landlords (Tier 01-04), who collectively control 100.0% of the 401 tier-classified properties. This confirms the absence of mid-size or institutional investor presence in the market, underscoring its local, individual-investor driven nature, as illustrated in CH08-1.

Single-property landlords (Tier 01) form the vast majority of this market, owning 376 properties, which represents 93.8% of all tier-classified investor-owned SFR. This makes first-time or single-property investors the foundational segment of the rental market.

Institutional investors (Tier 09, 1000+ properties) hold 0 properties, representing 0.0% of the investor-owned market. This stark absence challenges the common narrative of large corporations dominating the SFR market, at least within Day County.

The data provided does not include acquisition prices by tier, making it impossible to analyze if larger portfolio investors paid more or less for properties compared to smaller landlords. This limits insights into potential pricing strategies or market access advantages across different investor sizes.

Across the four existing tiers (Tier 01-04), there are 322 entities for single-property landlords, 15 for two-property, 6 for small landlords (3-5 properties), and 2 for small landlords (6-10 properties). This distribution further reinforces the fragmented, individual-centric nature of investor ownership in the county.

Individual investors overwhelmingly dominate the smaller portfolio tiers in Day County, owning 322 single-property holdings (82.1%), 15 two-property holdings (88.2%), and all 6 properties in the 3-5 property tier (100.0%). This highlights the strong preference and capacity for individuals to invest in smaller-scale rental properties.

Companies have a minor presence only in the smallest tiers, holding 70 single-property portfolios (17.9%) and 2 two-property portfolios (11.8%), but no properties in the 3-5 property tier. This indicates that corporate investment, though present, is very limited and generally restricted to single assets.

There is no crossover point where companies become the majority owners in any tier, as individual investors maintain a substantial lead across all reported tiers. This contrasts with broader market trends where companies tend to dominate larger portfolios, emphasizing the unique, individual-centric market structure of Day County, as shown in CH09-1.

Due to the absence of acquisition pricing data, it is not possible to compare how individual and company acquisition prices differ within each tier. This limits insights into whether different owner types employ distinct pricing strategies or face varying market conditions.

The single-property tier (Tier 01) shows the highest company concentration relative to other tiers, with 70 properties (17.9%) owned by companies. However, this is still a minority compared to the 322 properties (82.1%) owned by individuals in this tier.

Zip code SD-Day-57239 exhibits the highest investor ownership rate in Day County at a striking 60.9%, meaning nearly two-thirds of SFR properties in this area are investor-owned. This signifies extreme concentration of rental housing in specific micro-markets within the county, as shown in CH10-2.

While SD-Day-57239 leads in percentage, SD-Day-57273 holds the highest count of investor-owned properties with 112, representing a substantial 47.1% investor ownership rate. This indicates a high volume of investor activity in this particular zip code, combining both scale and density, as shown in CH10-1.

The top 5 regions by investor ownership percentage all demonstrate high landlord penetration, with rates ranging from 47.1% (SD-Day-57273) to 60.9% (SD-Day-57239). This pattern suggests that in key areas, a majority of SFR properties are part of investment portfolios, creating distinct market dynamics.

Conversely, the data does not provide information on sub-geographies with the lowest investor ownership rates, which would offer a complete picture of market segmentation within the county. However, the presence of areas with over 60% investor ownership is a significant finding.

Due to the absence of acquisition pricing data in this section, it is not possible to analyze how acquisition prices vary across these geographically distinct regions. This limits insights into price premiums or discounts that might be associated with higher or lower investor concentration.

Analyzing the top 5 regions, there is a clear correlation between high property counts and high ownership rates. For instance, SD-Day-57273 is #1 by count (112 properties) and #5 by percentage (47.1%), while SD-Day-57239 is #3 by count (81 properties) and #1 by percentage (60.9%). This indicates that investor interest is concentrated in specific, high-penetration areas.

The data does not explicitly state the total SFR inventory in each top region, but by combining the 'Landlord SFR Properties' count with the 'Landlord Ownership Rate', we can infer the total SFR properties in SD-Day-57273 is approximately 238 (112 / 0.471), highlighting varied market sizes within the county.

A significant data gap exists as no historical transaction data is available for all landlords or specifically for institutional investors (1000+ tier). This prevents any determination of whether landlords in Day County have been net buyers or net sellers over time, or in recent quarters.

Consequently, it is impossible to calculate the percentage of buy transactions that originated from other landlords or the percentage of sell transactions that went to other landlords. This limits insights into market liquidity and the prevalence of inter-landlord trading activity.

The absence of buy and sell prices makes it impossible to compare average buy prices to average sell prices, thereby preventing any analysis of implied profit margins for landlords in the county. This is a crucial metric for understanding investor profitability.

Without transaction counts across various timeframes (Q4, Q3, annual, All Time), it is not possible to analyze how the buy/sell ratio has changed, nor to identify trends in market direction, such as periods of accumulation or divestment by landlords.

The lack of specific data for institutional investors (1000+ tier) means their transaction patterns cannot be compared to the overall landlord market. This limits insights into whether larger entities behave differently in terms of buying, selling, or pricing strategies.

For Q4 2025, Day County experienced a complete halt in reported real estate transactions, with 0 total SFR transactions recorded. This means landlords were involved in 0 transactions, representing 0.0% of the market, effectively making it a non-existent quarter for reported activity.

Given the zero transaction volume, there is no data to analyze how transaction volumes varied across investor tiers in Q4 2025. This prevents any insights into which investor sizes, if any, were most active during the period.

Similarly, with no purchases, there are no average purchase prices by tier to report, meaning it is impossible to determine if any specific tier paid more or less for properties in Q4. All average prices for Tier 01 and Tier 09 are reported as $0.

The absence of transactions means there was no inter-landlord trading activity in Q4 2025, with 0 properties bought from other landlords. This indicates a complete lack of secondary market activity among investors in this period.

As all transaction numbers are zero, there is no price spread to calculate between the highest and lowest tier purchase prices. This further limits understanding of market segmentation based on investor capacity or strategy.

The lack of activity means that no tier exhibited a higher inter-landlord purchase percentage, as all transaction metrics across all tiers stand at zero. This provides no insight into the reliance on internal market trading for any investor segment.

Comparing the lack of Q4 transaction activity to the existing ownership distribution (where mom-and-pop landlords control 100% of tier-classified properties), suggests a dormant period for a market largely built on smaller individual investments, or a significant data reporting gap.