Residential real estate investors appear largely unphased by recent challenges including the high cost of financing, rising home prices, limited inventory and competition from institutional and traditional home buyers.

Investor sentiment jumped 16% from the previous quarter, according to the RCN Capital/CJ Patrick Company Summer 2024 Investor Sentiment Index. Nearly two-thirds of investors indicated they view today's market as better or much better than it was a year ago, while only 20% felt it was worse. Further, 61% of investors expect the market to continue to improve and only 14% expect it to decline, which represents the highest percentage of positive responses and the lowest percentage of negative responses since the study began.

Investors are not without concerns despite their optimism, the report said. More than 84% of investors surveyed said they worry about increasing insurance costs and the unavailability of insurance in markets frequently impacted by extreme weather events. Nearly 68% noted that these insurance issues had caused them to miss out on an investment opportunity. Squatters are another commonly cited problem for real estate investors, with more than half indicating they have personally encountered problems with squatters.