JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Out-of-state investors are betting on Jacksonville’s housing market. One investor group from Utah wants to buy more than 100 homes here every year starting in 2027.
The local company helping them buy says it’s adding homes, not pricing families out.
They’re 3-bedroom homes in neighborhoods like Arlington, near schools and jobs, and investors from across the country are buying them.
According to the Jacksonville Business Journal, an investor group called Wealth Outside Wall Street has already bought 21 homes here through Jacksonville-based JWB Real Estate Capital. JWB says about 80% of its investors live outside Florida.
“There’s a common narrative out there that investors are just ... buying all this inventory and taking inventory that first-time home buyers or other people in Jacksonville could buy,” said Gregg Cohen, co-founder of JWB.
JWB says it focuses on workforce neighborhoods within 10 miles of downtown, and the new homes it builds go on the market as rentals. The company says its average rent is $1,516 a month. Zillow, puts the Jacksonville average at $2,074, which would make JWB’s rents about 27% lower.
So what does that mean for local families trying to buy their first home?
“They’re creating more inventory, more options for people to live in that didn’t exist before,” said Dr. Alex Stewart, a real estate expert with The Market Distillery.
But the numbers show how tight things are for local buyers.
The Business Journal reports the investor group’s members paid an average of about $270,000 per home. That’s roughly $65,000 below Duval County’s August median price of $335,000, according to the Northeast Florida Association of Realtors. NEFAR’s affordability index for Duval sits at 86. Anything under 100 means a family earning the median income doesn’t make enough to qualify for a median-priced home.
Stewart said first-time buyers face more competition from local buyers than from outside companies.
JWB’s bet is that Jacksonville’s growth pushes everything up at the same time.
“Over time home prices go up and rents go up, but the neighborhoods can stay affordable because what also happens is median incomes go up,” Cohen said.
Cohen says the answer to affordability is more supply. But the homes JWB builds are rentals, not homes for sale. So for first-time buyers, the question is whether paychecks here can keep up with home prices JWB expects to keep climbing.
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