Landscape of Single-Family Rentals Becoming More Singular

Filed under: mergers and acquisitions, the single-family rental (SFR) industry is fast becoming all-in-the-family. The recent sale of SFR platform OwnAmerica to property manager Renters Warehouse will offer holistic services to smaller retail investors.

With the deal in place, Renters Warehouse may now offer SFR property for-sale online, along with in-house property management services. Greg Rand, founder of OwnAmerica, who now becomes the chief strategy officer for the new Renters Warehouse, tells Curbed, “The industry now is kind of hitting a second inning,” adding, “The consolidation of large ownership players like [Invitation Homes], that’s been the story for a couple of years, but now there’s consolidation of service provider industry players, like businesses within the SFR industry. That’s now starting to take place.”

The single-family rental (SFR) space has undergone a dramatic transformation since the housing bust 10 years ago, as private-equity backed companies like Invitation Homes and American Homes 4 Rent have acquired hundreds of thousands of homes and formed publicly traded companies to rent them out.

The ripple effects of this trend have traveled from Wall Street down to Main Street. Single-family rental platforms—think Zillow for SFR homes—launched in hopes of bringing the same institutional data and analytics that the Invitation Homes of the world use to smaller retail investors who might want to add a rental property as part of their retirement planning or just to generate some extra income.

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