Investors double down on rental properties

Aug 11, 2017

Homeownership in United States is hovering near a 51-year low

By Heather Perlberg Bloomberg

Original Story: http://www.tulsaworld.com/business/realestate/investors-double-down-on-rental-properties/article_f6c9b0c4-810f-5928-a67e-465584bbdf04.html

10 years after housing peaked, US is more of a renter nation
Renter Nicole Caverlyat gets settled at her home last year in the Piedmont Park neighborhood in Apopka, Florida, a former agricultural hub now crowded with housing developments. JOHN RAOUX/AP file

The Associated Press

It was a rare lucrative business for Wall Street in the aftermath of the financial crisis: snapping up properties in foreclosure and renting them out. So good, in fact, that now, as the distressed pool dries up, some investors are refusing to let the rental-model fizzle. They’re building more and more of the houses themselves.

American Homes 4 Rent, a 5-year-old real estate investment trust and the biggest of the publicly traded landlords by number of homes, is buying lots and houses around the U.S., and Colony Starwood Homes plans to purchase at least 600 properties over the next year from more than a dozen builders.

Privately held AHV Communities is plotting whole neighborhoods for those who want — without the bother of ownership — single-family residences with some apartment-complex bells and whistles, such as fitness centers and bocce-ball courts. Residents don’t even have to mow their lawns.

The bet behind the build-to-rent boom is that there are enough people who dream of the detached-house life but can’t afford to buy into it. With tight mortgage standards and rising prices, and millennials putting off marriage and loaded up with student debt, that might not be a long shot.

As it is, the homeownership rate in the U.S. has been hovering for a while near a 51-year low, according to U.S. Census data, though that could be changing: The number of owner-occupied homes rose faster than the number of renting households for the first time since 2006 in the first three months of the year.

But the REITs probably aren’t taking too much of a gamble considering many Americans’ feeble efforts to stash money away, said Bruce McNeilage, co-founder of Nashville, Tennessee-based Kinloch Partners.

“People have good intentions, but they’ve never been able to save for a down payment,” McNeilage said. Many tenants ask for short leases, saying they plan to buy, but they rarely do, he said.

About one third of the 42 Nashville homes Kinloch sold to American Homes 4 Rent in 2014 were leased by people who had been on month-to-month arrangements for about seven years.

For the landlord companies, it typically costs more, of course, to purchase a freshly constructed property than it does to acquire and refurbish an already lived-in model. But they’re getting discounts from builders. They also have to put less into maintenance and repairs, especially early on.

And a new single-family rental can command higher rent, 5 percent to 8 percent more than an older, renovated one, according to Alex Sifakis, president of based JWB Real Estate Capital, which has built about 450 rental homes in Jacksonville, Florida, since 2011.

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American Homes 4 Rent, started by Public Storage founder B. Wayne Hughes, expects the new homes it’s having constructed will bring higher yields than the existing properties it buys, executives said on a call with analysts.

At this point, Invitation Homes, the Blackstone Group LP-backed rental-home REIT with about 48,000 houses and the largest of the companies by market capitalization, is sticking with the original business model, even though foreclosures are at their lowest level since 2005. While Invitation occasionally purchases new homes to fill gaps, it’s still focused on finding repossessions. It has kept its supply stable for two years, selling what doesn’t fit its strategy.

What the other REITs are doing is not only generating business for the building industry but getting them out of jams. “Some builders get a little bit of fatigue at the end of trying to close out an existing community, and they have maybe 10, 15, 20 remaining homes,” Colony Starwood Chief Financial Officer Arik Prawer said on a February conference call. By the same token, “some builders love to just get some momentum going in a new community, and like for us to buy a strip of homes upfront just to get it going.”

Colony executives said this month that they have three communities in the works, where every home is a newly built rental, and eight more planned. The company is No. 2 in total returns among the largest single-family landlords this year through Friday.

Even Lennar Corp., the second-largest U.S. homebuilder, is in on the game. It created its own rental-only community in Sparks, Nevada, a Reno suburb, starting with about 80 homes in 2015. Now there are 225, with all but two occupied as of last month, according to the local leasing office.

“It can be a challenge to build entry-level homes at a price level that is affordable for ownership,” said Drew Flahive, president of Amherst Holdings’s single-family residential division, which has purchased new homes to lease and manages 12,000 properties. “Converting single-family properties to rentals often makes the most sense to maximize real estate value while providing affordable housing.”

By Bruce McNeilage 14 Dec, 2023
In my interview with Seana Smith & Brad Smith from Yahoo Finance today we discussed single-familiy rental rates and my thoughts on mortgage rates going into 2024.
By Bruce McNeilage 14 Dec, 2023
Owner's equivalent rental prices rose 0.5% in November , a pervasive factor in US inflation as limited housing inventory continues to squeeze homebuyers out of tightened real estate markets. Kinloch Partners CEO Bruce McNeilage joins Yahoo Finance Live to weigh in on the outlook for renters and home purchases in 2024. Home prices are "not going to go down, that's for sure. And mortgage rates might go down, but if the cost of a house goes up $10-20,000, it's a wash," McNeilage states. For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live. 
By Bruce McNeilage 08 Nov, 2023
Original Story can be found here: https://www.tennessean.com/story/money/real-estate/2023/11/08/renters-seek-new-options-in-nashvilles-tight-housing-market/70652968007/ Charlene and Timothy Stratton traded in their 4-acre Illinois ranch for a rental home in the Nashville suburb of Spring Hill and, so far, they love the new low-maintenance lifestyle. Like a growing contingent of Americans, they chose to rent a single-family house rather than buy a home or rent in multifamily apartment buildings. "We lived in the country all of our lives with horses and cows," said Timothy Stratton, a retired airline mechanic. "But we wanted to rent because we’re looking at our age. We did a lot of research and decided this will work out for the time being." Families like the Strattons increasingly want the mobility and limited commitment of a rental, with the privacy and space of a single-family home. Meanwhile, many families are also being pushed out of the tight housing market. Housing affordability plummeted to historic lows this year, with only 23% of U.S. listings in April considered affordable to households earning $75,000 or less, according to the National Association of Realtors. In response, real estate investors are betting heavily on new rental properties and, increasingly, on standalone units — especially in the South. More than 61,000 fully and semi-detached single-family rental units are under construction in Southern states as of September. In comparison, 28,000 units are in production in the Western U.S., the next-busiest region, according to RealPage Market Analytics. Those units include single-family homes, townhomes, rowhomes, quadruplexes and duplexes. Single-family rental communities are increasingly concentrated in subdivisions with on-site maintenance, rather than in homes nestled in for-sale housing neighborhoods. The Nashville market has the ninth-highest number of in-construction, build-to-rent homes with 2,745 units in the pipeline. Phoenix tops the list with 21,676 units underway, a RealPage analysis in August found. "Construction isn't going fast enough in Nashville. If they built four or five new build-to-rent communities, they would fill them up immediately," said Doug Ressler, the business intelligence director of Yardi Matrix, a real estate data firm. "We really expect Nashville to continue to see growth here." Rent vs. own: 'More house for your money' Charlene Stratton filled the three-bedroom house with festive seasonal crafts and artwork she creates in her home studio. Renting isn't perfect, but there are real perks — like, when the air conditioner stalled on a Saturday afternoon in the middle of summer, the landlord offered to put them in a hotel until maintenance could fix it that Monday. "When something goes wrong, we just call them," Charlene Stratton said. "It's great." The Strattons live at DerryBerry Estates, one of the first of its kind, built in 2019 by Kinloch Parners. The 34-home community sits on former pastures with views of Spring Hill's rolling green landscape and rose bushes in the front yard. Local development companies like Kinloch Partners of Nashville and Franklin-based Chartwell Residential and Barlow Builders have made stakes in the industry. "In 2008, I had no competition. Now there are six or seven players in the market," said Kinloch Partners Co-founder Bruce McNeilage, who sold much of his inventory to American Homes 4 Rent and expanded to South Carolina. "We're 99% leased out." McNeilage said he prioritizes creating a calm, supportive community with competitive prices. Rents at DerryBerry Estates ranged from $2,300 to $2,600 for homes with three to five bedrooms in September. "People are starting families later in life and COVID-19 has allowed people to work out of their houses so people are moving farther out," McNeilage added. "Housing prices are going up and interest prices just doubled. You can get more house for your money if you get farther out." Housing in Nashville area: 'Can't build them fast enough' Chartwell Residential, a local real estate firm specializing in multifamily apartments, is now building out its first single-family rental home community. https://www.tennessean.com/story/money/real-estate/2023/11/08/renters-seek-new-options-in-nashvilles-tight-housing-market/70652968007/ https://www.tennessean.com/story/money/real-estate/2023/11/08/renters-seek-new-options-in-nashvilles-tight-housing-market/70652968007/ https://www.tennessean.com/story/money/real-estate/2023/11/08/renters-seek-new-options-in-nashvilles-tight-housing-market/70652968007/ https://www.tennessean.com/story/money/real-estate/2023/11/08/renters-seek-new-options-in-nashvilles-tight-housing-market/70652968007/ https://www.tennessean.com/story/money/real-estate/2023/11/08/renters-seek-new-options-in-nashvilles-tight-housing-market/70652968007/ https://www.tennessean.com/story/money/real-estate/2023/11/08/renters-seek-new-options-in-nashvilles-tight-housing-market/70652968007/
By Bruce McNeilage 15 Jul, 2023
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — High prices and high-interest rates have kept many from buying a single-family home in a quiet suburban neighborhood. But what if you could rent one? Developers say they are seeing a big demand for build-to-rent communities. Upon first glance at the DerryBerry Estates subdivision, you might assume the single-family homes are for sale, but they are not—each one is a rental. “People are very happy with what we are providing,” said Bruce McNeilage, CEO/co-founder, Kinloch Partners. Bruce McNeilage built DerryBerry Estates in Spring Hill a few years ago. He saw some families struggling to afford a single-family home in the suburbs, but still craving that lifestyle. “Their kids are getting older, they want to be in good schools, you want to ride a bike around, and you just can’t do that in an apartment complex.” No sharing walls at DerryBerry Estates, or Fairview Station, the other rental home community Kinloch Partners built in western Williamson County. DerryBerry Estates subdivision has 41 single-family homes with 3 and 4 bedrooms and rents in the $2,300 to $2,500 range; and all the trappings of the suburban lifestyle. “They have front porches, they have covered back porches, two-car garage. They have all the amenities and appointments on the interior that one would want in a house for sale, but these are available for rent.” Who would be interested in an all-rental community? McNeilage said his tenants are often folks new to town testing out the neighborhood, young families who can’t afford just yet to buy, those looking for a low-maintenance lifestyle, and senior citizens, which make up 10% of his tenants. “They don’t want to live in an apartment and share walls with someone. They want to live in a single-family home in the suburbs to probably be real close to their grandchildren.” McNeilage has a couple of rental communities in Middle Tennessee, as well as out of state. And with housing prices staying high, he sees the popularity of rental communities sticking around “I could build 100 houses. I could build another 100 houses. I really have a demand that I can’t keep up with.” McNeilage said that his tenant turnover is lower than an apartment complex. People will stay in his homes 3-4 years on average, but for apartment complexes, it’s 1.5 years. 
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