Wall Street is selling more rental homes, as buying ban takes effect
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Newly enacted housing legislation that bans institutional investors from purchasing single-family rental homes has those same investors putting up more “for sale” signs.
The number of homes owned by institutional investors listed for sale is, as of this month, more than double what it was at the start of February, according to an analysis provided exclusively to Property Play by Parcl Labs, a real estate data provider.
Listings have gone from 4,166 on Feb. 1, when Parcl launched its full research, to now 9,447 homes representing $3.1 billion in total asking price.
“The rate of for-sale change is something to keep an eye on,” said Jason Lewris, co-founder of Parcl Labs. “These numbers won’t materialize into actual dispositions for months given how long the sales cycle can be, but it’s the fastest read into institutional behavior.”
The legislation defined institutional investors as those owning 350 or more homes. That was a surprise to the industry, which traditionally set that bar at 1,000 homes. It does not force them to sell the homes they currently own, but they are barred from buying any more homes unless they fall under certain exceptions, including build-to-rent.
The charge by lawmakers was that these investors, most of whom were able to buy the homes with all cash, were inflating prices and sidelining regular owner-occupant buyers. The call for a ban was bipartisan.
Large-scale investors first entered the market during the financial crisis in 2008, when foreclosures were rampant and bulk auctions were popping up in the hardest-hit markets, like Atlanta, Las Vegas and Phoenix. Private equity firms purchased thousands of homes in a short period, converting them to rentals and creating a new single-family rental asset class.
The cohort of investors with 350 or more homes that therefore fall under the new legislation now own roughly 589,000 homes, or 3.9% of the 14 million single-family rental homes in the U.S., according to Parcl. They account for roughly 40% of the net selling year to date.
The largest landlords — Progress Residential, Invitation Homes, AMH, Tricon, FirstKey, Amherst and VineBrook — are all net sellers year to date, with 3,180 more homes sold than bought since Jan. 1. To put that in perspective, they still own about 400,000 homes, so it’s not exactly a liquidation sale, with one exception. VineBrook currently has nearly 10% of its portfolio on the market, roughly 1,900 homes with a total asking price of $285 million.
Invitation homes and AMH, the two publicly traded, single-family rental REITs, have 549 and 536 homes for sale, respectively. The largest landlord, Progress Residential, has the least of the larger players, just 143 for sale.
“There is broad recognition now both by the White House and lawmakers, in an overwhelming majority, that private capital has a very big role to play for a component of the American population that wants to rent a home,” said Stephen Scherr, co-president of Pretium, in an interview last week on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.” Pretium is the parent company of Progress Residential.
Progress is now focusing on the areas that the new legislation allows and which the industry fought hard for during the legislative process.
“We can buy build-to-rent, which is a predominant component of new housing. We can buy under various other exceptions including rent-to-renovate, where we improve the housing stock or we buy under a homeownership boost, where we give people an opportunity to transition where they want from renters to owners,” Sherr said.
The build-to-rent play has been gaining significant steam over the past few years as demand for single-family rental housing grows.
AMH started early, in 2017, building its own homes. It has so far developed more than 14,000 homes for rent in 180 communities, according to the company. Invitation Homes purchased an Atlanta-based homebuilder, ResiBuilt, at the beginning of this year.
“The financing case has materially changed with the forced disposition mandate removed. Lenders can underwrite [build-to-rent] again, and we’re starting to see this happen,” Chris Nebenzahl, vice president of rental research at John Burns Research and Consulting, wrote in a report.
The investors who are selling are offering discounts on the properties. Nationally, 38.7% of all listings for sale today have had price cuts compared with 54% within the institutional, single-family rental cohort, according to Parcl Labs. Since early May, markdowns have deepened from about 3.1% to 4% of asking value. Meanwhile, 54% of the investor listings for those in the more than 350 homes category carry a price cut.
“From what we can tell, given where U.S. home prices are, some of this is attributed to shifts in strategy — collect high dollar values off of top U.S. home values by culling underperforming assets and redirect that capital towards growth areas, i.e. build-to-rent, for example,” Lewris said in a statement, adding that the next six to eight weeks will be telling.
