Today I’m excited to share our first SFR Technology Market Map which highlights many of the companies building across every segment of the SFR ownership lifecycle: A higher-resolution version is available for download here.

Across the United States today there are more than 47 million renter households. Historically, we’ve thought of rental housing as being primarily composed of apartment units — high- and mid-rise buildings in downtown corridors, or garden-style units in suburban areas. However, in the decade-plus period following the Great Financial Crisis (GFC), single-family rentals (SFRs) have been the fastest growing segment of rental occupied households, adding more than 4 million rental homes. Today, nearly 34% of rented units are SFRs, representing 16 million properties across the U.S.

What prompted this shift towards SFRs? There are a number of factors, including:

• Demographic and migratory tailwinds in recent years supporting demand for single-family housing.
• Limited construction activity in the single-family sector following the GFC, resulting in rapid home price appreciation and affordability challenges for first-time homebuyers. One recent estimate found that the U.S. requires up to 6.8 million new units to meet current housing demand.
• While the majority of SFRs are owned by small individual landlords, there is a growing universe of “sophisticated” operators of SFR portfolios, who developed the scale and track record required to attract institutional capital. Firms like Invitation Homes, Progress Residential, Blackstone and KKR have scaled to tens of thousands of units under management.
• The emergence of technology platforms to remotely manage portfolios of geographically distributed SFR (Read more...)