OwnAmerica?s sale to Renters Warehouse last week will bring end-to-end services to smaller investors 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. And last week, one of those platforms, OwnAmerica, took a step to make it even easier to invest in SFR homes by selling itself to property manager Renters Warehouse. Under the deal, the new Renters Warehouse will give investors an easy way to buy an SFR property online, as well as provide in-house property management services.
?The industry now is kind of hitting a second inning,? said Greg Rand, founder of OwnAmerica, who now becomes the chief strategy officer for the new Renters Warehouse. ?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 busine...