Investors can buy stakes in malls, apartment towers, timber forests and even cellphone towers through real-estate investment trusts. Now, add to the list: single-family homes transformed into rental properties.Beazer Homes USA Inc., one of the nation’s top home builders, has formed a REIT that will buy and then rent single-family homes, one of the largest and most talked-about asset classes in the real-estate business. The Atlanta-based company last week announced that it was joining with buyout firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. to form the REIT, which eventually plans to go public.Beazer already had accumulated 192 single-family homes …
via Builder Is Constructing REIT for Home Rentals – WSJ.com.
The multifamily sector is in good shape for the foreseeable future, according to Calvin Schnure, NAREIT’s vice president of research and industry information, despite some market concerns about a rebound in new construction. He pointed out that there are approximately 3 million households that have “doubled up” since 2008, and many of those residents will be looking for a place of their own as the job market improves.The vacancy rate for apartments fell 60 basis points in the first quarter, to 8.8 percent. Schnure said that’s down more than 2 percentage points from its 2009 peak. Additionally, he said that in the first quarter alone, the number of occupied apartments jumped 8 percent, the strongest growth in demand for rental apartments since 1993.“So we’re seeing that the apartment sector still has quite a bit of momentum,” he explained.
via Multifamily Momentum Will Continue.