By Marcia Kaufman, CEO of Bayport Funding Heightened real estate investment activity in the single-family rental (SFR) market in recent years has resulted in limited supply and commensurate pricing elevations across the country. Today, institutional investors with portfolios exceeding 1,000 units own approximately 3 percent of the 14 million SFR properties nationwide, or roughly 420,000 homes. Per a recent analysis conducted by Stateline, the nonprofit news service of Pew Charitable Trusts, as of 2022, both institutional and non-institutional investors own approximately 25 percent of all single-family homes (SFHs). Statistics provided by Redfin shed further light on these figures. A record-breaking 80 percent increase in SFH investment activity occurred between 2020 and 2021 in conjunction with lower mortgage rates at that time. By contrast, 2023’s combination of a cooling market, high interest rates, increasing prices and recession fears are leading many of the nation’s larger institutional investors — many of whom purchased during the pandemic — to offload their inventory with an urgency not seen in decades. This is resulting in opportunities for individual investors to build their SFR portfolios at a time in which demand is particularly high. The climate for growing an SFR portfolio is made more auspicious when …
