Large investor firms are taking advantage of the deep discounts found in some housing markets, and they’re finding that buying one or two homes is just not enough -- they want thousands. The investors are then renting the homes out to tenants, banking on returns from the rental income, which they say is better than other investments at the moment...
For example, large private equity investors like Waypoint, which signed a deal with GI Partners, says it plan to buy 10,000 to 15,000 additional homes by the end of next year.
“We realized that there is a tremendous amount of brain damage around acquiring single-family homes, renovating them, and renting them out,” says Colin Wiel, a co-founder of Waypoint. “We think this is a huge opportunity, and we are going to treat it like a factory and create a production line to do this.”
Meanwhile, rental demand is rising and so are rents.
Economists say that investors buying the homes by bulk could help to stabilize the housing market.
Source: “Investors Are Looking to Buy Homes by the Thousands,” The New York Times (April 2, 2012)