Roofstock, a platform for buying and selling single-family rental homes, is offering a unique carrot to try to entice investors to use its platform to buy a property: guaranteed rent.
Roofstock announced Tuesday that it is rolling out what it calls an “industry-leading” guarantee that provides up to 12 months of rent on a vacant property purchased through the company’s platform.
According to the company, the “Roofstock Guarantee” begins providing rent payments to investors if the vacant property is not leased within 45 days of closing.
But that’s not all Roofstock is offering investors. The “Roofstock Guarantee” has two parts. The company is also set to offer to 30-day, money-back guarantee on single-family rentals purchased through its marketplace.
If a buyer is “not satisfied” with their purchase, Roofstock will relist the property on its marketplace for free. When the property sells, the company will refund the full original purchase price to the original buyer, regardless of what the home sells for in the subsequent sale.
If the home doesn’t sell with 90 days, the company says that it will buy the property back itself.
Each part of the guarantee carries other terms and conditions (as these things usually do), but the company said that it feels its technology and “strict underwriting criteria” ensure that only quality rentable properties are available on its platform.
“We’ve introduced the Roofstock Guarantee to give our investors increased confidence when investing through our platform,” said Gary Beasley, Roofstock's CEO and co-founder.
“We identify and curate investment properties and provide rich data and analytics to help investors find the homes that best meet their objectives,” Beasley added. “Our data shows that the actual one-year returns have on average outperformed our underwriting expectations on both a current yield and value appreciation basis, which gives us the confidence to stand behind our product offering.”
Beasley added that the company believes its technology give the company “unique insight” into a home’s investment potential, which makes it much easier to provide this guarantee.
“We expect to continue producing innovations and product enhancements like our Roofstock Guarantee that further our mission to democratize real estate investing,” Beasley concluded.