Texas-based Amherst Residential has been betting big on the single-family rental market, scooping up millions of dollars’ worth of properties across the U.S. to build a portfolio of more than 23,000 homes.
In 2017, Amherst – one of the country’s largest single-family landlords – bought $78 million worth of properties primarily located in Atlanta in Southeast Florida.
Now, that deal looks like chump change compared with Amherst’s latest $404.1 million acquisition of 2,400 properties located in multiple states that was closed in a series of transactions that began in October 2018.
The company said the latest deal brings its services to Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Seattle and Denver, upping its footprint to 29 markets.
"We see an opportunity for consolidation across the single-family residential market, and are focused on executing portfolio acquisitions that facilitate expansion into areas of high growth," said Amherst Residential President Drew Flahive. "With the size, flexibility and attractive cost of capital associated with our scalable platform, we are uniquely positioned to capitalize on market fragmentation to aggregate bulk portfolios of single-family rental assets."
"Supply of single-family housing inventory in the United States is at historical lows and we are seeing consistently strong demand for high-quality, safe and affordable, single-family housing," added Chris Avallone, co-head of Institutional Single-Family Residential at Amherst. "Amid this rising demand, we intend to accelerate acquisition activities and continue to provide the market with value-add services to lower the cost of real estate ownership."
Amherst made news last year when it threw down $1.2 billion to help launch a house-flipping subsidiary called Bungalo. At the time, sources said the company was working to raise another $1 billion to purchase single-family rentals. It looks like this latest deal propels Amherst closer toward its goal.
The company said it is “actively pursuing additional acquisition opportunities” and plans to purchase 10,000 mores single-family rental properties in 2019.
